The Sorry Tale Of Nostalgia versus Reality

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by jjl

I had a RAD 12. It was the first new radio I owned; I received it as a Christmas present in 1971. It gave me no end of enjoyment, listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes etc.
Mine fell to pieces after being dropped on the floor once too often. It was scrapped at the end of 1976 but was still working.
I'd love another one, but I'm not sure how many survive being a cheapest of the cheap model made from flimsy plastic

My parents' RAD 12 was eventually given to me in about 1980 and it died perhaps a year later. It had been repaired a few times, either by dad or myself. It was the cheapest of the cheap, and by 1979 dad had a decent Harman/Kardon receiver (another story, and I still own it).

Not a great radio but it did the job. And for reasons only of nostalgia I occasionally search eBay for one.

[sp10mk11]

To over come the disappointment I feel some times with very old (1970s) cassette recorders etc, I have accustomed myself to not expect them to sound how I remember or how I hope they will, that way I am not disappointed when the latest mono radio/cassette I have just bought with a 3" speaker, no loudness or proper tone controls sound thin and gutless.
But I can still listen to it or any other similar type equipment without any problems.

If some thing is muffled because it is designed that way and not because some thing is wrong with it then that is fine aswell

There is plenty of modern gear that is positively rude to listen too now I wonder what future generations will make of it.

Gary

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by sp10mk11

There is plenty of modern gear that is positively rude to listen too now I wonder what future generations will make of it.

It's a good question. In 30-40 years time will the 40-50 year olds be nostalgic for Samsung Galaxy devices, iPods and first generation iPads?

[Junk Box Nick]

Probably, in fact, almost certainly. It's what they grew up with.

Whether they are able to use them in the way we are able to use (and maintain) our vintage stuff may be another matter.

[Radio Wrangler]

Behind many devices there is a whole unseen infrastructure.

I first came across the concept in terms of photography. You hold the camera in your hand but it's useless without all the film manufacturing, chemical manufacturing and developing industries behind it.

We can DIY for ourselves a lot of this... coating our own plates and developing them, though film and colour film are much more difficult.

Similarly, we can make our own signals for our old radios and tellies and (ahem) distribute them off-air by wire.

But most of the modern handheld devices rely on GSM basestations, servers and general infrastructure. You could do something, but licenses to do it legally won't be possible when the frequencies are assigned to whatever comes next.

Reliance on support from the cloud will be a further step in the same direction

David

[AC/HL]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

Probably, in fact, almost certainly. It's what they grew up with.

And for the very same reasons we do, it's Human nature. They'll have the same grumbles too, no holographic camera, battery life less than 3 months, and so on.

[Radio Wrangler]

I disagree with one bit, Bill. The trend for functional time per charge is definitely downwards. My ancient thickphone can do a full week on a charge

David

[Nickthedentist]

I suppose it depends on what the device actually is. I have a new, basic £40 Nokia phone, not a smartphone. It easily lasts 2 weeks between charges, far better than my old 3310 ever managed.

[Gulliver]

I like my smartphone but I agree the battery life is pretty awful. When it was new 16 months ago I could almost go through the "waking hours" without charging it. Today it's ailing battery can muster a few hours. Admittedly I use it quite heavily. That does make me wonder about electric cars, and battery life....

In many ways my favourite phone was my old Nokia 3330, very nice to use and would go several days without a charge. Bear in mind I have been known to exchange 500 texts a day with just one person. Something simple like the 3330 (or 3310) with today's battery tech could probably last a couple of weeks.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Gulliver

In 30-40 years time will the 40-50 year olds be nostalgic for Samsung Galaxy devices, iPods and first generation iPads?

I recall a cartoon in part of the technical press some years ago, where the residents of a seniors-care-home sometime in the future were fighting over whether they were going to connect the Wii, the Xbox or the Playstation to the TV for that afternoon's gaming.

[thegreat26]

I am quite younger than my collection. And for sure my collection was going to be bigger if my wife was allowing it. For sure we are not buying our equipment for the audio quality. The smell of those circuits and their story before us excites me. Their build quality is amazing. And most of them were built to last. Maybe I should have lived some decades ago this is the reason I love those vintage electronics. They are something like a time machine for us.

[Radio Wrangler]

A lot of people say that, but what if you really did live all those years ago? Maybe you'd see what we now call vintage electronics as the new upstart? Maybe you'd hanker for the much older stuff?

I tease people who say they want to go back and live in the past that they'd have to accept the dentistry, too.

What I do for a day-job would see me burned for witchcraft, I've got a thoroughly modern dentist, I've got a modern level of disposable income and I can pick and choose a mixture of all I like best from the past and the present and sometimes a little way into the future. Then I go out and ride a horse! The present is a pretty good time to be in.

David

[Peter.N.]

Its all relative to the technology of the time. I can remember when the Pye VT4 came out, I was dying to get inside the tuner and see how they could select so many different channels - that was new technology, but sadly there was a label on the tuner which stated " the guarantee will be void if this cover is removed" sets were so expensive then that I had to obey. A year or so later we did dozens of band 3 conversions with turret tuners which were very clever but a different system to the switch tuners used by Pye. So in the space of a year the technology had been turned on its head.

Peter

[Phil G4SPZ]

Interesting thread, this.

My first experience of record players was watching 78s playing on my parents' old Sobell Tablegram. I became a big fan of 78s in the late 1950s when they were still being sold, alongside the new 45rpm vinyl discs. So my own first personal record player had to be a mechanical gramophone, a Fullotone, on which I literally wore out several of my favourite records!

In recent years I have acquired a Columbia gramophone plus several hundred 78s, and I am astounded at how good these still sound. I've got electrical means of reproduction, too, you'll be relieved to hear, and again, most 78s in good condition still sound pretty decent when played through a 7kHz scratch filter.

Don't forget that 'pop' records usually sounded so good on Dansettes and the like because the alternative sources of pop music - Radio Luxembourg or the pirate stations - were much worse!

So my experience is somewhat more positive. OTOH, perhaps it's something to do with my ears!

[dave walsh]

Phil is spot on about 78's and the quality but they are going around at a fair speed I often transfer these into compilation CD's with other more modern tracks [without a sophisticated range of styli or filtering systems] and they still sound good!

The vinyl in the sixties is a bit different. There was so much going on, the creativity, new sounds and recording techniques, musicians using "advanced" chords in different ways-lots of rule breaking in this way by people who didn't know they were there in the first place, best illustrated perhaps by the Beatles output. You would consistently hear a new single and think it couldn't be bettered-then it was! The advent of portable record players and tape recorders was also ground breaking-singles were often "designed to get maximum effect through a "low" power set up, although a Record Player pushing out 2 1/2 watts-maybe though a large'ish eliptical speaker-sounded very loud and exciting then and could certainly fill a large room. It wasreally the combination of what you were hearing and how and where it was happening that we recall. Singles were'nt designed to be played through Hi Fi systems at al. Studios knew this and allowed for it-often playing them through a small speaker to check, not just Studio Monitors.

Occasionally we got to play records through some adults impressive new Radio Gram. Hearing "Beatles For Sale" like this was phenomenal with all the bass and Hammond Organ fills but we didn't feel deprived overall. Why things can seem jaded now is perhaps again subject to a number of factors but "in the moment" it was fairly overwhelming as Cam Tech acknowledges in his initiating post creating this interesting thread.

Dave W

As a related aside for anyone interested-I heard a Mitch Benn Special on 4xtra this morning re Dylan. It was intended as a comedy spoof perhaps but came across as a very good insight into the man and his music-making an amazing impact with non of the conventional attributes [allegedly]. Benn makes the point later on about how bland everything was pre the mid sixties [How Much Is That Doggy In The Window] and how it is again now post X-Factor. Should be on the I Player for 28 days!

[Welsh Anorak]

The odd thing is the way that convenience has overtaken quality. We have systems capable of delivering sound (and pictures) way beyond what was available, even in a studio, not that many years ago. And what do we do? Watch films on a tablet or phone - or, luxury, a laptop and listen to compressed MP3 files on a mobile phone's miniscule speaker that makes my teenage 'tranny' sound positively hi-fi!
If I wanted to impress a girlfriend I could make a mixtape for her (followed by her inevitable swift departure), but now even making a CD or similar is antiquated. Things are changing but we don't quite know where they're going. Help!

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Welsh Anorak

If I wanted to impress a girlfriend I could make a mixtape for her (followed by her inevitable swift departure), but now even making a CD or similar is antiquated. Things are changing but we don't quite know where they're going. Help!

These days you just make a playlist on Spotify for her, and share it. Works just the same as mixtapes/CDs but with the benefit that no physical media are needed (and no loss-of-fidelity like there was when doing tape-to-tape copies).

Things have always changed: I have this amusing image of someone in the 18th century writing out on music-ruled manuscript paper a "mix-score" for their inamorata/inamorato, posting it to them, and the recipient then having to find an orchestra before he/she can hear it.

[dave walsh]

I agree that there is the high tech spotify instant equivalent of a mix tape but it doesn't require quite the same effort and comittment perhaps. Will anyone be nostalgic about those in the future, given the transient nature of our selfie society-who knows? It's interesting that the younger generation whilst living almost wholly within a virtual reality world are also the same group that value hardware like vinyl. Is there a contradiction there-I don't know?

The apparent irony in convenience over-taking quality only re-inforces the notion that consumers will often sacrifice the latter for the former, as in the days of transistor radios perhaps! Quite possibly, engineers and audio enthusiasts will always have a higher standard than the bulk of the population..

Dave W

[wireful3]

I find 78s are an interesting phenomenon, Most of them now sound a bit grim and I put this down to the fact that they were relatively expensive and so collections were small with records played many times. The acoustic soundboxes were not very gentle either.

I have two experiences that made an impression on me the first was many years ago when I heard a 78 played on an experimental Hi Fi system. Money was no object and I assume the record was pristine, the result was very impressive. The second was more recent when I visited a museum dedicated to mechanical music. I heard a gramophone with a giant horn considered in its day as Hi Fi the result surprised me.

What intrigues me is how far into the past will nostalgia of the future go. Today it is possible to find books that are a hundred or so years old and read them with no difficulty. It is also possible for enthusiasts to listen to very early cylinder sound recordings without too much difficulty. 78s are not too much of a problem and early vinyl is relatively easy. In comparison I have files of notes I made 20 years ago that I can only retrieve if at the time I had made hard copy. I suppose that with enough searching I could get an old computer or some program to retrieve the files but Not as easily as reading very old documents.

With music I find it strange. Mini discs are an example as are 8track tapes. They had a vogue for a few years and then effectively vanished. Fashion or technical advances made them redundant. Reproducing them though is almost as much a challenge as reproducing cylinder records (maybe a bit of an exaggeration). It makes me wonder how much of currently computer stored music will be accessible to the masses in even 5yrs time. I have a couple of old (not vintage) radios that also play MP3 card but even they have problems because they can't accept the current style high capacity SD cards. What will happen to stuff saved on smart phones is a mystery

I am beginning to think there are two types of nostalgia. One, looking back to things that were once commonplace for many years, the other is things that were considered the greatest innovation but then vanished without trace.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by wireful3

. It makes me wonder how much of currently computer stored music will be accessible to the masses in even 5yrs time.

You have a point - but the great thing about the current digitisation is that there will be vastly-more *discoverable* copies of a particular work.

Think about it: you have a rare single/album/78/off-air tape-recording of some particular work on your shelf.

But *nobody else can find this out*.

In other words - your copy doesn't exist!

The great thing about online/digital stuff is that you can go on the likes of YouTube and rediscover recordings from times-past that you remember well but thought were lost forever.

And the more different copies you can find the easier it is to push these through some relatively-simple software to produce a 'best currently available' recomposition.