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Why do we tube lovers love tubes?

I thought tubes conveyed LESS information (audio) than solid state. That's what Bass Player magazine implied in an article about tube amps--that you're not getting the full picture of your bass's sound profile. It's like how some people love sepia tone but not fully-fleshed digital images.

That depends much more on the various circuits than the devices used.
 
I wonder if in Photography forums they moan about photoshop.
A nice parallel can be done with Tube vs Modeling ;)

And digital versus film
They don't shoot a lot of film these days.

For classic movies, are you expected to go out and get a film projector, or get a digitally restored blu-ray version.

I went to an old theater a while back that had film projectors. 24fps, screen was flashing, scratches, jitter, blobs in the corner when it came time to change the reels - really bad experience compared to the digital theaters that are popping up everywhere. I should have got the blu-ray.
 
And digital versus film
They don't shoot a lot of film these days.

For classic movies, are you expected to go out and get a film projector, or get a digitally restored blu-ray version.

I went to an old theater a while back that had film projectors. 24fps, screen was flashing, scratches, jitter, blobs in the corner when it came time to change the reels - really bad experience compared to the digital theaters that are popping up everywhere. I should have got the blu-ray.
what a lame and irrelevant comparison.

but let's assume that it's not. they absolutely DO use film for movies these days. they might transfer it to a digital format, but they shoot it on film. why? because video looks cheap.
 
Well if you cant go faster because of issues with heat removal ( a problem the P4 was infamous for) you cant go faster.
Anyone who has owned a Honda is familiar with this problem.
Everyone I know in the IT industry laughs at moores law. Whether you want to consider it being in terms of switch count or cpu power, pcs/servers have simply plateaued. They are now bound so much by their disk subsystems and the memory buss that even if they could continue to increase, they cant utilize all that power.
a niggling detail either way.

The transistor junction speed is still slowing things down. New junctionless transistor will eventually change this. Or some other new technology.

Everybody in the IT industry loves Moore's law. They're always planning and buying new stuff. It makes for a lot of fun.
 
I thought tubes conveyed LESS information (audio) than solid state. That's what Bass Player magazine implied in an article about tube amps--that you're not getting the full picture of your bass's sound profile. It's like how some people love sepia tone but not fully-fleshed digital images.

I haven't read that - do you have a date or reference?

I have heard it in LP versus CD. LP's hold much less information than CD's.
You can make a CD of an LP and in blind tests subjects can't tell the CD from the LP.

Lossless formats used by newer audio players even have more information. But it highly improbably anybody could actually hear it. Good specs though.
 
The transistor junction speed is still slowing things down.

Ummm... no.

Transistors keep getting smaller and faster pretty well. Interconnect issues have come to dominate, especially capacitive issues due to wire widths narrowing relative to wire thickness.

The other big issues is leakage and the associated static power issues it presents.

...and I'd argue that FETs don't have a "junction", but that is bit semantics.

New junctionless transistor will eventually change this. Or some other new technology.

Yeah - lots of things have been going to change it.

We're still using CMOS.
 
what a lame and irrelevant comparison.

but let's assume that it's not. they absolutely DO use film for movies these days. they might transfer it to a digital format, but they shoot it on film. why? because video looks cheap.
I agree that film has a grain and texture that humans seem to enjoy more than the stark reality of "HD no filters" which is a little bit too fractious and disturbing, filters for this medium have improved via video plugins in digital editing.
Avid has been a leader as they have with digital audio as in HD Protools.
But that said Protools is to sound what florescent tubes is to light. Digital is great for its pristine signal path and ease of editing but thats it. You need loads of color to get it to sound right.
Tubes, audio transformers, passive eq's, certain types of compressors, and tape echo's seem to be the only things left eluding the software modeling merchants at the moment.
I think it depends on your standards, I hear a sound in my head, I don't want an all digital sound signature on it.
I might try something to soften the razor edge of modern technology.
what electronics technicians call signal to noise degradation we sound engineers sometimes call good tone.
I personally need all the available tools at my disposal, I have an all transistor 3 way active bass rig with a DSP DSC with various pre amps.
I also have various all tube rigs this is because I need to do it all very convincingly. If nothing else for my own satisfaction.
I am perfectly sure that blow up rubber sex dolls are getting better too. Call me old fashioned! I still prefer women for all the inconvenience and lack of fidelity concerned.:ninja:
 
Somebody must be thinking about old TV cameras that had tubes in them. Hardly any resolution and contrast in them. They'd blare on a candle. And they recorded to analog tape.

Not so with modern digital cameras
In 2009 the Academy Award for Best Cinematography was awarded for a movie mostly shot digitally, Slumdog Millionaire. Another nominee, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was also shot digitally. The popularity, quality, and convenience just keeps growing and growing.

Most of a person's brain is all dedicated to vision. So imagine what they can do with audio.

There's plenty of plugins for everything audio, even a free old tape echo
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Somebody must be thinking about old TV cameras that had tubes in them. Hardly any resolution and contrast in them. They'd blare on a candle. And they recorded to analog tape.

Not so with modern digital cameras
In 2009 the Academy Award for Best Cinematography was awarded for a movie mostly shot digitally, Slumdog Millionaire. Another nominee, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was also shot digitally. The popularity, quality, and convenience just keeps growing and growing.

Most of a person's brain is all dedicated to vision. So imagine what they can do with audio.

There's plenty of plugins for everything audio, even a free old tape echo
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How much do they charge for a nice secondhand fairchild 670 compressor $35,000.00- $40,000.00?.
How much would you get trade in on the UA virtual fairchild 670 native plugin, about a half chewed hershey bar?
Actually things are only worth what you can really sell them for.
And even if you are deaf as a post you should know some intelligent hearing people are prepared to pay for the subtile differences they can hear and feel, even if you actually cant.
:bassist:
My personal favorite tape echo looks like this mate:
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Its a 14 tube 3 head system crammed full of extremely complex combinations of tape head inductances, audio transformer, tape, tape head and tube saturation curves and all the other subtle effects real tube analogue machines have by nature. Its also very beautiful and very rare. In ten years it will be worth twice what its worth now and it will still be good to go for another 50 odd years service.
Another great analogy you should use to annoy the crap out of people that don't like frauds and fakes, would be "why bother going to Europe to get some culture when its all just like parts of Las Vegas" EH?.:bassist:
 
Somebody must be thinking about old TV cameras that had tubes in them. Hardly any resolution and contrast in them. They'd blare on a candle. And they recorded to analog tape.

Not so with modern digital cameras
In 2009 the Academy Award for Best Cinematography was awarded for a movie mostly shot digitally, Slumdog Millionaire. Another nominee, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was also shot digitally. The popularity, quality, and convenience just keeps growing and growing.

Most of a person's brain is all dedicated to vision. So imagine what they can do with audio.

There's plenty of plugins for everything audio, even a free old tape echo
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Yes, Its ALL getting better.....When the first 16 bitdigital recordings were released on CD there was deffinately something missing that tape gave us...then we got noise shaping in the digital signal that moved digital in the direction to sound more pleasing like the analog harmonic content you get from saturated tape... but it still wasn't enough ...have you seen the "tape saturation" plugins?... Recording tip...if you can record your initial tracks on analog tape and transfer it to digital format you get the saturation yet you make as many passes with shedding the inital tracks... if you don't have a mutitrack tape uni then record and mix down your digital recording to 2 track tape and then transfer That back to digital.....IMHO I think SLUM Dog and Benny Button winning best ciny is also the "industry's" way of phasing out the old formats because they are in theory more expensive than going digital to produce in terms of film stock special lighting and so on. Roger Ebert set up a comparison of films originally shot in 70mm and reprinted to a fresh print and the digital transfer of the same movie...."Patton" in Chicago a couple of years back The film was shown in a theatre that was setup for 70mm projection and full blown sound and in a digital theatre wih same size screen and film still won out by a small margin...with the technology of just a few years ago its very hard to get black to project digitally without showing as purple screen...for the new generation of audiences, ...most don't know the difference or care...I dare say the same goes for the listener who is content to listen to thier audio via Itunes MP3 Mp4 ect through tiny earbuds...whether it was recorded with tube- solid stae or plugins....


:hiding:
 
I wonder if in Photography forums they moan about photoshop.
A nice parallel can be done with Tube vs Modeling ;)

I was trying (very badly you might say) to make a joke with the word "modeling" with the photo of that young lady .... :rollno:

THe parallel between sound and photo is that everything is analog , soundwaves , light.
Everything nowadays is converted to digital , from at the mic directly ( http://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=current_microphones&cid=d01_description )
to after mastering but it will eventually go all digital.
It's the same with photography , the lightwave captured by the camera is analog , it will eventually be transformed digitally.
There is not a big market for paper photos anymore....

I don't mind being digital right after my bass (Or DI ) and yes I play for 30 years and played on everything and your mother.
And I don't mind playing through a 'good'ol'amp' for recording , if the song needs that tone.

EDIT; for the sake of understanding , I must add that I'm a DI guy. I use a monitor , not an amp. If I want a tube tone , I'll use a pre ,a comp or my VB99.
 
I was trying (very badly you might say) to make a joke with the word "modeling" with the photo of that young lady .... :rollno:
any time you want to post photos of young ladies, you feel free, and funny or not, i will support you. devo photos are also welcome.

THe parallel between sound and photo is that everything is analog , soundwaves , light.
Everything nowadays is converted to digital , from at the mic directly ( http://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=current_microphones&cid=d01_description )
to after mastering but it will eventually go all digital.
It's the same with photography , the lightwave captured by the camera is analog , it will eventually be transformed digitally.
There is not a big market for paper photos anymore....
maybe not for news journalists or paparazzi, but in the art photography world, they still seem to be quite desirable. yes, a lot of art photographers do digital manipulation (this would be a good time to bring up devo's mark mothersbaugh, who does a lot of digital manipulation of photography), but in the end, i think art collectors like to see their photos printed on photo stock and not printed off an inkjet or displayed on computer screens.

I don't mind being digital right after my bass (Or DI ) and yes I play for 30 years and played on everything and your mother.
And I don't mind playing through a 'good'ol'amp' either.
of course you wouldn't. those old and so-called "obsolete designs" are still hugely popular for a reason. and that is why i so don't get the level of anger that seamonkey has over tubes, especially when it's painfully obvious he's got zero experience with tubes.