> People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes.
I'd argue that they don't. People like what they know, and a different reproduction creates an annoying cognitive dissonance, like hearing a new interpretation of your favorite piece after having listened to the original for decades.
It's pretty much the source of the Uncanny Valley issue
Did you know a lot of contemporary music is still recorded onto tape in the studio because engineers and musicians like the character it adds to the signal? Consumer tapes sound hissy partly because the tape is so narrow that they have a low signal:noise ratio. Recording onto larger-size tape reels eliminates that issue, but the distortion/compression from deliberate overdriving of the inputs still sounds pleasing.
Not only that, but modern digital recordings often digitally add a track of tape hiss to warm up the sound. I don't mean a distortion plugin or anything, I mean a recording of a 2" tape machine playing nothing but hiss!
That being said, I agree with masklinn, we do this because people are used to hearing it, not because hiss is intrinsically good sounding.
Will the children of the early 2000s grow to yearn for the sound of 128kb MP3?
At least one study has shown that younger listeners prefer the 'sizzle' sound of MP3s over higher quality recordings, presumably because it's what they're used to.
I'd argue that they don't. People like what they know, and a different reproduction creates an annoying cognitive dissonance, like hearing a new interpretation of your favorite piece after having listened to the original for decades.
It's pretty much the source of the Uncanny Valley issue