[LAD] Half-OT: Fader mapping - was - Ardour MIDI tracer

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 2014-08-24 at 22:56 +0200, hermann meyer wrote:
> why musicians could prefer the digital way, if at least the end up in
> a digital media.

When recording a guitar at midnight in a rental apartment I play my
guitar directly connected to the mixing console, resp. some
preamplification is better before using the mixer. Sometimes amp and
speaker simulations can be used, but often they are too sluggish. EQs
digital or analog) and early reflections (digital) often are more
promising. I'm not against digital gear for guitars, OTOH tube gear has
some advantages and even analog transistor gear. I mentioned the Boss
Sustainer and Turbo Overdrive. Both effects can be done digital too, but
the advantage when using those effects is, that you automatically get a
preamp. The Hughes & Kettner tube preamp is much better. At home we
usually can not record a guitar amp, in a studio we can do. A flight
simulator is good to practise flying, but if you want to travel, you
need to use a real plane. There is nothing like a tube emulation. You
can not use a mixer or sound card input with a completely different
responding quality and frequency response than those provided by tubes
and Celestion speakers and use an algorithm to simulate something that
is missing. It's possible to handle the frequencies, when there are only
frequencies to cut, but impossible to emulate a missing responding
quality. For guitar the simulations are to sluggish, the responding
quality of the sound cards or mixers are different to those of tube
amps. Regarding the tube microphone emulation, "let your Sure mic sound
like a Neuman or Brauner", it's not only the tube, but much more the
missing frequency response of the capsule.

On Sun, 2014-08-24 at 22:53 +0100, James Morris wrote:
> Bring out the pitchforks, someone dares to not keep up with the times,
> burn him at the stake!

You are missing the context. I'm pro old equipment, but against
equipment that tries to fake vintage gear, claiming to use modern
methods, while it even doesn't use the available algorithms. And again,
you can simulate a flight, but you can't travel using a flight
simulator. IOW if you know what to do, you can provide digital EQs and
things like that, but you can not provide preamp and amp simulation,
when the preamp from the mixer or sound card simply can not do what's
needed for guitar. Perhaps you noticed that one of the threads is about
pickups and the different sound, when using a guitar amp and when using
other gear.

I'm not a bonehead, I simply confront you with the technical facts.