Old metal boxes#
A plugin might faithfully mimic the frequency response of a blue metal box from the 1950s. What does that have to do with my client's track, which needs a specific tonal correction? What does it have to do with the music lover at the end of the chain? He probably doesn't know what a Pultec is.
Much of the audio community would rather argue over old metal boxes than get anything done.
Famous gear is on famous records because famous artists use it#
People correlate famous microphones and consoles with the biggest artists in the world, and cheap gear with bands who play to three people and a dog. But correlation is not causation. The gear is not where the sound of the record mainly comes from. See performance.
Prices then and now#
People look at second-hand prices for legendary synths and say they wish they could go back to the 1980s, when this stuff was affordable. It never was. The prices back then were brutal when you adjust for inflation.
The Fairlight was an 8-bit sampler with more or less the audio quality of a Game Boy, and it cost Ferrari money. Today stock plugins and VCV Rack do the same things and more, for free. I don't see why anyone would want one now other than for collector's nostalgia.
The Akai MPC3000 is probably the most iconic sequencer of all time, and it was a serious professional piece of kit. But 30 years later a modern hardware sequencer is much more capable and costs four times less.
Build quality is worth paying for#
Metal knobs and relays cost money. If you want nice things, you have to pay for them. Premium hardware is often beautifully built and can last a lifetime. But are you really doing it for the sound?
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