audio interfaces with tubes?

[carlo3874]

Hello,

Does anybody out there make audio interfaces with tubes like the presonus firestudio tube but smaller, 2x2?

thanks!

carlo3874

[Charling]

Hmm, i'd be wary of the the 'tube' status on those presonus boxes. an interface is a piece of software, a collection of a/d converters and often a collection of preamps/line inputs etc.

The software has obviously nothing to do with tubes, the A/D converters have nothing to do with tubes. and they are the important aspects of an interface.

I guess the point is you buy an interface but get a free tube preamp or two. so you could essentially buy any interface and then buy a nice tube preamp to add to the system. If you are using a nice preamp then you could put this into a line input of even the most basic interface. a lower quality a/d in the interface is less of an issue (even low quality a/d's are pretty good these days!).

so I'd say, if you want tube sound, add a tube preamp to a good value interface! all the important things an INTERFACE needs to be will never benefit from being 'tube'.

[Nick Kay]

Originally Posted by Charling

Hmm, i'd be wary of the the 'tube' status on those presonus boxes. an interface is a piece of software, a collection of a/d converters and often a collection of preamps/line inputs etc.

The software has obviously nothing to do with tubes, the A/D converters have nothing to do with tubes. and they are the important aspects of an interface.

I guess the point is you buy an interface but get a free tube preamp or two. so you could essentially buy any interface and then buy a nice tube preamp to add to the system. If you are using a nice preamp then you could put this into a line input of even the most basic interface. a lower quality a/d in the interface is less of an issue (even low quality a/d's are pretty good these days!).

so I'd say, if you want tube sound, add a tube preamp to a good value interface! all the important things an INTERFACE needs to be will never benefit from being 'tube'.

+1 to all of the above (except that an interface is hardware. Software is programs, applications, games and the like). You're not going to want tube character on every track you cut. A solid interface with good SS preamps and line inputs for an outboard tube preamp would be a much more flexible system.

That being said, the most compact tube-based recording solution I can think of is the ART Tube MP Project Series. It was originally just a colourful 12AX7-based mic preamp, but the newer versions have a ADC and USB 1.1 connectivity tacked on, too. Don't know if they're any good, but might be worth checking out.

[newbold]

Got a mac? Get an Apogee Duet and 2 great mic pre's...but the mic pres will be the costly side of things...interfaces' clout comes from their digital converters. $500 and you're set with great pro sounding gear.

...that fits in your pocket.

[Charling]

Originally Posted by Nick Kay

+1 to all of the above (except that an interface is hardware. Software is programs, applications, games and the like)

yeah, I should have been more clear, I meant the software as in the driver to run it, and the control panel specific to that interface!

[Kipaste]

Originally Posted by Nick Kay

That being said, the most compact tube-based recording solution I can think of is the ART Tube MP Project Series. It was originally just a colourful 12AX7-based mic preamp, but the newer versions have a ADC and USB 1.1 connectivity tacked on, too. Don't know if they're any good, but might be worth checking out.

No, they're not any good. Well, they make a decent low-end bass DI box but that's it, for vocals they're pretty horrid. Same goes for pretty much all cheap "tube" preamps like presonus tubepre and such. The tube warmth is an illusion at best, since they're not really tube amplifiers. Instead the tube is a starved plate design and the tube is driven with a fraction of the voltage needed to really run a tube properly. So the tube is not what you get in a a good tube amplifier, it's what you get with a tube driven distortion pedal. So no real warmth, just mild distortion.

So I'd go with what you suggested too. An interface with decent SS pres is a better buy. For the OP, if you really wan't to upgrade to a tube preamp, except it to cost atleast as much as the interface itself.

[DavC]

i have to agree with Kipaste ...

i have and have tried several tube pres ... and a variety of tubes from old to new ...

they are a fun tool for guitar/bass inline stuff ... but it seems like anything else , when you get things cranked up enough to ad 'warmth' , at that point you've raised the noise level up to high ..!! better tubes , running at a lower gain % seem to quiet it down a bit ...

i try to ad a little 'tube warmth' to the individual tracks as they're going down ... i run one of my keyboards thru a tube Eq ... and it has the better analog patches ...

sadly , the digital Mastering tools seem to have better emulations of analog warmth ... than the cheaper tube units .!

DC

[seamonkey]

Yep, tubes are just gimmick in an interface.
They wear out and change characteristics over time. Tube rollers change and hear differences in other tube gear.
IMHO - it's better to get a clean as track as possible and then add dirt. If you abosolutely believe you need a tube to get the dirt you want then re-amp after you record a clean track. Plugins these days are better than rolling tubes.

[Charling]

Originally Posted by seamonkey

Yep, tubes are just gimmick in an interface.
They wear out and change characteristics over time. Tube rollers change and hear differences in other tube gear.
IMHO - it's better to get a clean as track as possible and then add dirt. If you abosolutely believe you need a tube to get the dirt you want then re-amp after you record a clean track. Plugins these days are better than rolling tubes.

I agree with your first point 100%, but not with your IMHO! you could add a bit of distortion with any of the host of tube warmth, softclip distortion plugs but it would not sound the same.

You could 're-amp' as you say, but doing that through a preamp is not really going to work, you would have to pass the signal out of your A/D at a very low level then back in again, a whole host of audio faux pas awaits you!

and the I've not heard many inline line level 'tube warmth' boxes that are worth coming out of the computer for.

however the original pre amp process, or the compression or eq process, can benefit greatly from tubes, if you are a good engineer then you will know when adding a bit of warmth to a sound is going to get in the way of the mix later, and when it will subtly enhance a mix.

So many of the top top bits of gear have tubes in them, they are in there for a reason, you'd be considered a bit of a silly engineer to say 'I won't use that Pultec Compressor, it will colour the sound, I'll do it with a plug in later...'

its like saying 'I don't like the u67, i'll use a u87 and add a bit of 'tube warmth' in the box. that will NOT sound the same. believe me!

Not putting the downer on tube warmth plugs etc, they are useful tools to have around! hey are simply not the same as real tubes, however.

Also, tubes aside, would you choose, say, a focusrite ISA220 over an (original) neve 1073? I know which one I would choose! the ISA is a really good pre but the 1073 is out of this world, with a price tag to match! But would you disregard it for the cleaner ISA?

EDIT - and in some cases the plugs may sound better for the job, I'm not deneying that, just that many great bits of gear have tubes in them, and the fact that they distort the sound slightly when driven is no reason to avoid them!

sorry man, I know this is two posts I have directly argued with you in, but I think our approach to recording music differs greatly!

[seamonkey]

No problems Charling, you're not arguing, you're discussing. Too many people around here seem to take things personally. They spend their time trying to discredit the poster than trying to focus on the discussion.

You have some good discussion in your post. I don't agree. But the OP can try either method fairly easy and decide for themselves which works best and in what circumstances. And any person who tries one over the other may be get different results.

A major hurdle all plugin makers have for emulating tube gear is there is no gold standard piece of tube gear they can model from. No two pieces of tube gear from the same manufacturer off the same assembly line will null with each other. A plugin maker can null with one, but the owner of the other will always say "it doesn't sound like mine." This goes back to the infamous Carver challenge.

Plugins are getting more and more popular. I think because they sound good and they're easy to tweak or swap out. It's hard to say what the future holds, but I expect that some plugins that actually don't emulate a real tubes will be a rage in the future. Because - IMHO - A tube isn't the gold standard. There's an "ideal" sound without artifacts that come from real tubes.

There was good music before tubes, it just wasn't captured. There will good music now and forward, without a tube in the mix.

[Charling]

Originally Posted by seamonkey

No problems Charling, you're not arguing, you're discussing. Too many people around here seem to take things personally. They spend their time trying to discredit the poster than trying to focus on the discussion.

You have some good discussion in your post. I don't agree. But the OP can try either method fairly easy and decide for themselves which works best and in what circumstances. And any person who tries one over the other may be get different results.

A major hurdle all plugin makers have for emulating tube gear is there is no gold standard piece of tube gear they can model from. No two pieces of tube gear from the same manufacturer off the same assembly line will null with each other. A plugin maker can null with one, but the owner of the other will always say "it doesn't sound like mine." This goes back to the infamous Carver challenge.

Plugins are getting more and more popular. I think because they sound good and they're easy to tweak or swap out. It's hard to say what the future holds, but I expect that some plugins that actually don't emulate a real tubes will be a rage in the future. Because - IMHO - A tube isn't the gold standard. There's an "ideal" sound without artifacts that come from real tubes.

There was good music before tubes, it just wasn't captured. There will good music now and forward, without a tube in the mix.

Cool

Yeah I agree that its whatever works for the individual, be it a 4 track casette recorder or whatever, the music is all that matters when you get down to it and many great albums have been recorded on old HD recorders with one 57 at the wrong sample rate or onto a 2 track consumer reel to reel machine or whatever!

But we are, as our job title suggests, engineers and though that means less these days than it used to I still think its really important to think about the impications of the processes we use to record and how we can improve them!

I think the over emphasis on nulling is a bit misplaced, its often the main argument of people arguing for and against various bits of gear but it is also not very in tune with the creative side of recording.

i think of it like a sculptor with bad tools. It is possible that if there was a brilliantly sculpted statue to copy from then he could use these tools to just about make an exact copy of the original but its a long and difficult process, whereas using the right tools for the job would not only make the task easier it would also be easy and enjoyable which incites you to be more creative etc. sorry thats a bit abstract

the carver challenge is an interesting one, but he was working this electrical magic on a very simple device. the amp was always in a single 'state' and he just had to copy that one 'state'. Still a hard task, but compare this to a compressor, valve or otherwise, with a number of knobs and thousands of conceivable different settings for them.

analog circuits are so complex that a million and one things change when you turn one knob, not just the input and output voltage. An analog processor has millions different settings that cannot be modelled unless you can model everything inside the circuit including all the unintended stuff that we don't understand but nevertheless contribute to the circuit. A basic algorythm that looks at the knobs and the way they interact at different settings is never going to capture all that. you would have to design a different algorythm to null with every possible setting on the front of a compressor if you wanted it to sound exactly the same, and that is NOT going to happen, ever!

thats why they have turned to convolution, which gets a lot closer, and they do do just that. with devices like the liquid channel they take an impulse response of every position a knob can be on the front panel of the target device, still painstaking work but a lot more realistic than modelling every setting! Trouble is convolution takes a huge amount of computer power to even run at a fraction of the detail needed to emulate properly, and while they sound good, and similar, they don't null with the original a lot of the time.

so to summarise, desigining a circuit or algorythm to null works but is so hugely impractical for multi input devices that it will never happen, and convolving from an impulse response is a lot more practical but needs a lot of power and is not quite there yet with the methods to produce accurate results.

I think both methods will, given time, end up being great, when computers are ten times more powerful than today you could run 3 convolution plugins on every channel no probs!

And as for algorhythms, when computers have the power and designers have the ability to really model EVERYTHING about a circuit then we may well get incredibly accurate modelled plugins.

The difficulty is in the unknown, have you read about evolving circuits? Very basically they are circuits allowed to design themselves through evolution steps, ending up with a very effecient circuit. a lot of these circuits are beyond our understanding of how they work, I think the first one was a series of logic chips that was set to evolve to differentiate between two signals. Thats a task that shouldn't be possible with just logic chips but the evolving circuit managed it, and several of the componants it used to do the task weren't even in the actual circuit (not electrically) but the circuit stopped working if they were removed!

really interesting stuff, but I mention it because it shows that circuits are a LOT more complex than just the set of voltages and currents accross each componant, and all these hidden extra elements of the circuit efect its functioning, and untill they model all these as well then plugins are not going to perform like the real thing, especially not when a circuit becomes saturated etc thats when things go haywire!

but, back on topic, I use plugs all the time, they are great, you get instant recall! they sound really good, you can have 50 pe-1b's on a track even if you only buy one etc etc.

I'm sold on plugins for there strong points, but it'll be a long time before I sell my hardware