Yes I know, that's why I wrote technically better. The distortions and coloring your tube amplifier produce might sound good to you, but they're imperfections.
BTW I did blind tests with a lot of the never-transistor crowd, and with the right simulated effects a rough 95% of them couldn't tell which one was the tube and which one was the transistor amplifier with simulated tube. So I'd say it's also a bit of nostalgia.
The results were even worse for vinyl vs MP3. Recording some vinyls as high quality MP3 (to preserve the defects) let no one tell the difference. Even though they were adamant that MP3's make music so harsh that they can't listen to it without getting a brain aneurysm.
So it's not the MP3 that makes the music unlistenable to them, it's actually the fidelity of the recording that vinyl's just don't have.
Although with vinyl I must admit there's a certain romantic aspect to putting one on, even though I don't have a player.
PS: I know there are better formats than MP3, but in this case people were talking about MP3 I didn't want to give them FLAC.
>Yes I know, that's why I wrote technically better. The distortions and coloring your tube amplifier produce might sound good to you, but they're imperfections.
Well, so is human timing errors in playing. But most people would still rather hear a human play the piano that a MIDI file (and even electronic music done in DAWs is "humanized" in all sorts of ways).
>Although with vinyl I must admit there's a certain romantic aspect to putting one on, even though I don't have a player.
With vinyl the tactility and patina and process (that makes "skipping" more effort) are even more important to me than the playback fidelity.
> Yes I know, that's why I wrote technically better.
I would still disagree with your use of the word "better."
> The distortions and coloring your tube amplifier produce might sound good to you, but they're imperfections.
"Sounding good to the listener" is the criteria by which this kind of musical equipment is evaluated. According to this standard, tube amps are "better."
As a tech-head I totally get where you are coming from. The more accurate reproduction of the sound does create a lot of value as it enables new sounds and techniques. But as a musician, I don't really care about optimizing the electrical and acoustic properties of the physical system. I only really care about the sound I get out of it at the end.
Distortion is, by the exact same measure of sonic clarity and reproductive accuracy, horribly broken from a technical point of view. Yet that effect underpins whole genres of music. In many situations it is "better" than the "technically accurate" reproduction.
We like amps for the coloration not the transparency.