My experience is that many older designs can easily hang with current designs IF the "technology" of newer passive parts ( resistors, capacitors, diodes, wiring ) is brought up to date. Most of the "improvements" in audio products have not come about because we have a whole new way of designing gear, it is because we simply have better quality raw parts to work with. There are plenty of "old" designs out there that measured phenomenally well, were wide bandwidth, offered excellent transient response, had low distortion without gobs of negative feedback, etc... Finding these and updating them can give you world class performance for pennies on the dollar and the cost of new parts and some personal elbow grease.
As to things that DO "fall by the wayside" quickly, start looking at various surround sound processors. Dolby Pro Logic processors are selling for anywhere from 10% to 20% of MSRP when new. That does not mean that they will not work, but simply shows that there is very little need / desire for them.
So long as something functions as intended and someone will use it as designed, a product is never "obsolete". It is just not "highly marketable". Sean
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As to things that DO "fall by the wayside" quickly, start looking at various surround sound processors. Dolby Pro Logic processors are selling for anywhere from 10% to 20% of MSRP when new. That does not mean that they will not work, but simply shows that there is very little need / desire for them.
So long as something functions as intended and someone will use it as designed, a product is never "obsolete". It is just not "highly marketable". Sean
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