Comment by codedokode
3 hours ago
On a side note, think how conservative music world is, if people are still manufacturing and successfully sell guitar designed in 50s. You can probably take a 50s guitar and connect to a modern amp, or take a modern guitar and connect to a 50s amp and it will work.
Compare this, for example, to smartphone chargers or headphones and their compatibility.
Smartphone chargers had legitimate reason to change. Higher power, faster data, and we learned the hard way that micro usb and all the proprietary connectors before it were fundamentally physically flawed.
Audio hasn't changed at all in the last two centuries. An analog audio signal is fundamental physics and there's nothing to gain or change or improve in any meaningful sense. TRS/phono jacks likewise are just so brute force stupid and rugged that there was never a reason to change.
The connectors and interfaces never changed because the underlying signals never changed because there's nothing to change. Digial electronics on the other hand legitimately have gone through real and worthwhile changes, and been radically redefined many times in the last 60 years.
Oh yeah, you can plug a guitar made in the 50's to an amp that was made yesterday and vice versa with zero issues.
Consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradivarius
As an amusing aside, Stradivarius could not have known how his fiddles would sound today. Most of them have been modernized, with new necks and bass bar, and some other tweaks. Most are played with metal or synthetic strings, and modern bows.
> You can probably
No need for "probably". That absolutely works.
"Who says you need to buy a guitar?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_F7aiOvdwE
(technically a "diddley bow": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diddley_bow)
why would the connector need to change? nothing has come out that's really better for analog signals
I do find it hilarious that the phono jack appeared fully formed and hasn't changed in a hundred years. We got the smaller flavors of TRS sure, but the big honking quarter inch phono jack has stayed exactly the same. Perfect design in one go, no notes.
xlr?
Sometimes engineers find the optimal or near optimal design early on in the life of a technology. Jet airplanes haven’t changed much since the 1960s.