Ok I’ll jump in.
Is there (or was there) a difference between tubes and digital? Yes I believe so.
Can we identify the difference? Not so much.
About 3 years ago a group of my guitar playing friends got together for our semi-annual “Tone-Fest” We all bring our favorite tube amps and guitars and have an all day session of jamming and comparing amps. I brought my 64 Super Reverb, Plexi and I believe I had my Badger 18 Combo at the time, not sure. One of the group who is a recording engineer wanted to challenge us to compare digital to tubes. He set up a screen so we couldn’t see the setup we were playing through and hooked up an A/B box to switch us back and forth.
Now I must say that these are some players I really respect including one who designs, builds and swears by boutique tube amps. Could we hear a difference? Yes, but we could not identify which was which. We were wrong as often as we were right and that included when we were actually playing the guitar so that feel was accounted for.
I think this may answer the question why we have this conflict with people who can hear a difference and those that can’t tell them apart. Both are true. In our case we could definitely hear something was changing but could not consistently identify tube vs digital.
This demonstration caused me to eventually purchase an AxeFx Ultra and then an AxeFx II. I’ll get the AxeFx 3, 4 & 5 when they come out.
The interesting thing is that some of those tube purists who were at the Tone-Fest and mistakenly identified digital as tubes are still telling me that the Axe is great but not quite there yet. Ok.
Now maybe this is why the AxeFx can keep improving when it’s already supposedly arrived. I don’t really know.
I do know this. The guy that makes boutique tube amps and yet could not consistently tell one from the other (along with the rest of us) still insists that tube amps are better. Huh?
I believe that the advances in modeling threaten both his beliefs in old technology and probably more importantly his future job, however I think people will be buying tubes amps for a very long time and he doesn’t need to worry about the market drying up.
As for the comment regarding capacitors holding a charge and this preventing digital from replicating analog systems. I respectfully disagree. I am a programmer and although I know nothing about how the Axe is programmed it would be possible to program a digital system to replicate the capacitive storage of energy. As a matter of fact you could exceed what a capacitor does. You could store more energy than a capacitor does and for a longer period of time, infinitely actually (rebooting being the exception). It could then release that stored virtual energy when required based on some parameter such as a transient like an aggressive pick attack. As of for the percentages of output you could simply make 25% appear as 100% and be able to jump to 400%. This is really just a numbers game and of no real absolute meaning.
Digital systems have the potential to exceed analog systems and I believe they have in many ways although not all. The adjectives we all know have or will eventually be exceeded, more rubbery or less, more bloom or less, more headroom or less, more chime or less and on and on.
For the record I love my AxeFx II and think it’s the way of the future. I also love my Suhr Badger, which I leave at my practice location and often use for practice purposes rather than bring my Axe. Although I’ll eventually sell my Badger, for now I enjoy the simplicity.
Don’t hate me, I agree with both sides.
exactly some people just don't get rid of their biased opinions and actually be open minded.
