Directions in space?

On Jun 24, 5:22*pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science Chuk Goodin wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:38:38 -0500, Michael Ash wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but my impresion of tubes used in
guitar amplifiers is that they are essentially psychological at this
point. There's nothing preventing you from building a semiconductor
circuit with identical response, and it would be cheaper and use less
power. But they would fail in the psychological department, because people
*think* that tubes sound better. This, in my mind, doesn't constitute a
decent reason to use tubes.

So, I'm guessing you really don't want a sound card for your computer that
uses vacuum tubes? (I think AOpen made a motherboard that had a tube
socket on it...)

For sound quality, I'm pretty sure that you could program a digital sound
card to perfectly mimick the tube's output for a fraction of the cost and
power usage.

Here you Betray your Ignorance, sir.

The whole point of the tube amplifier is that it is Not Perfect. Its
Imperfections are its Beauty. Turned up to eleven, its Beauty is
Overwhelming.

Any digital manipulation that mimics a tube perfectly is, by
definition, Not Imperfect, and therefore Not Beautiful. You cannot
win.

Jim "Monster cables under the bed" Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"The universe is sacred, You cannot change it.
If you try to improve it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it."

Lao Tsu

In article ,
dlzc wrote:

Otoh, one watt of acoustic power is VERY
LOUD unless the room is very large.

I am unconvinced, so I'll have to do more research...

Check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure_level

2.3 milliwatts per square meter of acoustic energy corresponds to some
90 deciBels of sound level.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stjarnhimlen dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/

In rec.arts.sf.science Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article ,
Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article ,
Michael Ash wrote:

For sound quality, I'm pretty sure that you could program a digital sound
card to perfectly mimick the tube's output

Not perfectly - but probably good enough for the human ear to be unable to
hear any difference. Looking at the waveform on an oscilloscope could
still show some differences though.

You choose how close you want to get, then you choose your components to
match it. A 24-bit DAC will get you to within one part in 16 million of
where you want to be, and they're quite common these days.

Some things:

1. Even if the bit resolution corresponds to one part in 16 million, do you
really believe the D/A converter is accurate to within 0.000006 % ????

Probably not. But neither are your ears. In a competition between whether
the DAC's conversion accuracy and your ear's ability to discriminate, the
DAC will win. Especially once you consider that the audio system's output,
either kind of audio system, is going through an imperfect set of
speakers.

2. Even if the D/A converter also has this accuracy, it's still not perfect!
There will be deviations up to one part in 16 million, and a perfect simulation
requires zero deviation. Right?

Yes, but who cares? You don't need a perfect simulation, only an
indistinguishable simulation. Human ears aren't that difficult to fool,
especially when you're trying to imitate something that's already
artificial.

3. And when we're at it to this level of accuracy - exactly WHAT should we
emulate digitally? Individual tubes of the same tube type will surely differ
from one another more than 0.000006 % -- don't you think so? Of course, if
we aim at "good enough" rather than "perfect", the accuracy requirements will
be much lower than this.

This is completely at odds with point #2, I hope you realize. If you're
just curious then that's fine, but if you're actually trying to make a
point then this makes no sense. If your vacuum tubes are already this
variable then you only need to fall within the range of possible vacuum
tubes to be sufficiently accurate.

for a fraction of the cost

Not likely - hiring a programmer is not cheap. Buying a vacuum tube could
be much cheaper...

Sure, if you want to build *one*. But generally you produce these things
for sale, at which point the cost of the programmer is divided across all
of the units you produce, whereas you pay for the tube for every one.

And of course for the digital solution there's no reason to be building
hardware at all. Use a commodity sound card and just write a little driver
that preprocesses the audio being output.

OK - unless I want to start my own software company which implements a
vacuum tube simulator intended to run on standard sound chips - which
software of this kind can I buy today?

Microsoft Visual C++ on Windows, or the free comes-with-the-OS developer
tools on any other system.

If you want something pre-made, you probably won't find it. Why? Because
people who prefer the sound of vacuum tubes also, for the most part, have
an irrational belief that it cannot be imitated by digital means. They're
the same kind of people who will spend $200 on an audio cable which
produces no discernable difference when compared to a straightened-out
coat hanger.

and power usage.

Depends on the tube. A miniature vacuum tube doesn't need more power than
millions of transistors...... :-)

I very much doubt that. "Millions of transistors" is not a lot these days.
You're talking perhaps one watt. Can you get a miniature vacuum tube that
only requires one watt?

One watt is perhaps a bit hard, but I can get down to two watts. This little
cutie:

http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aac0073.htm

requires approx. one watt for the heater (it utilizes direct heating) and
another watt for the rest of the tube.

Is this tube suitable for this application? In any case, you're still
using more power, just not a lot in any case.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

In rec.arts.sf.science JimboCat wrote:
On Jun 24, 5:22?pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science Chuk Goodin wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:38:38 -0500, Michael Ash wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but my impresion of tubes used in
guitar amplifiers is that they are essentially psychological at this
point. There's nothing preventing you from building a semiconductor
circuit with identical response, and it would be cheaper and use less
power. But they would fail in the psychological department, because people
*think* that tubes sound better. This, in my mind, doesn't constitute a
decent reason to use tubes.

So, I'm guessing you really don't want a sound card for your computer that
uses vacuum tubes? (I think AOpen made a motherboard that had a tube
socket on it...)

For sound quality, I'm pretty sure that you could program a digital sound
card to perfectly mimick the tube's output for a fraction of the cost and
power usage.

Here you Betray your Ignorance, sir.

The whole point of the tube amplifier is that it is Not Perfect. Its
Imperfections are its Beauty. Turned up to eleven, its Beauty is
Overwhelming.

Any digital manipulation that mimics a tube perfectly is, by
definition, Not Imperfect, and therefore Not Beautiful. You cannot
win.

Jim "Monster cables under the bed" Deutch (JimboCat)

Do I correctly infer from your Nonstandard use of Capitalization that this
post is Satire? I only ask because it is frighteningly Realistic and I
just Can't Tell.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

Michael Ash wrote:

Do I correctly infer from your Nonstandard use of Capitalization that this
post is Satire? I only ask because it is frighteningly Realistic and I
just Can't Tell.

Yeah, it's a good one. There are lots of people who will argue that
tooth and nail without quite realizing how silly it is on its face.
Just like there were lots of people who insisted (and some who still
insist) that vinyl records sound better than CDs because ... that's what
they grew up listening to and don't like change, if you want to be
honest about it.

--
Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
The tremor of awe is the best in man.
-- Goethe

Michael Ash wrote:
Max Francis wrote:
Yeah, it's a good one. There are lots of people who will argue that
tooth and nail without quite realizing how silly it is on its face.
Just like there were lots of people who insisted (and some who still
insist) that vinyl records sound better than CDs because ... that's what
they grew up listening to and don't like change, if you want to be
honest about it.

I give it a day before someone lectures you about how analog systems are
inherently better because they have infinite precision.

And thirty minutes after that before someone else resurrects last month's
thread about the Lensman universe, thiry-decimal measurements, and the
quantization of space-time...

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeableBLINK
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

In rec.arts.sf.science Erik Max Francis wrote:
Michael Ash wrote:

Do I correctly infer from your Nonstandard use of Capitalization that this
post is Satire? I only ask because it is frighteningly Realistic and I
just Can't Tell.

Yeah, it's a good one. There are lots of people who will argue that
tooth and nail without quite realizing how silly it is on its face.
Just like there were lots of people who insisted (and some who still
insist) that vinyl records sound better than CDs because ... that's what
they grew up listening to and don't like change, if you want to be
honest about it.

I give it a day before someone lectures you about how analog systems are
inherently better because they have infinite precision.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

On Jun 25, 10:45*am, (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
In article ,
Michael Ash wrote:

And of course for the digital solution there's no reason to be building
hardware at all. Use a commodity sound card and just write a little driver
that preprocesses the audio being output.

OK - unless I want to start my own software company which implements a
vacuum tube simulator intended to run on standard sound chips - which
software of this kind can I buy today?

I have a version (at least six years old) of the digital sound-
processing software put out by DiamondCut Productions http://
www.diamondcut.com and it has built-in filters to simulate literally
dozens of different vaccuum tube amplifier arrangements (shown on a
spiffy wood-paneled user-interface, no less). Not only is such
software commercially available, but it is commonplace, and fast
enough to do the job in real time in the CPU -- no soundcard
modifications required. I paid about fifty bucks for it.

Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"If the money the state gets from the lottery are used for education,
why aren't we raising a generation who knows better than to play the
lottery?" -- Wildepad

On Jun 25, 8:04*pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science JimboCat wrote:

Here you Betray your Ignorance, sir.

The whole point of the tube amplifier is that it is Not Perfect. Its
Imperfections are its Beauty. Turned up to eleven, its Beauty is
Overwhelming.

Any digital manipulation that mimics a tube perfectly is, by
definition, Not Imperfect, and therefore Not Beautiful. You cannot
win.

Jim "Monster cables under the bed" Deutch (JimboCat)

Do I correctly infer from your Nonstandard use of Capitalization that this
post is Satire? I only ask because it is frighteningly Realistic and I
just Can't Tell.

Indeed. There are, however, people who think just this way. Isn't
there something, perhaps by Arthur Clarke, about a sufficiently
advanced satire being indistinguishable from a genuine kook?

Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"There was nothing very interesting in Katherine P. Rankin’s study of
sarcasm — at least, nothing worth your important time. All she did was
use an M.R.I. to find the place in the brain where the ability to
detect sarcasm resides. But then, you probably already knew it was in
the right parahippocampal gyrus." -- DAN HURLEY

In rec.arts.sf.science JimboCat wrote:
On Jun 25, 8:04?pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.science JimboCat wrote:

Here you Betray your Ignorance, sir.

The whole point of the tube amplifier is that it is Not Perfect. Its
Imperfections are its Beauty. Turned up to eleven, its Beauty is
Overwhelming.

Any digital manipulation that mimics a tube perfectly is, by
definition, Not Imperfect, and therefore Not Beautiful. You cannot
win.

Jim "Monster cables under the bed" Deutch (JimboCat)

Do I correctly infer from your Nonstandard use of Capitalization that this
post is Satire? I only ask because it is frighteningly Realistic and I
just Can't Tell.

Indeed. There are, however, people who think just this way.

I know, that's why I asked. In fact if I hadn't recognized your name I
wouldn't have even asked, I would have just responded straight.

Isn't
there something, perhaps by Arthur Clarke, about a sufficiently
advanced satire being indistinguishable from a genuine kook?

Sounds like a parody on Clarke. I'm pretty sure I've seen the same thing,
but I couldn't tell you where. It's a basic rule of the internet that
there is no position so absurd that you cannot find someone who sincerely
holds it.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon