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Re: Smaller Speakers



screw this,I'm going back to my Marshall,Les Paul,Crybaby combo!
ACDC anyone?
Jeff

Kim Flint wrote:

> At 03:49 PM 3/12/98 -0500, Sean T Barrett wrote:
> >>And forget about putting anything other than guitar sounds
> >>through it, the amp colors it too much.
> >
> >Umm... so why do people put up with this for guitar?
> >I don't understand the amp obsession.  Why not learn
> >to love the sound of something other than the strange
> >coloring traditional guitar amps provide?  Is there
> >really something inherently "good" about them, some
> >deficiency in the tone of the guitar the amp makes
> >up for, or such?  Or are guitarists just used to how
> >guitars sound on other people's records?
>
> I guess you're not a guitar player, right? An electric guitar by itself 
>is
> only half the instrument. The other half is the amplifier. You play that 
>as
> much as you do the guitar, and a good amp is carefully designed with 
>that in
> mind. That is why guitar players will generally spend more time obsessing
> about their amplifiers than their guitars, and why everything other than 
>a
> guitar will sound crappy through it. That is also why a guitar through a
> flat PA system will sound very bad, and to the player, it will feel
> lifeless. The amplifier itself is not reacting to the playing, and it 
>feels
> flat and unispiring. This reactive aspect of tube guitar amps is a big 
>part
> of the reason people like them.
>
> >The music industry's obsession with recreating and
> >refining "flawed-but-familiar" technology (an obsession
> >shared throughout much of the worlds technology
> >research) feels to me like an inevitable consequence
> >of commerce:
>
> That's a player obsession, not an industry obsession. Players demand it, 
>so
> manufacturers provide it. Some manufacturers try to innovate and make
> "classic" sounds cheaply by designing simulations. For example, the sound
> made by old TB-303's is very popular in some music. As a result, real
> TB-303's are impossible to find and extremely expensive, which cuts most
> people out of the scene. So several companies have come up with various
> inexpensive recreations of that sound to meet the huge demand. Many
> companies have been very successful with that.
>
> The guitar amp industry is totally insane. If you were to perfectly 
>recreate
> a tube amp in a digital processor (which I think is technically 
>impossible,
> actually, but anyway...), and place it down next to the original for 
>guitar
> players to compare, the guitar players will always want to buy the one 
>with
> real tubes in it. They might actually buy the simulation, but only 
>because
> they couldn't afford the real thing.
>
> No manufacturer in their right mind would want to manufacture tube amps 
>and
> analog synthesizers. Those are expensive and difficult things to do, much
> more so than modern stuff. Recreating those sounds with simulations is 
>also
> very difficult, and subject to numerous reactionary responses from very,
> very finicky customers. But that's what people want.....
>
> >old thing--e.g. animated watercolors--but the odd thing is
> >the amount of attention that goes into precisely replicating
> >-unintentional artifacts- of the medium.  Virtual brush strokes
> >produce various sorts of splotches and drips, and the programs go
> >to great lengths to reproduce these, so it will look "just like"
> >the real thing.
>
> Usually those imperfections are what made it unique and desireable in the
> first place. Watercolor paintings look very different than other types of
> images. They also require special approaches and techniques. If you truly
> want to recreate that digitally, you need to replicate all of the
> characteristics that make it that way. Also, those imperfections cause 
>the
> artist to create in a way they might not otherwise. So if you want a
> watercolor artist to be able to use digital equipment and have it feel 
>the
> same in all respects, you need to recreate all of the imperfections.
> Otherwise, the artist's creative process will be disrupted and they won't
> feel comfortable with the medium. If you are not a watercolor artist, you
> almost certainly won't get it. Same with all the sounds people want.
>
> >I understand the commerce motivation to sound/look "just like"
> >the real thing, but I find the end result to be such a waste
> >of energy--imagine if all that effort were to be put into
> >creating new sounds/looks! [*]
>
> I can tell you from experience that trying to do new things is what often
> turns into a huge waste of energy, or money mostly. It takes a long, long
> time for people to adopt it and start to use it. The inventor typically 
>goes
> bankrupt during that period, and only on the off chance that some retro
> movement comes along later and requires his invention does he have a 
>chance
> to get anything out of it. In most cases, nothing ever happens at all. 
>There
> are many, many people creating interesting new things all of the time, 
>but
> they will mostly fail to ever be noticed since the vast majority of 
>people
> are not interested in new things.
>
> The smart business plan is to do something that people want now, and are
> willing to pay for roughly around the time your bills are due....
>
> >I guess the VG-8 attempts to balance this line--allowing
> >precise emulation of all sorts of guitars and amps while
> >also allowing new, never-before-heard things to be done
> >to it...
>
> I always thought the VG-8 was terrible for emulating anything, but great 
>for
> making new sounds. That's probably why nobody bought them and roland 
>stopped
> making them.
>
> >but in general the process bugs the heck out of me.
>
> well, if you actively support and buy new things, so that the people 
>taking
> all of the risk to do them can survive at it, maybe it will change.
>
> kim
> _______________________________________________________
> Kim Flint                       408-752-9284
> Mpact Systems Engineering       kflint@chromatic.com
> Chromatic Research              http://www.chromatic.com