TPA-1 Plug-In User Manual
Contents
1. TPA 1 Back Panel As you can see from the screenshots fig 2 and fig 3 we ve decided to make the TPA 1 as similar as possible to a real hardware tube power amp in order to make the user experience easier giving the chance to tweak the controls of the plug in like one would do when having a real rackmount power amplifier in front of him herself The GUI is divided in two main sections front panel and rear panel freely switchable using the double arrow button placed at the right side of the interface Front Panel Controls In the front panel of the TPA 1 you ll find all the controls you re used to see in a real guitar power amplifier with some additions From left to right Mono Stereo lets the user select the processing mode of the plug in It is extremely important to note that a complete stereo separation and so a correct stereo image preservation is only possible when the TPA 1 is placed on a stereo bus and fed with a stereo signal with left and right components panned at 100 Feeding the TPA 1 with two preamp tracks panned at less than 100 left and right will not preserve the correct stereo separation of the tracks at the output Stereo Mode will obviously double the CPU load of the plug in as the two audio channels are being implicitly processed by two separated instances of the TPA 1 Depth controls the low end response of the plug in Like in real tube amplifies it acts on the negative feedback loop of the power amp ci2. sound card settings In almost all cases amp sims and stomp box simulators don t introduce noticeable latency The TPA 1 doesn t introduce noticeable latency If you re experiencing latency issues check your sound card settings specifically reduce the Input Buffer Size The TPA 1 is a power amplifier simulator so it needs a preamp like our NRR 1 The Anvil SHB 1 plug ins or even a real hardware preamp and a cabinet simulator after it to sound like a real mic d tube amplifier There are numerous free and commercial cabinet simulator plug ins available so make sure to place one and only one of them right after the TPA 1 Acknowledgments Ignite Amps wants to thank all the musicians interested in Ignite Amps projects who have shown great enthusiasm toward us always pushing us to improve our work helping us beta test and find bugs everyone who has provided precious suggestions kick ass audio clips or videos or who have donated money for our research and development in the DSP field Without these people this plug in would have never been created Thanks to You too for downloading and trying the TPA 1 plug in and for reading the f ing manual Sincerely The Ignite Amps Crew m Audio Unit is a trademark of Apple Computers Inc VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH Ignite Amps uses Symbiosis to provide Audio Unit support 10
3. affect the dynamic behaviour of the plug in in any way Input lets you change the overall input level of the plug in It is very important to set the input level correctly in order to make the TPA 1 work in optimal conditions In this regard please refer to the Setting the input level paragraph under the Getting the best out of the TPA 1 chapter for some guidance Getting the best out of the TPA 1 Since there are a number of different scenarios where you may want to use the TPA 1 we ll briefly describe how to set the plug in in order to obtain the best results depending on the rest of your rig the preamp and the cabinet Setting the Input Level When using a VST AU or a hardware preamp in front of the TPA 1 we strongly suggest you to set the TPA 1 input level using the small red knob on the right side of the rear panel in order to have the input signal peaking close to the clipping threshold according to the input meters placed next to the control This is needed because the TPA 1 has an internal input signal level scaling algorithm which makes the simulated circuit work with voltages coherent with real tube power amplifiers circuits In order for the scaling result to be optimal the input signal should have a swing of circa 2 Volts peak to peak 2Vpp which is about full scale on the input meters If the swing is bigger the clipping indicators above the input meters will light on Please note that even if the input meters indic
4. are already contained in the IR itself so you don t want to double the effect On the other hand when using a cabinet IR captured with a solid state power amplifier you should crank the Resonance knob to get back the fatness and presence of a real tube power amplifier Don t be afraid to turn it to the max This is what you should usually do in these cases If you have no idea of what chain has been used to capture your preferred IR just go by ears by comparing it to other IRs of known sources you should be able to discern if it has been captured with a tube power amp or not If you re using a cabinet simulator which is not IR based you d better read the product manual to search for more details or contact the vendor directly to understand how you should set the Resonance control Tips for digital guitarists Always use the high impedance Hi Z input of your sound card when featured This will ensure less noise and signal loss Most real pre amplifiers and stomp boxes have an input impedance of 1MegaOhm so it would be a good idea to get a sound card with 1MegaOhm input impedance to use Ignite Amps simulators at their best Make always sure to have the highest input signal before the AD conversion while still avoiding clipping Amp sims and stomp box simulators are not noisy they do not add noise In fact they re a lot less noisy than real hardwares If you have noise issues check your guitar electronic circuit cables and
5. of the plug in Obviously the higher the oversampling the higher the CPU usage In our experience and tests we ve found 4x oversampling to be the best compromise for accurate processing and good performance but we ve decided to add other two options to help users with slower machines to run the plug in without CPU overloading 2x or run the plug in at its full potential when having a powerful system at disposal 8x Keep in mind that the sound difference between these three modes is not going to be night and day for mixing purposes it s unlikely you will need to rework the mix settings when switching between different oversampling values A good practice would be to run the plug in at 4x or 2x during mixing and switch it to 8x right before rendering your project This will avoid CPU usage problems when using multiple plug ins during the mixing phase and still give you full processing quality once your tracks are exported Click on the led to select the desired oversampling rate Bias lets you choose the bias point of the power amp tubes It controls the amount of negative voltage offset applied to the signal at the grid of the tubes Colder settings will make the pentodes tetrodes draw less current decreasing the overall output volume and potentially introducing cross over distortion due to the class AB design which may be what a guitarist needs to achieve a more dirty loose tone Hotter settings will make the pentodes tetrodes draw more c
6. power amps usually have a considerably lower output impedance compared to tube power amps which means that they behave in a more transparent way when paired with a guitar bass cabinet Tone wise it means that the frequency shaping described in the Resonance control section see Rear Panel Controls has a lot less influence on the final tone making the cabinet sound middy with poor low frequencies content and presence This is one of the main reasons why tube power amps are usually preferred by guitarists overs solid state power amps because of their higher output impedance they sound considerably fatter deeper more present and generally more pleasant to the ears Depending on what power amp has been used to drive the speakers when capturing the IR of the system those frequency response differences are going to be contained in the IR itself after the de convolution process Vendors of commercial IR based cabinet simulators or IR libraries usually describe the chain used to capture their IRs so you should know what category of IR you re using The TPA 1 emulates a tube power amplifier but we wanted it to work perfectly with both IR categories that s why we added the Resonance control In particular when you re using a cabinet IR captured with a tube power amplifier you should keep the Resonance value to zero or use very low values if you want some additional tone shaping because the bass and treble boosts due to the speaker impedance
7. ate clipping the signal is not getting clipped at all It only means that the power amp circuit is working with voltages that are higher than expected by design The input signal dynamics is always 100 preserved in the TPA 1 After tweaking the input level knob if you need to reset the clipping indicators to check if clipping is still occurring just click on the indicator and it will light off Setting the Resonance There are a lot of free and commercial solutions for emulating guitar and bass cabinets and microphones but in this section we ll analyse just what we consider to be the state of art on this field impulse response IR based cabinet microphone simulators Since these IRs are captured from real world equipment by sending a test tone through the system and then recording and de convolving the output to obtain the system s impulse response containing the linear frequency response of the system itself to be then convolved with the input signal of the cabinet simulation plug ins and since a power amplifier has to be used to drive the speaker and capture its frequency behaviour they may already contain some of the inherent interactions that happen between the power amplifier and the load it drives the speakers We can divide cabinet IRs in two main categories solid state power amp based and tube power amp based The biggest difference lies in the output impedance of the power amp used to capture them Solid state
8. cessor with SSE2 instructions support Installation To install the TPA 1 Plug In just follow the instructions below according to the platform and plug in format you want to use Windows VST Copy the file TPA 1 dIl into your VST Plug Ins folder for example C Program Files Steinberg VSTPlugins Mac OSX VST Copy the bundle TPA 1 vst into the path Library Audio Plug Ins VST Mac OSX AU Copy the bundle TPA 1 component into the path Library Audio Plug Ins Components For Windows VST format we provide separate x86 32 bit and x64 64 bit binaries so make sure to choose the right one according to your operative system and plug in host specifications Keep in mind that x64 binaries will not run on 32 bit environments while x86 binaries will most likely run on 64 bit environments although we do not recommend such usage for performance and stability reasons We strongly advice Windows users against putting both x86 and x64 versions in the host VST folder s as it may cause one of the versions not to be recognized as a plug in Mac OSX plug ins VST AU are compiled in Universal Binary format for Intel processors containing both 32 bit and 64 bit code in the same bundle which means that the user doesn t need to care about choosing x86 or x64 version as the system will handle that automatically After that you should re start your favourite VST AU host making sure it re scans your Plug Ins folder s to recognize the TPA 1 as a
9. engineerin the moshpit TNI ITE AMPS TPA I AUDIO PLUG IN USER MANUAL Summary Introduction Minimum System Requirements Installation Main Features TPA 1 Circuit Diagram Graphic User Interface Front Panel Controls Rear Panel Controls Getting the best out of the TPA 1 Tips for digital guitarsts Acknowledgments pag pag pag pag pag pag pag pag pag pag pag ON OO BR A BR WwW Ww Introduction The TPA 1 is a digital emulation of a class AB tube power amplifier for guitar It has been designed and developed to be paired with any guitar preamp VST AU or even hardware Its circuit is not based on any particular physical power amplifier but it has been designed to have enough versatility to range from vintage to modern tones letting the user be free to shape its dynamic behaviour with ease without the need to be a tube amplifier tech Every single component on the signal path of the analog circuit has been taken into account and modeled in the best possible way to match the original sound as it was meant to be while keeping an eye on CPU performances and real time playability at the same time The TPA 1 is meant to be used as a guitar tube power amplifier simulator for live playing and jamming tracking or mixing inside hosts capable of VST or AU Plug Ins support Minimum System requirements Windows Mac Windows XP Vista 7 8 32 64 bit OSX 10 5 Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP Intel pro
10. g on the speaker model and brand and a more gentle increase from mid to high frequencies How does this impact the tone The speaker impedance is in series with the power amp output impedance forming a voltage divider The voltage drop caused by this divider is then frequency dependent for the reasons discussed above which means that more signal will be preserved where the speaker impedance is higher and more attenuation will occur at those frequencies where the speaker impedance is lower Tone wise this will result in a considerable peak boost in the speaker resonant frequency and a gentle shelving boost in the higher frequencies it is worth noting that we re using the term boost for simplicity here we should rather talk about less attenuation to be correct The Resonance control lets you decide how much of this interaction will happen lower values translate to a flatter frequency response of the plug in higher values will introduce more lows and highs scooping the tone for a more modern type of sound This control should be set according to the cabinet used after the TPA 1 plug in Please read the Setting the Resonance paragraph under the Getting the best out of the TPA 1 chapter for some guidance Sagging controls the dynamic behaviour of the plug in During normal operations pentodes tetrodes draw a significant amount of current which leads to a voltage drop on the power supply transformer and rectifier ci
11. new Effect Plug In please note that some hosts may not re scan the plug in folder automatically at every start up so you may need to do that manually Refer to your host s manual for instructions If everything is right you should now see the TPA 1 entry into the Effect Plug Ins list of your host Main Features e Dynamic EL34 6L6GC KT88 pentodes tetrodes analog modeling push pull stage e Dynamic ECC83 12AX7 triode analog modeling phase inverter stage e Mono Stereo processing support e Selectable oversampling rate up to 8x e Global input output level controls e Double precision 64 bit floating point mathematical model e Fully automatable controls TPA 1 Circuit Diagram PUSH STAGE VOLTAGE SCALING SPEAKER LOAD a L T P PHASE SPLITTER METERS FEEDBACK CIRCUIT Fig 1 TPA 1 Circuit Diagram Graphic User Interface TONITE AMPS vita via a TPA ty lt TUBE POWER AMPLIFIER STEREO DEPTH PRESENGE VOLUME Fig 2 TPA 1 Front Panel BIAS SAGGING pre abi TUBES OVERSAMPLING A CAUTION an Tok ET A DO NOT OPEN D E EA k NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE 2x 4x 8x A HOT i LR patie EE IGNITE AM FEEDBACK RESONANCE OUTPUT SPEAKER i je i DO NOT EXPOSE THIS UNIT Crier H Tae SEER tn oa as 1 G FUSE 2A TO RAIN OR MOISTURE HANDCRAFTED IN ITALY a a H Fig 3
12. nge Lower values will make the plug in sound more raw and modern with more harmonic content It is really important to note that the value of this control has a great impact on the behaviour of the Depth and Presence controls as they re placed on the feedback loop In fact the lower the Feedback amount the less those controls will influence the tone to the point of being completely disconnected from the circuit when the Feedback is set to zero Resonance controls the interaction between the power amp and the speaker s Even if speakers are rated with a constant impedance 2 4 8 16 ohms they re not purely resistive but reactive components their real impedance has a strong variation depending on the frequency The image below fig 4 shows you what a real speaker impedance looks like at different frequencies POINT OF MAXIMUM BACK EMF IS HIGHEST IMPEDANCE IN RESONANT AREA PEAK E a IMPEDANCE FREQUENCY T RATED i by ela RATED IMPEDANCE oo ye oe a ABOUT 20 HIGHER THAN x N izi 4 D C RESISTANCE D C D i RESISTANCE yew i os aa 10 000 0 400 FREQUENCY Hz RESONANGE REGION OF FREQUENCY AREA RATED IMPEDANCE IMPEDANCE CHANGES HERE DUE TO MOTION OF DIAPHRAGM Fig 4 Speaker Impedance vs Frequency graph image source Harmony Central forum As you can see there is a huge impedance increase on the speaker resonant frequency usually between 70Hz and 90Hz dependin
13. rcuit due to the impedance of these elements This voltage drop causes the plate and screen grid voltage of the power tubes to decrease reducing the output headroom and adding a smooth and natural compression to the tone usually referred to as sagging In real power amplifiers the power supply rectifier circuit may use silicon diodes or rectifier tubes silicon diodes will cause a smaller voltage drop and a faster response compared to rectifier tubes which will cause more sagging to occur with a slower response This control lets you choose the power supply circuit behaviour you can range from an ideal and transparent circuit setting it to zero eliminating the sagging effect completely to a modern tone oriented diode rectifier values from 2 to 4 up to a more vintage tone oriented tube rectifier values from 5 to 10 Tubes lets you decide what kind of tubes you want to use in the push pull stage Clicking on this control will make a drop down menu appear and you will be able to select your preferred tube model As described in the Bias control section the range of the Bias control will change according to the selected tubes avoiding the need to re bias the power amp like you would do in a real world situation and making it easier for you to compare different tubes Output lets you change the overall output level of the plug in Unlike the Volume control located in the front panel this control is completely linear and doesn t
14. rcuit so its impact on the tone is strictly dependent on the Feedback control setting It has been designed as a low shelving filter Presence controls the high end response of the plug in Like in real tube amplifies It acts on the negative feedback loop of the power amp circuit so its impact on the tone is strictly dependent on the Feedback control setting It has been designed as a high shelving filter Volume controls the amount of signal that feeds the phase inverter stage It changes the dynamic behaviour of the circuit the higher the setting the more the phase inverter and consequently the push pull stages are driven into saturation adding even and odd harmonics to your guitar tone and eventually increasing the natural compression known as sagging see the Sagging control paragraph It basically acts like an drive control for the plug in Rear Panel Controls On the TPA 1 rear panel you ll find controls to best manage the plug in to suit your system guitar preamp and cabinet simulator From left to right Oversampling lets you choose the internal processing sample rate of the plug in The available options are 2x 4x or 8x This means that if your host is set up to process at 44100Hz sample rate by selecting 4x oversampling for example the TPA 1 will process your signal at 44100 x 4 176400 samples per second Oversampling is needed to avoid digital artifacts aliasing and improve the accuracy and musicality
15. urrent increasing the overall output level and eventually the power supply sagging effect depending on the Sagging control setting adding compression or in extreme cases saturation and cleaning up the tone from potential cross over distortion Keep it in the default range around half way for standard real world operations but feel free to experiment without fear of blowing something up It is important to note that the range of this control changes depending on the selected tubes see the Tubes control for practical reasons In fact in a real world situation biasing a KT88 with the same grid voltage offset of a 6L6GC would cause the KT88 to draw almost two times the current drawn by the 6L6GC causing a huge output volume difference and potentially damaging the tube itself by exceeding the maximum power dissipation rate of its anode Scaling the bias control range according to the selected tube guarantees output volume coherence making it easier to compare different tubes and choose the right one for you and makes the virtual tubes work with currents that make sense in a real world situation allowing you to set the bias of the power amp correctly without the need to be a tube amplifier technician Feedback controls the amount of negative feedback coming from the output of the power amp The higher the value the more feedback is applied decreasing the overall volume and making the power tubes work within a more linear ra
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