by John Bowen » Sat Sep 19, 2020 10:38 am
I'm always very careful about any time someone says “Can X sound exactly like Y?”. One thing I’ve learned over all these years is that everyone’s hearing will greatly affect how they perceive sound quality, so this is quite a subjective thing. When the DX7 came out, I sat in Dave Smith’s office, and listening to a DX7 we had brought in, we both remarked how noisy and harsh it sounded, and were both sure it would not do well compared to the warmth of analog. Guess how many DX7s were sold in it’s product lifetime?
I have a friend who I believe in his claim that he could hear above 20,000 Hz (or at least sense it to a great extent). He hated the way CDs sounded when they came out, while most people were accepting of it (of course, there were enough variables that it was clear that the early CD products had some issues). I was not as critical, and felt he must be wrong...and I think we all know how much things have improved over the early days of digital. Still, as you can see by the resurgence of interest in vinyl recordings, there’s some subtleties that you just are not going to be able to duplicate for a number of customers.
Finally, it’s also about musical taste. Besides the DX7, there’s another very popular synth that I never understood the appeal - it just sounded ‘bad’ to me, noting that the main feature was how hot the outputs were (louder is better, right?). Obviously I was in the minority there as well.
I'm always very careful about any time someone says “Can X sound exactly like Y?”. One thing I’ve learned over all these years is that everyone’s hearing will greatly affect how they perceive sound quality, so this is quite a subjective thing. When the DX7 came out, I sat in Dave Smith’s office, and listening to a DX7 we had brought in, we both remarked how noisy and harsh it sounded, and were both sure it would not do well compared to the warmth of analog. Guess how many DX7s were sold in it’s product lifetime? :-)
I have a friend who I believe in his claim that he could hear above 20,000 Hz (or at least sense it to a great extent). He hated the way CDs sounded when they came out, while most people were accepting of it (of course, there were enough variables that it was clear that the early CD products had some issues). I was not as critical, and felt he must be wrong...and I think we all know how much things have improved over the early days of digital. Still, as you can see by the resurgence of interest in vinyl recordings, there’s some subtleties that you just are not going to be able to duplicate for a number of customers.
Finally, it’s also about musical taste. Besides the DX7, there’s another very popular synth that I never understood the appeal - it just sounded ‘bad’ to me, noting that the main feature was how hot the outputs were (louder is better, right?). Obviously I was in the minority there as well.