Is It Ironic?

"Really good" is subjective opinion. I find older Rolling Stones record not so great sounding but have 2010 remasters that sound much better. Early Beatles recordings sounded just horrible, but to my surprise some people find them great sounding. Even Beatles, after recording first LP in Abbey Road Studios realized how much better it can sound. There might be some exceptional older Jazz recordings or exceptional pieces of equipment, but you can find even better recordings and amazing hardware today. Digital is not better - nobody claims this. It is getting on the par with analog playback but is much more convenient.

"What I find ironic is that much of the music used to ascertain the improvements in equipment was recorded fifty years ago. The touchstone recordings by RCA, Mercury, Columbia, Decca and Blue Note were made with equipment that was being retired as obsolete when Brian Jones was the guitar player with the Rolling Stones. We're using newer and newer equipment to find out that old recordings made with "antique" equipment actually sounds really good. Ironic?"

Recording studio gear and playback gear, are 2 completely different applications. They don't do the same thing. Whatever studio gear that was used to capture the event is a fixed variable. Weather the recording is good, bad, old, new) is all you have to work with. The job of an audio system is to play the recording back in the most transparent way possible. It doesn't matter if the recording is old or new, you'll still benefit from modern equipment. For example, consider high frequencies. If you are using low quality playback gear, cymbals don't always sound like cymbals. They can sound like a piece of metal being dropped on a cement floor. As you upgrade your audio system, the more real they sound. You're trying to get the proper timbre of a cymbal and not something else. So, when you are playing an old recording, cymbals still need to sound like cymbals. They still have the potential to sound like metal being dropped, just like in a modern recording. So the better the playback system, the better the sound quality. Even if the recording is old.

Is it ironic? Yes. Ludicrous? Possibly. It's funny how technology is constantly "improving".....until you pop in some old piece of classic gear that demands you ask the question: "Are these "improvements" real?