AW: tubes, transistors......

[Magnus Danielson]

>>>>> "BL" == Bill Layer <b.layer at vikingelectronics.com> writes:

Hi All!

 BL> Juergen's comments have raised a deep and perplexing Zen-type issue, that
 BL> is: What is the actual sound of an electronic instrument? The design or the
 BL> parts or the patch or???? (and you thought I was going to ask what is the
 BL> sound of one bifet clapping!)

 BL> A logically related question is: what is the sound of an instrument, if not
 BL> the sum of it's fundamental and distortion products, irrespective of the
 BL> source of that distortion? How is it defined? How should we define it?

Somewhere in the back of my head I recall a old truth that "90% of a
instruments character is in it's transient". This means that in the
attack part of a tone you have much more information about the
instrument. Imitating the attack of a grand piano is much more
difficult than imitating the sustain-part.

This is also consitent with Eric's point about transient properties of
tubes.

The rule is however not really well appropriate for new type of
instruments where you may do a lot of dirty tricks in the loooong
sustain period.

 BL> Finally, the most intersting question of all arises: Where does the
 BL> instrument begin and end? This is even more puzzling if you consider a
 BL> modular system, where the issue is most cloudy. 

There is guitarists that consider their amps and integral part of
their instrument.

I think that a really interesting aspect is the instruments use.
I know many examples of sounds that when listened to all alone they
are so flat, naive, nose or something similar that you would just pass
by it and simply not use it, it was not a good sound, where they
become THE little sound that when correctly used puts a very
colourfull spice to a allready very good piece. Go listen to Vangelis
to find noumerous examples. So, where does the instrument end now?

 BL> Now that I've brought this zen discussion to the table, a bit of my own
 BL> un-zenlike dogma. I think that electroinc instruments are being used at
 BL> their worst and weakest, when one endeavours to duplicate the sound of a
 BL> real accoustic instrument; that is: the original goal of music synthesis
 BL> (that of flawless emulation), is just flat pointless and moreover,
 BL> tasteless (don't agree? listen to Switched on Brandenburgs or anything by
 BL> Tomita EXCEPT for the Englufed Cathedral) for any purposes other than
 BL> academic.

 BL> I for one would NEVER tolerate transistor artifacts in my stereo PERIOD,
 BL> but on the other hand, I think they are fine for Emusic apps, INCLUDING
 BL> signal processing. Why this apparent contradiction? Because IMO, there is
 BL> nothing inherently 'correct', genuine  or natural about the sound of an
 BL> eMusic instrument, but there IS something inherently correct about the
 BL> manner in which it is reproduced.

Sometimes you end up with subjectivites one way or another. In many
cases you may conclude that something is stupid or wierd to be using
since this or that product is "better" but what eventually counts is
how they are being used and how the musician feels about using it,
that is certainly subjective. Some instruments certainly lends
themselfs for a certain class of sounds and music where as they can do
a lot more... I have even heard a guy play a Hammond in a very diffrent
way than we are used to hear them... this was a real intriguing thing
to hear and is also BTW one of my favorite albums...

So, to some degree one comes into the "Whatever works for you".

BTW. There is one place where tubes have a special case, and that is
radio and TV transmitters. For these apps I hardly think that solid
state will compete in the same way for the same functionallity for
still some time. You can get tubes capable of about 500 kW of RF
power, so if anyone want to build a stadium PA power amp just surf
over to Siemens and download their RF tube catalog in PDF format.
Oh, keep some distance from these tubes, they have X-ray problems and
you will need watercooling.

Cheers,
Magnus