Modern music sounds expensive but feels empty and I can't figure out why?
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i've been thinking about this a lot lately and i genuinely can't shake it.
i was listening to fleetwood mac's rumours on vinyl last night and there's this moment in the middle of gold dust woman where you can hear the room. like the actual air in the studio. the imperfections in stevie's voice, the way the reverb feels organic and not processed. it sounds like humans in a space together making something real.
then i opened spotify and put on something from this year and it's technically flawless. perfectly compressed, mixed to hit right on earbuds, optimized for streaming algorithms. and i felt absolutely nothing.
i think what old recording equipment did was capture energy not just sound. tape saturation, room mics, analog warmth — all of that "imperfection" was actually just humanity leaking through onto the recording. now everything gets scrubbed clean in post and what's left is technically perfect and completely soulless.
is this just nostalgia bias or did something genuinely change about how music gets made and why?