Re: (TV) fripp and bill

[Martin McClellan <martin@rosacordis.com>]

> > I'm naturally leery of digital effects, but I keep hearing  
> > interesting things about it. Sadly, a downloaded demo won't work  
> > on my machine with my cheap audio input device (works fine in  
> > Garage Band!).
>
> Weird.  I wonder what GR's doing that doesn't like your input  
> device. Are you using a USB dongle?  GR might require more  
> bandwidth, maybe.

Nope--it seems to be a documented thing with the Griffin iMic and GR.  
I can see audio to the computer, GR is running fine, and I have  
plenty of overhead, so who knows. When I complained about such, I was  
told that GR came with a USB input so not to worry. That's all well  
and good, but I would like to HEAR it too!
> > I'm awaiting that time where digital modeling really can give you  
> > all those sweet tubes without the expense or trouble. It's coming,  
> > but are we there yet?
>
> I think a lot of what people think of as "tube sound" is actually a  
> combination of tubes, transformers (very important, and often  
> overlooked), and the speaker cone, all of which have their own  
> nonlinearities...[snip]

I've heard good reports on the Vox modeler in a box, whatever they  
call it. But I have to agree with you--listening to simulations of  
amps is like eating chicken-flavored crackers. You can KIND of see  
the flavor, but it's not like eating a real bird.

Add to that the fact that guitar sounds best through a very  
compressed audio spectrum (which is why all those high-tech digital  
bass systems sounded great, but the same technology for guitar kind  
of blows), which is kind of an antitheses of what most engineers try  
to do with digital. The most coveted amps tend to have cheaper (or,  
rather, more fragile lower watt) speakers, and a easy path to  
overloading the power amp. In my mind, the best amps sound good  
played loud with the speaker cone on the verge of self destroying.

> Even "tube" gear can be lousy, btw--there's a lot of awful starved- 
> plate stuff on the market, which gives you a caricature of what  
> tubes sound like.  While these days I'm usually going direct to the  
> laptop and out to the PA, I'm using the EH LPB2ube (dumb name) as  
> my preamp, cascading both channels into one.  It's a pretty good  
> sounding little box--better than any of the plugins I've tried-- 
> though it suffers from EH's legendarily shoddy build quality. (One  
> little, easily-loosened screw holds the circuit board just off the  
> chassis, a fact which I discovered when that chassis went live with  
> 300V right before a live radio broadcast.  Ouch.)

I'm still playing through a Groove Tubes amp--versatile, all tube,  
hand wired. It's not finicky, but it is a bit limited in tone.  
Occasionally I long for an AC 30 turned full out, but I just can't  
hack the repair bills.... I hope amp modeling can someday get me half  
way there. I suspect I'd use it for recording (if it could emulate a  
room well, speaker distortion, etc), and then play live through  
actual amps and let the room model itself.

cheers,

M
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