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Although semiconductor technologies have dis- as software plug-ins so that the musician can
placed vacuum-tube devices in nearly all fields of connect the guitar directly to the computers sound
electronics, vacuum tubes are still widely used in card, record the input tracks, add effects and/or
professional guitar amplifiers. A major reason for virtual instruments, and then compile the song as
this is that electric-guitar amplifiers are typically a CD or upload it to the Internet. This is especially
overdriven, that is, operated in such a way that the useful for home studios and small ad hoc recording
output saturates. Vacuum tubes distort the signal in sessions, because it eliminates several tedious
a different manner compared to solid-state electron- tasks of acoustic recording, such as setting up the
ics, and human listeners tend to prefer this. This amplifier and recording equipment, selecting a
might be because the distinctive tone of tube am- microphone position, finding a recording room, etc.
plifiers was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s by This article attempts to summarize real-time
early rock and roll bands, so musicians and listeners digital techniques for modeling guitar tube ampli-
have become accustomed to tube distortion. Some fiers. Although a brief overview was presented in
studies on the perceptual aspects of vacuum-tube Pakarinen (2008), to the authors knowledge, there
and solid-state distortion have been published (e.g., are no previous works that attempt a comprehensive
Hamm 1973; Bussey and Haigler 1981; Santo 1994). survey of the topic. Because this topic is relatively
Despite their acclaimed tone, vacuum-tube new and commercially active, most of the reference
amplifiers have certain shortcomings: large size and material can be found in patents rather than aca-
weight, poor durability, high power consumption, demic publications. Judging from the large number
high price, and often poor availability of spare parts. of amateur musicians and home-studio owners, as
Thus, it is not surprising that many attempts have well as the huge number of discussion threads on
been made to emulate guitar tube amplifiers using Internet forums, this topic is potentially interesting
smaller and cheaper solid-state analog circuits (e.g., for a wide spectrum of readers. Thus, a conscious
Todokoro 1976; Sondermeyer 1984). The next step choice has been made to try to survey the modeling
in the evolution of tube-amplifier emulation has techniques at an abstracted level, without delving
been to simulate the amplifiers using computers into the underlying mathematics or electric circuit
and digital signal processors (DSP). analysis.
A primary advantage of digital emulation is that This review is organized into four sections. We
the same hardware can be used for modeling many first describe the sources of the nonlinearities in
different tube amplifiers and effects. When a new guitar amplifier circuits. Then, we review published
model is to be added, new parameter values or methods for modeling the linear stages of guitar
program code are simply uploaded to the device. amplifiers. The heart of this survey is the review
Furthermore, amplifier models can be implemented of methods for nonlinear modeling. Finally we
Vacuum-Tube Amplifiers
The purpose of this section is to present an overview
of the operation of vacuum-tube amplifiers and to
illustrate the complex nature of their important
nonlinearities. An overview of vacuum tubes used
in audio applications can be found in Barbour
(1998), and a detailed tutorial on classic vacuum-
tube circuits is provided in Langford-Smith (1954).
The physical principles governing the operation of
vacuum tubes are reviewed in Spangenberger (1948).
Excellent Internet articles discussing the design of
guitar tube amplifiers can be found online (e.g., at
www.aikenamps.com and www.ax84.com).
A typical guitar tube amplifier consists of a commonly used for signal rectification. Three-
preamplifier, a tone-control circuit (i.e., tone stack), terminal devices are known as triodes and are
a power amplifier, and a transformer that couples primarily used in preamplifier circuits. Four- and
to the loudspeaker load. The preamplifier magnifies five-terminal devices (tetrodes and pentodes, re-
the relatively weak signal from the magnetic spectively) are used mainly for power amplification
guitar pickups and provides buffering so that the purposes to drive a loudspeaker, for example.
pickup response is not altered by the amplifier The operation of vacuum tubes is analogous to
circuitry. The preamplifier is usually realized with water flow on a slope. First, the electrode termed
triode tubes. The tone stack provides a typical V- the cathode is heated, and the process known as
shaped equalization for compensating the pickups thermionic emission acts like a pump that forms
resonance at mid-frequencies, and it gives the a pool of electrons at the top of a hill. A second
user additional tonal control. The power amplifier terminal called the plate (or anode) is at the bottom
boosts the signal so that it is powerful enough of a slope. Electrons will flow from the cathode to
to drive a loudspeaker. In the so-called all-tube the plate depending upon the relative height of the
guitar amplifiers, both the pre- and power-amplifier plate, which is controlled by the voltage applied
circuits use tubes instead of transistors in amplifying to it. Note that because a pump is at the cathode,
the signal. Typically, these amplification circuits electrodes can never flow backward from the plate
contain one or more tube stages, namely, circuit to the cathode even though the plate may be raised
blocks that consist of a tube connected to resistive uphill of the cathode. This describes the rectification
and capacitive (RC) components. behavior of a diode tube.
The triode, illustrated in Figure 1, introduces
a third terminal called the grid between the two
Vacuum Tubes terminals. With the plate downhill of the cathode,
the grid is like a raised barrier in the slope that
Vacuum tubes, or thermionic valves, were invented limits the flow of electrons from the cathode to
in the early 1900s for amplifying low-level volt- the plate. If this barrier controlled by the grid is
age signals. Structurally, they consist of two or high enough, it stops the electron flow completely.
more electrodes in a vacuum enclosed in a glass This water-flow analogy motivates the British term
or metal shell. A two-terminal device is a diode, referring to vacuum tubes as valves.
Figure 2
an eight-times oversampling circuit for evaluating as tremolo, chorus, or delay. If headphones or line
a static nonlinearity at 249.6 kHz, thus attenuating output are used, a simple low-pass filter can also be
the aliased distortion components. This straightfor- applied for simulating the effect of the loudspeaker
ward technique, named TubeTone Modeling, was cabinet. Finally, the signal drives a loudspeaker (or
used in several commercially successful Line 6 several loudspeakers, if for example stereo effects
digital guitar-amplifier emulators. are used) after a D/A conversion and amplification.
Figure 4 illustrates the system described in Doidic
et al. (1998). Here, the digital signal is first fed to
Customized Waveshaping
a collection of preamplifier effectsthat is, effects
that are typically located between the guitar and An interesting method for obtaining a highly
amplifier, such as a noise gate, compressor, or a customized type of distortion has been introduced
wah-wah. Next, eight-times oversampling with in Fernandez-Cid
and Quiros (2001). This technique,
linear interpolation is applied to the signal, and it illustrated on the left of Figure 6, decomposes the
is fed to a nonlinearity. After the nonlinearity, the input signal into frequency bands using a filterbank,
signal is lowpass-filtered using an antialiasing FIR and it then applies a different static nonlinearity
filter, and it is downsampled back to the sampling for each band separately. Thus, only narrow-band
rate of 31.2 kHz. signals are inserted to the nonlinear waveshapers,
Figure 5 visualizes what happens to the waveform and the perceptually disturbing intermodulation
and spectrum of a sinusoidal input signal when distortion is minimized. The authors call this tech-
distorted by the nonlinear Equations 2 and 3. nique multiband waveshaping. The delay imposed
The top row illustrates the waveform (left) and on the direct signal in Figure 6 equals the delay
spectrum (right) of a 1.2-kHz sinusoidal signal with caused by the filterbank, so that the signal phase is
an amplitude of 0.8. The middle row shows the correctly preserved after the final summation.
signal after the symmetric distortion defined by Fernandez-Cid
and Quiros (2001) suggest using
Equation 2. As expected, the symmetric distortion Chebychev polynomials as the nonlinearities. These
creates a tail of odd harmonics in the output polynomials are a special type of function allowing
signal spectrum. For frequencies above the Nyquist the designer to individually set the amplitude of
limit (a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz was used each harmonic distortion component, provided
here), the harmonics fold back to the audio band, that the input signal is purely sinusoidal with
resulting in frequency components that are not in unity amplitude. Furthermore, using this type of
any simple harmonic relation with the input tone. polynomial approximation, aliasing can be avoided
The bottom row shows the input signal after the for sinusoidal input signals, because the designer
heavy-clipping asymmetric distortion defined by can simply choose not to synthesize the highest
Equation 3. As can be seen in the lower right graph, harmonics. The right part of Figure 6 illustrates
the asymmetric distortion creates even and odd the construction of a single Chebychev-based
harmonic components. The upper components are waveshaper used in Fernandez-Cid
and Quiros,
again aliased back to the audio band, resulting in an where the overall signal level is set between [1, 1]
inharmonic spectrum. prior to the evaluation of the nonlinearity. Dynamic
In Doidic et al. (1998), the output signal from the nonlinearities can be imitated by using two different
distortion is fed to a collection of linear effects, such polynomials ( fA (x) and fB (x) in the right part of
Figure 6) in parallel, and varying their mix ratio nonlinearities that change their shape according to
according to the signal level of the corresponding the input signal or some system-state variables.
band. Finally, the original dynamics of the signal An early digital system for emulating a tube
are restored by multiplying the polynomial output amplifier was outlined by Pritchard (1991). He
with the signal level, as shown in the right part of suggested using two nonlinear distortion blocks
Figure 6. The authors claim that the waveshapers with a digital equalization unit in between. Ideally,
perform well, even though their input is not a the first distortion block would have a high-pass
sinusoid but rather a narrowband signal. filter with the cutoff frequency controlled by the
Patents by Jackson (2003) and Amels (2003) input-signal polarity, and an asymmetric static
present trigonometric functions for creating static nonlinearity for producing mainly even harmonics.
waveshapers where the distortion component levels The second distortion block would generate both
can be set by the designer. Schimmel and Misurec even and odd harmonics and emulate the sagging
(2007) implemented and analyzed static nonlinear- effect of the power amplifier using a dynamic
ities using piecewise-linear approximations of the nonlinearity. Aliasing problems, however, are not
nonlinear input-output curves. These three meth- addressed by Pritchard.
ods use oversampling to suppress aliasing. Also, A more detailed description of a dynamic tube-
a polynomial approximation of a static nonlinear- amplifier model has been discussed in a Yamaha
ity without aliasing suppression is presented in patent (Kuroki and Ito 1998). There, a single tube
Schimmel (2003). stage is again modeled using a lookup table, but
the DC offset of the input is varied according to
the input-signal envelope. The authors give the
Ad Hoc Nonlinear Filters impression that this bias variation would be caused
by grid capacitor charging owing to grid current,
Because the assumption that the nonlinearities although a more realistic explanation would be the
are memory-less does not hold for describing the variation of the cathode voltage owing to a change in
behavior of real tube amplifiers, researchers have plate current. A tube preamplifier can be simulated
proposed various dynamic waveshapers, namely, by connecting several tube-stage models in cascade.
Sign inversion is applied between tube stages for signal-analysis block estimates the signal energy
modeling the phase-inverting behavior of a real tube for the last few milliseconds, and it checks whether
stage. Note that, owing to the dynamic nonlineari- the input signal is increasing or decreasing. Next,
ties (i.e., signal history-dependent DC offsets), the the polynomial coefficients are interpolated from
preamplifier stages cannot be combined as a single a set of pre-stored coefficient values according to
equivalent lookup table. A pushpull power ampli- the signal energy. The pre-stored coefficients are
fier can be simulated by connecting two tube-stage obtained from measured tube data using system-
models in parallel and reversing the sign of the other identification techniques (see, e.g., Nelles 2000).
branch. With suitable DC-offset values, crossover The hysteresis effect can be simulated by using
distortion can be emulated, if desired. The system a different set of polynomial coefficients for in-
proposed in Kuroki and Ito is illustrated in Figure 7. creasing and decreasing input signals. The authors
Another dynamic model of a guitar preamplifier suggest implementing the static nonlinearities with
has been presented in Karjalainen et al. (2006). This Chebychev polynomials to avoid aliasing, and also
model assumes that the plate load of the tube stage is because the accuracy of the Chebychev polynomial
constant and resistive, so that the tube nonlinearity approximation is highest near the signal extrema
simplifies to a mapping from the grid voltage Vgk (i.e., around 1, near saturation).
to plate voltage Vp . This curve is measured from the
tube by shorting the cathode to ground and varying
Analytical Methods
the grid voltage. Grid current is also measured as
a function of the grid voltage. These curves are
Several methods exist for analyzing a nonlinearity
combined in a single precomputed Vgk -to-Vp table.
with memory. These are based upon Volterra series
Bias variation is simulated using a feedback loop,
theory and can be used to implement nonlinear
as in Kuroki and Ito (1998). The filtering effect
audio effects.
caused by the grid resistor and Miller capacitance
is modeled with a low-pass filter at grid input,
Volterra Series
while a high-pass filter emulates the interstage
DC-blocking filter. Three tube-stage models are The Volterra series expansion (Boyd 1985) is a
used in series and connected to a loudspeaker model representation of systems based upon a nonlinear
via an equalizer. A minimum-phase FIR filter is expansion of linear systems theory. Analogous to
used as a loudspeaker model. convolution with the impulse response vector of a
An interesting system-identification-based ap- linear system, the Volterra series is a multidimen-
proach has been presented by Gustafsson et al. sional convolution with nonlinear system-response
(2004), the founders of the Swedish company Soft- matrices. Whereas in linear systems the impulse re-
ube AB (producers of Amp Room software). Here, sponse fully characterizes the system and allows its
the dynamic nonlinearity is simulated by feeding output to be predicted given an input, Volterra sys-
the signal through a nonlinear polynomial function tems are characterized by special functions, called
and varying the polynomial coefficients according kernels, that correspond to the multidimensional
to the input signal. Figure 8 illustrates this. The impulse response of the nonlinear terms. It can also