Spark 2 adds AI, doubles its DSP power to help your guitar rock out
The Spark 2 from Positive Grid seems to be like a miniature old-school amp, however it’s, primarily, a pc with some knobs and a speaker. It has Bluetooth, USB-C, and an related smartphone app. It wants firmware updates, which might brick the gadget—ask me how I discovered this out—and it runs code on DSP chips. New guitar tones will be downloaded into the gadget, the place they run as software program slightly than as analog electrical circuits in an amp or foot pedal.
In different phrases, the Spark 2 is the most recent instance of the “software-ization” of music.
Neglect the previous picture of a studio full of a million-dollar, 48-track mixing board from SSL or API and bursting with analog amps, classic mics, and ginormous plate reverbs. Studios at the moment are much more more likely to be digital, the place individuals document “within the field” (i.e., they monitor and blend on a pc working software program like Professional Instruments or Logic Professional) utilizing digital fashions of traditional (and costly) amplifiers, coded by firms like NeuralDSP and IK Multimedia. These modeled amp sounds are then run by way of convolution software program that depends on digital impulse responses captured from completely different audio system and speaker cupboards. They’re modified with results like refrain and distortion, that are all modeled, too. The outcomes will be world-class, they usually’re more and more exhibiting up on data.
