Is FR the only important measurement? Real life testing.

[Lorenzo74]

So I've been watching this guys videos for a while, he is an empirical data kind of scientist, and in this video regarding guitar amps he has the holy grail of audiophile terminology, applied to guitar amplifiers, debunked in its entirety.

This is not exactly revelaing anything we didnt know here at ASR, but its a good video to refer to those audiphiles that dont believe in math or data charts since it has empirical listenable data. Its not exactly hifi audio related, but amps are amps, and audiophoolery is audiophoolery, so it kind of overlaps with ASR's ethos. And if anything its an entretaining video to watch on amplification myths.

Hi @cheapmessiah ,

Now that you open the pandora’s vase… at least you should bring JIM LILL to ASR community to let him get the deserved applause .
I (we?) want to know his opinions and get him contributing to Audio Science.
can you commit to that?

Well done sir
My Best
L.

 

[fastfreddy666]

The same thing is happening in the electronic (dance) music scene. People still prefer the sound of the original Analog Roland 303 (acid house and other dance music) but there are emulations which come pretty close (my first experience was with RB-338 software by proprellerheads in the late 90s and it had an emulation of 808 and a 909 (both are early drumcomputers) and a 303. You had even more options to tweak the sound than the original. The sequencer on the original is kind of a pain in the ass (archaic) to operate. Another Example Vangelis used a Yamaha CS-80 (polyphonic aftertouch. YES) on the soundtrack for Blade Runner and his very successful album Chariots of fire. One of the attractions of using old analog gear is that they have a tendency to drift (detune) which give it a kind of unpredictability. Some people like that kind of thing. The originals are still be used but they will cost you your money and your back. It weighs 82 kg (12.7 lbs) and cost a pretty penny. $50000 for a CS-80 or more are no exception nowadays. An original 303 is a much simpler instrument. You can get it for $2,000. Annoying thing is that it has no Midi and I already told you about the sequencer. You can modify it of course but this will also cost money. You could also use a hardware clone or software version ( I use the Roland cloud version). You can emulate the Yahama with an Arturia CS-80 plugin which will not break the bank ($200) But if your smart (educate yourself about how synthesizers work) enough you can create the sound with the help of modern software synthesizers. To emulate a CS 80. Use for instance the well known plugin Massive developed by Native Instruments (virtual-analog software beast) plugin for instance. Start with a: sawtooth, detune, envelope, easy. Play with low release and sustain and keep the filter frequency open and stable in one position. Good luck.

For the real die-hards you can use Native Instrument's Kontakt. This piece of software allows you to build your own synthesizer in software. If you know things about voltage controlled oscillators, filters ,and amplifiers, and of course envelope generators you can start building. The only thing you need to do is educate yourself. Read some books about the subject or watch some Youtube video's.

What about the Hammond Organ? It's an electric instrument and is still being made by a Japanese company Suzuki Music group (not to be confused by the car manufacturer).
Another option is to buy an original American made B-3 or something for $6000. But be aware they need to be maintained regularly and this will not be cheap. If you have the money and the resources go right ahead and buy one and hire some people to carry it. it weighs 425 pounds (193 kg). I feel empathy for those poor roadies who had to carry that stuff on stage every night during a tour.

I just use use a powerful pc and laptop with 8 core CPU and a Native Instruments Maschine MK 3 (midi controller) in combination with Ableton Live (a DAW) and a ton of plugins. I happen to like the tactile feeling of knobs and sliders like in the "old" days so I'm using a hardware controller. But if your prefer to move move a cursor with your optical laser mouse with 20.000 dpi sensor that is also okay. Or why not the best of both worlds? Buy some clones of your favorite analog equipment and start tinkering. Then you upload your "ideas" to the computer and start to finetune it in your DAW (using some big fat effect plugins) There are more ways to get things done. You just have to let your creative juices flowing and start creating....

 

[Spocko]

The same thing is happening in the electronic (dance) music scene. People still prefer the sound of the original Analog Roland 303 (acid house and other dance music) but there are emulations which come pretty close (my first experience was with RB-338 software by proprellerheads in the late 90s and it had an emulation of 808 and a 909 (both are early drumcomputers) and a 303. You had even more options to tweak the sound than the original. The sequencer on the original is kind of a pain in the ass (archaic) to operate. Another Example Vangelis used a Yamaha CS-80 (polyphonic aftertouch. YES) on the soundtrack for Blade Runner and his very successful album Chariots of fire. One of the attractions of using old analog gear is that they have a tendency to drift (detune) which give it a kind of unpredictability. Some people like that kind of thing. The originals are still be used but they will cost you your money and your back. It weighs 82 kg (12.7 lbs) and cost a pretty penny. $50000 for a CS-80 or more are no exception nowadays. An original 303 is a much simpler instrument. You can get it for $2,000. Annoying thing is that it has no Midi and I already told you about the sequencer. You can modify it of course but this will also cost money. You could also use a hardware clone or software version ( I use the Roland cloud version). You can emulate the Yahama with an Arturia CS-80 plugin which will not break the bank ($200) But if your smart (educate yourself about how synthesizers work) enough you can create the sound with the help of modern software synthesizers. To emulate a CS 80. Use for instance the well known plugin Massive developed by Native Instruments (virtual-analog software beast) plugin for instance. Start with a: sawtooth, detune, envelope, easy. Play with low release and sustain and keep the filter frequency open and stable in one position. Good luck.

For the real die-hards you can use Native Instrument's Kontakt. This piece of software allows you to build your own synthesizer in software. If you know things about voltage controlled oscillators, filters ,and amplifiers, and of course envelope generators you can start building. The only thing you need to do is educate yourself. Read some books about the subject or watch some Youtube video's.

What about the Hammond Organ? It's an electric instrument and is still being made by a Japanese company Suzuki Music group (not to be confused by the car manufacturer).
Another option is to buy an original American made B-3 or something for $6000. But be aware they need to be maintained regularly and this will not be cheap. If you have the money and the resources go right ahead and buy one and hire some people to carry it. it weighs 425 pounds (193 kg). I feel empathy for those poor roadies who had to carry that stuff on stage every night during a tour.

I just use use a powerful pc and laptop with 8 core CPU and a Native Instruments Maschine MK 3 (midi controller) in combination with Ableton Live (a DAW) and a ton of plugins. I happen to like the tactile feeling of knobs and sliders like in the "old" days so I'm using a hardware controller. But if your prefer to move move a cursor with your optical laser mouse with 20.000 dpi sensor that is also okay. Or why not the best of both worlds? Buy some clones of your favorite analog equipment and start tinkering. Then you upload your "ideas" to the computer and start to finetune it in your DAW (using some big fat effect plugins) There are more ways to get things done. You just have to let your creative juices flowing and start creating....

This darn thread has me revisiting my purchases and acquiring music making gear - just bought the Elektron Syntakt and Hydrasynth to make some modern music lol!

 

[OnLyTNT]

Similar work:

Some of you might have heard vintage tube screamers were said to have better sound because of vintage opamps. It turned out that the "mojo" opamp has nothing to do with the sound. They mostly sound same and the totally negligible tone shift is coming from the tone stack of the pedal because of the tolerance of the component values. I was planing to build one, instead (being lazy) I got a Chinese copy, well . Now I have Helix and my pedals are kinda useless . Oh, speaking of amp modeling, most modelers nowadays can produce almost same sound with the modeled amp. Of course there will be slight difference, but that difference actually happens between same model amps and again because of the tone stack components... Thou, most guitarists have accepted the power of the modelers lately. I'm pretty confident that similar issue like tone stack difference also applies to the old analog synths, because of the inconsistent circuit components...

 

[Westsounds]

So I've been watching this guys videos for a while, he is an empirical data kind of scientist, and in this video regarding guitar amps he has the holy grail of audiophile terminology, applied to guitar amplifiers, debunked in its entirety.

This is not exactly revelaing anything we didnt know here at ASR, but its a good video to refer to those audiphiles that dont believe in math or data charts since it has empirical listenable data. Its not exactly hifi audio related, but amps are amps, and audiophoolery is audiophoolery, so it kind of overlaps with ASR's ethos. And if anything its an entretaining video to watch on amplification myths.

Haven’t read this whole thread yet, but I’m familiar with this, and it’s the same principle as many audiophiles suffer with. The only thing is it’s often referred to as ‘tone’ with guitarist amps/guitarists instead of ‘sound quality’ with audiophiles.

What needs to be remembered here are electric guitars are a low fidelity instrument. The tone is generated from the amplifier/speaker combination, and the distortion and colouration effect becomes it’s sound. On top of this, they often use many added effects which further change sound to desired effects.

Audiophiles take this even further as they are reproducing these sounds via their Hi-Fi. In a way, audiophiles and musicians are one of the same, they play with equipment to get a flavour that they like to their ears. Guitar companies capitalize on this offering ‘tone’ and analogue type sounds with digital equipment (because the old school analogue gear did sound the best).

And does this sound familiar in the audiophile world?!