Panasonic's Chief Engineer Masahiro Yamaski has included a rather interesting new feature on their new high-end range of BDPs, Tube Mode.
Yamasaki cut his teeth working on Panasonic's Technics amplifiers back in the day and still incorporates an old 1969 Technics valve amp with his setup at home. Unhappy with the cold digital sound of modern equipment he'd been nurturing a pet project to bring the warmth and tonality of valve amplifiers to today's digital audio.
Yamasaki is careful to point out that this new feature is no mere gimmick: "We have carried out a detailed examination of the sonic characterisitics of tube amplifiers and we believe we have faithfully programmed these into the Unipher chip. The key was replicating the second and third harmonic distortions responsible for the characteristic 'tube' sound."
There are three different tube modes on offer, each with a slightly different response modeled after the sonic output of actual tube amplifiers, "It's about recreating tonal characteristics and not just adding distortion" enthuses Yamasaki.
Yamasaki cut his teeth working on Panasonic's Technics amplifiers back in the day and still incorporates an old 1969 Technics valve amp with his setup at home. Unhappy with the cold digital sound of modern equipment he'd been nurturing a pet project to bring the warmth and tonality of valve amplifiers to today's digital audio.
Yamasaki is careful to point out that this new feature is no mere gimmick: "We have carried out a detailed examination of the sonic characterisitics of tube amplifiers and we believe we have faithfully programmed these into the Unipher chip. The key was replicating the second and third harmonic distortions responsible for the characteristic 'tube' sound."
There are three different tube modes on offer, each with a slightly different response modeled after the sonic output of actual tube amplifiers, "It's about recreating tonal characteristics and not just adding distortion" enthuses Yamasaki.
