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Tube amps and a Stradivarius

I was mixing an orchestra in a church and the conductor who was my friend wanted me to hear one of the musicians play their Stradivarius violin for me back at the mixer. The sound was so beautiful it seemed like there was already reverb on it. I was brought to tears simply because of the beauty and I'd never hear such an instrument before.

Tube amps are not technically as accurate as solid-state but they sound more musical, I would submit that they sound that way because of the ring of the tubes just like the reverb of the Stradivarius violin. I believe the vibration of the sound from the speakers excite the tubes and there is a pleasant reverb effect. In mixing vocals there is an important effect in the reverb processor called pre delay and that time delay before the reverb is actuated in the processor is like the time delay of the speakers making the tubes ring. Thoughts?

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Showing 1 response by desktopguy

desktopguy
337 posts
 

I've always heard (and believed) that tubes sound as good as they do for 2 primary reasons:

1 - They better convey the particular harmonic structure of notes from different instruments (accuracy of tone & timbre)

2 - And very often, they overload more gracefully/less abruptly than SS devices, and the distortion byproducts sound more benign (the distortion representing more even-order harmonics and fewer odd-order ones).

But that doesn't really explain the 3D effect one often gets from tubes, where each musical note sounds more tangible, real, occupying real space in a real place. For me, that is the greatest asset of tube audio: how musically realistic the sound is.

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