Any info on how modelers work?

[riker1384]

There are a ton of modeling products on the market these days. Is there a lot of info on how they work, or is that stuff kept as trade secrets? With some of these products that model a bunch of amps, I'm skeptical that it's much more than a bunch of EQ curves, and some distortion characteristics in some cases. Is it just that, or are they more sophisticated?

[bongomania]

In the case of Sansamps, which are analog, it's just EQ curves and distortion. Those curves and distortion qualities are very carefully chosen and designed, but that's how those work. In 99% of other cases, the modeling is digital. How that works is they record a variety of test signals, like sine waves, instruments, and voices, and run those through the device that they want to copy. Then they use a computer to compare exactly how the waveforms of the output of the device differ from the waves at the input. Then they are able to write a program which causes any input signal to be altered in the same way (on average) as the original device would have done.

[FreaqyFrequency]

I've always wondered about that myself. Thanks Bongo.