Sydney, Australia (December 28, 2012) -- Australia's MI Audio has announced an innovative new amplifier that combines a vacuum tube circuit with iOS digital control. They call it the Flex SmartAmp, and will be officially unveiling the product at the Winter NAMM show in January. Here are the details so far from MI Audio:
MI Audio has successfully developed the revolutionary technology in the Flex SmartAmp, the technology that is about to change the future of guitar amplification.
Flex SmartAmp encompasses an analog, pure vacuum tube amplifier circuit which can be digitally controlled via iOS to build a virtually limitless number of amplifiers. By using specially designed iOS software, the Flex SmartAmp has an intuitive control touch-screen interface that provides near-infinite amplifier options – all at your fingertips! Have access to an unmatched arsenal of amps, download custom one-offs, or design-your-own… your collection will be like no other. It will be the collection of amps you have always dreamed about.
Guitar amplifier technology has been divided in the past decade: the versatile digital modelling amplifier vs. the classic analog vacuum tube amplifier. New digital modelling technologies aim to best emulate the pure sound of a vacuum tube, but are met with numerous compromises along the way. Tube amplifiers provide the warm, vintage sound heard on all your favourite records, but don’t have the options or flexibility of the dozens of emulations that digital modelling provides. Never before has this divide been bridged… until now!
When asked about the technology, Ibrahim explains “The Flex SmartAmp is an all-analog path, vacuum tube amplifier like all of the classic designs before it. From the input jack to the speaker cabinet output, the signal flows through all of the traditional components found in customary amplifiers such as resistors, capacitors, power and preamp tubes etc. What sets the Flex SmartAmp apart is the way that these components are wired up to each other can be controlled via a mobile computing device such as a laptop, smart phone or tablet. Digital modelling amps typically switch and control DSP programming. Every option, dial and switch that corresponds to a physical component in the amplifier is switched in real time. When you flick the amp from Standby to On, you aren’t changing 0’s and 1’s. You are physically altering the voltages in the amp to give you the response, feel and character that digital modelling can never achieve. The control of these components is done via the integrated touch-screen. Slide, swipe and touch to recall your amp presets instantly, with each screen and set of controls changing with each amp preset.
It is now possible to create a limitless number of unique amplifier designs that can be saved and stored in your portable device. New circuits can also be downloaded via an “Amp Store” and one-off custom amp designs can be created. Flex SmartAmp users will be able to make and share their ideal schematics”.
The versatility of Flex SmartAmp is also tour friendly thanks to its genius design. The brain of Flex SmartAmp is separate from the brawn, which means that all of your amps, designs and presets are stored in your device (like your iPad) and can travel with you, in your carry-on luggage! Touring musicians will have their sounds and settings stored in their smart phone, table or laptop. Just hire a Flex SmartAmp at the destination and the sounds will be ready to go.
In the recording studio, Flex SmartAmp gives an unlimited* arsenal of pure vacuum tube amps ready to please the most discerning of players. Any modifications that are necessary to any of these amps are just a click away via the Schematics Editor. This allows you to tune the amplifier specifically for the user.
Flex SmartAmp is the only amp you will need – from the studio, to rehearsal, to live use or at home. Gone are the days where getting a new sound involves buying a new rig, or using something that simulates the wanted sound. Start your own personal collection of valve amps to your taste and style that will be like no other collection.
This is the technology that kills the tube vs. digital modelling debate. This is the technology that will set the tone of amps to come. This is the technology that you have to see.
MI Audio’s patent pending technology is a major evolutionary step in sound amplification. One of the exciting features is the open-ended collaborative approach to circuit design, not only between different equipment manufacturers but also between amp designers and end users.
*by unlimited, we mean you have 3.43 x 10154 options to choose from.
For more information:
MI Audio
Guitarists are used to coveting cranky, old gear, but if you’re not a rack user, the H3000 might not be for you! If you ever see one of these in a studio, be sure to take some time to check it out, and maybe give the plugin a try.When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
