The Difference Between Vintage And Old...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Steinberg today announced that they updated their old Model E and VB-1 plug-ins from VST1 days to modern 32/64 VST2.4 standards, and made them free. They are available on Steinberg’s site.
Model E, along with Neon (also available free here, but PC only, and don’t expect it to work) is one of the very first softsynths that didn’t require extra hardware–I believe Creamware made the first softsynth, but it required their cards to work–and at the time was one of the best. It is obviously based upon the MiniMoog, and is coded extremely tightly, in order to run at all on computers of the era. In today’s terms, it uses essentially no CPU.
Anyhow, it’s a fine softsynth, and a bargain at twice the price. It is quite bright by today’s standards; Adam conjectures this is due to a lack of band-limited oscillators which would have been too heavy-duty at the time. Certainly usable for certain situations, though, and you can instance a bajillion of them on a modern computer.
It brings to light an interesting semantic issue, though. While the term “vintage” gets bandied about to the point of uselessness on eBay and Craigslist, in real life we all know what it means. The difference between “vintage” and “old” is essentially desirability. A Neve Melbourne console is vintage. A powered Conn console from the same era is “old.” A Moog Source from ’81 is “vintage,” while a Bontempi chord organ from ’81 is “old.” Easy enough, right?
How does that relate to software, though? I use a lot of old software like TurboSynth, M, and UpBeat when the mood strikes me. But it would never occur to me to call UpBeat “vintage.” It’s just old. It runs on an old computer, and does old shit. In the computer world, though, it is so ancient as to be almost indecipherable. But by our normal metric as specified above, to me it is desirable; building a system running it that works with my modern rig is a worthy goal. That makes it “vintage,” right?
Semantic issues like this are rife in the music industry. I think it’s the result of music being an inherently subjective art form. Everyone working in the industry, or utilizing its resources, carries that thought process over to the gear itself. Millions of lines of code are devoted to recreating desirable (i.e. “vintage”) gear in the modern DAW context, while almost none is devoted to recreating gear that is just plain old. Obviously, someone isn’t going to go out of their way to try and clone something that was inherently shitty, but as we’ve learned, shitty is also in the eye/ear of the beholder.
This is a strange world we live in.
24 comments
I think there might be desirable software that when discontinued, not updated, not supported, etc will still be desirable. If something that doesn't sound like 18 other software products or necessarily have a direct equivalent, (maybe Absynth for example?) it might achieve the same nostalgic afterglow for those who found it to be useful in their lives.
However, the real problem is something you touched on: if I bought a 2600, I could plug in a 1/4 cable and record it successfully in under 5 minutes. Same goes for a 40 year old Tele for that matter.
But if those instruments required a special cable with an obsolete connector and an amp that was only made for 1 year and was difficult to find because no one bothered to keep them....those products would no longer be sought after by "vintage" enthusiasts. They would only exist in a very specific niche market populated by obsessive collectors.
AD Ratshack reverb being a possible exception to your theory...
I think it's great that Steinberg is giving something away. I don't remember them every doing that before.
On the other hand, there isn't much about these that can't be replaced by many other free softsynths.
I don't really care about 'vintage' -- I have vintage hardware synths, and I use them sometimes. The thing is this: there's sound design, and then there's music. Sound design can enhance good music, but it can't rescue bad music. Otherwise trance music wouldn't be so fucking annoying and BT would be the next Beethoven.
I also have a wheezy chord organ -- a JC Penney and not a Bontempi, and inexplicably built into a wood cabinet with The Worst Drum Machine Ever Made, and when I mic it up to catch it's full asthmatic charm, it brings a mood with it. It reeks of the sepia-tinged memory I have pre-urban-renewal America, of moribund music stores with dusty Lowry Console organs in the window.
That's the spirit! Fuck the labels. Make some music. I've often said the following: a good musician can make a good tune with a piece of string and a soup can, while a bad musician can't make a good tune with all the gear in the world.
It doesn't really matter what you call it, I guess is what I mean. Good gear and the skill to use it certainly helps, but it's not the end, only the means.
-CR
Indeed to the last two posts .
If you still had to ask the question ...just ask the guys who were still running ReBirth in XP mode or like me through Wine ( till the iOS version anyway )
Or indeed look to your alpha syntari and that big ol' dongle it runs off ?
Before reading this post i believed that I was vintage.
Turns out I am just old.
Ha ha ha ha!
there's a vintage/old porn joke here somewhere.
i read an interview w/the Dust Brothers ages ago about the 1st beck record they did and they said he would bring lot's of random stuff into the sessions but always had his $25 sears guitar that he played on the whole record. it took a while because it wouldn't stay in tune or something.
vintage/old.. meh.. as said.. in the right hands it's just another instrument.
i'd love some mid 90s vintage max patches :)
Turbosynth! A great old DD product from my grad school days (we used SoftSynth too -- the first digital additive software I ever used. That was DD too right?) But what impresses me most is that you sound like you were/are able to get Turbosynth to run more than 45 seconds without freezing your (vintage) computer.
I run Turbosynth on a c. 2005 iBook in Classic mode. Works fine, pretty quick, doesn't crash.
UpBeat and M are on a PowerBook 185 for extra authenticity. I don't think that thing could run Turbosynth. Never tried, anyhow.
-CR
My netbook says thanks for the heads up!
Cake has a similar "cheap" guitar sound to Beck (or Beck stole/sampled the idea). Once Cake got popular and started touring, that cheap guitar (Park?) became irreplaceable and it was tough to find a backup. Because it fell on the wrong side of the old/vintage guitar market and probably broke pretty often.
First Steinberg releases Windows 7 64-bit and OS X Intel drivers (albeit, "unsupported") for the Midex interfaces, and now this? What's next, a new firmware/driver suite for the Houston?
I wish Abes could sound as shitty as my Yamaha MT3x : ( ...miss it....
Anyone remember these and these ?
http://www.ews64.com/microwavesynth.html
Or the Waldorf AFB stuff:
http://www.google.com/search?q=waldorf+afb16&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1366&bih=600&sei=YL7WTt6sPMbZgQfDm5DKAQ
I'm with chaircrusher. Sitting in a pitch black LAX, paying a bar tab in cold hard cash, one has to wonder.. No power, how would it be to go back to making music without it? And how would it sound? Just like before there was any power, or? That might put "vintage" in a whole different light.
For the record, I remember running Turbosynth on some pretty anemic computers. I had a Quadra 840AV (built-in wee video, oooh, ahh!) and an LCII at the workplace, and I remember Turbosynthing my little heart out. More, accurately, I remember Nine Inch Nailsfying a lot of electric guitar, until I figured out that my K2000 was capable of very similar waveshaping madness.
This brought thoughts to mind of "old" tube consoles and hardware being chucked in the dumpster to make way for new solid-state hotness (late 60's). Analog synths & FX pedals sold at rock bottom prices in favor of the new digital stuff (early 90's).
As the worm turns...
No kidding. I can't begin to tell you how many cheap-as-fuck 2600s, 808s, and 303s I passed on in the early 90s. It's embarrassing. The Die Warzau guys knew what was going on. They built a monster collection of synths in that time period for next to nothing.
-CR
Whether old or vintage, quality or shitty, some gear, as mentioned, just has a vibe... maybe it's nostalgia, the interface, the limitations, the sound, whatever, what works, works. I had a substantial collection of Italian and Japanese organs (Yamaha with arpeggiator, I still miss it) and they were f'king awful, but you'd get these noises and textures that were great as sampling material. Same with my analogue delay collection... though they're not so shitty.
Mentioning Neon really brought me back to when I started with electronic production... that netbook might just get some use now!
Might I interest you in a nice copy of Massive?
For what it's worth, I used to know all that shit. But I stopped caring in 1999, and those brain cells have since been put to use for other purposes, like wondering what color shirt to wear.
-CR
Got massive, but thanks. Massive has a better VA engine than the Z1, but the only thing that comes close to the Z1's bowed string engine is Logic's sculpture. I'm inspired by Feldman's work, and that has driven me to find sophisticated string synths.
I don't actually know all that stuff about Korg part numbers - I just know where I stashed the info the last time I looked it up.
For what it's worth, I have a Prophecy on sale at the bay right now. I started out on the cheaper end but it's sitting at 300 right now. I was surprised/bummed that there were so many (around 8) for sale but wasn't expecting to get anything outrageous out of this deal anyway.
In the interest of saving space, I decided I was happier keeping the MS2000R, Pro-One and AX60. Not to mention those 3 are quite a bit easier to program for a jack-of-all trades like myself.
As a total aside, but speaking of vintage... did you ever do samples of the Hammond Sideman? (Currently rocking my Full Of Techno shirt... which is how I found ye olde thread)
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