Music

[Fatal Error]

Now go out and listen to some LIVE music!

[maccorin]

maccorin, just can't go wrong with a Marshall stack. :mrgreen:

hell no you cant i've got a crappy little marshall practice amp, and even that is better then plugging straight into the console, but for real recording, i'd prolly borrow my friends half-stack

[Mr_Sfstk8d]

Marshall good.... Whatever you're doing, though, you cannot replace vacuum tubes for the truest sound fidelity. (OK, OK, fidelity by definition is the measure of 'true'ness, but you know what I mean) I come from a vehement radio background, and I believe that _real_ radios, and amps in general, glow in the dark. :P

[distrodawg]

Well shucks, I guess I don't know about all this... It seems to me that the tools needed to record, produce and master good quality music don't have anything at all to do with whether or not they're connected to a pc, mac or an Alesis ADAT. (Or some large format analog tape recording gear, for that matter.) When I'm not hacking away at Linux code, I play live music all over the Detroit area. Many of my friends, including some fairly well known artists, have released albums done "direct to digital". Under Linux, one might do well to install Demudi, the Debian Multimedia Distribution. Ardour is easily the functional equivilent of pro-tools, sonar or any other mix/post production package. Since almost all playback is done on 'digital" media, like cd's, the big analog purity issue is pretty meaningless to the listener.
As for the solid-state vs. tube amp debate... Other than my surprise at finding it on a Linux forum, I'd have to say that the guitarists I know lean towards tube amps, because of the ability to produce fuller, more saturated tone with less output. It's funny that the hottest solid state's on the market are amps that "emulate" tube amp sounds. I don't know anyone who takes anything but a practice amp into the studio. Mic'ing an amp is something done for live sound reinforcement, not recording fidelity. Maybe that's why sansamps are so popular with pros?

[maccorin]

wow, i really didn't think there would be this many people knowledgable about the recording process on here.

DistroDawg, yea, but my practice amp is too small to produce enough sound without distortion. I have done a bit of recording in the past, and I have always preferred Mic'ing an amp, I dunno why you think no one does it, but believe me they do. The tube thing... tube amps are aight, not my thing really... IMO thats like the people that refuse to use ADAT, because 2 inch tape is more "pure" somehow by the distortian it introduces, an absurd argument, they would be better served by just saying "cause i like the sound" _that_ would be acceptable

[Mr_Sfstk8d]

Very valid point about most distribution being digital, i.e. CD. I'd have to agree about the recording in digital being really a non-issue, especially if your _only_ distribution method will be mp3, ogg, etc. i.e. served up from an Apache server in your closet to a couple dozen of your closest and dearest whatever. Besides, when was the last time you bought a _cassette_ from somebody's trunk, or a retail store for that matter. But I will stand for tubes in live performance. All other things considered (drunk fans can't tell !=quality, cheap venue, etc.) the heat alone favors tubes vs. transistors at that large power output, not to mention electrical power consumption (~=direct result of heat and a few other minor subparticle effects). Each one of them definately has their place, and they are both the hardest working electrons in show-business. WTF did that just mean?!

[maccorin]

oh yea, i'm not saying tube amps don't have their place, just that I prefer marshalls ;p

and that i don't understand the "pure" argument, because it seems "unpure" to me, but _not_ in a bad way.

[beezlebubsbum]

I have a question for Fatal Error. I was reading a magazine the other day, and it mentioned a fellow that did a lot of cracking of programs, making warez software, and his name was Fatal Error. Are you that person?

[Mr_Sfstk8d]

The 'purity' issue, the one we're talking about here, anyway, became an issue with the invention of transistor based amplifiers. I don't know what kind of background you have on the particle structure of transistors, mine is not too terribly deep anyway. Basically, a transistor has only so far it can make a given sine wave stretch before you go into cut off. That's where you're "cutting off" the top and bottom of the sinusoid of the sound wave. You'd see that if you looked at the signal with an oscilloscope. Where it's cut off, it just goes flat from where it left off till where it should have come back down again. Right there is where you wind up losing the fidelity, it's no longer true to its original form. Different amps have different levels of where that will happen of course. The work around in this is amplification in multiple stages, trasistor1 amplifies +50%, passes to transistor2..... transistor_n is the final output ranges. Doing too much in any one transistor sounds like crap, intorduces error, and response time gets kind of boggle with that far jump from input to output. Has all to do with the PNP, or NPN of the guts. However, in these stages any 'inaccuracy' from one amp to the next is passed along with, and amplified along with, the signal from there to eternity, or the speaker, whichever comes first :P Tube amplifiers use a different type of field effect to achieve amplification and can, and frequently do, perform all of the amplification in one tube, sometimes split up for various channel ranges, etc. Sure, some tubes have _many_ functions within them, or many layers of amplification within one piece of evacutated glass. I work with one at work that takes the light produced by the chemiluminscent reaction of Oxides of Nitrogen with Ozone in the parts per million range and amplifies it all the way up to an output of 0 - 5 VDC for analyzer pickup in _one_ tube. It's a beast. For that tremendous sensitivity and reactivity required, a tube is the only way to go. Usually over-powering protection is designed in before the tube (as far as electron flow) but, yeah, sometimes one blows. And that's a show right there. However, the power dissapation from the transistors, for high gain applications, versus that of tubes, even heated ones, is usually, !always, higher and usually is in the form of heat, tough to handle, as well as other undesirable RF interference. Now, how that RFI screws with your other IC components is a completely different can of worms. Sometimes you get the 'tin cans' on your circuit boards, but then there's the heat problem. Sometimes tubes are lined with a can. For these, however, it usually works out nicely as a chimney for carrying away heat. Passive heat sink in 1930's???? Hmmm.... OK, that's enough Ge, Be, Si, Al, Fe, Ag, Au, Cu, W, et. al. for now. I'm tuckered out. I hope this was a sufficiently convoluted explaination of the purity issue.

73

[Fatal Error]

Warez? Craking? I wish! If you have seen my posts here and on tinyminds.org you would know that I should not even approch a computer let alone use (hell, TRY to use) one! Its Fatal Error because I can kill any programm under any OS and not even break a sweat. Thanx for the thought though, I'll dream well tonight.