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comment by WanderingEng
WanderingEng  ·  2565 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: They Used To Last 50 Years

I agree with everything you said. Part of the Russian tube legend is that they lagged the solid state advances of the west, so their factories survived long enough to meet the latent demand once western stockpiles were gone. But that might be a remnant of the Cold War, portraying the enemy as technologically inferior.

I enjoy tubes the way some people enjoy cars. My hifi is objectively inferior and more expensive than modern equipment the way a similar vintage muscle car is objectively inferior and more expensive than a modern muscle car.

Also more than you asked for.





kleinbl00  ·  2565 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I can totally respect that. A great friend of mine has some Zus and some tiny riduculous little tube amp that distorts like a muther whenever he pushes it even a tiny little bit, which is usually to watch Youtube videos. Meanwhile, he's made the Woody Allen argument that all movies should be mono so the soundtrack doesn't detract from the picture all the while knowing that I make most of my money mixing 5.1 and am seriously contemplating becoming the only Atmos rig north of San Francisco.

The general inferiority of Soviet equipment may/may not have been a deliberate strategy by the USSR to cause the west to underestimate domestic market gear based on sub-par export models. At the same time, the performance encouragement provided by a free market economy is not present in a command economy and absent self-driven loyalty and self-sufficient pride of workmanship, the two manufacturing paradigms do not compete fairly. I think it was Hoffman who pointed out that when the overwhelming majority of your manufacturing expertise is given over to military uses, you end up at a keen disadvantage in the consumer marketplace. It's not that a tank factory can't make frying pans. It's that a tank factory can't make frying pans most people can afford and switching over from making top of the line precision hardware to economy bakeware requires significant retooling, both spiritual and actual.