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There are many many digital tube amp emulations and they are widely used. But when it comes to music and audio, there's a lot of subjectivity and magical think

There are many many digital tube amp emulations and they are widely used. But when it comes to music and audio, there's a lot of subjectivity and magical thinking and some people believe that the real thing is better than a digital emulation. Whether they're objectively right is an open question, but they believe it enough for it to be worth spending money on. There's another aspect to this which is the creative spark itself. If you've ever tried to do something creative, you know it can be really hard to summon the right headspace to get your emotions out into some tangible form. It takes a weird, tenuous mix of confidence and vulnerability to make it happen. It's really easy for that delicate psychological balance to collapse. I think for a lot of musicians, certain gear has a talismanic ability to help them preserve the mental state they need to create. Now, you could argue that this is all just placebo affect. But in this case, the entire goal is to create a certain mental self-confidence, so the placebo effect is reality. When belief is the point, if you believe it works, it actually does work. Tube amps are one of those things that helps some people connect with their muse.

teddyh 4y ago
That magical thinking only works, though, if the object in question is special in some way. If it can be had for a dime a dozen at any time from any local corner store, the object loses its magic.
- bb88 4y ago
  That's the thing, tubes used to be a dime a dozen. Just not anymore once transistors took over. I'm not saying it's not nostalgia, it could very well be....
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Exactly my point. If tubes still were, and always had been, a dime a dozen, then nobody would care about building (or buying) fancy expensive equipment with tubes! Tubes would be seen as obsolete junk.
    - progrus 4y ago
      Except for guitar amps - I think you underestimate how tribal and idiosyncratic the tone hounds can get.
      - ilyt 4y ago
        Well, my amp is not in any of emulators so I have my excuse. But I kinda like single purpose of dedicated amplifier
        progrus 4y ago
        I like analog hardware mostly because of the knobs, but there is also a nice spiritual connection to the sound energy. Note that a solid-state amp can still be analog, transistors vs. tubes is distinct from analog vs. digital. Analog solid-state amps can make fantastic sounds, but transistors are much better at staying linear until they clip, so the transitions to nonlinearity/distortion are abrupt and the crunchy tone is less “warm”.
      - bb88 4y ago
        I'm don't underestimate it at all. There's a certain warm tone that tubes produce. It's gentle in a sense. A DAC can be harsh. A naive view point is that the analog output of an analog device is going to be smooth. The digital output will add noise on the stair step transitions. I'm not saying this is the case in reality. I'm just saying, it's useful to think about when dealing with analog vs digital signals.
        progrus 4y ago
        “Warm tone” is just another name for gentler distortion, where non-linearities happen before the hard clip limit. It can be modeled pretty well digitally as long as the digital signal itself doesn’t clip, but I agree the real thing is best.
        kazinator 4y ago
        > There's a certain warm tone that tubes produce. LOL, what? Tubes produce the distortion you hear in most branches of heavy metal, and iconic sounds throughout the whole spectrum of guitar rock. In its raw form, it sounds awful; it has to be carefully shaped by filters, to remove high frequency "fizz" as well as annoying midrange frequencies to which the ear is sensitive. Even then, that filtered tone isn't something you could listen to via hi-fi equipment or record directly; it is amplified into certain kinds of cabinets with certain kinds of speakers. After all that, some people still hate it. :)
- munificent 4y ago
  Rarity is one aspect that can summon that talismanic belief, but not the only one. There are lots of guitarists who have an abiding love of Stratocasters despite them being the Wonder Bread of guitars. What they have instead is a connection to history and other shamanic players: many famous guitarists have played strats, so even though your strat isn't the one Stevie Ray Vaughan played, it is sort of the same species in the underlying animistic magical thinking. With tubes, I think would hold even if the tubes themselves became cheap as chips. Time is another one: simply using the same piece of gear for years can imbue it with the power of ritual. Many writers use the same kind of paper and pen, and sit at the same sea, and the repetition alone is enough to summon the write mental state.
criddell 4y ago
Your comment made me think of Jim Lill, a professional guitar player out of Nashville. He has a whole YouTube series where he tries to figure out where guitar tone comes from. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvAovXWLq8Q6VITKAB_Rjww https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvAovXWLq8Q6VITKAB_Rjww I found it pretty fascinating and watched them all in one night. Wired wrote about him back in January. https://www.wired.com/story/jim-lill-interview-youtube/ https://www.wired.com/story/jim-lill-interview-youtube/
- mikewarot 4y ago
  I figured his youtube series would show up here. Take my Upvote. I'm now of the strong opinion that there is NO need for tubes any more, unless you've got old gear you want to keep working, and are willing to fork over the money for the tubes, and the power they waste as heat. It makes me sad, I've been learning how to repair old tube ham gear (Collins, et al) from a friend who's been doing it since he was a kid in the 1950s. I've learned to have strong contempt for silver mica capacitors, and a reverence for the silence of modern non-dynamotor power supplies. The strangest case was the RF amplifier that didn't work... because the ground lug the grid was connected to, wasn't a good ground.

teddyh 4y ago

That magical thinking only works, though, if the object in question is special in some way. If it can be had for a dime a dozen at any time from any local corner store, the object loses its magic.

bb88 4y ago
That's the thing, tubes used to be a dime a dozen. Just not anymore once transistors took over. I'm not saying it's not nostalgia, it could very well be....
- teddyh 4y ago
  Exactly my point. If tubes still were, and always had been, a dime a dozen, then nobody would care about building (or buying) fancy expensive equipment with tubes! Tubes would be seen as obsolete junk.
  - progrus 4y ago
    Except for guitar amps - I think you underestimate how tribal and idiosyncratic the tone hounds can get.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Well, my amp is not in any of emulators so I have my excuse. But I kinda like single purpose of dedicated amplifier
      - progrus 4y ago
        I like analog hardware mostly because of the knobs, but there is also a nice spiritual connection to the sound energy. Note that a solid-state amp can still be analog, transistors vs. tubes is distinct from analog vs. digital. Analog solid-state amps can make fantastic sounds, but transistors are much better at staying linear until they clip, so the transitions to nonlinearity/distortion are abrupt and the crunchy tone is less “warm”.
    - bb88 4y ago
      I'm don't underestimate it at all. There's a certain warm tone that tubes produce. It's gentle in a sense. A DAC can be harsh. A naive view point is that the analog output of an analog device is going to be smooth. The digital output will add noise on the stair step transitions. I'm not saying this is the case in reality. I'm just saying, it's useful to think about when dealing with analog vs digital signals.
      - progrus 4y ago
        “Warm tone” is just another name for gentler distortion, where non-linearities happen before the hard clip limit. It can be modeled pretty well digitally as long as the digital signal itself doesn’t clip, but I agree the real thing is best.
      - kazinator 4y ago
        > There's a certain warm tone that tubes produce. LOL, what? Tubes produce the distortion you hear in most branches of heavy metal, and iconic sounds throughout the whole spectrum of guitar rock. In its raw form, it sounds awful; it has to be carefully shaped by filters, to remove high frequency "fizz" as well as annoying midrange frequencies to which the ear is sensitive. Even then, that filtered tone isn't something you could listen to via hi-fi equipment or record directly; it is amplified into certain kinds of cabinets with certain kinds of speakers. After all that, some people still hate it. :)
munificent 4y ago
Rarity is one aspect that can summon that talismanic belief, but not the only one. There are lots of guitarists who have an abiding love of Stratocasters despite them being the Wonder Bread of guitars. What they have instead is a connection to history and other shamanic players: many famous guitarists have played strats, so even though your strat isn't the one Stevie Ray Vaughan played, it is sort of the same species in the underlying animistic magical thinking. With tubes, I think would hold even if the tubes themselves became cheap as chips. Time is another one: simply using the same piece of gear for years can imbue it with the power of ritual. Many writers use the same kind of paper and pen, and sit at the same sea, and the repetition alone is enough to summon the write mental state.

criddell 4y ago

Your comment made me think of Jim Lill, a professional guitar player out of Nashville. He has a whole YouTube series where he tries to figure out where guitar tone comes from. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvAovXWLq8Q6VITKAB_Rjww https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvAovXWLq8Q6VITKAB_Rjww I found it pretty fascinating and watched them all in one night. Wired wrote about him back in January. https://www.wired.com/story/jim-lill-interview-youtube/ https://www.wired.com/story/jim-lill-interview-youtube/

mikewarot 4y ago
I figured his youtube series would show up here. Take my Upvote. I'm now of the strong opinion that there is NO need for tubes any more, unless you've got old gear you want to keep working, and are willing to fork over the money for the tubes, and the power they waste as heat. It makes me sad, I've been learning how to repair old tube ham gear (Collins, et al) from a friend who's been doing it since he was a kid in the 1950s. I've learned to have strong contempt for silver mica capacitors, and a reverence for the silence of modern non-dynamotor power supplies. The strangest case was the RF amplifier that didn't work... because the ground lug the grid was connected to, wasn't a good ground.