You can ask my wife, when it comes to choosing a movie I’ll always pick something I haven’t seen over an old movie I’ve seen before… I definitely love new things. But lately, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to realize that our society has an obsession with the NEW!

Now I may be preaching to choir a bit here since of all people I know, the more technical, and enthusiasts per-say, tend to have an appreciation for the value of classic things. Having said that, I still think it’s relevant to draw to our attention to a trap that we all may be falling into right now.

New isn’t always better

I’ve been a massive culprit of believing that I could do a much better job if I just had X piece of new gear or Y plugin. I have believed that what is really holding me back is the quality of my converters or the transient response of my monitoring, and If i could just get some new Genelecs and that Apogee that new SSL sound card then I’d be killing it!

Over the years I’ve personally done many comparisons of gear when trying to make a decision and let’s be honest here a lot of the improvements of newer/better gear are very subtle! Now don’t hear what I’m not saying… I’m not saying that great and very expensive gear isn’t amazing… not at all. I’m not saying that the small differences that you can or can’t even hear when you upgrade each part of a chain don’t add up to a much much greater end result, BUT. What I’m trying to get at is that we have to stop listening to the marketing teams that want us to believe that we NEED this revolutionary new plugin and just get on with the work.

Old isn’t necessarily stale

When I say this to people who appreciate vintage gear it may seem pointless but here is the thing. It’s easy to believe that a hand built Fairchild 670 with 20 tubes, 11 transformers and 2 inductors is going to sound absolutely fantastic! But, It’s a lot harder to trust that we can make great music or soundtracks without one. You see what I know, is that somewhere in me there seems to be this voice that is always telling me that ‘I need this new plugin that is at 40% off today’ that my snare would finally not sound !@#$ if I just had that new Steven Slate thingymabob! Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna buy some new stuff on Black Friday, Cyber Monday or that other big sale, however. The beauty of old stuff… or just the stuff that we have is that it limits us, it forces us to make a decision and move on to what we can control.

In Conclusion

So here is the summary! Don’t despise the day of small beginnings. Don’t doubt your gear, just do the best you can with what you have right now. Upgrade when you can, get that noise reduction plugin or whatever you actually ‘need’ to allow you to do work that you couldn’t before, but don’t believe the hype, just make great sound now!