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Re: Smaller Speakers



kim:
>I guess you're not a guitar player, right? An electric guitar
>by itself is only half the instrument.
[snip]
>That is also why a guitar through a flat PA system will sound
>very bad, and to the player, it will feel lifeless.

Well, this is an interesting theory and statement.
Maybe I'm just a moron; I've spent ten years playing
a cheap guitar through a chorus pedal, a little eq
and reverb, direct to a 4-track.  It doesn't feel lifeless
to me, although maybe I don't know any better.  

Still, I don't consider the guitar direct
"half the instrument".  Is an acoustic guitar
only 1/3 of an instrument because it lacks a pickup
and an amp?

I realize you didn't intend this as a combative
statement, rather an explanation to a non-guitarist
outsider about why amplifiers are important, so now
perhaps my puzzlement is clearer.  I don't _feel_ like
I'm missing anything.  I find it outrageous to imagine
that getting an expensive amphead, a Marshall brake,
2 4x12 (or whatever) cabinets, and a pair of really
good microphones is going to make my music sound
"better".  Different, sure.  But "better"?  Much
as I really can't imagine what magic I could hear
if I touched my fingers to a Klein.  Maybe I'm just
a philistine--_tone_ deaf, as it were--and maybe
someday I'll have the requisite ear-opening experience.

Another person explicitly raised the issue that
the advantage to amp cabinet coloration is that
the distorted guitar tone benefits from filtering.
I could believe this, but then why do we need
"speaker simulators"?  Why not just a simple
low-pass filter on the output of your (possibly
tube-based) distortion pedal?

[re: watercolors in specific, but also sound and synthesis in general]
>Usually those imperfections are what made
>it unique and desireable in the first place.
[snip]
>If you truly want to recreate that digitally, you need to
>replicate all of the characteristics that make it that way.

I agree totally.  The question is _why_ "truly recreate
it digitally"?  I was trying to point out the consequences
of "true re-creation"--perhaps it is twice as much work
accurately reproducing all the frills and accidental
properties of something as it would be to simply make
something new and never before seen.  [And I know the
answer to "why", see next paragraph :) ]

>>I understand the commerce motivation to sound/look "just like"
>>the real thing, but I find the end result to be such a waste
>>of energy--imagine if all that effort were to be put into
>>creating new sounds/looks! [*]
>
>I can tell you from experience that trying to do new things is what often
>turns into a huge waste of energy, or money mostly. It takes a long, long
>time for people to adopt it and start to use it.

Of course.  Hence my phrase "the commerce motivation".
You gots ta eat!  But I still think it sucks.

I guess I'm just struck by the arbitrariness of tone/instrument
choice.  The endless quest to produce the perfect piano
synthesizer, the hammond b-3 synthesizer, etc. etc.
But I suppose we do have the pianos and hammonds of
today... the electic guitar itself, or more recently, the
Stick and Warr guitar.  But the construction of sound
from electrons themselves is so much more powerful and
flexible than stretching thin wires very taut (although
the latter clearly has certain advantages), that I'd
expect all sorts of new and exciting possibilities
coming out of them... and instead it feels like the
last "surprising" thing coming out of the digital
domain was DX7-ish FM synthesis.  No, I take that
back.  Pitch-shifting is a new digital-only effect.

I could go on, but this rant is mostly off-topic, so I
better stop.

Sean