Amp comparisons?

PolarityMan

I think a lot of people kinda missed your point, the reference to pantone etc makes me think you are looking for a way to qualitatively differentiate amps regardless of either their control settings or input content.

I think any attempt to be scientific about this is likely to converge on a profiling style approach where you play white or  pink noise through the amp, sweep each of the controls and then record the output building a profile of how the output changes.

Once you ahd a library of these profiles, all through the same cab / mic chain you could potentially perform ana analysis to see which amps were close to each other and in which portion of their control space.

The people who missed the point have got one thing right though..it is way less hassle to do it by ear.

Kittyfrisk

'Guitar tone has to be one of the most subjective things in the universe!'

Apart from guitars   

Cheers,   

Kittyfrisk

PolarityMan said:

I think a lot of people kinda missed your point, the reference to pantone etc makes me think you are looking for a way to qualitatively differentiate amps regardless of either their control settings or input content.

I think any attempt to be scientific about this is likely to converge on a profiling style approach where you play white or  pink noise through the amp, sweep each of the controls and then record the output building a profile of how the output changes.

Once you ahd a library of these profiles, all through the same cab / mic chain you could potentially perform ana analysis to see which amps were close to each other and in which portion of their control space.

The people who missed the point have got one thing right though..it is way less hassle to do it by ear.

Clearly, not everyone missed my point 

And you are not wrong about the hassle 

Modulus_Amps

We could describe guitar tone by frequency response, compression, sensitivity, Harmonic spectrum etc.... but that does not translate well for guitarists.

Also as said already assuming one brand has one tonal character is a flawed idea too. I have 14 valve amps here right now, they all sound different, change the speaker and they all sound different again, change the guitar and.... well hopefully you get the picture.

PolarityMan

Modulus_Amps said:

We could describe guitar tone by frequency response, compression, sensitivity, Harmonic spectrum etc.... but that does not translate well for guitarists.

Also as said already assuming one brand has one tonal character is a flawed idea too. I have 14 valve amps here right now, they all sound different, change the speaker and they all sound different again, change the guitar and.... well hopefully you get the picture.

Well true but if such an approach were taken you could easily make qualitative statements like say the clean channel on amp X is much clsoer to an AC30 than amp Y is. 

Modulus_Amps

PolarityMan said:

Modulus_Amps said:

We could describe guitar tone by frequency response, compression, sensitivity, Harmonic spectrum etc.... but that does not translate well for guitarists.

Also as said already assuming one brand has one tonal character is a flawed idea too. I have 14 valve amps here right now, they all sound different, change the speaker and they all sound different again, change the guitar and.... well hopefully you get the picture.

Well true but if such an approach were taken you could easily make qualitative statements like say the clean channel on amp X is much clsoer to an AC30 than amp Y is. 

ah, but which AC30, a vintage one with less filtering and old speakers or a modern one with a stiffer power supply.

You would have to start off by creating some standard against which everything else should be measured

Kittyfrisk

Modulus_Amps said:

PolarityMan said:

Modulus_Amps said:

We could describe guitar tone by frequency response, compression, sensitivity, Harmonic spectrum etc.... but that does not translate well for guitarists.

Also as said already assuming one brand has one tonal character is a flawed idea too. I have 14 valve amps here right now, they all sound different, change the speaker and they all sound different again, change the guitar and.... well hopefully you get the picture.

Well true but if such an approach were taken you could easily make qualitative statements like say the clean channel on amp X is much clsoer to an AC30 than amp Y is. 

ah, but which AC30, a vintage one with less filtering and old speakers or a modern one with a stiffer power supply.

You would have to start off by creating some standard against which everything else should be measured

Which brings me neatly back to my original post.
" I guess I'm looking for a kind of neutral setting point or reference position that applies to all such demo's."     

Having pondered this a bit, I wonder if the 'answer' might lie in the use of technology.
Perhaps a Kemper type profile for any given amp, or better yet, all amps, might serve as a standard?

I'm not a profiler user, so I'm not sure how achievable or even possible this might be.
Just musing 

PolarityMan

Modulus_Amps said:

PolarityMan said:

Modulus_Amps said:

We could describe guitar tone by frequency response, compression, sensitivity, Harmonic spectrum etc.... but that does not translate well for guitarists.

Also as said already assuming one brand has one tonal character is a flawed idea too. I have 14 valve amps here right now, they all sound different, change the speaker and they all sound different again, change the guitar and.... well hopefully you get the picture.

Well true but if such an approach were taken you could easily make qualitative statements like say the clean channel on amp X is much clsoer to an AC30 than amp Y is. 

ah, but which AC30, a vintage one with less filtering and old speakers or a modern one with a stiffer power supply.

You would have to start off by creating some standard against which everything else should be measured

No you wouldnt, the profile is effectively a representative of an entire range of a particular amps sound space..so you want to know which AC30...pick one...or you could average out all known samples and compare to some kind of idealised AC30.

The real blocker is that it would be a huge amount of effort to invest and is only likely to happen if there is a side benefit..like building a digital model at the same time.