If you would be so kind as to point me to a wholly synthesized rendition
of Beethoven's 5th that is entirely synthesized, and is generally
recognised as sounding better than an orchestral version generated by
real people?
You are confusing 2 things, first there is the input from the *player*,
then there is the sound of the *instrument*.
Naturally both are tightly coupled, but I am pretty sure (well assumption),
that if Stradivarius played some run of the mill made in Mechico violin,
he could still keep an audience in awe.
You have one that was built in 1985 and enjoyed any kind of acceptance
at all by serious musicians?
That is a straw man.
The issue is 'can we make a tube sound at low level'.
Well any diode clipper does that.
Now you can add other stuff, like 'sagging supply', quite easily, by doing a peak detection
and lowering the diode biases, etc etc.
Asymmetric? Can be done too, the 'Joerg way', couple of discretes,
some JFETS, what not.
There is no problem there.
The problem is in their idiotic specs, 'soft', colourful', 'sexy', 'fuzzier',
'warmth', 'alive', 'organic' hey, what does it mean?
Does it mean the same thing to person A as to person B?
So you first have to come up with some real tests, scope it,
see what is different, and recreate that with some hardware, software,
lookup tables if you must (AD EPROM DA for curve, now there is hardly latency),
etc.
Formulate the exact problem, and you have the solution.
Not so. Yes, the technology enables it, but that leaves the limiting
factor of our understanding of the mechanisms at work modifying the
sound, and the labor involved in replicating them in DSP.
Sure, right.
I think it can be done (I think it _has_ been done), but it'd be a hell
of a lot of work for a very talented team. If you think you can do it
on your own with a few lines of Verilog, then get cracking -- there's a
river of money to be had if you make it work cheaply.
No way, I do not like to sell snake oil, and I do not want to stimulate anybody
to believe in snake oil.
And I would have to advertise in their snake oil language to sell it.
Simple as that.
So if you're making a bazillion (and you think you can market it to
guitarists) then you can plan on amortizing all that engineering expense
over a bunch of units, and it makes sense. If you're building one --
get some tubes, buddy.
Personally I think very few real guitarist give a dime.
They can play, and use the instrument to express themselves.
A lot of others will just go for some sort of special sound, well it is not that
what makes music, Hendrix burned his guitar on stage IIRC, good thing too.
(am I gone hear about this LOL).
Yup. And my 2000 Ford Escort (and anything else with a motor) will
climb right past those horses going up that 45 degree slope with those
8" rocks cluttering the 18" wide trail.
Oh, did not know that.
To each his own ;-)
