There's a lot of talk about 'tube' sound in music forums and stuff, in reference to the characteristic timbre imparted to the sound by 'tube' amplifiers.
This seems to be due to the non-linear behavior of the tubes, which causes severe distortion of the sound signal - typically 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion. By contrast, good transistor amps are perfectly linear. While a tube amp may have a 'total harmonic distortion' (THD) measurement of about 1-5%, a good transistor amp may score 0.001%.
The process of generating harmonic distortion, appears on the face of it, fairly straight forward and should be relatively straightforward to implement with a DSP engine.
Just wondering if any one has tried to develop such a plugin, because it may be nice to get the 'tube' sound without all the attendant problems - low reliability, short life time, microphony, etc.
This seems to be due to the non-linear behavior of the tubes, which causes severe distortion of the sound signal - typically 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion. By contrast, good transistor amps are perfectly linear. While a tube amp may have a 'total harmonic distortion' (THD) measurement of about 1-5%, a good transistor amp may score 0.001%.
The process of generating harmonic distortion, appears on the face of it, fairly straight forward and should be relatively straightforward to implement with a DSP engine.
Just wondering if any one has tried to develop such a plugin, because it may be nice to get the 'tube' sound without all the attendant problems - low reliability, short life time, microphony, etc.
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