Korg and Noritake Introduce Futuristic Nutube Vacuum Tubes

Absolutely. I have a strong feeling these tubes are never going to "sound" quite the same unless they look (and basically are) just like the genuine originals. The placebo effect is incredibly strong.

mark-r• 11 years ago

I'm surprised the government didn't outlaw tubes along with all the incandescent bulbs. That's just the kind of collateral damage they never seem to consider.

kazinator12• 11 years ago

If they put the same coating on the anode as what they put in the vacuum-fluorescent displays, it will have more than just that warm glow. It will flicker green.

From the photo, it looks like that may be the case: what are those green squares? The form factor is like that of a VFD.

It is quite suggestive of the intent that the part will be mounted such that it is visible through a display window in the equipment's case.

arunc• 11 years ago

How are harmonics generated by the tube better than those generated by IC?

mdellabitta• 11 years ago

They're even-order, mostly 2nd harmonic.

bwanab• 11 years ago

In addition, when tubes are pushed, the distortion comes on gradually and those even harmonics give a pleasant tone. This is why almost all rock guitarists use tube amplifiers despite the fact that they cost multiples over equivalent powered solid state amps.

boomlinde• 11 years ago

I don't see where the article says that they are. It says that the tubes are designed for musical instrument applications to generate rich harmonics. Essentially, the distortion characteristics of a tube amplifier are different from those of modern designs, and these characteristics are sometimes desired in for example guitar distortion pedals.

Korg has previously released synthesizers and a sampler using vacuum tubes for effect rather than to make them "better" in any objective sense.

JonnieCache• 11 years ago

They're highly non-linear wrt amplitude and frequency, in a pleasing way.

This makes them almost instruments in their own right. When playing a guitar through heavy tube distortion, the tubes react to your playing very sensitively, just like the guitar itself does.

When people describe random pieces of electronic equipment as "musical" this is usually what they mean.

This applies to IC amps as well, but not to the same extent. The recent history of music tech is a story of working hard with esoteric techniques to produce amazing music from primitive gear in the 60s and 70s, then inventing more reliable and repeatable techniques using digital technology in the 80s and 90s.

In recent years, people are realising that the man-vs-machine-vs-physics attrition of the mid to late 20th century actually led to a certain sonic complexity that has been missing in recent years. So now we see these hybrid products which merge old and new technology to get a deep sound while retaining reliability and a good workflow.

See also: analog voltage controlled oscillators which automatically tune themselves using digital clocks, and compensate for temerature changes.

(Incidentally, a lot of audiophile nonsense stems from them making category errors between their puported search for crystal clear reproduction, and studio engineers' quest for signal distortion with emotional quality. This is similar to how MBA types cargo cult programming terminology.)

Shivetya• 11 years ago

it plays into that old joke about audiophiles listening to hardware. Perhaps the distortion has properties that ICs fail to emulate, or likely put three of these guys in a room and a blind listening test will have four results.

huuu• 11 years ago

I had a Microkorg and the emulation is indeed very good. But I think tubes are more 'random' and 'smooth'.

So I agree that there isn't much ICs can't emulate but I also think it can be difficult to write a good emulation program.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

There's a reason the audiophile community has rejected double blind testing.

S_A_P• 11 years ago

I will expand on a comment below. Tubes usually distort with even order harmonics which means the distortion is usually in key with the note and our brains find this distortion pleasing. Transistors distort with odd order harmonics which sounds more dissonant and harsh to the ears. Transistors also tend to be clean or clip, there is little to no build up. Tubes saturate gradually and can make things sound "warmer, fuller and generally awesome". Not all tubes are great though and it doesn't look like these are power tubes so it would be for preamp/line level gear only. Either way I'm really excited to see this.

pjc50• 11 years ago

That's a two-segment vacuum fluorescent display! If you want to do your own "tube" experiments, you can find these in salvaged electrical gear, especially VCRs.

fnordfnordfnord• 11 years ago

Yeah! I am pleased that Noritake may have found a way to keep their company/plants going. I hope it works out for them.

nharada• 11 years ago

Generally with tube amps there are two places the tubes can go, either the preamp stage or the output stage. Most tube amp enthusiasts will scoff at the idea of having only a preamp tube stage and not power tube stage. These things look tiny, I'd be impressed if these can deliver the wattage required by output tubes.

Also interesting will be to hear how they actually sound. All tubes aren't built equal, and even with traditional tubes you can find people arguing about the merits of the 6L6 or EL-34.

Of course, if this thing delivers on both fronts that would be incredible. Tubes are in short supply, and my friends who play on tube amps are always complaining out how expensive it is to replace the damn things.

jdmoreira• 11 years ago

This is not for power amp, it's for 'coloring' sound in synths and effects.

(at least that's my guess)

kubiiii• 11 years ago

Maintenance is expensive for sure and new old stock is scarce. But there it's not only tube amps vs solid state amps, there are also modeling amps. They've been around for more than a decade and they are able to simulate the effect of tube amplification and even model each electronic component individually. Well at least they pretend they do. And anyway even if they did guitarist would not buy them because they are a little conservative.

Demiurge3• 11 years ago

I have Axe-Fx II, it is amazing, and from my understanding no one can tell the difference anymore, which is why so many big and small names have switched over, like Steve Vai and Metallica: http://www.fractalaudio.com/artists.php

72deluxe2• 11 years ago

Modelling amplifiers do a variable job. Some of the cheap models sound horrible and harsh, and even the more expensive ones can sound harsh and not warm at all. In particular, I have noticed that any bass amp modeller only does nasally distortion in the style of a completely overdriven SVT with the mids boosted, completely different to real amps or even preamps like the SWR Interstellar Overdrive etc.

Even the guitar amp simulators in apps like Logic Pro X sound pretty ropey. My friend (who is an excellent guitarist and teaches many many people) struggled to get a good sound out of it, and I really did as guitar amps are completely alien to me (why a presence control eh? why not just leave it on 10 and let the treble do the job???). To be fair to the developers of the software based ones, they make a good attempt but amp simulators never ever sound like the real things.

In my defence I used to use them for a while as a bass player but now am entirely analogue, with real glowing warm things in my gear. The difference is like chalk and cheese. I confess I always valves in the preamp stages - I do have one that uses an EL84 (normally a power amp valve) in the preamp stage combined with a 12AX7 for a great round sound; I used class D for the power amp because I don't want my back to break carrying gear). I have played for 20+ years and my ability these nuances has improved, so I wouldn't have heard the difference to begin with, that's for sure. Pity my ears have been subjected to drummers in that time, or I would hear the differences far better!

diydsp• 11 years ago

Coolest thing is that it uses only 2% the power of comparable tubes.

But it's confusing: There is already a model of tube called 6P1 (1).

Anyway, who is this for? Engineers/instrument designers? Korg to use internally?

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6P1P

amdolan• 11 years ago

Who is this for? Engineers/instrument designers? Korg to use internally?

This is an important question. I doubt I'll have the chance to use this unless someone in Asia makes a knock off.

kazinator12• 11 years ago

Note that tiny vacuum tubes already exist. Look at any vacuum fluorescent display (e.g. nearby microwave oven).

Also, when tubes were in their heyday, there existed miniature tubes: perhaps not as small as this new one, but a lot smaller than a 12AX7/ECC83.

Check out the vacuum tube hearing aid pages in the Hearing Aid Museum:

http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/

Can't believe they made kids wear such things. :)

joezydeco2• 11 years ago

Noritake is one of the largest global manufacturers of VFD displays. This is no coincidence.

kazinator12• 11 years ago

I'm looking at some Noritake data sheets for VFD's.

Looks like you could possibly just use those things as distortion elements.

From the picture it looks like this part is a dual triode device. The groups of three pins on either side are the anode/grid/cathode, and the four pins in the middle are separate filament circuits. 12AX7 and similar tubes usually have only three pins for two filaments: the filaments are in series with a center tap for hooking them up in parallel.

If this thing is similar to VFD's, it can probably run at around 20V for the anode voltage, and a small voltage for the filaments, around 2V.

It would be interesting to develop a tube board for the ADA MP-1 guitar pre-amp with these things. The stock one uses a pair of 12AX7's. A 9V power feed is used for the filaments, and 190V for the anode voltage. That could all be gutted out, and a simpler transformer used which doesn't provide a high voltage tap. The silicon side of the MP-1 runs on +/-15V rails; the same underlying transformer tap could could power the Noritake tubes.

serf2• 11 years ago

unrelated aside since you linked to such an interesting web page.

this 1940 vacuum tube hearing aid used a bone-conducting transducer scheme.[1] I was stuck thinking that was a fairly new concept (at least from the 80s) for military comms, and was intrigued by the use of such tech in the recent Google Glass.

It's cool to see that the idea was much older than I realized.

[1] http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Vacuum%20Tube/Acoust...

hamiltonkibbe11• 11 years ago

Cool concept, but I doubt the operating range of these tubes is large enough to get any sort of usable gain out. Unless there's a datasheet that says otherwise I'd imagine these are going to end up early in the gain chain as a "coloring" component.

With the low operating range and low bias point you don't get the same effect as you do with a tube biased to it's sweet spot. It seems like a marketing gimmick like the starved-plate 12ax7 stage they put in everything nowadays (with ~12V B+ as opposed to the 250-400V B+ you find in nearly all classic amp designs), along with a few LEDs and a window in front so you can see where your extra $100 is going.

If you plot (really any) load line on the plate curves for a 12AX7 with a < 50V B+ you're in a really poor, highly non-linear region. Looking at plate curves for some old VFD tubes the operating range for those is way down in the same region in the lower left corner if you plot them over the 12AX7 plate curves.

Given the size and the fact that it uses 2% of the power of conventional tubes, I doubt that these tubes could be used as an output stage. I would have to guess that they're running them cold as well. Preamp tube power draw is often dominated by the heaters

Of course this is all speculation until they publish a datasheet...

illicium• 11 years ago

Isn't non-linearity a desirable property for audio tubes?

hamiltonkibbe11• 11 years ago

Yes but not all non-linearity. With a high plate voltage (and a reasonable bias point) you get gentle compression as the tube starts to break up. That's the good (T00B) sound, with the even harmonics and everything.

When you run a low plate voltage you start to run into some of the undesirable things that happen when you get close to the point where the tube stops conducting entirely. you start to hard-clip the signal on one half-cycle and all those odd square-wave harmonics start to jump out, and that can sound even worse than some mediocre diode hard-clip/distortion stage designs.

EDIT: If you look at the plate curves for e.g. a 12AX7 http://www.paleoelectronics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009...

The way you pick your operating point is you draw a diagonal line from the plate voltage at the bottom to the saturation current on the left, and the output current moves along that line as the input signal changes (the input voltage is the voltage at the top of each curved black line). A good operating point is one where the intersections of the curves with the load line (the diagonal line you drew) are evenly spaced along the load line. If they are perfectly spaced, the amplification is exactly linear. As an example, if you plot a load line for 350V plate voltage and 2mA max plate current the intersections with the curves will be closer together on the right and move farther apart as you move left along the load line. That is the asymmetrical compression that gives a nice tube amp distortion tone.

If you do the same thing with a 12V plate voltage (and any plate current) you start running into that 0V grid curve and it's hard to reason about what's happening in between the two data points (curves) you have, because at some point the curves change and start looking like the 0V one, but it's hard to tell where. Once you start driving the grid positive the tube will stop conducting entirely and hard-clip your signal, which is what I was referring to before.

The TL;DR; would be something like look at how the 0V curve goes the opposite way as all the others, that's not where you want to be.

SwellJoe4• 11 years ago

I find most cheap tube gear uninteresting, musically speaking. It's generally, as you note, a tiny low voltage 12AX7 preamp stage feeding a regular old transistor gain stage. There's a reason the old master volume Marshall amps are sought after, and why so many manufacturers have returned to all-tube designs.

Some of what goes on in audio is snake oil. In fact, a lot of it is. But, modeling amps and tube preamp stage gear still doesn't hold up well against a good tube amp. I bought a new amp a couple years ago, after having used the same amp for ~20 years (a 1984 JCM 800). I tried every amp in the small size range at two guitar stores. The clear winner was an all-tube Vox model. The modeling amps were way down the list, which was disappointing. I really believed we had the technology to replicate good amp tone (and some guitar amp sims on computer are reasonably good)...but we still aren't there.

And, the preamp tube with transistor volume stage amps were also clearly inferior to the master volume style all-tube amp I ended up buying.

hamiltonkibbe11• 11 years ago

Nothing like cranking the volume and getting those power tubes really cooking! I love my 65 reissue twin.

6stringmerc• 11 years ago

Very nice write up and I'm in agreement. I've heard good things about Vox and their move back toward being the best consumer tube amp. I grew up with a 64 Fender Twin Silverface (Dad's gig amp) and it was a monster, just too much, but I'm glad we sold it to somebody who still has it. I became a solid-state guy but always lusted after the 5150 2x12" combo, and they're holding steady at about $500 used, so one of those is in my future.

I've used quite a few Line6 computer products and I like the bang-for-the-buck but would never, ever put them in the pro sound field. Fun to play with, cheaper than pedals, but takes me quite a bit in fiddling with settings + post production to make them worthwhile (same goes for my little MicroSpider amp, which is mostly for busking).

One thing that came across my radar was the Kemper, which seems to be that technological achievement you might have in mind. I've never played/heard one (that I know of), but I think it has a pretty good reputation thus far. Link: http://www.kemper-amps.com/profiling

boobsbr2• 11 years ago

Why did you part with the JCM 800? That's a classic.

grandalf4• 11 years ago

Why is early in the gain chain necessarily bad? Suppose the later stages of the chain introduce no distortion, would it be possible (in theory) to have low power devices like this create all the nonlinear effects considered desirable by audiophiles and then just amplify that later on?

hamiltonkibbe11• 11 years ago

Not necessarily bad, but something that breaks up easily at low signal levels limits your headroom which leads to more noise later on

sbierwagen• 11 years ago

You can use regular unmodified VFDs as tube amps, though the gain isn't great: http://hpfriedrichs.com/radioroom/vfd/rr-vfd.htm

kazinator12• 11 years ago

Based on that article, I'm not convinced that it's the best that the part could do, based on the circuit schematic. We would not be using the windings of a transformer as a load in a typical gain stage in a musical instrument preamp. A typical inverting stage would have a large-ish resistor as its load, in parallel with the fairly high impedance of the next stage (another tube circuit that is similar).

dzhiurgis• 11 years ago

Is it worth having tube amp for use with 24/192 records or is it's use is exclusive to vinyl?

Korg and Noritake Introduce Futuristic Nutube Vacuum Tubes

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