social topic

2017-08-20 11:37:26 am

red chamber dream

the artists who just want credit for their stuff being used have got to be fighting a losing battle

the internet sucks :/

DJGrenola

2017-08-20 11:54:08 am

yeah it's making me consider taking my stuff off soundcloud now

DJGrenola

2017-08-20 11:54:44 am

could be stolen by any youtube wannabe and I'd never know about it

DJGrenola

2017-08-20 11:57:21 am

that's a thing about the content ID systems actually, you ought to be able to tell google "here is my shit, it is mine, add it to your signatures, if anybody uses it you know what's up"

but no, that system is solely for use by WMG and sony and friends

DJGrenola

2017-08-20 12:06:27 pm

I still don't actually know whether posting something on the internet using some third party (google, soundcloud etc) which displays the date you posted it would stand up in court or not

DJGrenola

2017-08-20 12:07:30 pm

you used to have to mail copies of things to yourself recorded delivery, and then not open the envelope

DJGrenola

2017-08-20 12:08:19 pm

that's in the UK at least, no idea about anywhere else

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 04:18:51 pm

aw yeah, just ordered these shiny beauties for my guitar amplifier so I have spares for the gig next month

I have such a fetish for valves / tubes

Poision Envy

2017-08-21 06:49:49 pm

Club 27 Goals

I guess I've been too dumb to understand what the point of those kinds of tubes are for sound amplification. What's the tech behind it? My old coworkers were really big audiophiles and had crazy tube pictures, and some even lit up. Is that normal?

Also why do audiophiles even need amplifiers? Do the headphones require way more power or something?

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 06:50:22 pm

well ... it's complicated lol

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 06:52:58 pm

the short answer is that there isn't any point to them. transistors do exactly the same job for much cheaper, consume far less power, don't get hot, operate at low voltages rather than the hundreds of volts needed for valves/tubes, don't burn out after a few thousand hours, are smaller, and don't require specialised, expensive output transformers like valves do

Poision Envy

2017-08-21 06:55:25 pm

Club 27 Goals

so you can have an amplifier with transistors instead of tubes? That's pretty interesting cause none of the audiophile guys I knew ever had amps like that

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 06:56:56 pm

yeah

well

I mean your ipod or phone or whatever has a power amplifier in it to drive the speaker and the headphone jack, it's not a big fuck off hundreds-of-watts one, but it's still a power amplifier intended to drive a speaker ... for a hi-fi amp you just scale that up

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 06:57:27 pm

99.999999% of amplifiers use transistors nowadays, but there's a catch

Poision Envy

2017-08-21 06:57:54 pm

Club 27 Goals

yeah that makes sense, and I mean tubes are way prettier than black boxes. Unless you stick some LEDs in them or something

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 06:59:29 pm

transistors have a very linear transfer function, so if you plot the input against the output on a graph, you get a very straight line. they're extremely faithful, linear amplifiers that reproduce the input signal extremely closely, and that's the catch

for a valve amplifier, you don't, you get more of a curve, which introduces harmonic distortion, but the kicker is that it's a type of distortion that happens to be pleasant to the ear

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 07:00:03 pm

so valve amplifiers are inferior in every measurable way, but it just so happens that they're inferior in such a way that the ear prefers it

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 07:00:51 pm

for guitar amplifiers it's a bit different since distortion is a huge part of the electric guitar sound, so guitar amplifiers that use valves (like mine) are overdriven on purpose to give you that crunch

if you overdrive a transistor amp it sounds fucking awful

DJGrenola

Edit history:

DJGrenola: 2017-08-21 07:01:40 pm

2017-08-21 07:01:33 pm

guitar amplifiers based on transistors nowadays nearly always have a computer in them that does digital signal processing in order to approximate valve distortion

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 07:04:37 pm

as for the tech, it isn't complicated, you're just heating up a piece of metal with a heater until the electrons break free of the metal ... then you can apply a voltage across the tube to suck the electrons from one end of the tube to the other, and the amplification comes from the fact that you use the input signal to modulate the electron stream using a grid placed halfway along the tube, so a small input signal is used to control a much larger flow of electrons from one end of the tube to the other

Poision Envy

2017-08-21 07:05:33 pm

Club 27 Goals

that's fuckin neato. I never would have thought they worked that way, honestly the glow and everything I thought was just for show. Like adding green LEDs to mice or something.

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 07:05:48 pm

I think for very high power amplifiers used in things like radio transmitters, RADAR etc. they still do use tubes

there is of course also one in your microwave oven, but that's another story

Poision Envy

2017-08-21 07:06:21 pm

Club 27 Goals

now I'm really curious to try out some good headphones with a good amp and see how it sounds. I haven't dared try any of my friend's setups because they dumped serious money into it and I am not ready to blow $2,000 just as 'entry' tier equipment to listen to Eminem

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 07:06:44 pm

yeah they're clever things, but transistors just rendered them obsolete, I'm honestly still surprised it's still economical to manufacture them, the only companies that make them are in eastern europe, russia and china

DJGrenola

2017-08-21 07:07:14 pm

yeah I'd love a valve hi-fi amp, but as you say they cost many thousands :(

one day I might have a shot at designing my own and see if I can do it on the cheap