Getting that film look

In article .com,
says...
wrote:

says...

I have heard these kinds of comments and often find that they are sort of an
urban legend similar to some who insist tube amplifiers sound better than
solid-state amplifiers. Double-blind tests always do them in (they can't
consistently identify the type of amplifier).

Which studies? I have been recording these amps for 30 years and they
sound different and many people "can" tell the difference in double blind
studies.

Filtering issues aside, you can only tell if you drive the amp into
non-linearity.

Depends on the study. Some mastering cats are really freaky when it comes
to these studies and have blown apart some of the tests.

http://milbert.com/tstxt.htm

"Engineers and musicians have long debated the question of tube
sound versus transistor sound. Previous attempts to measure this
difference have always assumed linear operation of the test amplifier.
This conventional method of frequency response, distortion and noise
measurement has shown that no significant difference exists."

And how could it? But of course, if you are the sort who likes to
over-drive your amplifiers, then hey, the more power to ya. Or at
least to the inputs of your amplifiers.


Yep, and some like to overdrive their amps for playback while mixing and
mastering. Go figure. Playback of audio asside, most good musicians are
so dymanic in their playing that at some point they are going to over-
drive the input of the amp, even on a very soft piece of music, even for
only a few notes in the piece. This would make one amp or the other
produce a different sound and most of them will pick tubes for guitar or
B3 and solid state for bass. Of course Dimebag loved solid state for
guitar.