Re: Kemper Profiling Amp anyone? it is a modeler technological marvel??
I don't see how one can make comparisons with anything other than their ears and brains. Every single manufacturer of modelers and tube amps will claim theirs is the best...or at least the best FOR YOU...if not themselves. And they all advertise the latest bells, whistles and gee whiz process to further their aims. How exactly does one scientifically ascertain how one is better than the other? I can't even get my hands on current model tube amp schematics and I don't imagine that the modelers are putting their secrets out their either. Even I could take apart my tube amps and crudely reverse engineer them but my GT-10? No way. How do I peer inside it's CPU to scientifically judge it's merits? I think we can all agree that watching the Kemper videos that their models are nearly identical to the original...at least inside that room. But how do we make that judgement? What instruments do we use to measure frequencies coming out of the speakers? Is anybody putting a spectrum analyzer to both the model and the original to see if what we hear is actually all there is? I don't see how anybody can make a scientific comparison. We HEAR it, absolutely. And whether people choose to acknowledge it or not, the Kemper is in a sense, being peer reviewed right here. We judge it to be pretty damned close. But that's not scientific. It's a judgement...either of approval or disapproval. I understand the point you want to make, but it's no more or less valid than someone just listening to giving a device a thumbs up or a thumbs down. We, as consumers, have no scientific tools to test manufacturers' claims of superiority. Does the "Zero Loss" loop really have NO loss in it's FX loop? There HAS to be some loss...electrons move through a wire and in doing so they create heat...maybe a little, maybe a lot...but heat is a loss. Scientifically I could prove that the Zero Loss loop does indeed lose. Does that mean it's a tone sucker? Nope. Maybe the loss is so low that for all practical and consumer purposes, it's so close to zero as to be insignificant. But there too, that contrasting and backwards determination requires a judgement call to be made by someone. The Zero Loss is not zero but it is zero. really.
I took a lot of science classes, BTW. I was pre-pre med and then went on to be a cardiology technician. A commercial Orchid grower with knowledge of their genetics. Looking around, I see no way for the consumers here on this forum to use the scientific method to state that tubes are superior to chips nor to state that chips are superior to tubes. Apples and oranges...they both happen to be fruit. There's no standard here to be measured against either. Did you know that the "volt" is an actual circuit sitting in a lab that's used as the standard volt for most of the planet? If anyone ever needs to know what a volt is, and how to replicate it, it's there for us to use. What standards exist to tell us what the proper amplifier sound is and how that ideal is acheived? Obviously there isn't one nor will there ever be one. Music and music making is a work in progress...be it creatively or technologically. You can argue if you like that chips are more advanced than tubes and therefore better but that too is a judgement. More is not always better. Better is not always suitable. Suitable is not always useful. Useful is not always exclusively so and science is an ever evolving way of observing the universe. But as Einstein noted, the universe changes as it's being observed. We are the observers and as such, we can't realistically show that either tubes or chips are the be all and end all of amplification. Just when you thought tubes were never going to change, Jet City (IIRC) came out with some that did change...they were digital replacements. And then they disappeared. Someone judged them to be lacking I guess.
Bottom line: we're people...consumers without the scientific tools required to do as you suggest...and the industry keeps even the basic information about it's products secret, as if they were national security documents. We can only rely on our ears, needs, wallets and experience to decide what is better. This forum is a peer (consumer) review board and that's about as scientific as it gets. As yet, we have yet to reach a scientific consensus on what is good, much less better or best

-Rod-