Virtual guitar amps/analog guitar amps

Ove Karlsen said:
From my personal research and development of DSP, I would say that digital can sound better than analog, with good algorithms.
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Define "better"...?

One the real problems with the assumption is that it's all about the "math"....a.k.a. the "precision" quality of digital.
There is this misguided belief that if one can make digital more precise via better math, it means it's also better than analog.

Well....that's really not what it's about, IMHO, and all those wonderful, "organic" and random imperfections that come with analog electronics and tubes and tape are what many people think makes analog sound better.
Yeah, digital can try and *mimic*, *simulate*, *approximate* all the analog imperfection goodness, but it doesn't really replace it 100%, and way too often, the digital math/precision is what actually gets in the way, IMO....it comes out "over blended"....homogonized...into sonic puree.
Yes, digital allows you to recall that homogenized puree over and over with the same precision, and maybe that appeals to some folks and you might prefer that for the conveniece....but it doesn't replace analog/tubes/tape, IMO.

You appear to be more into the Electronic/Techno style of music, in which case digital synthesis might be more appealing to you, but that's a different thing.
 
Hi Ove.
Now I don't know jack S about "code" but I do know the amp company I worked for have produced a range of solid state amps that THEY are very happy with and the market has also given them a big, if limited in some ways, welcome. But this is their first generation of amps and they see the future as "digital" at least for affordable amps.

I must mention a couple of your terms that give me pause?

"Saturation. Yes we all "know" what it means and so long as you mean near "rail to rail clipping" I am happy. But valves are never run into true saturation or they would fail in minutes.

People also talk of OP transformers "saturating". They don't and they can't be with the size of traff and the energies available in normal valve amplifiers. They really mean very, very distorted.

Then "third ORDER distortion? Now, your English is excellent but I think you mean "third harmonic" distortion? In English "orders" are multiples of ten or in filter parlance, progress in 6dB chunks, i.e. a 12dB per octave filter is second order.

Lastly, the company I mentioned will continue to make All Valve amplifiers, hybrid valve amps and sstate amps but the numbers of each might change drastically in the next decade.

Dave.
 
IDK what Ove meant by better.

I would only really say that digital can be better in a limited number of ways:

1) A hell of a lot less self noise

B) Consistency and predictability

III) Ease of modification and adjustment. It is at least theoretically easier to alter most of the minute details of the circuit - filter points, OT character, even bias point/crossover distortion - by sliding a digital fader than it would be to physically modify the tube amp.

And now let me save you some time by partially rebutting my own points:

A) A decently built and maintained amp plugged into decent wall power won't have enough self noise to be a deal breaker. Comsidering the fact that we're basically plugging an antenna into the thing...

II) Again, a decent amp should sound about the same - given the same knob settings, etc - every time you plug into it right up until some component starts to fail. Course, if you like the sound of that component almost failing, you may be disappointed when it drifts further or is finally replaced. Which kind of leads to...

C) I don't know of any popular digital sims which really allow that kind of subtle tweaking. I am sometimes painfully aware of the fact that when I pull up the "Class A" on PodFarm I am pretty much plugging into exactly the same amp in exactly the same room with exactly the same mics at exactly the same temp, pressure, and humidity as everybody else who owns PodFarm.

And that sort of leads to the whole question of homogeny. I personally don't find these things particularly sterile or boring sounding, but I do see where it might lead to a certain sameness between users. I personally don't use presets. I plug in and turn the knobs til it sounds good, just like I would with a real amp. And just like with a real amp I am never really worried about whether it happens to sound exactly like the dude down the street. To an extent I think that we - who spend an inordinate amount of time engaged in the act of critical listening - put way more stock and importance in the minute subtleties of our sounds than might be warranted in the final product. Whether we're in a stadium where it's life threateningly loud and the audiences ears' defense mechanism kick in or we're playing a brunch show at the pizza joint where the cash register is as loud as our guitars or recording a track which is gong to get compressed and eq'd and eventually listened to on earbuds or in a car, I think that **** hair of difference that makes your amp different from mine means about dick.
 
With better, I mean more accurate, less noise. Indeed. That is better to me. And a trained ear, who has done DSP for 10 years, wants that :) (Listening to ghosts is not my idea of "good". (Aliases, and rather the mental phenomena).

Third order distortion yes, that is what one calls it in DSP. Some have called it "third order sigmoid". And polynomial distortion etc. Signal - (signal^3, * a normalization, (1/3)). There is probably something clever everyone can agree on calling this. It makes ofcourse sense that if the waveform rises at three times the rate, there will be third overtone.

With some tweaks, (threshold, kneedepth, etc) it is very good for softclipping, and I think most of you will think of it as "analog":

http://www.ovekarlsen.com/tmp/sctest.wav

Here with my limiter, 3dB RMS peaks, ~4.5dB RMS program.

Old cabinet radios, and tube amps giving more of a second order tone, is different though.

Peace Be With You.
 
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Ove Karlsen said:
With better, I mean more accurate, less noise. Indeed. That is better to me.
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Well that's fine....it's "better" to you, but again, you miss the point about tube amps....it's go nothing to do with "accuracy" and "less noise". :)

Ove Karlsen said:
I wrote own DSP which I use much in this, and it is inspired by religion, a positive lifestyle, and also meditation.
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Hey Ove....you wanna be really inspired and almost see and feel god practically in the room with you......?

No need for meditation....just plug a guitar into a dimed EL34 or 6V6 tube amp and hit a few notes and chords.
Try that with a DSP! :D ;)



ashcat_lt said:
....or recording a track which is gong to get compressed and eq'd and eventually listened to on earbuds or in a car, I think that **** hair of difference that makes your amp different from mine means about dick.
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Yeah....there's that now somehwat old argument....that if the playback is going to be compromised in some way, why worry about any sonic differences at the source.......and everyone is welcome operate from that point of irrelevance.
However, if you're going to accept a "good enough approximation" (which is already a compromised source, IMO)...then how can, and why do, you argue against anyone who is NOT willing to do that...?
Is that simply to make yourself feel better about your own decisions?

Also....(and some may not feel this way about it)....how something sounds TO YOU during the time of creation, at the source...is EVERYTHING!
Talking about the compromised playback, is not the point, especially with something like a guitar amp and guitar tone.
It's about that immediate feedback while you play....and that DOES means something to a lot of players, even if it means "dick" to you.

It's like saying....you can get off just as easy with a Playboy magazine as you can with the centerfold model in front of you....so who cares about the difference.
Really.....? :p
 
Not only that, didn't this start as virtual guitar for live use? I think even the most hardcore tube honks mostly agree that sims and modelers can work great for recording. Using them live is where they fall way short for most players that want to play guitar and not just make noises.
 
miroslav said:
Yeah....there's that now somehwat old argument....that if the playback is going to be compromised in some way, why worry about any sonic differences at the source.......and everyone is welcome operate from that point of irrelevance.
However, if you're going to accept a "good enough approximation" (which is already a compromised source, IMO)...then how can, and why do, you argue against anyone who is NOT willing to do that...?
Is that simply to make yourself feel better about your own decisions?

Also....(and some may not feel this way about it)....how something sounds TO YOU during the time of creation, at the source...is EVERYTHING!
Talking about the compromised playback, is not the point, especially with something like a guitar amp and guitar tone.
It's about that immediate feedback while you play....and that DOES means something to a lot of players, even if it means "dick" to you.

It's like saying....you can get off just as easy with a Playboy magazine as you can with the centerfold model in front of you....so who cares about the difference.
Really.....? :p
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I have not ever said that anybody should not use whatever method works best for them, at least as long as it doesnt negatively effect the experience of the other folks involved. In contrast, I have been told in this very thread that what I do with amp sims is "not art".

I completely dig the idea that what you hear (both tone and overall volume) while playing is important in getting a decent performance. I personally don't feel like I'm missing any of that playing PodFarm through a PA. I tend to suspect that people who do haven't really given it a fair chance. Like, I honestly believe that a good ABX test would have some interesting results, though I'm sure it wouldn't change anybody's minds. I also find it interesting that some of those who claim that experience is king when it comes to this argument are the same who argue that the inspired performance at 0300 on a Sunday night is not important enough to capture since you can't crank up a tube amp.

But WTF do I know? I'm not an artist. (Never claimed I was, art fag ;) )
 
Taking a bit of a detour in order to further the discussion.

Another bonus with sims is the ability to do things that are physically impossible, dangerous, or even just inconvenient. I can run the power amp out from a Marshall head into the front end of a Fender Twin cranked up and plug it into the two inch speaker in one of those little plastic things and not even have to worry that I'm going to let out the magic smoke. Why would I do such a thing? Black Metal maybe?

But it won't really sound like the horrible noise that would happen if I actually tried it IRL. I have mentioned in the past that this is a noticeable failing in the amp sims I know - they do not reproduce well the (even near) catastrophic failure of a physical device pushed well beyond its normal operating parameters. I am impatiently waiting for Line6 to release a "complete disaster" expansion. I want the "overloaded, mis-biased, sagging mess with microphonic preamp tube" model and the "two mismatched speakers (one torn) in rickety cabinet with loose hardware" model. I'd pay dollars for that! :)
 
Well...I think a lot of the folks here who say they prefer amps, HAVE given sims/pods a shot. I've heard enough different ones to not feel the need to sell off my amps.
I think many agree that sims/pods have their place and can be used well enough, especially when a mix masks out their digital signature.
It really is at the more discriminating levels that people have a genuine preference for amps.

It is somewhat obvious that the majority who use sims/pods, do it NOT because the prefer that sound over real amps....but because of other reasons that have NOTHING to do with the actual sound. It's always about convenience and limits of their playing environment...neighbors and what have you.
With amps....we are primarily talking about their sound.

Oh...I was recording until about 3:30 this morning....and cranking amps was not an issue, never is for me. :)
 
ashcat_lt said:
I can run the power amp out from a Marshall head into the front end of a Fender Twin....
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I would like to see that....I guess you don't care about killing the tranny on the Marshall, since it's not going to see any speaker load.

Or are you saying something else....?
 
miroslav said:
It is somewhat obvious that the majority who use sims/pods do it NOT because the prefer that sound over real amps....but because of other reasons that have NOTHING to do with the actual sound....it's always about convenience and limits of their playing environment...neighbors and what have you.
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This is what it really boils down to.
 
Well, I'm 99.999% certain that neither you (Edit - miro, i was ninja'd on this post) nor any of these others who have "tried sims" did not actually engage in double blind ABX lab tests. Frankly, I'm not saying you should. I'd be interested to see the results of such a test, but I know that no matter what you (in a general sense) would still prefer the tube amp when you can actually see the thing.

But I'm not really trying to change anybody's mind. I am to an extent trying to defend the validity of amp sims in the process, which might I suppose influence the decisions of somebody who's on the fence. Gods help anyone who takes my (or anybody else's but their own) opinion that much... Basically what I'm saying is that "will they laugh at me" should be about the last criteria to consider in these kind of decisions.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Well, I'm 99.999% certain that neither you nor any of these others who have "tried sims" did not actually engage in double blind ABX lab tests.
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Is that what someone has to do in order to feel right about their choice in using a sim over an amp....?

All I need to do is go plug into one of my tube amps, and it's a pretty easy decision for me....and yeah, I also like to actually see the thing....feel the warmth from the tubes and the nice aroma as they heat up the wood cabinet, not to mention the whole touchy-feely thing of playing with the knobs in real time....and if I stand close enough, the speaker blows up my skirt.

I don't want to [CTRL] [SHIFT] [ENTER] when I play guitar. :)
 
ashcat_lt said:
Frankly, I'm not saying you should.
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If you want to convince me that you actually prefer tube amps to sims for reasons of tone and whatever "feel" means, this is what it would take. You've already convinced youself, and that's fine with me.
 
ashcat_lt said:
If you want to convince me that you actually prefer tube amps to sims for reasons of tone and whatever "feel" means, this is what it would take. You've already convinced youself, and that's fine with me.
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Do you really not get what "feel" from playing a tube amp means....?....then what's the point of even trying to convince you about the tone.

With the thousands of tube amps sold every year, and the millions of players using them....why the heck would *I* need to convince you.
You said you stopped using amps something like 15 years ago (I think that's what you said)....maybe you should plug back into one and convince yourself. :)
 
ashcat_lt said:
Taking a bit of a detour in order to further the discussion.

Another bonus with sims is the ability to do things that are physically impossible, dangerous, or even just inconvenient. I can run the power amp out from a Marshall head into the front end of a Fender Twin cranked up and plug it into the two inch speaker in one of those little plastic things and not even have to worry that I'm going to let out the magic smoke. Why would I do such a thing? Black Metal maybe?

But it won't really sound like the horrible noise that would happen if I actually tried it IRL. I have mentioned in the past that this is a noticeable failing in the amp sims I know - they do not reproduce well the (even near) catastrophic failure of a physical device pushed well beyond its normal operating parameters. I am impatiently waiting for Line6 to release a "complete disaster" expansion. I want the "overloaded, mis-biased, sagging mess with microphonic preamp tube" model and the "two mismatched speakers (one torn) in rickety cabinet with loose hardware" model. I'd pay dollars for that! :)
Click to expand...

I've got an old Twin that will do that.

You have to supply your own fire extinguisher and 991 access.

:laughings:
 
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