ABSTRACT
Vintage audio equipment has enjoyed a renaissance despite having more noise and distortion than recent models. Beginning in the late 1990s, ‘retromania’ is a very real phenomenon, found in trade magazines and literature but also in the production, retail, rental and recording sectors of the audio industry. Apart from nostalgia, there seem to be audible, aesthetic reasons at play. ‘Vintage sounds’ are typically created by non-linearities causing harmonic distortion and can be employed to reference recording history and tradition.
