Ohhwy61, I'd like to *rent* the product you are suggesting and use it to expand my familiarity with the sound of different classic designs and categories of components--further my audiophile education. (Sidebar: using this technology, could someone make a CD of classic sonic signatures? Imagine: Track 6, classic Conrad-Johnson; Track 8, the sound of single-ended triodes.) In order to want to have it as a permanent part of my system, it would need to be remarkably good in terms of not adding artifacts of its own. Even then, I'm not sure I could live with that much flexibility. I would want to start tweaking the system for every recording, which for me is a recipe for audiophile burnout. Good topic.
Digital Modeling of Sonic Signatures
A company called Line 6 has a number of products aimed at electric guitarists. Basically, they are digital, solid state signal processors and/or amps that use DSP to sonically model the sound of specific guitar amplifiers. The sound palette ranges from classic Fenders, stacked Marshalls, clean Rolands and more modern hi-gain, class A designs (Mesa-Boogie). Amazingly, the digital recreations are very accurate. I'm not saying they're indistinguishable from the originals, but the recreations are real close. My question is -- why are no audio manufacturers applying similar technology to recreate, or mimic the sonic signature's of well known high end amps and preamps? I'm imagining an outboard processor that the user could dial in any sound palette they desired, whenever they desired. Would any of you buy a product like this?