I think y'all missed the point because the OP is talking about an amp that automatically adjusts itself to reproduce a "good" bass tone. I described a scenario that showed (from what I could make out) what the tech would look like on an operational level, perhaps with a little embellishment, to fix what I saw as a perception problem.
Not everyone missed the point. People brought up good points like how something like this would react to something else dynamically changing the sound (aka, another one of these amps in play), or how the basic blocks of this tech exist in some form already.
But what the OP is describing is not a sound engineer. He is talking about something to eliminate the need for sound engineers. Also, if I am reading the post correctly, he wants the amp to faithfully reproduce the signal you send to it no matter the situation. I imagine you are still allowed to have a preamp and pedals to get the bass tone you want.
But overall, I think the point was missed because the OP was visualizing a piece of tech/equipment to solve a perceived problem, and people are either saying we just have to just live with the problem, the solution doesn't exist now, or just don't understand the problem he is trying to solve.
The problem, as I read it, is that you have to fiddle with your amp to get the same sound whenever the situation changes. I imagine he just wants to plug and play music, ie, be a musician and not a sound engineer.
Thank you for clarifying why you think we “all” missed the point. (Even though later you say that not everyone missed it.)
I guess then, the question that needs to be discussed is: How much of the tweaking of an amp is really a part of the musical process! Some consider it just as important as the notes being played. Others, not so much. But that is a whole other discussion.
I still hold to my belief that most of the responses did understand that the OP was proposing to automate a process that has traditionally been a manual one. I had no issue with him raising the subject.
But maybe to put it more in perspective of the psychological implications that I discussed earlier and which are hard to ignore, perhaps we might think in terms of not being a sound man replacement, but consider how we all feel about another form of automating what has been a traditionally human role. The self driving car.
This may be a better substitute than the sound man replacement scenario.
As much as dynamically changing the EQ of an amp based on algorithms that must predict certain conditions and adapt rapidly to those conditions, a self driving car operates under a set of instructions that assumes certain dynamics to be in play. And as with self driving cars or auto-adjusting amps, the software can be very good, but it still has to operate to the satisfaction of and in an environment containing some compilation of fleshy goo and emotional, unpredictable wetware.
In the situation of the amp, the worst case scenario is that the human interface might have a different definition of, as you phrased it, “a good bass tone.” No harm no foul. No one dies. The human experience is left wanting due to it’s own preference set. Of course if the human interfacing with a self driving car goes off on a tangent it could be tragic.
Not the car’s fault, nor the amp’s.
I think if the goal of such an amp were to satisfy the sonic needs of an automated listening device, then all would be right with the world. But people are fickle. What they like today, they may hate tomorrow. If you can include something that will keep up with that in your self driving amp, you may very well be able to realize your “good bass tone.”
