6 ms·

A decade ago it was generally assumed that vinyl recordings were over with. And vacuum-tube amplification should be obsolete. But retro-fashion persists.

JohnBooty 5y ago
CRT manufacturing is, at a minimum, an order of magnitude more complex. In all likelihood the ability/knowledge to manufacture high quality CRTs has been irrevocably lost and won't be regained unless somebody wants to sink large amounts of cash (hundreds of millions?) into reviving it. In contrast, vinyl never actually went away. retro-fashion CRTs still have some technical advantages (essentially zero lag) and notable differences compared to modern flat panel displays. The appeal to many of these outdated technologies extends beyond "fashion."
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  CRTs also scaled images very nicely. LCDs et al have had to rely on higher pixel densities to achieve the same results. This is then requires more powerful graphics processors too. So for games, some gamers have turned back to CRTs which means they can run their games at lower screen resolutions but have all the rendering effects enabled. Resulting in a better looking game than they would have gotten from the same computer hardware powering an LCD display. There might have even been a discussion on here about this actually.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Agreed on all counts! Digital Foundry has done some excellent videos on CRTs for retro and modern gaming. High end CRTs are actually fantastic for modern games, too, especially at 120hz. (Although, good luck finding/affording one...) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=digital+foundry+crt https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=digital+foundry... While purely subjective, many would agree that low-rez pixel art looks much better on a CRT: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/the_same_pixel_art_on_a_crt_vs_lcd_screen/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/t... There might have even been a discussion on here about this actually. There have been a few. Of course, any time an older technology is mentioned on HN, a bunch of uninformed tech bros dismiss it as "fashion" or "hipster" or "nostalgia." In reality, sometimes these old technologies have unique qualities. I have to laugh at the idea of CRTs being "retro-fashion." I've got a half-dozen CRTs in my home and basement and let me tell you, nobody thinks it's cool ha ha ha ha.
  - SilasX 5y ago
    Yes! They’re also better for rhythm games, like Dance Dance Revolution, because you avoid the lag from upscaling.
- Zardoz84 5y ago
  A CRT it's only a special vacuum tube. And now, there is a small manufacturing of vacuum tubes in China.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    That's only part of it. There's also the phosphor masks, etc. It's not that we literally don't know how to make CRTs any more. But the manufacturing ecosystem is gone: the machines, the tooling, etc. That was the product of 80 years and many billions of dollars of R&D. Making high-quality CRTs requires some pretty specialized propietary gear. We could probably manufacture a 1950s-style black and white TV without too much effort. But it would be a tremendous leap from there to creating e.g. a high-end Triniton monitor capable of doing 1080p@120hz.
  - willis936 5y ago
    A vacuum tube with 3 balanced heaters, specific and large blown dimensions, a delicate mask inserted, coated with lead, and wrapped in copper coils. You could make one in your garage for sure. /s
- louhike 5y ago
  Yes, old technologies (video games consoles before HDMI use, VHS) were made to be displayed on CRT and the quality is far worse when seen on recent TV. I recommend the twitter of CRT Pixels if you want examples.
- speeder 5y ago
  I was using CRT until recently, sadly it broke in a way nobody could fix :( Reasons why I preferred it over flat panel: 1. Zero lag (lag annoys me a lot when I am gaming) 2. Arbitrary resolutions (for example I was running several recent games using a medium-range video card, with graphic options on ULTRA or above, because the games would look gorgeous on CRT with low resolution) 3. Arbitrary resolutions (want to use content for other format than widescreen? It is covered! Content designed for pixels that are not square? It works too!) 4. Stupid high refresh rate if desired (while lowering resolution of course) 5. Stupid high resolution if desired (while lowering refresh rate). 6. Better contrast (one of the reasons I got CRT back was that I got annoyed with flat panel when I tried to play SuperHOT and watch Game of Thrones on the same day, if I avoided SuperHOT becoming a white blob, Game of Thrones became black blob, if I avoided Game of Thrones becoming black blob, superhot became white blob) The last one sadly is only "theoretical" for me because I never had the right equipment and software, but CRT could do HDR images, for example Silicon Graphics for a time was shipping computers for digital art that had a fancy video card that could output 48 bits of colour, that computer came with a ginormous widescreen CRT too... I believe that CRT is the one John Carmack is using in a famous photo. Also I heard before Windows Vista that introduced a lot of DRM-related restrictions on video and sound drivers, you could do a lot of fancy shenanigans with CRTs, seemly intended for engineers and architects, but I never got too much details about it, I never seen it in person and nobody ever described it to me, I only saw people bemoaning it was removed.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Also I heard before Windows Vista that introduced a lot of DRM-related restrictions on video and sound drivers, you could do a lot of fancy shenanigans with CRTs, seemly intended for engineers and architects Huh, that's interesting. I'd love to know more about this if you manage to jog your memory. I'm not sure what you're referring to so that's why I'm interested.
    - speeder 5y ago
      I remembered the name, it was "Overlay" seemly it allowed you do things like control the RAMDAC directly and skip the CPU, send arbitrary information to the CRT, and other shenanigans. From what I understood the non-official reason for its removal was to prevent people from using it to circunvent HDMI restrictions in a way that would allow them to duplicate movies without using DRM. The official reason was that it caused driver instabilities and thus Microsoft was against its inclusion in the new driver model for Vista. Why it was popular with CAD, I have no idea.
- TillE 5y ago
  Zero lag is the really important bit. If you're a top-level speedrunner of a retro game, there's just no good alternative yet. When existing CRTs deteriorate beyond repair, that's a big problem. We can replace aging consoles with highly accurate FPGA clones, but we can't replace the displays. The best modern displays still effectively lag behind a CRT by about a frame (~15ms), which really does matter.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    If you're a top-level speedrunner of a retro game, there's just no good alternative yet. I think even the most casual of gamers feel the difference when input/display lag is reduced, even if they don't know why their enjoyment is greater. Similar to how most folks, in a blind test, would prefer a fresh-baked pastry from a skilled baker that uses quality ingredients vs. some kind of shelf-stable junkfood pasty. They would likely not know or care about the fact that one uses high quality grassfed butter and the other uses partially hydrogenated oils and that one uses cane sugar and the other uses corn syrup. But they would enjoy one more than the other, even if they weren't able to articulate why.
ddingus 5y ago
It is fashion. Frankly, a well made tube amp coupled with a quality phonograph cartridge has a great sound! It is a sound many people, myself included, crave. Some of that sound happens because of production constraints. There are limits to what can be put into a groove with good results and those impact how the music is produced. A vinyl mix often stands right out. A similar thing exists with AM radio. Back in the peak time for AM music listening, many stations were broadcasting 8 to 10Khz of bandwidth. It is a far cry from the brutal 5khz brick wall so many stations use today. Mixing music so it would sound good on AM as well as FM, stereo and wi-fi, tape, vinyl, involved some production constraints that again color how music is produced. That distinctive 70's era sound is that way because of these things, in part. Obviously, there is more to the story, but where there are limits, there is art. As those limits were removed, we got loudness wars and some albums shipped clipped and brick wall tiring to listen to. Expose someone growing up on that to a banging vinyl production and it can blow their minds and they go looking for more! And let me be clear: The tube amp and vinyl source material are not better than a CD, though they may be better in some respects than a stream is, and digital audio is superior. Period. It is better than our ears are and has been since we got the storage to produce it and distribute it properly to people. So that gives? It is all about the limits and the art. Sounds people crave. And for what it is worth, each vinyl play is unique. Heard only once and then forever gone. People know the record is consumable, an experience to be valued and so they do. I like to capture them after a few plays. The occassional rattle from the cartridge, pop, click, all speak to the time I recorded a record I love while in it's prime. Here is a sort of digital parallel experience that might help: Right now, I am typing to you in the little HN text input window. I could take it off line, use other tools, then paste it right in. Sometimes I do. Depends on what it is and whether I feel the window is risky... And the difference on your end? NONE! It was for me. A bit of theatre, immediacy, connection to a "conversation", or "person" created in my mind that does help what I say flow differently. These little things matter to people. They are why apps will signal, "X is typing..." in an attempt to convey more than text, but less than people in close proximity. People run little radio stations for it too. The station has very low power. But, it is "on air" and that sense of a unique experience colors what people in the studio do. Others may listen on a radio, and a few will. Locals. Most will stream, or pick up a replay later. And there will be a subtle energy in that missing from just recording in a studio. Once a person begins to look for this, it is fascinating! And that is why I am writing this. Music from before the computer editing and processing was not quite as perfect as we can make it. But ask around and many pick up on the energy to be had from a great show performed decades ago. Maybe from before the listener was born even. And they will talk about those humans who did it in real time, no bullshit, just everyone in the moment, experiencing something familiar, yet unique to them. And that is all. The analog age has a sparkle to it people crave. And it will still work today too. All people have to do is embrace the art. Take the limitations and roll it all up onto good sounds.

JohnBooty 5y ago

CRT manufacturing is, at a minimum, an order of magnitude more complex. In all likelihood the ability/knowledge to manufacture high quality CRTs has been irrevocably lost and won't be regained unless somebody wants to sink large amounts of cash (hundreds of millions?) into reviving it. In contrast, vinyl never actually went away. retro-fashion CRTs still have some technical advantages (essentially zero lag) and notable differences compared to modern flat panel displays. The appeal to many of these outdated technologies extends beyond "fashion."

hnlmorg 5y ago
CRTs also scaled images very nicely. LCDs et al have had to rely on higher pixel densities to achieve the same results. This is then requires more powerful graphics processors too. So for games, some gamers have turned back to CRTs which means they can run their games at lower screen resolutions but have all the rendering effects enabled. Resulting in a better looking game than they would have gotten from the same computer hardware powering an LCD display. There might have even been a discussion on here about this actually.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Agreed on all counts! Digital Foundry has done some excellent videos on CRTs for retro and modern gaming. High end CRTs are actually fantastic for modern games, too, especially at 120hz. (Although, good luck finding/affording one...) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=digital+foundry+crt https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=digital+foundry... While purely subjective, many would agree that low-rez pixel art looks much better on a CRT: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/the_same_pixel_art_on_a_crt_vs_lcd_screen/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/t... There might have even been a discussion on here about this actually. There have been a few. Of course, any time an older technology is mentioned on HN, a bunch of uninformed tech bros dismiss it as "fashion" or "hipster" or "nostalgia." In reality, sometimes these old technologies have unique qualities. I have to laugh at the idea of CRTs being "retro-fashion." I've got a half-dozen CRTs in my home and basement and let me tell you, nobody thinks it's cool ha ha ha ha.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Yes! They’re also better for rhythm games, like Dance Dance Revolution, because you avoid the lag from upscaling.
Zardoz84 5y ago
A CRT it's only a special vacuum tube. And now, there is a small manufacturing of vacuum tubes in China.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  That's only part of it. There's also the phosphor masks, etc. It's not that we literally don't know how to make CRTs any more. But the manufacturing ecosystem is gone: the machines, the tooling, etc. That was the product of 80 years and many billions of dollars of R&D. Making high-quality CRTs requires some pretty specialized propietary gear. We could probably manufacture a 1950s-style black and white TV without too much effort. But it would be a tremendous leap from there to creating e.g. a high-end Triniton monitor capable of doing 1080p@120hz.
- willis936 5y ago
  A vacuum tube with 3 balanced heaters, specific and large blown dimensions, a delicate mask inserted, coated with lead, and wrapped in copper coils. You could make one in your garage for sure. /s
louhike 5y ago
Yes, old technologies (video games consoles before HDMI use, VHS) were made to be displayed on CRT and the quality is far worse when seen on recent TV. I recommend the twitter of CRT Pixels if you want examples.
speeder 5y ago
I was using CRT until recently, sadly it broke in a way nobody could fix :( Reasons why I preferred it over flat panel: 1. Zero lag (lag annoys me a lot when I am gaming) 2. Arbitrary resolutions (for example I was running several recent games using a medium-range video card, with graphic options on ULTRA or above, because the games would look gorgeous on CRT with low resolution) 3. Arbitrary resolutions (want to use content for other format than widescreen? It is covered! Content designed for pixels that are not square? It works too!) 4. Stupid high refresh rate if desired (while lowering resolution of course) 5. Stupid high resolution if desired (while lowering refresh rate). 6. Better contrast (one of the reasons I got CRT back was that I got annoyed with flat panel when I tried to play SuperHOT and watch Game of Thrones on the same day, if I avoided SuperHOT becoming a white blob, Game of Thrones became black blob, if I avoided Game of Thrones becoming black blob, superhot became white blob) The last one sadly is only "theoretical" for me because I never had the right equipment and software, but CRT could do HDR images, for example Silicon Graphics for a time was shipping computers for digital art that had a fancy video card that could output 48 bits of colour, that computer came with a ginormous widescreen CRT too... I believe that CRT is the one John Carmack is using in a famous photo. Also I heard before Windows Vista that introduced a lot of DRM-related restrictions on video and sound drivers, you could do a lot of fancy shenanigans with CRTs, seemly intended for engineers and architects, but I never got too much details about it, I never seen it in person and nobody ever described it to me, I only saw people bemoaning it was removed.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Also I heard before Windows Vista that introduced a lot of DRM-related restrictions on video and sound drivers, you could do a lot of fancy shenanigans with CRTs, seemly intended for engineers and architects Huh, that's interesting. I'd love to know more about this if you manage to jog your memory. I'm not sure what you're referring to so that's why I'm interested.
  - speeder 5y ago
    I remembered the name, it was "Overlay" seemly it allowed you do things like control the RAMDAC directly and skip the CPU, send arbitrary information to the CRT, and other shenanigans. From what I understood the non-official reason for its removal was to prevent people from using it to circunvent HDMI restrictions in a way that would allow them to duplicate movies without using DRM. The official reason was that it caused driver instabilities and thus Microsoft was against its inclusion in the new driver model for Vista. Why it was popular with CAD, I have no idea.
TillE 5y ago
Zero lag is the really important bit. If you're a top-level speedrunner of a retro game, there's just no good alternative yet. When existing CRTs deteriorate beyond repair, that's a big problem. We can replace aging consoles with highly accurate FPGA clones, but we can't replace the displays. The best modern displays still effectively lag behind a CRT by about a frame (~15ms), which really does matter.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  If you're a top-level speedrunner of a retro game, there's just no good alternative yet. I think even the most casual of gamers feel the difference when input/display lag is reduced, even if they don't know why their enjoyment is greater. Similar to how most folks, in a blind test, would prefer a fresh-baked pastry from a skilled baker that uses quality ingredients vs. some kind of shelf-stable junkfood pasty. They would likely not know or care about the fact that one uses high quality grassfed butter and the other uses partially hydrogenated oils and that one uses cane sugar and the other uses corn syrup. But they would enjoy one more than the other, even if they weren't able to articulate why.

ddingus 5y ago

It is fashion. Frankly, a well made tube amp coupled with a quality phonograph cartridge has a great sound! It is a sound many people, myself included, crave. Some of that sound happens because of production constraints. There are limits to what can be put into a groove with good results and those impact how the music is produced. A vinyl mix often stands right out. A similar thing exists with AM radio. Back in the peak time for AM music listening, many stations were broadcasting 8 to 10Khz of bandwidth. It is a far cry from the brutal 5khz brick wall so many stations use today. Mixing music so it would sound good on AM as well as FM, stereo and wi-fi, tape, vinyl, involved some production constraints that again color how music is produced. That distinctive 70's era sound is that way because of these things, in part. Obviously, there is more to the story, but where there are limits, there is art. As those limits were removed, we got loudness wars and some albums shipped clipped and brick wall tiring to listen to. Expose someone growing up on that to a banging vinyl production and it can blow their minds and they go looking for more! And let me be clear: The tube amp and vinyl source material are not better than a CD, though they may be better in some respects than a stream is, and digital audio is superior. Period. It is better than our ears are and has been since we got the storage to produce it and distribute it properly to people. So that gives? It is all about the limits and the art. Sounds people crave. And for what it is worth, each vinyl play is unique. Heard only once and then forever gone. People know the record is consumable, an experience to be valued and so they do. I like to capture them after a few plays. The occassional rattle from the cartridge, pop, click, all speak to the time I recorded a record I love while in it's prime. Here is a sort of digital parallel experience that might help: Right now, I am typing to you in the little HN text input window. I could take it off line, use other tools, then paste it right in. Sometimes I do. Depends on what it is and whether I feel the window is risky... And the difference on your end? NONE! It was for me. A bit of theatre, immediacy, connection to a "conversation", or "person" created in my mind that does help what I say flow differently. These little things matter to people. They are why apps will signal, "X is typing..." in an attempt to convey more than text, but less than people in close proximity. People run little radio stations for it too. The station has very low power. But, it is "on air" and that sense of a unique experience colors what people in the studio do. Others may listen on a radio, and a few will. Locals. Most will stream, or pick up a replay later. And there will be a subtle energy in that missing from just recording in a studio. Once a person begins to look for this, it is fascinating! And that is why I am writing this. Music from before the computer editing and processing was not quite as perfect as we can make it. But ask around and many pick up on the energy to be had from a great show performed decades ago. Maybe from before the listener was born even. And they will talk about those humans who did it in real time, no bullshit, just everyone in the moment, experiencing something familiar, yet unique to them. And that is all. The analog age has a sparkle to it people crave. And it will still work today too. All people have to do is embrace the art. Take the limitations and roll it all up onto good sounds.