wow, there's a lot that have been said there, and since I don't have time to read everything in details, I'll give you what came to my mind first :

analogue is electricity turned into vibration, and digital is electricity turned into numbers.

therefore, even if on the paper, digital should be better, in the case of plugins, for example, it will take EVERYTHING that's here in order to treat it.

which means a certain range of irrelevant harmonics which normally would be passed-by by the analogic effect is now taken in consideration by your plugin which doesn't sseparate them.

that's how you make the difference between a good emulation and a bad one.

in case of instruments players, there's also a lot more that comes into play like sustain, feedback... air

I think the best is to listen to a few Andy Scheps conferences (you can find some of them on youtube) because according to him, he switched from digital for his mixes to complete "in the box" production, which means he now only mixes with plugins.

I say "according to him", because they usually record with high quality analog gear, and there's from what I've heard, and depending on the band and the material, a lot of manipulations also before they end up with the final tracks of the master mix.

hope it helped

 

Conclusion is correct, the reasoning's a bit flaky. Amps = amperage, not amplification. Think voltage = how fast electrons are moving, amperage = how many electrons. But yeah, a tube is basically a [non-linear] amplifier, and this nonlinearity (along with the circuit topology used) is the "tube sound." There are many different circuit topologies (types of circuits, how the tube is used), and these alter the sound much more than than the tubes used.

In that case, go here & download LTSpice (it's free), go on YouTube and watch some vids explaining how to use it, Google "ltspice tube models," add them & go to town
There might be a better circuit sim than LTSpice (which sorta sucks & feels like it hasn't changed since the 90s, but SPICE is SPICE.
There are tons of tube enthusiast forums on the web, like https://www.reddit.com/r/diytubes/ . Caveat: 90% of everything written about teh "tube sound" is BS. Not to say that tube gear itself is BS -- I love it, for roughly the same reason I like old cars/bikes. Am a toobhead myself

 

^
Would saying that 1 volt is the potential energy required to drive 6.242×10^18 electrons through a 1-Ohm resistor in the span of 1 second make things clearer, or just make me sound like a bigger asshole? Should I have just ?
Taking into account that this is not a physics class?

 

Last edited: Feb 22, 2018

,

or "Voltage, electric potential difference, electric pressure or electric tension" => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage

<->

???

 

Last edited: Feb 22, 2018

I offered a simple visualization ("think [of] voltage [as]," opposed to "voltage is") of voltage in the context of tubes.
The speed of electrons, in vacuum, is

But yeah, Googling "voltage" also works

That's *the sound of tubes*, the relationship of [change in input] to [change in output], at different operating points. Those curves define a tube.

 

Last edited: Feb 22, 2018

Ok, bro, I know you're a shepherd of knowledge and my post #23 was just a little teasing.

But you have to admit, saying this is not a physics class and posting that technical tube pic, is a bit funny isn't it.

 

Only sort of. The point was simple: to show what tubes sound like. If OP can look at a chart (or at a waveform on a scope), he can also look at the transfer curves & make a reasonable guess at what the tube is doing to the sound. It's simpler than looking at, say, this:

...and trying to understand the sound of tape saturation (considering that crossover-distortion-looking-bit plays an insignificant part in tape saturation. It's just there, all the time)
I try not to use tech jargon/befuddle anyone with smartiferous scienceses, but it's hard to say something meaningful about teh "tube sound" without reaching for transfer curves -- they pretty much define what a tube sounds like.

 

So actually every sound that comes to your ear and you start to hear is analog. Sound is of course not turned into numbers, right? Sound have indeed vibrations and the vibrations are called Hz, isn't it? Vibrations per second.

Your ears are only there to make let you hear sound. That's what their job is. I don't think they do anything else? To be able to hear sound your ears need to get those vibrations as they cannot work with 'numbers'. And that's probably why computers are digital. Computers have no 'ears' so they cannot work with vibrations whereby they are working with numbers? It's maybe stupid said.

So everything inside your computer is digital, but when it comes out of it, from your outputs, or whenever you hear sound it's analog? That's why @m9cao has said outputs are analog:

And when you're playing instruments it's all analog aswell, right?

So digital audio is audio that has been converted from analog. And this audio can then be recorded or changed in digital computers. And that's needed, because computers don't work with analog. So I think the same thing happens again when it gets out from your speakers, but then the other way. It gets converted from digital to analog?

@Blorg

Actually I had no idea until you said he could make a quess. So I went into it and I think I kinda figured this picture out.



Without knowing what all the numbers means I think that the horizontal line with 100, 200, etc stands for voltage. If I look at 0 on the right side I can see a vertical line that goes up. I think that vertical line stands for current. That vertical line at 0 and the horizontal line that goes further from that point to the right makes one graph. I think those slanted lines shows the reaction in relation to the voltage and the current. I had to google what load line means and if I am right it's a draw line between the highest points of the current and the voltage. Sounds to me as maximum. I think that load line is where saturation happens when the lines are getting above it. I think the kind of sine waves that you can see is showing crossover distortion?

One thing that takes my attention is that the right and the left side are actually the same. So you have actually two graphs, but all these lines are connected to each other. If you for example take a look at 200 on the right side. It gives a slanted line of -20. On the left ride if you take a look a look at -20 it shows 200. This is also the same for the others.

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2018

my thoughts: before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. that way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.

 

i think you were totally confused, anything you talking with others was confusing any others, and, its useless.
you could do some mindmap, i often make some mindmap when my brain cant afford some complex thoughts.
good luck

 

and just how..? .don't leave us hanging now... do go on !

( as long as it doesn't involve Dad's balls )

 

actually, what you ear is electricity.

music is :
- someone has inspiration. it manifests itself through a brain impulse
- body is turned into motion
- hand hits the skin of a drum, or a string, whatever..
- vibration takes place
- vibration is "felt" by someone else's hear
- once it has hit the eardrum, it's turned into an electric impulse to and in the brain and processed ( to give it meaning )

digital or analog are a third party between the player and the audience.

what makes them "analog" or "digital" is just the gear that is used to process and render what was expressed ( the vibration ).

wether it's wax, the magnetic field of a tape or an HD digital converter, each application has its flaws.
one cannot reduce how a wavelength is received and interpreted only through an eardrum.

there's a lot more physical factors coming into play.

 

Well said for sure, but really did I? I mean why would I criticize anyone right here? They are all very helpful and as I said before I also appreciate it. If I seriously did, then it's not on purpose, really.

Edit: I have a feeling about something. Therefore I changed my previous post a little bit. I understand it can be read that way. Anyway thanks for pointing it out.

That's fine. And I think my thoughts could be pretty complex indeed. That's true, haha. I think it's not immediately a bad thing. Sometimes I actually hear from people that they like the way I think, because not many people do it, and it makes you think whereby you get interesting conversations. Well, maybe not in this thread? I quess therefore a good thing that Herr Durr came to put a bit more humor into it

You could have stopped when it came complex for you, but you didn't. So that's really great from you. In fact I just want to say if you never came in like all the others I never was where I am right now. And you was throwing with so many interesting and helpful stuff aswell for sure. So for now thank you!

When you are getting electric impulses is there actually something in your body or when it's in his way to travel to your brain that can affect these impulses that happens unconsciously? So you can experience it as something different than others or than how it supposed to be? I know everyone is different, but is there also a deep reason behind it why some people like different genres and while others don't? I have to say that I think there is not really an answer for that and it is just the way it is, but who knows. And actually vibrations are everywhere, right?

Getting back on your previous post. Yes, there are a lot of emulation plugins to for example the known LA-2A compressor. I think the only way to decide which one is better is by testing it and to find out which one you like the most or the one that works for you of course. The real hardware compressor is around $3500? There are so many companies that are trying to emulate it. UAD, Native Instruments, Waves, etc. I'm always tricked that expensive hardware or whatever is better. Of course it will not immediately say that if something is expensive it's also better, but it is something that always will be in mine mind. And in this case I think that expensive hardware like LA-2A is better, but is it true? Have hardware compressors clear advantages over digital plugins?

I think therefore it's also pretty funny to notice that in so many different situations digital is more used than analog at the moment and starts to throw analog away, but it seems that analog still have his own place. For example in audio?

And I will definitely check something about Andrew Scheps what you had mentioned earlier

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2018

I was talking about synapse activity, but the whole vibrational aspect is at work,
if you want to go to the extreme, take gravitational waves : they literally "expand" matter, yet you don't feel them.
same thing with neutrinos.
but just because you don't feel something doesn't mean it doesn't happen

so,to answer your question about why people like more one genre compared to another, it's because of a lot of factors : education, culture, the context, what and who they are, where they go.
there's a real message in music and a lot more than just notes

hardware cannot be taken individually, "analog" sound is about the quality of the chaining, so even wires quality counts.
can emulation be good ? yes, of course, if made properly. it also needs a lot of RAM & processing power.

where emulation shows it's limits, is in the physical interactions one can get (i.e with virtual guitar & bass amps compared to the real ones : not the same sustain, tubes take time to reach an efficiency point / heat, etc.. )
but it's also more stable and less reacting to these environnemental factors

audiophiles like to spend money in quality analog sound sets, but vinyl is still here.. I like it on a good stereo, but I also like surround, and I think it can tale the art of mixing to a higher level.

Scheps can be a bit redundent depending on what vidéos you'll check, but definitely a great guy with a lot of experience in both fields and a great sense of humor.

take care

 

@black bounty

Thank you very much for your time and for your answers! I think it's fine for now. So thanks a lot to everyone aswell

 

The load line gives you plate current from plate voltage & grid voltage. Nonlinearity is the difference in distance between circled.

this came from http://www.trioda.com/tools/triode.html , where you can play with the values by sliding the little triangles at the "ends" of the load line.

If you're seriously interested, you really should download LTSpice (lets you make schematics & see how they work)

It comes with a bunch of sample schematics, and YT is full of intro videos. Takes about 1/2 hour to get the basics if you sorta know basic electronics.

 

@Blorg

I will look into it. Thank you for the suggestion!