I've always disliked the notion of "warming up" a signal in studio electionics. For one thing, people have varying opinions on what is "warm". When you add up all those opinions, "warm" is just another word for "good".
I think any piece of equipment has to sound good to begin with. There is no way of adding "goodness" after the fact. Adding distortion to a good clean sound, only makes it worse. Good tube equipment has its sound, but it's not a sound effect. As we all know, good (vintage) tube equipment often sounds surprisingly clean. That's because it was conceived for general use (e.g. broadcast), not for special effects. People are mislead by modern day tube equipment which often sounds kind of fuzzy. IMHO fuzzy tube is a bad sound, just like fuzzed-up solid state is a bad sound.
I see solid state and tube as two different approaches to design a good (or bad) piece of equipment. The difference between the two is in just about every aspect: simplicity vs. complexity, transformer coupled vs. transformerless, low feedback (or zero feedback) vs high feedback, high impedance vs. low or medium impedance and hence different capacitor choices and much more. It's kind of friviolous to say you can emulate all that with a "toob" circuit.
Bottom line: I like tube and I like solid state, but I personally don't care for fuzz (unless we're talking about guitar stompboxes).
I think any piece of equipment has to sound good to begin with. There is no way of adding "goodness" after the fact. Adding distortion to a good clean sound, only makes it worse. Good tube equipment has its sound, but it's not a sound effect. As we all know, good (vintage) tube equipment often sounds surprisingly clean. That's because it was conceived for general use (e.g. broadcast), not for special effects. People are mislead by modern day tube equipment which often sounds kind of fuzzy. IMHO fuzzy tube is a bad sound, just like fuzzed-up solid state is a bad sound.
I see solid state and tube as two different approaches to design a good (or bad) piece of equipment. The difference between the two is in just about every aspect: simplicity vs. complexity, transformer coupled vs. transformerless, low feedback (or zero feedback) vs high feedback, high impedance vs. low or medium impedance and hence different capacitor choices and much more. It's kind of friviolous to say you can emulate all that with a "toob" circuit.
Bottom line: I like tube and I like solid state, but I personally don't care for fuzz (unless we're talking about guitar stompboxes).