Great article on "Analogue Warmth"
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No it will be superior, because at all volume and load levels, you will hear the sweet sound of the SET amps when they are sounding their best. Hook it up to a pair of apogee's and crank up to 110db's and hear that SET sound as clear as ever.
I find that as I get older, so many interesting compromises arise in the simplest of life's decisions.
Toothpaste - one brand great for preventing decay, one for whitening, one for bad breath. Hmm, none do all three.
Dating a woman - one great between the sheets, one in the kitchen, the other for emotional support. Hmm, few do all three (***LADIES, DON'T HIT THE MESSENGER***lol!)
EVERY simple choice I have to make has to have in-depth thought, so little if anything in life is just a no-brainer in every respect.
Audio? Some of the toughest choices out there.
That's why I wonder Blizzard if you're out of high school yet.
The way you argue is like the kid who can eat between meals and think he can maintain his appetite
And believes that you can have it all w/amplification, every sound re tube/every brand can just be reduced to an algorythm, that what a swathe of a'fools love and find irreplaceable is a simple distortion, that can just be copied and pasted.
I admire people who just think the world is black and white, it makes getting up in the morning and getting thru the day just so dead simple. Other people who fret over such irrelevances must be totally confusing to you.
Blizz, these comments are made in light-hearted jest, but there remains a kernel of seriousness in what I'm saying.
I'm afraid I have to turn away from this thread if all I'm going to be told is that the SET magic, tubes in general, is JUST distortion. I'm happy to accept a good proportion is, but to in effect be told I'm just 100% misled by grunge is just plain insulting, and I'm sure I speak for many.
EVERY God damn show I go to, the sound in every Class D/Hi Rez room leaves me cold, those rooms w.tubes/vinyl always draw me in. Often i leave because the sound doesn't QUITE do it for me, but I'm always on a journey. The room w/SS/Hi Rez that works, one per show, is often spectacular, and i stay, but i don't detect any magic, and I leave the show convinced more than ever that no matter the shortcomings, tubes/vinyl just delivers the message, not just a portrayal by the messengers.
So, as I say, I'll bow out until someone w/a bit more rationality blended w/"life is complicated/never black and white" comes along to get this thread back on track.
Good luck w/your simplistic view of life - I hope it serves you well in relationships, money decisions, voting intentions, choice to be religious/what religion/any religion at all etc. LOL
Marc, you and I are just unlucky that our ears are not as good as Blizzard's ears. Think how nice it would be if we loved the timbral thinness and unnaturalness of 0s and 1s powered by the awesome power supply switching noise of class D amplification, and think about how much money we would save?
Well there needs to be some guys supporting the tube gear manufacturers. If not, where would the coloration profiles come from in the future? We need artists to make the templates
In an age-old discussion that regularly borders on science fiction, this is one of the most mysterious things that gets said. For me, it's like trying to unravel the mysteries of The Guild from Dune. But of course that is science fiction, and we're talking about the real world here. Perhaps you could start a thread in the measurements-based forum where we could explore the specific shortcomings of your digital system that somehow manage to remove the rhythm and melody from your recordings. What's left, by the way?
Tim
As Al wrote clearly and perceptively in post #2 of this thread believing that analog is simply about "warmth" reflects a misunderstanding of why many members here prefer analog.
Many members prefer analog, because they haven't heard the next generation of digital yet. That combined with good old fashioned stubbornness.
Depends on how they are decoded, but of course you know that this would be my reply.
Well there needs to be some guys supporting the tube gear manufacturers. If not, where would the coloration profiles come from in the future? We need artists to make the templates
Can I vote myself for this role? Please. Please!
The only prob, is that I'll be so mesmerised by the sounds I'm hearing, I just won't have the time to "cut and paste" those samples to the magic box, and send it back to you sounding as far away from real music as it's possible. Too bad for your business model.
Btw, once you're done w/audio, maybe it's time for you to clone the perfect woman, make fast food taste like Haute Cuisine in pill form, make voting for one party the natural thing to do. Put it this way, if you can make Class D INDISTINGUISHABLE from the most intimate SET sound, the rest of these will be child's play :b
Of course you have no clue what those who have heard top-level analog are talking about, because you haven't heard any (hint: top-level analog is really, really pricey, but I have been fortunate enough to hear it in other well set-up systems).
Please spare us your ignorance.
And yes, I remain a digital-only guy for a number of reasons, but at least I know what the 'analog guys' are talking about.
I think we're hung up on semantics. Some see "warmth" as a derogatory term; some see it as flattering. It is universally used but far from universally defined. Could you take a shot at telling us what you prefer about analog in more substantive terms? The preferred analog format, vinyl, certainly sounds different from digital. Does analog reproduction have a different FR profile than digital? Different imaging/channel separation? Different dynamic range? Different attack/decay characteristics? There seems to be something "more' here. What is it?
Tim
The whole argument is ridiculous. That we can, or should, try to capture the essence of analogue playback using digital technology is fairly silly - because we don't know that 'the magic' of analogue playback is anything but expectation bias, nor do we know that it isn't a careful tradeoff of one primitive technology against another, nor do we know that it isn't down to 'selective' choices of recordings.
But then failing to fully analyse the analogue playback system is even sillier. For example, one of the main contributors to the 'valve sound' could well be the highly-measurable phenomenon of microphony i.e. acoustic feedback from the speakers to the valves. This will be dependent on resonances in the room, so even if your model captures it, you can't make it work in a different room or even in the same room with different humidity or temperature or a change in the furniture. Ditto vinyl and feedback through the arm.
But then failing to fully analyse the analogue playback system is even sillier. For example, one of the main contributors to the 'valve sound' could well be the highly-measurable phenomenon of microphony i.e. acoustic feedback from the speakers to the valves. This will be dependent on resonances in the room, so even if your model captures it, you can't make it work in a different room or even in the same room with different humidity or temperature or a change in the furniture. Ditto vinyl and feedback through the arm.
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