Forget house flipping, buy all the MDF2s on eBay, wait a year and 10x your money.
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Ok, not exactly the same but in the ballpark
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It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
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Does anybody actually ask if anything is relevant?
TR505 springs to mind.
Yeah, for example here from earlier today
I thought it was a joke thread at first, but then there was actual discussion about the gear in question.
I don’t care what people think is relevant or not. I wouldn’t know either, because I don’t use any Instagram/TikTok whatever bullshit to know what all the cool kids deem relevant
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It’s not the person asking. They may be insecure about the gear in some way.
It’s the people knocking the gear. “No. It’s not relevant when I can do this with that. And it sounds a hundred times better.”
That’s some elitist bullshit right there.
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It’s all clickbait YouTube driven culture, it’s garbage.
If you are considering buying a synth have you ever asked yourself “but is this synth relevant in 20XX?” If so you’re in the wrong profession/hobby.
I’ve been into synths for a very very long time and I’ve bought and sold more gear than I care to admit (seriously it’s been problematic at times lol) and when a piece of gear is in my radar “relevancy” to any given time period has never been on the list of things to consider when I’m debating picking something up.
Relevant to me and the sounds I want to achieve, my workflow etc sure but relevant to the current time period is a laughable concept. Some of the most sought after synths of all time were made 40-50 years ago ffs
“Influencer” culture seeping into music gear and music tech culture is inherently toxic for everyone involved. If you’re thinking about picking up a specific piece of gear read the specs and listen to demos, check out the manual, what more info could you possibly need, people’s general opinions on gear is borderline useless.
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Giving the idea of “relevance” a sympathetic interpretation, I think it’s a blanket term for: trendy/cool, cutting edge, makes earlier iterations of something similar redundant (like old phones, laptops, and software), or is the thing the best in class.
I suppose there are music devices that are just so antiquated to be extremely difficult to use or have limitations that make them have a very limited range of uses. However, people like Hainbach and Look Mum No Computer put the most obscure things to good musical use.
If someone asked, “Is the DX7 still relevant in 2023”, I suppose one could reply with, “Yes, of course, it’s a great sounding synth with a solid keyboard, however perhaps the Digitone would suit you more because of reasons XYZ”.
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I dunno, I still use mine every now and again, and sample loops from it more often 
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Mammal Virtues were a great band. No longer relevant now, of course.
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I don’t think I’ve ever read an “is XYZ still relevant” thread, maybe the one about the OT a bit, but I always felt people that ask such questions simply worry they’d buy a piece of gear that they then might not like, because it’s not really what they thought it was.
Makes sense?
But then the thread quickly derails…
It’s definitely a form of FOMO. Afraid to buy something only to be met with something better a week later.
Which obviously renders the former unit completely useless.
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Hmm…maybe a sign of how the teaser game music gear companies played (it seems to have slowed down significantly recently) and the role “new stuff” nowadays plays in our society has creeped into the subconscious of some (many?) people…
When culture leans heavily on the need for validation and comparing one’s self to others, relevancy is just a veiled, more tasteful quest than asking outright “do I matter if I have/buy/do this thing?”
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This is very true, and very common in electronic music gear it seems. Maybe a cross between the marketing and the fact that it’s ‘technology’ based. It seems that things quickly become out of date once a ‘new’ version is released and then stay that way until they become old enough to be retro, and therefore cool again!
It never occurs to me in the guitar world, no idea what year my Les Paul is from (mid 90s I think) but there is no reason at all for me to change.
Not sure, but I can’t wait for the 808 hihat ratchet sound to be irrelevant, this trend has been going on like 20 years, when will it die?
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Oh my gawd. The poor SP404 thread is like that.
It might be directly proportional to the amount of hype a piece of gear, or how much people love it. But it brings out people who nitpick over the most obscure functionality. Trying to get the machine to do stuff that it “can” do if you try, but not what it was intentionally designed to do.
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