Lo-tech idea I'm going to try out!

[+Stephen]

You're welcome.

 

If you skip 6 minutes into this video, you get an idea of the crap that gets stuck to vinyl:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yFLGZHAdqE

 

In today's world, vinyl's regarded as a bit of a pain but there's a lot of stuff out there that sounds better on vinyl than any other format. Plus, messing with different turntables, cartridges, and phono preamps allows for a lot customization of the sound.

I recently purchased a Spin Clean, and my vinyl has never sounded better! It is absolutely amazing what this thing pulls out of the records.

[Gunstar]

I'm definately going to get that spin clean device! And thanks to everyone that explained why vinyl is better, so I don't have too. Don't think I could have explained it better anyway. But one of the additional benefits of my Atari vinyl recording project is that if they are well taken care of, they WILL outlast any CD's, DVD's, Tapes, MP3's, etc. etc.

 

Great for archival purposes to insure Atari software survives for a very long time. If stored correctly and used correctly, they don't degrade like magnetic tapes and CD's (especially CDR's and the like).

 

MP3's? Never use them, listened once and it sounded worse than cassette tape to me, which is inferior in it's own rite. (cassette only, reel-to-reel is still used as master recordings for digital prints becuase it is so good!) I still use a portable CD player and CD case. I personally find it ridiculous to think one needs hundreds or thousands of songs with them when they couldn't possibly listen to them in the few hours they are using the portable players on a regular basis. a few CD's have always been more than enough for me, even if I'm taking a 1500 mile tip across the country.

[charliecron]

Not Atari but it's been done..

"The May 1977 issue of Interface Age contained the first "Floppy-ROM", a 33⅓ RPM record with about 6 minutes of "Kansas City Standard" audio."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_ROM#Floppy-ROM

 

This interface may help with your project..

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/175640-an-atari-tape-interface/

 

Good luck and have fun!

[jmetal88]

For me, "The Thompson Twins Adventure Game" for the ZX Spectrum comes to mind.

[Shawn Jefferson]

The RAM & Storage will eventually become so much higher, within 10 years, that people will scoff at the numbers we have now, and wonder how people lived with .mp3 compression in this decade. At some point, down the line, in the next 5 years, someone will realize that .wav files can be encapsulated in a Digital Rights Management-friendly containing file-lock, with a bit-level randomized data security scheme applied to the wav... this will coincide with storage getting bigger & cheaper.

 

A "Breakthrough" device will be announced, with 10x the storage available today, and everything will be re-issued through a service similar to itunes. A PIN will enable the .wav file for playback by the registered owner.

 

This will be the big thing for a while, then 5 years later, the storage will be bigger, and they will re-issue the songs at a higher sampling rate. At this point it will be the Musicians, not the Record Companies that are getting mad... because, after a few iterations of this storage-increase/sampling-rate-increase type of progress, eventually the releases will be getting closer and closer to the level of perfection of the actual release, and the way that piracy has always been, and will obviously continue to be, people will crack the DRM PIN scheme, and re-distribute the music freely at the same sampling rate as the Media that the Artist has recorded. Remixes by third parties and sample-theft will prevail. Eventually the Record Companies will get mad again too, but not as mad as they've been.

 

This will likely cause innovations to occur in studio technologies, and eventually, the sampling bit-rates for studio gear will double, quadruple, etc. getting higher & higher, to still maintain an 'edge' of 'quality'. All old samples will be obsolete. High bit-rate sample libraries will be produced & sold, etc. it will effect many different areas of business throughout the music industry.

 

This sample-rate increase trend has been going on in recording for a while now... eventually it will reach the consumer level, through the Trickle-Down Effect.

 

Ironically, digital audio sound reproduction is akin to a logarithm, though. It gets closer & closer, but will, by definition, will never achieve the quality level of Analog. You can keep chopping & chopping something into smaller & smaller samples, and every time you do, the quality will get better than it was before... but no matter how many times you chop it, it will never be as "Perfect" as an analog representation.

 

Things have been going in this BUY DIGITAL direction now, since at least 1983, so there's no escaping it. In every case that I can think of there has been an Analog product that worked perfectly acceptably, but was shunned in favor of a Digital product. It then takes 10s of years for the Digital product to mature & develop sufficiently to come anywhere close to where the analog product was, twenty years prior. It would be amusing, if it didn't suck so much.

 

Anyway, 10-15 years from now, people will laugh at .mp3s the same way they laugh at 8-Tracks & Victrola Consoles, as obscure, antique curiosities that 'Grandma' rattles on about.

 

Somehow I doubt things will unfold as you've described. For a couple of reasons: Generally people don't care about the sample rate of their mp3s, as long as they don't sound incredibly bad. Secondly, we are moving more and more towards an everything connected electronic world. What I actually think will happen:

 

Record companies will go out of business as we know them. All recordings of muscians songs will be available for free on the Internet, and their primary source of revenue will be live shows and merchandise. People will not store songs on their own devices, but stream them over the Internet. The new business model will be along the lines of the Google model, free content in exchange for demographic information/advertising.

 

I mean, already you can buy songs for $0.99 each, not much of a step to make it free. Maybe a "radio-like" business model will show up, but one in which you can stream the song you want to any device you own for free, and either advertising pays for it, or demographics information.

 

And as a general consumer, I say, hell ya. I don't think muscians (and especially record companies) need to be making millions of dollars anyway (same goes for actors, movie companies and pro-sports players, IMO.) This is happening to a large degree anyway with underground piracy and downloading easily accessible.

 

You are already seeing this in the movie entertainment industry as well... people go to movies, but don't rent or buy DVDs, they stream (or download) from the Internet.

Edited October 10, 2011 by Shawn Jefferson

[UNIXcoffee928]

Just as Ebeneezer Scrooge once said, "Are these the things that will be, or are these the things that may be, only?"...

 

Who knows, really.

 

You are right, in many ways, as well, especially in a short-term for forecast of, say, 3 years.

 

There has been a major push toward "Cloud Computing", and if things go that way, they can shoot the dead horse of .mp3 for a long, long, time.

 

Often the Consumer needs to be told that what they have now sucks... Works very effectively for Apple, lol.

 

The biggest stumbling block is consumer cable modem network speed... which hasn't changed much since 1999. They milk it, and charge you a monthly fee for a connection that doesn't even come close to the capabilities of a standard 10/100 NIC, let alone modern Gigabit Adapters.

 

Despite what I've said regarding Analog technologies, I have also been a proponent of "Digital Convergence" for many years, because of the potential flexibility that it potentially affords. Something really needs to be done to get a faster high bandwidth connection to the masses, cheaply, to move all of this data, though.

 

As far as people's salaries go... well, most of us live in capitalist societies, and people make money in different amounts, based on their job duties & job description. Often, the salaries do not seem to properly reflect the level of work or responsibility. You can't really get around that, unless you are a Zen Monk... Every instance of communism failed to eliminate class-distinction, largely because of the human-element of corruption. That is just the way things go, in human societies. Millions of people have died over these ideas, throughout the ages, yet not much changes... There is a "Pecking Order".

 

I can totally see how you say that the jobs that you mention have hugely inflated salaries. Part of me wants to agree, and the other part says, "No Way!". To the casual observer, it may seem like an ideal life to be a Rock Star, or be a Sports Star, or be a Famous Movie Star... but if you dig deeper, it's not.

 

These people work all day, everyday. Once you are famous, it is your job to be famous... you never go "home" at the end of the day, you never "vacation", like "normal" people. As an example, try following all of the links off of the "Music Industry" Wikipedia entry, and follow all of the links off of the pages you visit, and then follow those links, etc.... to know your sh*t, you have to know how all of this works... that's one of the reasons that the salaries can be high (definitely no guarantees, though)...& to top it off, you need to be skilled as a musician, and not be afraid to appear in front of enormous crowds... not easy. There are analogs to acting, and sports, too. Part of the job is "to make it look easy", ha... these jobs are far from easy.

[Bryan]

hmm - I thought hiss and crackle was inevitable, but skipping was down to carelessness, and CD was a case of 'it isn't perfect, but it won't degrade any further'. I stand corrected.

 

As an example of a decent LP, here's a track from Lindsey Buckingham's Gift of Screws LP I just recorded. There is no processing or clean-up and it's encoded at 192K.

 

The quality of vinyl is all over the place though, and sometimes I've gotten brand new stuff with defects (which gets returned when possible) and sometimes it's hard to find a good used copy of something. The hunt is always fun, though.

 

http://members.core.com/~bryede/love_runs.mp3

[+Stephen]

hmm - I thought hiss and crackle was inevitable, but skipping was down to carelessness, and CD was a case of 'it isn't perfect, but it won't degrade any further'. I stand corrected.

 

As an example of a decent LP, here's a track from Lindsey Buckingham's Gift of Screws LP I just recorded. There is no processing or clean-up and it's encoded at 192K.

 

The quality of vinyl is all over the place though, and sometimes I've gotten brand new stuff with defects (which gets returned when possible) and sometimes it's hard to find a good used copy of something. The hunt is always fun, though.

 

http://members.core.com/~bryede/love_runs.mp3

Speaking of low-quality new stuff, do NOT pay the crazy money for the Tubular bells box set, with new pressing on vinyl. It's utter shit (the vinyl that is).

[Bryan]

Yeah, I try to get some forum opinions before buying new stuff. I mainly read: http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/vinyl/bbs.html

 

The new vinyl release of Duran Duran's All You Need is Now is pretty good. Best album they've done in a long time.

[sack-c0s]

I personally find it ridiculous to think one needs hundreds or thousands of songs with them when they couldn't possibly listen to them in the few hours they are using the portable players on a regular basis. a few CD's have always been more than enough for me, even if I'm taking a 1500 mile tip across the country.

 

It's not the need to listen to all of it back-to-back, for me it's just down to indecision. I have no idea what I want to listen to until I get the urge to listen to it, so having it there just in case is a good thing.

 

I think mp3 vs other storage formats is like comparing snacking on a shop-bought sandwich to sitting down for a decent meal. one gets you by when you're out on the street, the other should be taken care of and you enjoy it properly.

Edited October 11, 2011 by sack-c0s

[frogstar_robot]

Ironically, digital audio sound reproduction is akin to a logarithm, though. It gets closer & closer, but will, by definition, will never achieve the quality level of Analog. You can keep chopping & chopping something into smaller & smaller samples, and every time you do, the quality will get better than it was before... but no matter how many times you chop it, it will never be as "Perfect" as an analog representation.

 

It is a fallacy that analog media represent some sort of Infinite Resolution and Clarity utopia. The resolution of ANY media is limited by physical factors. Tape is constrained by the number and coercivity of magnetic domains. Vinyl is constrained by mechanical properties of the master cutting stylus and the physical properties of the lacquer master and various transfers before the disc is pressed. Shannon and Nyquist modeled all of this to a high degree of mathematical rigor. If the bitness and sampling rate exceed the dynamic range and noise floor of signal source then it has been accurately captured minus the lossage induced by the analog components that got the signal to the A/D converter and any remaining non-linearities in the A/D converter itself (which are VERY good these days).

 

I use an M-Audio 24/96 to capture audio from vinyl (which ultimately winds up as the dreaded MP3s ... high bitrate all 16 bits used MP3 though.....). This is a 24 bit card that can sample at up to 96kHz. My limiting factors at the moment are my stylus and sadly the state of much of the vinyl I'm processing. That card captures DC to daylight as far as the source is concerned.

[Bryan]

Yeah, I don't buy the "digital isn't good enough" argument either. Digital can be any quality just like analog can. They just bring different artifacts into the equation. With analog you get the limitations of the media overlaid on your signal. With digital, you get the resolution you've selected and you have the problem of what to do with out-of-band content. The latter is the biggest problem 44.1/16 CD has. Most music events will have content above 20KHz, and even the best ADC's will have problems cleanly encoding content that gets within 10% of the Nyquist limit. Anything above 22.5KHz will contribute only noise and distortion. This means CD audio must be run through a very high order (steep) filtering process which has repercussions throughout the audible range. Fortunately, the digital process has gotten much better over time, but unfortunately CD mastering has become a joke with many releases dynamically compressed and boosted to the point of clipping.

 

Many albums can only be heard as intended by finding a good original LP copy, and even then you need to pay attention to the dead wax info (writing inscribed in the run-out groove area) to see who mastered it as many LP's went through several pressing cycles using different mastering engineers. I know people obsessed with collecting different pressings of an album from all over the world. I don't usually go that crazy, but sometimes I'll buy a copy from country the album originated in.

[frogstar_robot]

Yeah, I don't buy the "digital isn't good enough" argument either. Digital can be any quality just like analog can. They just bring different artifacts into the equation. With analog you get the limitations of the media overlaid on your signal. With digital, you get the resolution you've selected and you have the problem of what to do with out-of-band content. The latter is the biggest problem 44.1/16 CD has. Most music events will have content above 20KHz, and even the best ADC's will have problems cleanly encoding content that gets within 10% of the Nyquist limit. Anything above 22.5KHz will contribute only noise and distortion. This means CD audio must be run through a very high order (steep) filtering process which has repercussions throughout the audible range. Fortunately, the digital process has gotten much better over time, but unfortunately CD mastering has become a joke with many releases dynamically compressed and boosted to the point of clipping.

 

Many albums can only be heard as intended by finding a good original LP copy, and even then you need to pay attention to the dead wax info (writing inscribed in the run-out groove area) to see who mastered it as many LP's went through several pressing cycles using different mastering engineers. I know people obsessed with collecting different pressings of an album from all over the world. I don't usually go that crazy, but sometimes I'll buy a copy from country the album originated in.

 

The funny thing about out of band content is that I've found you often don't want it. I sampled a few albums at 24 bit/96kHz. This meant I was capturing out of band info clear up to 48kHz (theoretically). Of course we can't hear that but the low harmonics can be perceptible. The stuff you get from vinyl that high up is can be simply nasty. If you have to use a low pass filter to get rid of that crap anyway then just sample at a sane rate.

 

I'm getting much better results sampling at 48kHz. I get out of band up to 24 kHz and LAME rolls off around 20kHz anyway. This all works well.

 

And I'm getting more than enough resolution to see the quality of the vinyl substrate itself. I usually find "quiet" sections with no audio except for the sound of the stylus tracking the vinyl and the noise of the electronics so that I can model the noise and knock it down before cutting up my sides into individual tracks. Good vinyl substrate that isn't all scratched up has a nice steady hiss when digitally amplified to max. The lower quality stuff or at least the stuff that didn't age as well sounds more like shot noise even when the pops and clicks are cleaned out. And noise removal is distinct from click removal. Noise samples should be as free of clicks as possible. You want the spectrum of a steady hiss. The noise remover tends to want to more aggressively go after the low and high extremes too when I get what seems to be harder and more brittle vinyl. If I can distinguish the relative quality of the PVC itself then I don't see where digital isn't more than good enough to capture it.

 

That and my MP3s sound like (clean) records themselves. I mainly do this to get away from the Loudness War too. That and I bought a lot of vinyl in my younger days that I want to bring into the 21st century.

[charliecron]

The most memorable analog vs. digital explanation I've heard, and it's favors analog, is that an analog circuit can represent and infinite amount of positions between totally on and totally off, while a digital has two positions.

 

Makes sense to me. It's about warmth. Digital has none.

[frogstar_robot]

The most memorable analog vs. digital explanation I've heard, and it's favors analog, is that an analog circuit can represent and infinite amount of positions between totally on and totally off, while a digital has two positions.

 

Makes sense to me. It's about warmth. Digital has none.

 

But an analog circuit can't represent a waveform with infinite accuracy. All AV equipment have noise floors and slew rates as well as other limiting factors. The noise floor is the amount of signal that can be useably amplified before it disappears into the hiss and the slew rate is the maximum rate at which an active component can track the input. Slew rate sets limits on dynamic range and frequency response. Another thing that proponents of that fallacy miss is that ALL audio can be broken up into a mix of sine waves of various relative phases and frequencies. A nice picture of that is here:

 

http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mastascu/elessonshtml/Freq/Freq4.html

 

A sine wave is a mathematically pure object. If you sample two points of a sine wave then you know everything about it's phase, frequency, and amplitude. If your sampling rate is high enough to capture the highest frequency component your amplifiers can actually reproduce then that signal can be perfectly reconstructed within the limits of the system being used to play it back. Shannon, Nyquist, and Hartley proved this stuff both theoretically and practically. These guys are the patron saints of Real Engineering and were first rate scientists. I'll take their word for it over the artistic crowd at Stereophile and The Absolute Sound.

 

High resolution digital captures of vinyl and tube audio sound every bit as "warm" if played back through good amplifiers and speakers. And what you said about two positions only applies to 1-bit audio. 16 and 24 bit audio can represent considerably more than two positions.

[Bryan]

The funny thing about out of band content is that I've found you often don't want it. I sampled a few albums at 24 bit/96kHz. This meant I was capturing out of band info clear up to 48kHz (theoretically). Of course we can't hear that but the low harmonics can be perceptible. The stuff you get from vinyl that high up is can be simply nasty. If you have to use a low pass filter to get rid of that crap anyway then just sample at a sane rate.

 

I'm getting much better results sampling at 48kHz. I get out of band up to 24 kHz and LAME rolls off around 20kHz anyway. This all works well.

 

And I'm getting more than enough resolution to see the quality of the vinyl substrate itself. I usually find "quiet" sections with no audio except for the sound of the stylus tracking the vinyl and the noise of the electronics so that I can model the noise and knock it down before cutting up my sides into individual tracks. Good vinyl substrate that isn't all scratched up has a nice steady hiss when digitally amplified to max. The lower quality stuff or at least the stuff that didn't age as well sounds more like shot noise even when the pops and clicks are cleaned out. And noise removal is distinct from click removal. Noise samples should be as free of clicks as possible. You want the spectrum of a steady hiss. The noise remover tends to want to more aggressively go after the low and high extremes too when I get what seems to be harder and more brittle vinyl. If I can distinguish the relative quality of the PVC itself then I don't see where digital isn't more than good enough to capture it.

 

That and my MP3s sound like (clean) records themselves. I mainly do this to get away from the Loudness War too. That and I bought a lot of vinyl in my younger days that I want to bring into the 21st century.

 

It's interesting to look at the frequency range challenges of vinyl. Typical record mastering can produce flat results up to about 18KHz where it begins to roll off gradually yielding useful content up to 28KHz or so. Of course, whether you can retrieve all that depends on your cartridge and stylus profile. Shibata-type styli have been shown to be capable of retrieving a 70KHz signal, and the CD-4 quadraphonic standard required response up to 50KHz. In order to cut those frequencies, you have to master at half-speed or you'd burn out the cutter head (which already has to be liquid cooled for normal operation). Inner grooves are more difficult to play back than outer ones because the circumference of one revolution shrinks to less than half of what it was at the beginning of the side which is why all kinds of elliptical, and fine-line stylus shapes exist. A basic conical stylus will be useful for 20Hz-20KHz at the start of a side, but will be limited to around 12-14KHz by the end because it will no longer fit into smaller groove modulations.

 

Anyway, at one point I thought I'd never touch vinyl again and now it's what I use 80% of the time. I've got some great CD's and SACD's as well, though.

[Gunstar]

The most memorable analog vs. digital explanation I've heard, and it's favors analog, is that an analog circuit can represent and infinite amount of positions between totally on and totally off, while a digital has two positions.

 

Makes sense to me. It's about warmth. Digital has none.

 

As an artist, I prefer the explanation of analog vs digital is like this; Analog is like solid, unbroken brush strokes, like Michael Angelo, where as digital is like a Monet's (the impressionist) work; it's all made up of dots that look good from a distance, but get up close and it looks like a mess of dots.

[Gunstar]

The funny thing about out of band content is that I've found you often don't want it. I sampled a few albums at 24 bit/96kHz. This meant I was capturing out of band info clear up to 48kHz (theoretically). Of course we can't hear that but the low harmonics can be perceptible. The stuff you get from vinyl that high up is can be simply nasty. If you have to use a low pass filter to get rid of that crap anyway then just sample at a sane rate.

 

I'm getting much better results sampling at 48kHz. I get out of band up to 24 kHz and LAME rolls off around 20kHz anyway. This all works well.

 

And I'm getting more than enough resolution to see the quality of the vinyl substrate itself. I usually find "quiet" sections with no audio except for the sound of the stylus tracking the vinyl and the noise of the electronics so that I can model the noise and knock it down before cutting up my sides into individual tracks. Good vinyl substrate that isn't all scratched up has a nice steady hiss when digitally amplified to max. The lower quality stuff or at least the stuff that didn't age as well sounds more like shot noise even when the pops and clicks are cleaned out. And noise removal is distinct from click removal. Noise samples should be as free of clicks as possible. You want the spectrum of a steady hiss. The noise remover tends to want to more aggressively go after the low and high extremes too when I get what seems to be harder and more brittle vinyl. If I can distinguish the relative quality of the PVC itself then I don't see where digital isn't more than good enough to capture it.

 

That and my MP3s sound like (clean) records themselves. I mainly do this to get away from the Loudness War too. That and I bought a lot of vinyl in my younger days that I want to bring into the 21st century.

 

It's interesting to look at the frequency range challenges of vinyl. Typical record mastering can produce flat results up to about 18KHz where it begins to roll off gradually yielding useful content up to 28KHz or so. Of course, whether you can retrieve all that depends on your cartridge and stylus profile. Shibata-type styli have been shown to be capable of retrieving a 70KHz signal, and the CD-4 quadraphonic standard required response up to 50KHz. In order to cut those frequencies, you have to master at half-speed or you'd burn out the cutter head (which already has to be liquid cooled for normal operation). Inner grooves are more difficult to play back than outer ones because the circumference of one revolution shrinks to less than half of what it was at the beginning of the side which is why all kinds of elliptical, and fine-line stylus shapes exist. A basic conical stylus will be useful for 20Hz-20KHz at the start of a side, but will be limited to around 12-14KHz by the end because it will no longer fit into smaller groove modulations.

 

Anyway, at one point I thought I'd never touch vinyl again and now it's what I use 80% of the time. I've got some great CD's and SACD's as well, though.

 

The current analog vinyl technology isn't even as good as it could be, but everyone went digital before analog reached it's highest heights. For example, take a look a CED (capacitance electronic disc) movie players which use a much smaller needle and much finer grooves in the "records" whcih was needed for video and audio (color and stereo) discs. If this technology was used for just audio, it would surpass ANYTHING analog or digital today. And this wasn't even the limit of analog tech! I own CED players and discs and if you take a disc out of it's protective sleeve, you can see that the density of the grooves is so high that it give a rainbow-effect like CD's and DVD's!

 

CED: http://en.wikipedia....Electronic_Disc

Edited October 11, 2011 by Gunstar

[kogden]

High resolution digital captures of vinyl and tube audio sound every bit as "warm" if played back through good amplifiers and speakers. And what you said about two positions only applies to 1-bit audio. 16 and 24 bit audio can represent considerably more than two positions.

 

I definitely agree there. And digital tube amp simulation is getting better everyday as well. I really like my Fender Mustang V guitar amp after several updates and lots of tweaking. I'm impressed with the IK Amplitube VST/AU plugins as well. Tweaked correctly and they sound great.

 

Analog is cool and has a place..... but digital is a bit more versatile and with decent amp/speaker combos sounds just as good with good source material. I do prefer the sound of tube amps for instruments during the digital recording process though. It's incredibly easy to get really crappy sound out of analog equipment too. It's just a different "sort" of crap.

 

As far as the Atari Phonograph project though it sounds awesome! I like to see pictures of the result! I thought of doing a Frankenstein 1010/MiniDisc player at one point but never got around to it. Reel-to-Reel sounded cool too.

[frogstar_robot]

Analog is cool and has a place..... but digital is a bit more versatile and with decent amp/speaker combos sounds just as good with good source material. I do prefer the sound of tube amps for instruments during the digital recording process though. It's incredibly easy to get really crappy sound out of analog equipment too. It's just a different "sort" of crap.

 

As far as the Atari Phonograph project though it sounds awesome! I like to see pictures of the result! I thought of doing a Frankenstein 1010/MiniDisc player at one point but never got around to it. Reel-to-Reel sounded cool too.

 

Yep! The rules for Production are considerably different for Re-Production. Tube guitar amps deliberately allow for exaggerating tube harmonics if desired. Introducing artefacts is fine here because the tubes are a component of a musical instrument with a characteristic sound. Anything goes basically if people like the way it sounds.

 

But within the limits of budget, a home system should strive to be a "straight wire with gain". If it is making things sound "warmer" then it is distorting the sound though many like such distortion. But a tightly designed home tube amp operating within it's headroom won't make things sound any warmer than a good solid state amp. The "warm" artifacts of tube amps especially weak ones come from running out of dynamic range then rolling the result off through big transformers. It just so happens that a solid state amp running out of gas sounds way uglier. So I'll also allow that tube sound degrades more gracefully than solid state.

 

I like the image of the big reel to reel too. Maybe even case it up so it looks like something from a 60s or 70s datacenter. Using with an 800 would reinforce that image. It looks a lot like an old school teletype console as it is.