If it does, I'm fully prepared to answer any and all questions. I make design decisions, and from my experience in the industry, I'm used to defending my design decisions.
The first question is likely to be something to the effect of HOW COULD YOU BETRAY US AND USE A DIGITAL DEVICE WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE TUBES IN THERE???
I'll start with background. This isn't the first time I've mixed digital with tubes. Echosaurus Valve and Glass Butterfly are recent examples of using tubes to get better results from technology that does something tubes are incapable of doing by themselves. Not to pat myself on the back, but I think they sound pretty good. Also remember Gondwana? I spent a good amount of time and money doing research and evaluation to get an IR loader to work in a tube scenario. All of the development I did on that project rolled directly into the setup I used in Venus X.
Now let's talk about cabsim, or speaker emulation. Why do we need it? Some of us obviously don't, as we plug directly into an amp and deal with everything from there. To those this will have no effect, as the digital processor is only used for the cabsim, and with the cabsim off you have a 100% analog signal path.
Why didn't I use an analog cabsim? Well I tried that first. I tried a number (7 I think?) of analog cabsim options and tweaked them to see if I could get the results I wanted. There were a couple that didn't sound bad, but I wasn't thrilled with any of them. None of them really gave what Tony and I were looking for. This is when the idea was floated to use an impulse response (IR) so we could use something directly tuned to sound like Tony's cab that he is already accustomed to using. The number of players using ampless rigs has skyrocketed since the use of IR became widespread with devices like Helix, Kemper, NeuralDSP, and others. The reason being that, with modern computing power, you can get a more realistic response than you can with a fixed EQ like an analog cabsim.
What is an impulse response? Put simply, an impulse response is a dynamic EQ that adjusts certain frequencies differently based on the input they receive. A physical speaker does not have a fixed response, so a fixed EQ can't accurately model the way a speaker behaves. The processor for the IR looks at the incoming signal and adjusts the output accordingly based on an algorithm that has been programmed in to tell it how to react. This concept has existed in DSP for years, but the obvious issue of DSP latency prevented it from becoming widespread until processors were able to get small enough, fast enough, and affordable enough to stick in guitar gear.
So the decision to use IR may be a controversial one, especially IR paired with tubes, but I am confident that this was the right decision to deliver the best-sounding product, and I am very proud of how I was able to implement it into what is already an amazing sounding preamp. I am incredibly pleased with how Venus X has turned out, and I really think it is the best possible product that I can make right now.
Sorry for the essay, but hopefully that clears up a question or two before they're asked
