Today the final part of the Vinny Gallo trilogy: The Return of Future Boy, from sound practices issue 6. Colourful as ever, Vinny covers a slew of topics: How he believed in progress when being a kid, and how one day that bubble burst. How he became nostalgia boy, but that a lot of those extremely desirable collectables used to be nothing-special products, or outdated, or actually worn out and a pain to own. But then again there is his western electric gear… Next, we find out how he chanced into owning CDs and pretty soon he is on a high-end audio acquisition trip. He likes that it is new, does not smell, it works and has warranty. Vinny goes on a visit at madrigal. Vinny is Future Boy.
teaser quote: ‘In the 60s it felt like each year the new things got better and better, it was so exiting. Future Boy thought by the time he was 21 all disease would be curable, cars would fly and run on water and people would live forever and stay young looking. He’d fly the first spaceship to Pluto. He loved all the new modern things. He was a techno-loving guinny, Vinny 21st century, Dr. New. His friends called him FUTURE BOY.’
my take
‘Don’t take this article too literal (especially if you felt yourself somehow disagreeing with it).’ This time really: did we not read 3 weeks ago that Vinny’s father was in jail from when Vinny was 2 to when he was 15, and a year later Vinny left home? And now we read he was going every year with his pa to pick up the new cadillac?
Anyway, no shortage of things to discuss this week.
First, there is Vinny taking issue with the ‘they used to make quality, but now it is all junk’ party line. I guess the way to escape the line is to look at the absolute performance, design and manufacturing quality of things new and old.
With performance, we get immediately into a quantity vs. quality, objective vs. subjective debate. After recognising that we can still say that there are plenty of things where raw performance got better over the last 80 years. And plenty of things where R&D apparently was fully focussed on getting away with murder. It just depends on who you talk to which things are which…
For design quality, this is not about just the visual coolness factor—design is not about making things pretty. It also includes ergonomics/usability/comfort, and joy of use. For the former, things generally got a lot better over the last 50 years, although interacting with an appliance via one-line LCD and 3 tiny buttons may not be real progress. When it comes to joy of use, it is a sum of big positive and negative factors and the results are all over the place. Handling wood, cast or machined metal, bakelite and leather beats plastic every time, but if it is off for repairs most of the time, then owning a classic is certainly not a joy.
The cadillac example shows that for some things manufacturing quality went down the tubes a long time ago. Reading Vinny’s mind, I guess 1967 is the year the last year GM cars were alright. From a European perspective, the practice of the american car industry to slightly change body panels every year and create ‘model years’ is an nice example of hollow consumerism gone wild. After the MBAs got in control, these hollow shells started to stink, as Vinny’s pa concluded within a week. Finally last year they stopped getting away with it.
Now, next time you see something old/classic/collectable, maybe think: what about ‘absolute performance, design and manufacturing quality’? And know that the conclusion you reach, works only for your frame of reference. Remember the story of the 16th century Dutch art scene? Culture has a lot to do with this.
What the article also shows is that LPs are not the only fruit. Musically superior: yes. Love ‘the ceremony of records’: sure. The one and only thing: no. First, there is FM radio. If the programming is culturally up to scratch, the compressor backed off and optimod switched off, it is a great musical adventure to listen to. Next is CD, Vinny argues its case. Yes, comfort is trump. And even if they stopped making CDs today, there is enough software available for a lifetime—bite that, HDCD, SACD, DVD-A.
Moving towards the future, there are the many ways of playing music from computer hard disks to the sound system(s) in the house, either via (wireless) networks, USB or digital interfaces. Plenty of 100% bona fide ultra-fi nuts do this and so do I. Performance is usually equal to CD and comfort is at the next level. And now I am going to make a confession: I really like internet radio. Now before you shoot me for its lossy compression (MP3) sound quality, hear me out.
Yes, I have also found that some genres of music really do not go along with the MP3 algorithms. Yes, quality matters, so I refuse to listen to anything at less than 128k bit rates. Yes, I also feel that it does not make sense to listen to a MP3 compressed piece of music when I can hear it also in baseline CD quality, or better. But when these pitfalls are avoided, then a world of musical discovery is available that delivers goosebumps when played via an ultra-fi system.
If you can understand how the internet supports a freak community of ultra-fi builders, then you can understand how the internet can bring together broadcasters and listeners of small scale music that would not have a chance on FM radio, even in the quality-programming evening hours. You could call internet radio Future Boy’s long wave radio: not only receiving programmes from around the world, but also from the depths of sub-culture. And thinking about long wave radio makes the performance of (128k+) internet radio all relative.
And do not mistake FM and internet radio for background music. Both when at work and when I am relaxing, radio plays clearly in the foreground, making conversation and phone calls impossible. The mood changing and enhancing properties of music are all to clear in this situation. The programme has to be carefully selected and evolve over the day, or irritation ensues.
Vinny’s VCR and laser disk example shows the risk of being Future Boy: obsolescence. It may be not that long from now that storing music on hard disks looks just as hip as storing software on floppy disks. Here LPs show their value, and after 28 years of service, CDs too.
What is sad in this article are the signs of audio nervosa: listening ‘most often to the same few records. The ones that make the system sound best.’ And the fact that Vinny gets sucked into buying megabuck high-end gear. Luckily quite a few people have been taking the attitude to digital between 1996 and now. I am not talking about adding a unity gain tube stage at the end of a CD player or DAC. No, more about non-oversampling, no analog filter, no-op-amp I/V and output stages, or no stages at all. By the way, the current ‘killer CD player in toy clothing’ equivalent of the mid-90s portable player craze is first generation Sony playstations. Hell, they are cheap enough to try one out, but the comfort factor is greatly diminished when using one of these.
bonus tracks
One more shot of Vinny? Another colourful read and it is about making music to boot.
Now go and read the article, see you next week.
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