Even In Digital Photography Age, High Schoolers Still Flock To the Darkroom 240
v3rgEz writes: In the age of camera-equipped smart phones and inexpensive digital cameras, many high schoolers have never seen a roll of film or used an analog camera — much less developed film and paper prints in a darkroom. Among those that have, however, old school development has developed a serious cult following, with a number of high schools still finding a dedicated audience for the dark(room) arts.
Re:It's the chemicals.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The actual appeal (Score:2, Interesting)
It's comparable to the resurgence of interest in vinyl records. The only worthy attraction is in the sheer retro-ness of it. It certainly isn't in the quality...
This bit about vinyl is plainly wrong, and I wouldn't blame someone for stopping right there and disregarding the rest of your comment completely. The quality of analog vinyl vs digital format audio is hotly debated, and vinyl has a strong following among audiophiles. There's something to be said for the listening experience that goes along with becoming familiar with discernable differences between digital and analog formats. I won't go so far as to say that digital audio *can't* be indistinguishable from or even surpass the quality of existing analog audio technology, but there's no question that a lot of digital reproductions fall short of their analog counterparts that were produced from the same master recording. The interest goes deeper than sheer retro-ness, for sure.
As for film, the same holds true but for a different reason. There's something to be said for the experience of using an analog tool to create a work of art as opposed to using a digital tool to create and manipulate in a digital and precise manner. There's not much else to say about it, other than the simple fact that, in an artistic context, the fascination runs a lot deeper than the sheer retro-ness of it. I'm glad you've found reasons to love digital photography, and I won't deny that I prefer it as well...but don't overdo it when it comes to disparaging old technology.
The Audio Scoop (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonsense. When run in their linear range, which is to say, where they are designed to normally run, analog devices, be they tubes, fets or bipolar transistors, all follow the input signal faithfully, plus or minus inherent noise -- no "warmth" or other characteristics are inherent. *NONE*. Digital also.
However, when a tube is pushed into its nonlinear range, the gain transfer curve bends over comparatively smoothly so that what would be a clipped signal in a device like a bipolar transistor, turns first into a compressed signal, and even later down the curve, begins to evidence distortion that resembles clipping, but has, because of that still-somewhat-gentle curve, an entirely different set of dominant harmonics as compared to, for instance, a bipolar transistor at or near saturation.
That characteristic is why (knowledgable) musicians who use distortion as a tonal tool typically prefer tubes; specifically because they *do* run the tubes out of the linear area of the transfer curve, and the result is interesting and often pleasing. When the distortion is the result of a transfer curve that abruptly goes from highly linear to highly nonlinear, as is the case with bipolar devices, the result is most unpleasant.
However, this choice does not *ever* hold true for a musical reproduction system based on tubes that isn't running in a range that will distort the music. You'd have to turn it up so far that one or more elements of the preamp or power amp is pushed past the linear part of its transfer curve, and then *everything* distorts -- and that's not a "warm" sound, that's a "hey, your system is sucking, turn that thing down" sound.
So, for example, if I get out my Les Paul or my Strat and plug it into a tube amp, I'm doing so because the amp's distortion is going to very significantly color the reproduction of what I play. I'm going to adjust the amp specifically so I *get* distortion. It'll sound fabulous. I'll get feedback, there will be awesome weirdnesses when I hit harmonics on my strings, pick and fretting artifacts will sound very different, etc. When I record this as accurately as possible, however, and subsequently play it back on a musical reproduction system of ANY kind, I am NOT going to adjust that system so that it distorts, because I don't want MORE distortion, I want exactly, and I mean *exactly*, what I recorded. All the more so when it's my guitar plus drums, bass and vocals. Etc. Adjusting a music reproduction system doing that task so that it distorts is the act of a madman or a masochist. Tube, transistor or digital whatever completely aside, the entire objective of an audio system is to get the music to your ears without changing it in any way that degrades the transfer. So the kind of distortion the playback system would evidence if overdriven is (had better be!) utterly irrelevant.
The fact is, a digital system, an analog bipolar system in class A or properly biased AB, and a tube system in class A or a nominal push-pull configuration with an output transformer all reproduce essentially the same signal in human perception terms, plus or minus noise. But noise is a significant factor with tube designs. Sidle up to your tweeter and listen. Hear that hiss? That's coming from the tubes themselves. Now do the same with a 24- or 32-bit prepro and an amp with a 110db noise floor, like a Marantz MA700 [flickr.com]. Viola! No audible noise at the tweeter. It's there, but it's so blinking minuscule, you can't perceive it. Entirely a good thing.
So the whole "audiophile" trip about tube amps being "better" is a complete confusion of something they do for musicians playing a specific instrument (ex guitar, horn, bass), which they do not usefully do for general sound reproduction, because, and hear me on this, music consisting of more than one instru