You know what is weird

HUH??? :wtf:

What the heck does that ^^^ have anything to do with the discussion about the world economic/industrial situation and why kids today have/want more gear...?

Stay focused. ;)



:facepalm:

You didn't really just go there....Greta and climate change. :D

My advice...stop watching the news so much, you will feel better, and the future will not seem so dark.

Every older generation talks about the end of days for the kids of the future.
Let them sort it out...I'm sure they will, just like all the generations that have come before did.

I wish I had your optimism Miroslav I really do. The problem is, the power is in the hands of us OLD ones and they need to do somethng NOW.

Who said (might have been The Bard?) "Evil will propser when good men do nothing."

Dave.
 
... and they need to do somethng NOW.

Like what...really?
I assume you're still talking about climate change.

It's so easy to complain and blame...and expect that "someone" has the perfect answer, they just need to do it, and everyone will be happy with that solution...but really isn't one...and the idea that we (the little people on the very large planet) are going to just take some action that will make dramatic changes to what is predominantly a very large and long occurring natural process...is pretty naïve.

Sure, cut back the emissions, which have been cut quite substantially in the last 20-30 years...but it's a drop in the natural bucket.
Not to mention, who are we to now dictate to developing countries that they can't have their industrial revolutions like we already had, because it adds to climate change.
Your notion that the world just needs to "stop" producing...is beyond naïve..honestly. That's just the type of talk that feeds the news cycles and gets idealists like Greta and her puppet masters wound up... but it's not realistic.

Anyway...none of that has anything to do with how/why kids today have way more audio toys available.
 
Like what...really?
I assume you're still talking about climate change.

It's so easy to complain and blame...and expect that "someone" has the perfect answer, they just need to do it, and everyone will be happy with that solution...but really isn't one...and the idea that we (the little people on the very large planet) are going to just take some action that will make dramatic changes to what is predominantly a very large and long occurring natural process...is pretty naïve.

Sure, cut back the emissions, which have been cut quite substantially in the last 20-30 years...but it's a drop in the natural bucket.
Not to mention, who are we to now dictate to developing countries that they can't have their industrial revolutions like we already had, because it adds to climate change.
Your notion that the world just needs to "stop" producing...is beyond naïve..honestly. That's just the type of talk that feeds the news cycles and gets idealists like Greta and her puppet masters wound up... but it's not realistic.

Anyway...none of that has anything to do with how/why kids today have way more audio toys available.

You astonish me you really do Miroslav. I trust people of the calbre of sir David Attenborough. But I shall leave the subject now and keep to audio matters.

I doubt I shall live long enough to see the worst effects of CO2 and the Plastics polluting the ocean (and the AIR now they have found!).

Dave.
 
Nowadays Im in my middle ages. I don't get something I see a lot of. The Gear. How are the teens equipped so well?
Some of it comes down to attitudes towards debt. That is, "who cares ?" the old "live now, pay later" syndrome. Some have indulgent parents, whether that be through guilt or weakness. Some have supportive parents that are prepared to sacrifice. Some have worked hard doing odd jobs to pay for it. Some of it is borrowed or posed with. Some of it is cheap gear. Some of it is presents. Some of it is bought with presents. Some sell stuff they have to fund their desire.
When I read about the 2nd generation of British rockers, that generation of the Beatles and the Stones, they were fairly well equipped. They bought much of their stuff on hire purchase or paying off a bit at a time. There has long been a tradition of young people in music getting hold of the instruments and equipment they need ! How did all those young Black Americans get those double basses and horns ? How did Ted Nugent get his first guitar ? Ray Charles, Little Richard, Stevie Wonder and pianos ? Few in the history of popular music have been so well heeled that they could just walk into a shop and lay out the money needed for the instrument of their choice/desires/need. Yet, they managed to acquire them.
My older son turned 18 a month back and he went out and bought a Squire strat and Blackstar amp. The money came from money his Gran had put away for him when he was tiny that became his at 18. Not a huge amount, but enough. Now that he has no income, he has to think and plan how he's going to afford a few items he needs to record. But before that, he'd been banging away on a cheap acoustic I bought for him back in 2010 or 11. He's had to be a realist.
Teens find money in the same way most of us found money when we needed it. There are many ways and everyone's situation is different. Not everyone is Steve Jones breaking into Hammersmith Odeon and nicking Mick Ronson's gear !
 
Also bear in mind that young people are so much better informed {and therefore targeted} these days than before. In fact, humanity as a whole is much better informed in matters of audio, recording and the attendant equipment that goes with it. I'd never even heard of a compressor till I was 29 !
 
Also bear in mind that young people are so much better informed {and therefore targeted} these days than before. In fact, humanity as a whole is much better informed in matters of audio, recording and the attendant equipment that goes with it. I'd never even heard of a compressor till I was 29 !

Maybe informed 'at' Grim' but not scientifically educated. The lack of knowledge of the most basic electrical/electronic matters of 99.9% of new forum members is incredible! They must have dreamed their way through high school because surely they were taught Ohms law at least.

I built my first guitar amplifier at age 15 or thereabouts (2x KT66) at around 1961 and was well into knowing about compressors, preamps, gain, noise etc by 20 from reading magazines like Tape Reacorder, Hi Fi News and Wireless World. 'Kids' today, well most people actually, don't 'read' they want to learn about technology such as audio, Bish, Bash, Bosh from YT or from a couple of slick answers on a forum.

From some ten years of reading forums the level of education on matters electronic is woeful and people seem incapable of following a a logical process to diagnose problems. They have some very strange ideas of how things work and what is important or not in an audio chain and this makes them prey to the peddlers of highly expensive snake oil products.

Dave.
 
You know...that thing that's always puzzled me immensely is not where/how kids are able to afford more audio toys than when I was a kid...

...rather it's trying to understand how some of the upstarts in the audio/studio biz are able to build/open studios that probably cost a couple of million or more to construct and equip...???

Some of the guys began as your typical home studio operators...barebones stuff...then suddenly after a few years they've got 3-4 room studio suites with Neve and API consoles and racks of gear up the wazoo!
Now I know they didn't earn/save that money operating their humble home studio...and these are not guys who suddenly had major hits with the music they produced/engineered...so it's not like the money flowed in.

All I can think of is that they either came from money...or managed to secure massive loans/leases to outfit their new studios...or who knows, maybe even some illegal moneymaking stuff...???...I don't know, but I just see these people interviewed in the music rags, and I'm always asking myself that question...where did the money come from? :D
 
I'm going to build my big studio as soon as those little balls come down the chute with my lucky numbers.... 8 14 17 23 44 36 ...... Bang! $230 million will build me a really nice studio!
 
Maybe informed 'at' Grim' but not scientifically educated
I didn't say scientifically educated. I'm not scientifically educated when it comes to audio, partly because that side of things doesn't interest me. Well, I am in a way, yet, not. But what I meant was that when I was younger, ie, a teen, one rarely saw other teens involved in the recording of music, let alone them instructing, therefore one wasn't exposed to contemporaries with equipment. Also, there were few outlets that made this possible for the mass of teenagers that existed. The internet has changed that exponenetially. Plus also the fact that adults have generally been pretty shitty at keeping the adult world from encroaching into that of young people {or conversely letting young people grow up too fast}. A good example of that is phones. There were always telephones in my household and that of my friends but I never had their numbers nor them mine. Why ? Because kids didn't use phones. It was a kind of unwritten rule and the only time one got to use the phone was to make emergency reverse charge calls {which I discovered at 12} or prank calls. It's not like that now and certainly in England, any company that makes phones makes a huge amount of money from not just the teen market but the child market in general. So kids are better informed about phones and the world that the phones give them access to than they ever were when I was 5~18.
It's less about knowing the 'how' as it is being able to see what is there. Now a teenager can tap into YouTube and probably have access to 40 videos at a stroke of someone of similar age doing something with a musical instrument or piece of recording equipment. So it's pretty normalized for them and not out of reach or the mystical thing it once appeared to be although I still maintain that teens have long had access to certainly musical instruments.

'Kids' today, well most people actually, don't 'read' they want to learn about technology such as audio, Bish, Bash, Bosh from YT or from a couple of slick answers on a forum.
Well there's some truth in that but I think we need to be careful not to overlook that that is simply the way some people learn best. And also, not to impose the way we might have learned onto everyone as the only or best way.
The world is a lot more diverse than most of us like to acknowledge.
 
I won't make too may generalizations about today's kids. I know some that have no interest in anything technical, except that they can use it. There's no difference between turning on a TV or hitting the power button on their Iphone. I know others who can build a computer and program it as well. When the power supply goes out because of bad capacitors, they can track them down, change them and get things back up and running.

I didn't have much formal electronic education, just the basic stuff from my physics class. My degree was in chemistry. That didn't stop me from building a rudimentary mixer based on a Radio Shack mixer but adding 4 more inputs, or digging into my old Atari and TI computers to stack memory chips, run a few address lines, and increase the memory instead of buying the normal memory upgrades. I used to do programming in BASIC, wrote Lotus 123 macros, and build dBase and Access databases. I only took one BASIC programming class in college mostly to get access to the mainframe computers.

Some people are curious about how and why things work, others just want to use it and be done with it. If it doesn't work, buy a new one that does.

I know someone who couldn't tell the difference between a CPU and LED, but he can read music like a second language. Me... I know the spaces and lines are FACE and EGBDF, and the little tail on the dot says if its a 1/4 note or 1/8 note, but it would take me an hour to "read" a page of notes and it wouldn't sound like anything resembling music. I have to hear it to play it.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Thankfully there are a lot of us, so we cover all the bases!
 
I find that more and more these days, people who don't have, like to blame people who do have, for their shortcomings.
It's the easy answer to a lot of things...blame someone else, or try to take it from those that have it rather than earning it on your own.
While there's some truth in that, I don't think that's what Dave was getting at. While I think that some of the climate narrative lacks nuance, for at least 5 decades now, it has been pointed out how the west uses up roughly 80% of the world's resources and energy to the benefit of roughly 20% of the world's population and most of this is not because of need but to service desire, while many of the poorer nations are left scrambling for the remaining 20%. The point being that when oldmattb talks about how good life is now, that's a specifically western viewpoint or view of those that aren't struggling and pointing out one's struggles and highlighting reasons {and yes, sometimes laying them at the door of one that may be viewed as a legit culprit} isn't necessarily playing the blame game {although it might be in some instances}. It's a bit like how when people talk about the revolutionary 60s, their frame of reference is really quite narrow. Most of that change did not apply to the majority of the world's population so when we hear things like "the Beatles changed the world," or similar statements in relation to things that happened in America, it's important to note that there's a whole other world out there and things that happen everywhere are hugely significant for those people to whom they happen. And it's inescapable that some nations screw up others through a variety of ways and this impacts those populations.

When you consider a country like China...they are going through their form of "industrial revolution"...and just like the USA and GB and other more modern countries had a darker industrial past where people worked hard for low wages....they too will eventually raise their standard of living.
With the size of and educational freedom of their population and the inherent control mechanisms that are part and parcel of communism, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
Yet, paradoxically, it does seem like sometimes, the superpowers that have been through their own industrial revolutions and benefitted greatly from them seem to find any number of reasons to get in the way of competitors having their own.....


If their own government chooses to suppress that, and keep them at "sweat shop" earning levels, you're not going to change it by simply avoiding the products they export...if anything, it will make their lives worse if they can't earn even those low wages.
That's partly true. But the other side of the argument is equally valid. One might just not, within their own conscience, feel comfortable buying something that was made by, I don't know, slaves that are so plentiful that it doesn't matter if some get ill and die. The sticking point comes where one is attempting to control another's actions into lining up with their own.
Derek taylor once made a fascinating statement about John Lennon in regards to Yoko Ono; "Sure, I know John thinks we hate her....that's a very strong accusation and an extreme assumption. I can't say I blame him for thinking that sometimes but the reason he feels that way is because we don't love her." Taylor was being pretty insightful into the human condition there. He was observing that Lennon simply could not accept that others had the freedom to feel differently over something {someone} that he was passionate about. That's trying to control others into lining up with what one feels.

Anyway...let's not get into some political thing here
I think it's about time all of us matured to the level where we can state what we politically/musically/spiritually/socially/sexually/educationally/religiously etc think without the conversation becoming toxic and nasty. There's nothing wrong with passion unless it becomes misplaced or masquerades as a stick with which to beat people with. The problem isn't the subject of politics, it's the unwillingness to hear with both ears what someone with whom we don't agree is saying. I can think that what X might be saying is wrong or not agree with it....and still go out and play pool or have a meal with X and laugh about something else.
That said, Lazer probably should have put this in Primetime !
 
We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Thankfully there are a lot of us, so we cover all the bases!
This, for me, is what has made so much music so very interesting over the last 100 years. Everyone brings their contributions to the table and the resulting mix'n'match is what it is, either working well or not.
 
It's a bit like podcasting. You can do a decent podcast with a mic, a digital recorder and then an audio editor on a laptop. But I see folks building studios that may look great, but cost $$$$$ and are not needed, at least until they are well established.
 
Interesting topic flow !!!!!

Re the global warming part and the actions of many of us "old farts" --- especially the Pollies, just think about my country (Australia) at the moment. The country is virtually on fire from the shore line of the west coast to the east coast and from the north coast to the south coast (and even an island off the south coast), while Sydney two days ago had the hottest temperature in the world, millions of acres destroyed, thousands of homes and other buildings destroyed (even one home that was designed to withstand a fire temperature of 2000c), more than 500mil animals lost with a number of species lost forever, yet the Pollies are still denying that there is any such thing as climate change or global warming, but rather what we are experiencing is simply just a 1 in 1mill year event. Thank God for people like Greta who unfortunately will have to inherit the current mess.

NOW sort of back to topic !!!!!

I often state to people when discussing my audio career and the studios that I have built and owned.

When I first started out (very early 1960's), if you were building a studio (possibly slightly different for the super top few studios) and you had (say) $200k to spend (God only knows where you would have got that amount from !!!!!), about $160K+ of that was on equipment the other $40k- was on sound-proofing, whereas today if you had the same amount to spend about $40K- would be spent on equipment and $160K+ would/should be on acoustics.

Possibly the reason we older people (in my case prehistoric !!!!!) think about how can the modern young person have all that great gear. Also think just how many young ones have gigantic credit card (s) debt and go into bankruptcy as a result of buying all that gear, but have very poorly sound-proofed and properly acoustically treated studios (just think of the number of times this topic appears in this forum !!!).

AND, I agree that the vast majority have very little (if any) knowledge about one of the most fundamental aspects of the industry ---- electronics ---- not only Ohms law, but also frequency response, distortion (and what causes it), electronic gain staging, signal levels, etc, etc, etc !!!!!!! I designed and built virtually everything in my first two studios --- console, recorders, amplifiers, speakers, reverb/echo units, etc. All that I really purchased was the individual components (eg resistors, valves, physical speakers, tape decks{without electronics} and microphones, etc).

I even designed and installed all of the acoustic treatment ---- just to save money and because what I wanted was not readily available.

David
 
I built our "light show" around '69 or 70. It had 4 100W colored spots per side, and the control box had a set of DPDT switches and a set of snap switches activated by buttons fashioned from the caps of spray paint cans. Flip the switches forward and the buttons would turn the lights on when pressed. Flip back and the lights came on and the button would turn them off when pressed. Our "roadie" (one of our friends) could play the lights with the music by tapping the buttons.

We couldn't afford a strobe light, so I put a spot inside a box with a slot, mounted the motor from my Erector set on it the top, with a 78RPM record on it with another slot. Turn on the motor and Flash Flash Flash. Instant Strobe. You changed speed by moving the gear lever on the motor! I think we used it for about a half dozen times. The 78 kept getting broken.

Mics were Unidyne B 515s with high impedence and a switch. Cost <$30 each back then, which was a steal compared to an SM57. Besides, our Kustom 100 PA had high impedance inputs so the 57s wouldn't work so well.

It took a lot of jobs to pay the $800 for that PA. Luckily we had a regular gig at the local USO which paid $140 for a Sat night/Sun afternoon. I think it took us about 4 months pulling $100 off the top of each job to pay the music store.

In comparison, today's stuff is CHEAP! That $800 would be about $4000 today.

Man, that's a great post! You were so creative; a musical MacGyver! I can relate; my first guitar pedal for my old Truetone (I got new in the 60s from Western Auto) was made from a Sucrets can, a spring from a D-cell flashlight and dynamite shot-wire. Still have it, haha.
 
I remember making our PA speaker columns for our first band when I was 13 probably around 1970. I salvaged old console TV speakers and some plywood slapped together in my Dad's woodworking shop. Sounded like crap but we looked the part. There were actually 3 or 4 competing R&R cover bands in our area. We learned and worked hard on our craft plus our school and side jobs. Survived the other groups and played for years. I also built a light system from 4 colored 100w bulbs on each side on a conduit tripod of sorts. We could perform and work on our tan at the same time! lol lucky we didn't burn down the venues. I did a lot of self teach in electronics, etc and it came in handy.

Seems kids today want immediate gratification. I had several of my kids try music but found it too hard (compared to video games I suppose). Yes the technology is available much cheaper but most don't want to put in the book time to learn how the tools work.

This old foggy (no degree) was forced into retirement by a large corporation from their training dept. after 42 yrs. because it was too expensive to do training correctly. I was replaced by a team of kids with associate degrees that were supposed to bring YouTube type training to the company. Three years later they still have nothing to show other than the stuff I left behind. Progress I guess. I really don't mind. I'm enjoying retirement, playing all I want and keeping my grandchildren entertained.
Sorry for kind of rambling. It just seemed a good place for it.
 
In the eighties I had a Yamaha MT44 4 track with patch bay, I used guitar pedals for effects, I paid a fortune for that back then, ( that machine in today's dollars would be around $1800!) now I have a Behringer Xenyx 1832 board with 24 bit effects and 14 inputs going to a Akai EIE pro interface and then on to Samplitude, the biggest cost is software.The biggest problem I face now is I spend more time learning about the DAW and what it can do and getting all the plugins to work.
 
Thank you for the contributions. I was initially somewhat taken aback by the response but now feel a little bit vindicated. Yes, forums should be places for free speech even if that speech sometimes challenges people's entrenched beliefs. So LONG as it is all done in an open, gentlemanly (gentlewomanly?) fashion.

T Sat. Samplitude*, which one? Did you manage to grab the super cheap Pro X3 Suite a year of so ago? My son in France and I did.
I have to confess though that I rarely fire it up. My playing days are over and I tend to use my modest system mainly for diagnosis of peeps problems on forums (along with Right Mark Analyser) and thus use the magazine freebie Samplitude SE8. I use Sam Silver Pro to convert stuff to MP3.

Being an old fart I LIKE books! I have therefore searched for a hard copy of a manual for Samplitude but to no avail. YTs are not that useful to me and in any case you need two computers!

* MUST change the spellchecker on this new T510 Lenovo. The USA incumbent does not like many of the words I KNOW are 'proper'!

Dave.
 
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