[TheOtherHobbes]

Eno was dead wrong about that. Outside of a marginal Kickstarter project - probably for a Japanese fanbase - I don't think anyone is going to pay money for a high-jitter 12-bit resolution retro CD player.

Comparing that to the stylised imperfections of a human performer is unconvincing.

I do think there's an interesting effect where as soon as a first-to-market technology becomes good enough to avoid being hopelessly terrible, its characteristic flaws set standard expectations for a medium. Hence retro anything - guitars, synthesizers, cars, recording equipment, tapes, vinyl, paperback books, computers...

How likely is it that the early designers were so awesome they hit a technological bullseye with these things - apparently almost every single time anyone developed a new technology?

I can't quite believe that's how it works.

Personally I have no love at all for the sound of vinyl, even on stratospherically expensive hardware.

[JonnieCache]

I've paid money for software which emulates a 12 bit ADAC, with a knob to adjust the jitter etc. I have several such items in fact:

https://www.plogue.com/products/chipcrusher

https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler

That chipcrusher thing in particular does some crazy stuff.

[voltagex_]

Are they on the high or low end for pricing of plugins? I can imagine a full setup (excluding hardware) gets very, very expensive.

[tomc1985]

I love how people naively pass judgement on an aesthetic, as if everyone's tastes were like theirs.

Besides, it doesn't matter if it sounds human or not, that's not the point. Old hardware introduces a lot of weird harmonics that often affect future stages in the signal chain in a big way. Predictably enough that one can make art with it -- and it's hard to emulate that in software.

[lucideer]

I think you're confusing hitting an objective "technological bullseye" with creating something that a specific niche audience will someday see aesthetic value in; the former of course doesn't happen with every new technology, but the latter most certainly does (albeit with different size niches for different tech: guitar distortion and 8-bit music are a lot more popular than 12-bit CD players)

Eno is spot on in this quote

[anexprogrammer]

But there are chip tune bands who emulate 8 bit. That people pay money to see. So I can well imagine a niche for emulating flawed CDs.

[voltagex_]

At the end of BT's Somnambulist there's cut up samples that sound exactly what you'd get with a skipping Discman. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to listen to something like that but I'm sure there's someone experimenting with those sounds.

[SyneRyder]

As a counter example, there are bands whose aesthetic is defined by what Brian Eno described - taking the sounds of old hardware & exploiting their points of failure. Boards Of Canada uses 80s hardware, preserving/amplifying the sounds of grain & hiss in VHS tape and other analog mediums, and uses it not just as an aesthetic but exploring the theme of society on the brink of collapse as well:

Reach For The Dead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTg-q6Drt0 Album trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2lyYEUPat8

[gbog]

It's something else. Take the old synths for instance, their sound wasn't specially great by themselves, but guys like Kraftwerk and Telex, and Black devil disco club were excited with them and did commit a few good tracks. Then the unstable blur of these sounds became something. And more people try to get this sound back, with some success. Music id like the air, it will fill all the space available.