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Re: Electro Harmonix Freeze - Vortex Patch



mark francombe schrieb:
> No sarcasm here... Educate me?
>   
'sucking tone' is a term that I've only heard from guitarists so far, 
and which they use to describe an (unwanted) effect on the guitar sound 
when going through some box (which can be an effect, or an amp, or a 
cable etc.). One aspect of tone suckage is less high frequency content, 
another one might be loss of dynamic range, often not as this effect per 
se but low dynamics masked in noise perceived as a loss of dynamic 
range, some change in the way your guitar signal chain responds to your 
playing, or tube voodoo.

The most famous kind of tone sucking is plugging your guitar into a low 
impedance input (e.g. mixer or soundcard) in combination with a guitar 
with passive electronics, possibly even a vintage one. This will 
inevitably lead to a high-frequency rolloff.

With regard to the Vortex, this could be:
    * if you plug directly into the Vortex, then the high-frequency 
rolloff as described above will happen.
    * the Vortex is specified with a dynamic range of 83dB. Others have 
already mentioned that it tends to distort audibly and uglily if you 
overload the converters - so unless you use a compressor/limiter in 
front of it, people typically keep a lot of headroom - which, with other 
effects and noise buildup, could have negative effects on the dynamic 
range.
    * the Vortex is not an all-tube and a digital device, so that tube 
voodoo would also apply here...

The tone suckage is only relevant if you have the device in an insert 
(as opposed to send) configuration, so it did never apply to me (in my 
equipment logistics paradigm, there's rack device -> rack -> mixer).

Aren't you a guitarist, Mark? I'm really surprised that you don't know 
of the antichrist of tone suckage ;).

          Rainer

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