Best _available_ at the moment or to your money. I think it’s related to how you’re educated. Today, with all the hi quality plugins, whether clones or original, we can hear différences or bad quality because we’ve references.Calagan wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 3:25 pmIs 78rpm still as fresh and amazing as in the good old days (during the roaming 20s) ?SebAV wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 10:25 amI’m always astonished by the fact that something that « great at the time » is no longer ? I mean if it sounds bad today, it sounded bad at the time ? Or is there any combination of used algorithms and quality of DACs of the time ? Or were those old plugins used as « one trick pony » in their « not bad » spectrum of use ?zerocrossing wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2025 3:07 am These days, a lot of stuff is good or great. What you need to look for is aliasing, which can be prevalent in plugins that do distortion of any type. Decapitator is one of those plugins that was considered great in its day, but in modern times it doesn't really hold up due to a lack of internal oversampling. It's easy to check for. Just run some high notes though a plugin as you turn up the distortion amount and you'll start to hear the weird inharmonic garbage that aliasing creates.
Or is it sounding like shit ?
There is nothing natural or objective in how a specific technology is supposed to sound to human ears. People has some expectations based on what is considered the best at the moment. 78rpm was the thing hundred years ago. It's not anymore (at least, to most of us)...
I remember when the Roland D50 was all the rage, reading in interviews, « famous » musicians saying that the reverb on it was crap, where the included FX was indeed a strong selling point among us mere mortals. It’s obvious they had access to better sounding Lexicon & Co.
During the 00 decade, every soft synth or FX was a discovery, so a lot of them sounded great by absence of a better reference. It’s now moré true.
