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Where solid state amps tend to show their weakness (IMO) is that point where single notes are clean but you can hear the grit when 2 strings are sounded together or one note is hit especially hard. Valve amps do that far better in my opinion.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
The decision by Metallica to use modelling amps on the last your was, believe it or not, made on the basis of cost. It was simply a lot cheaper than dragging around a mountain of analogue / valve gear.
A friend of mind is an engineer at the BBC, and was working on a Metallica live session at Maida Vale, where they ran out of channels (96!), so I expect they have reduced massively their live set up.
Smacks of Spinal Tap .....
Feedback
Fractal have also included amp models and control features at Metallica’s request
I'd be willing to bet a lot of it is nostalgia, emotion, woo etc. and wouldn't stand up in a blind test. Similar to CDs vs. [new, unscratched/non-dusty] vinyl. And all the audiophile nonsense.
What sets them apart - especially if you're the player, so you're inside the 'feedback loop' of generating the signal - is how they respond to *changing* signals, both in terms of dynamics (how changes to incoming signal are reproduced in the outgoing signal) and frequency response (how changes in incoming signal affect harmonic content, especially when overdriven) - some people call this 'feel' or 'touch response'. This is *much* harder to get right, and is why it hasn't been done 100% convincingly yet even though it's theoretically possible. It's a lot easier to get it right from the point of view of an outside listener who is not the player, so FOH sound at a gig or recorded sound is pretty much there.
But I think it will come even for the player, and fairly soon.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Audiophile is about sound quality, it's not nonsense if you can recognise quality when you hear it irrespective of the medium or the means of amplification: I love my little Leak Stereo 20, but have to concede that my Quad 33/303 can sound better even though it is entirely solid state.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Thanks for trying
Re. Audiophile, I was being a bit provocative, but I absolutely agree you can get great quality via great equipment. I was thinking of the overpriced snake oil such as special mains leads and the like.
Having A/B'd a bunch of stuff I would agree with ICBM. It does seem to be the valve poweramp that makes the biggest difference.
I rate what Fractal have managed so far in terms of modelling, through a beefy enough solid state poweramp it's really quite good and consistently improving - I've had mine 2+ years now and the playing feel is really very good. Not 1:1, but close enough to where I don't care and all the other benefits more than make up for it. There are a million other ways to screw up a band performance/recording, a digital solution probably isn't the weak link these days by a long stretch.
Been impressed with the sounds of the Kemper too though I haven't played one.
You're right about the snake oil
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Same with solid-state and valve amps. Valves sound 'better', because they're worse - the distortion (even on an unclipped signal) they introduce just sounds naturally pleasing, and is quite hard to precisely emulate with a different technology, particularly as the ways the circuits work are non-linear. Even the apparent perceived volume is strangely different - a watt is a watt, but a valve amp of a given rated power will almost always sound louder than an exactly equivalent solid-state one, even when both are clean - because the dynamic response is different.
It's actually quite a fascinating subject. I honestly wonder whether it will be all finally figured out, or whether people will just stop caring once the difference gets small enough and other practical considerations outweigh it.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Vinyl clicks and pops, you need to sit and listen to a whole side of an album, manually turn over, you can hear the music from the needle when you show your ear next to it. It is very tangible.
Same with valve amps, they need to warm up, they react in a certain way to changes in signal, they get hot when driven.
One one hand the preference for vinyl and valve amps is damn silly. On the other hand, If all we had was reality, we probably wouldn't bother with music at all!
+1 to ICBM's "more complicated than that" . If you take a valve output stage (p-pull, hate SE!) it has at least one property that transistor stages don't inherently have and that is an output impedance quite a bit higher than the load. The classic AC30 design is IIRC close to 50 Ohms. Even a big, 4 OPV 100 watter with a whiff of feedback would likely be no lower than 10 Ohms.
One consequence of this is that as a speakers DC resistance increases as it heats up (Thermal Compression) and the drive current drops, valves are able to maintain the power into the load because they can supply the necessary greater voltage. I have no evidence for this (can't play for ***t!) but I would put money on this high OPZ being the major factor that players call "feel"?
The other effect is that the amplifier gives virtually no damping to the speakers and so they are allowed to 'sing' as they wish albeit maybe not a YOU want them to sing at times (e.g. The Rocket) !
Yes, it is possible to engineer a high OPZ into a transistor amp but it is NOT an inherent property and likely does not sound the same. In a word it is a kludge. It can also cause instability, and reliability problems.
Move back to pre amps. Triodes when distorted produce mainly even harmonic distortion. ICs, because they are symmetrical devices, produce mainly rather nastier odd harmonics but in general you don't overdrive ICs ('specially not TL072s!) . Yes, discrete transistors are asymmetrical and can do even harmonics but their headroom is pitiful compared to triodes, volts pk-pk not tens of volts pk-pk and anyway, transistors have a MASSIVE bandwidth, even audio devices reach into tens of MHz often 100. The humble junction FET makes an excellent VHF radio preamp! The HF rolloff of valves is a 'good thing'!
No, just because they both 'push electrons around' does not mean sstate sound the same as valve, WHEN overdriven. You can make very good hi-fi valve amps but in the limit NOT as good as the best transistor designs. Horses for...
So, do I think a modeller will come along that will fool player and audience? Yes. in fact I think we are very close now.
Dave.
I'm totally pragmatic about technology, but a little romance doesn't hurt as long as you know that's what it is.
I can be totally charmed by an oily, scruffy 1930s motorbike while still recognising that new ones are "better".