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Old 09-15-2018, 08:02 PM   #1
vejichan
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Default PC amp sims that sounds as good as axe fx and kemper?

Any suggestions? also what are your goto irs?
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Old 09-15-2018, 10:21 PM   #2
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None are as good as those two.
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Old 09-16-2018, 03:27 AM   #3
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Fortin Nameless, by Neural DSP.... it sounds INCREDIBLE!!! Check out all the reviews on Youtube. It just came out a week ago.
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Old 09-16-2018, 03:37 AM   #4
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If you spend some amount of time trying combinations of amp heads, with some IRs from good speakers cabinets and some pedals you´ll get a really nice sound.

nice starting point



https://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/ -> Head amp

https://www.tseaudio.com/home -> Pedals

https://kazrog.com/plugin-downloads/ -> To load you IRs

http://www.redwirez.com/bigbox.jsp -> Nice Impulses
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Old 09-16-2018, 03:51 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stews View Post
None are as good as those two.
Sure there are. Kazrog Thermionik, S-Gear (especially clean and crunch tones), Kuassa (their latest Caliburn is phenomenal), Mercuriall.
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Old 09-16-2018, 07:45 AM   #6
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As far as amp sims go, the end sound of a Kemper is king. There is nothing else in it's league that I have heard that successfully produces the general character of multiple real amps. It is almost there. But it doesn't quite have that reactive response in the lower frequencies as a nice amp/speaker has, and the upper frequencies sound too rolled off to me. So overall, it has the general character of the profiled amps but comes across rather flat. And you don't get spring reverb (spring reverb sims really blow). And none of this says anything as far as the inspiration of playing one in comparison to real amps in a real room, which I think is a big deal. In those terms, playing through a sim is very much like playing through a sampled drum kit vs. playing a real kit in a real room. You get the full experience with the real deal.

Something you will notice with amp sims is that most of them (and demos of them) are focused around high gain. Buckets of gain helps to hide the aliasing of digital distortion. For sounds that use a little breakup to crunchy (most guitar tones outside of metal), amp sims tend to sound thin, muddy, shrill, hard, hashy... and the distortion decays back to clean in an ugly way (not smooth sounding at all). At least one of the most famous sims uses heavy filtering to fight aliasing which has other consequences (lack of satisfying upper frequencies). And part of the ugliness of sims is playing through static impulse responses for the speaker side of things. Impulses just don't produce the same sort of focused and reactive sound as a real speaker/cab, which is really noticeable for dynamic playing (other than metal).

And demos of sims are typically slathered in digital reverb and delay to hide the lack of room ambience and spring reverb, which sounds blah to my ears. Real room ambience helps alot in making a guitar track blend well with other tracks, rather than sounding like the guitar is separated from everything else - either too forward or buried with other tracks. Spring reverb does that too, and it just sounds damn nice (especially old school Fender spring reverb).

Personally, I think no amp sim (even a Kemper) is as good as even a half-decent amp, a nice speaker, and microphones in a room. If you like Fender, a deluxe or vibroverb, or if you like Marshall, one of the older lower watt JTM's - will get you some really nice sounds without making your ears bleed and at a much lower cost than a Kemper. The biggest thing to me with lower cost amps is that they typically have crappy speakers and cabs. Even a solid state amp can sound pretty cool with a nice speaker/cab. The speaker is most important for general character and general frequency response, and the cab for openness/tightness. The speakers in most low cost combo amps don't have any bottom or top. So they sound kind of honky and hard (because you are hearing mostly mids). Celestion, Jensen, and other speaker manufacturers knew what was up from way back. Those speakers were esentially full range speakers, not bandlimited (very mid focused) like the speakers that you find in so many modern amps, where when you crank them up they sound loud in a bad way. When you have a speaker that produces nice lower frequencies and upper frequencies, cranking it up doesn't sound so loud and hard to the ears, because our ears are most senstive to mids. And amp sims essentially do the same thing, lacking in lower frequencies and having nasty aliasing elsewhere.
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Old 09-16-2018, 10:08 AM   #7
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The Kemper and Axe Fx are just computers that are both simplifying and obfuscating what you can do yourself on a desktop.
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Old 09-16-2018, 10:49 AM   #8
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For sounds that use a little breakup to crunchy (most guitar tones outside of metal), amp sims tend to sound thin, muddy, shrill, hard, hashy... and the distortion decays back to clean in an ugly way (not smooth sounding at all).
Never ever noticed that with S-Gear or Thermionik.

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And part of the ugliness of sims is playing through static impulse responses for the speaker side of things. Impulses just don't produce the same sort of focused and reactive sound as a real speaker/cab, which is really noticeable for dynamic playing (other than metal).
Well, Recabinet has the Dynamics knob that models this behavior. And dynamic convolution does exist (Nebula) which also deals with "staticness" of regular IRs. Mercuriall uses neural networks in their algorithms to do some really magical sounding stuff.

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And amp sims essentially do the same thing, lacking in lower frequencies and having nasty aliasing elsewhere.
Thermionik does up to 32x oversampling. No problems with aliasing.

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Old 09-16-2018, 11:46 AM   #9
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The Kemper and Axe Fx are just computers that are both simplifying and obfuscating what you can do yourself on a desktop.
It's not that they're inherently better than a plugin could be, it's that the software is better than the software available for PCs.

Don't blame them, why sell a plugin (that half the people will pirate) when they can shift a hardware unit.
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Old 09-16-2018, 11:58 AM   #10
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Would really like to see Shane McFee (Kazrog LLC) weigh in on this topic.

For < $2,000., many can build a really impressive Win10 Pro PC Desktop.
Thermionik Suite /Recabinet and other Kazrog goodies is ~ $250.

Shane should surely be able to comment quite professionally on Kemper & Thermionk. AXE FX ……..
Sure, much is valid, personal preference, but some of us non-guitarists can have lotsa uncertainties … imho.
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Old 09-16-2018, 12:54 PM   #11
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I haven't tried a lot of the names mentioned on this thread.

I recognise evil dragon as an omnipresent forum sage so would definitely try out his recommendations if I was looking for software.

Given how great my Atomic Amplifire sounds for a relatively inexpensive unit, I'd believe there are other smaller names that sound good.

I've recently tried Amplitube and personally thought the guitar amps sounded terrible despite looking mouthwateringly good and the bass amp sounding great.

Apart from the sound, one thing I love about using an external unit is that it has no effect on the workload or the buffer etc. These days computers can handle a lot in real time but it's always something I keep in mind when using a lot of plugins but not with external.

In fact, if plugins ruled the roost and there weren't great hardware units I'd strongly consider a second pc to get the same benefits.
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Old 09-16-2018, 02:52 PM   #12
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There's quite a few Amp Sims that I really like, but right now I am totally in awe of what's possibly the biggest understatement in the entire history of musical equipment:

the BBE Stomp Board - four amp sims without a name, just simple a tone control (without any cab-settings, yadda yadda whatsoever) and a spring-reverb, but a super-realistic tone to die for plus what is easily the best spring-reverb emulation I ever came across.

It's certainly not the most versatile amp-sim in the world and while the included stomp sims increase its versatility significantly, everything I got out of it has a low-gain vintage character (let's say Fender, Vox, early Marshall - dunno what (if anything) they modelled) - but that's right up my alley. If high-gain is your aim, your mile-age may vary greatly.

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Old 09-16-2018, 08:46 PM   #13
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I easily heard the differences in these (and got them right) from my laptop speakers, outside with the ac noise and crickets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRvRZNg8L0w

I know that s-gear gets alot of internet cred, but I just don't hear it. It sounds like a heavily filtered sim to me. Just flat and lifeless. I really do think a person would be better off with a solid state amp and a good speaker as a cost effective alternative. But I guess if <whatever> sounds ok to your ears, that is all that matters.
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Old 09-16-2018, 09:04 PM   #14
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"thin" is about the exact opposite problem that I have with amp sims

The idea that the computer running DSP inside a kemper or axe fx is somehow superior to the computer in a mac or pc running DSP is as laughable as thinking a UAD card or the ancient days PT TDM computers running DSP are better than the DSP inside the mac or PC somehow

If you like your tone, you like your tone. Right now, as much as I hate its kludgy, sketchy, slow nature, I like Bias better than anything I have ever played in my life, much much better than the heads and racks and racks of guitar gear I used to have. Sure there are some things that are hard to get, but the amp tone certainly isn't one of them.

One weird thing which I wouldn't have thought, 20 years ago, is that the cabinet model itself seems to be so much more influential on the tone than pretty much all the other factors combined. Celestion now releasing their own impulses has really made my life simpler
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Old 09-16-2018, 09:13 PM   #15
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doesn't Fender make some kind of amp sim, or something?
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Old 09-16-2018, 09:17 PM   #16
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IRight now, as much as I hate its kludgy, sketchy, slow nature, I like Bias better than anything I have ever played in my life, much much better than the heads and racks and racks of guitar gear I used to have. Sure there are some things that are hard to get, but the amp tone certainly isn't one of them.
For metal (hi gain), I'm guessing. Try to pull some classic rock tones out of it, and I bet you will be tweaking all night and the next day until your ears are sore from the aliasing.
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Old 09-16-2018, 09:19 PM   #17
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doesn't Fender make some kind of amp sim, or something?
Even Betty's cousin makes an amp sim these days. The things are like rabbits. Look Pa, there's another one!

*rustle* *rustle*

"Presenting the most realistic amp tone maker ever! (again, for the millionth time). The all new, ULTRA EXTRA REAL amp!"
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Old 09-16-2018, 09:47 PM   #18
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For metal (hi gain), I'm guessing. Try to pull some classic rock tones out of it, and I bet you will be tweaking all night and the next day until your ears are sore from the aliasing.
I do low gains all the time. A week ago I recorded a Carr Raleigh amp and a DI split at the same time, we ended up using Bias' Twin model instead of the Carr. I figure that's a good 1200 dollar savings, nevermind the other benefits of the DI

However, I strongly believe that this also has to do with my other point about IRs. If you really think about it, you are kidding yourself if you think you are going to beat a good impulse with any run of the mill professional studio room, never mind a home or project studio, when micing amps

I had ONE room, in my career, where very likely the very first cabinet impulse ever made was done in, that I believe I could compete with an impulse by micing. That room was inside a very prestigious studio, and took us some serious doing and thought to get right, and I am still betting that the lab Celestion used to make their impulses was better still, than Vintage's "Chunk Chamber"

I think you owe it to yourself to really, fairly, ABX some of these modern sims, I was a pretty doubting holdout, and you can see tons of threads on this very forum, back in the days when we had more manufacturers of the leading amp sims on here regularly, where I called them out on stuff, provided measurments, pictures and videos, so I was very very much in the "these things aren't cutting it" camp, until some newer products came out

I still didnt believe it and set out to prove they still weren't there by doing honest ABX tests and the joke was on me, I more often picked the sims as better.

Conversely to you, its the very highest gain tones I still have some trouble with, the crunch, low gain, and especially, glassy clean stuff is absolutely wonderful to me at this point.

BUT, if you have the amps, I wouldn't bother, I would take the line out and run it into an impulse and be happy and confident.

From someone who started his internet career on article after article on micing guitar cabs, I would be perfectly happy to never again, in my life, mic a guitar cab. I will only do so for academic tests or if a customer insists
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Old 09-16-2018, 10:18 PM   #19
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If one's fixated on hardware units as a benchmark, there's Helix native plugins, they're the same models as their pricey hardware box I guess.

Personally, I'm holding on my ancient POD farm. If I won't make anything out of that giant pile of different tones I'm failing hard at music. And no amount of hi tech modelling will help my skills anyway.
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Old 09-16-2018, 10:28 PM   #20
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However, I strongly believe that this also has to do with my other point about IRs. If you really think about it, you are kidding yourself if you think you are going to beat a good impulse with any run of the mill professional studio room, never mind a home or project studio, when micing amps
That hasn't been my experience at all. Sending amps into a loadbox and then into impulses sounds terrible, where they sound good with microphones, even in a bedroom. I have already tried some of the stuff from Celestion's IR library. Impulses make amps sound flat and lifeless, like amp sims. I laughed when I tried an impulse of one of my speakers. It was a major letdown, or it would have been if I didn't already have a good hunch of what to expect. Using cab impulse responses is a major reason why amp sims don't sound like amps in rooms through microphones. Of course, if you are using buckets of gain then everything is being super compressed anyway, it doesn't matter in that case so much.

I remember some years back, I had a modeler amp that sounded pretty decent in the room at lower volume. Using the direct out to send it to impulses sounded terrible. Putting a mic on it brought the thing back to life.

So, it is the same problem with either a tube amp or a modeler amp. Microphones in a room sound alot better to me ears. That bit of ambience between the mics and the amp helps to smooth the transients (but not kill them) and adds some space around the sound. It is no different than for drums or anything else. Drums sound crap with direct mics only, without overheads and some room to help smooth things out and pull everything together. And adding reverb after the fact doesn't fix it. It sounds like direct mics with reverb added. It's the same for guitar. We don't hear things in the world as if our ear is right up against the thing making sound. It doesn't sound good to the ears. The space around the thing making sound matters to our ears/brain. It is the same reason why most people prefer the sound of an acoustic guitar miked, rather than a piezo pickup. With a piezo, the room ambience is thrown away and the sound suffers, making the guitar sound lifeless.
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Old 09-16-2018, 10:51 PM   #21
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Some seem to be misunderstanding the Kemper. It’s not a computer running an amp sim. It’s a computer running proprietary profiling algorithms. It’s quite successful at what it does, and for me, better than other digital alternatives. At the moment.

I also don’t like the amp into impulse response approach. I find it really odd.

I also agree that an amp is almost always best in the end.

I use all these tools, and they all have a time and a place. None will make the difference between a great record and bad one.

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Old 09-16-2018, 11:33 PM   #22
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Never found a plugin amp I really liked for clean to slightly broken up tones. For me, the Wayfarer in SGear2 is OK, Kuassa Vermilion is better. Other than that they all sound pretty much alike to me.

I have never bothered trying any of the Pricey Boxes simply because they are just that.
And fwiw my home made wide panel tweed deluxe clone eats them all for breakfast, dinner & lunch. Plus at 11 watts it sounds pretty good down at bedroom levels if you dont need distortion.
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Old 09-17-2018, 12:30 AM   #23
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I know I'm running into the "through hi gain it all sounds the same" / "thru high gain everything is homogenous" / "through high gain...blah blah blah" bias here. That's a fruitless argument to even try to deal with. The hillarity of the same subject in the epic Slipperman VS Fletcher thread is worth a read

I'm surprised the impulses were giving you grief though, they turned a once super tedious and often not so happy results job into a thing of instant beauty for me.

I think there still is the thing about the dynamic response of speaker breakup that could be a failure of impulses, and I see ways people try to emulate that, but generally, I try like hell to avoid speaker distortion (though there could still be dynamics beyond that at play here)
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Old 09-17-2018, 12:31 AM   #24
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until your ears are sore from the aliasing.
Again, just no. Just no. 16x oversampling deals with that extremely well (that's 768 kHz if you track at 48k).

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I know that s-gear gets alot of internet cred, but I just don't hear it.
You don't hear it?



Amazing.

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Old 09-17-2018, 03:09 AM   #25
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The idea that the computer running DSP inside a kemper or axe fx is somehow superior to the computer in a mac or pc running DSP is as laughable as thinking a UAD card or the ancient days PT TDM computers running DSP are better than the DSP inside the mac or PC somehow
Has anyone actually thought that?

I don't think I've ever heard anyone have that misconception.
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Old 09-17-2018, 03:16 AM   #26
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Since we all have our opinions, the only thing I would say is that, in my experience, it's very much a minority view that today's top amp sims don't sound as good as real amps. The view that they actually sound bad in any way is even more so.

I do wonder if there are people who already believe that there will never be an amp sim that sounds like an amp. Obviously that can't be based in reality but it means they'll never listen to one objectively.

I'd personally be very surprised if anyone could tell in a blind test.
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Old 09-17-2018, 04:01 AM   #27
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Honestly IR's make a huge difference.

Companies that just make those:

Ownhammer
Rosen Digital (I think they recently changed to Lancaster Audio)
3 Sigma Audio
Joey Sturgis Tones has a few nice IRs for heavy stuff.

Truly, they were the game changer for me. 3rd party IRs, that is.

Here's a link to a track I finished up recently. Mixture of hard rock and rap for a tv licensing compilation. Guitars are high gain, completely in the box with TSEx50 and an IR from an Andrew Wade course on creative live.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6HwHl...RKq6U4dp7cB8hw

But I've seen plenty of other really convincing tones in the box. Helix native also seems great.
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Old 09-17-2018, 07:24 AM   #28
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I don't have the plugin version, but allegedly Helix Native is virtually identical to the hardware units and I absolutely love the sound of the hardware unit I've got. Highly recommended, though you might have to do a bit of work up front to get it sounding more like you want (particularly with high and low cuts). IRs also go a long way to getting it to sound more "real."

Having said that, once you get it there, it is 100x easier to get a good sound out of that than fiddling around with real amps and mic placement.
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Old 09-17-2018, 08:51 AM   #29
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Since we all have our opinions, the only thing I would say is that, in my experience, it's very much a minority view that today's top amp sims don't sound as good as real amps. The view that they actually sound bad in any way is even more so.

I do wonder if there are people who already believe that there will never be an amp sim that sounds like an amp. Obviously that can't be based in reality but it means they'll never listen to one objectively.

I'd personally be very surprised if anyone could tell in a blind test.
While I don't have the viewpoint that amp sims sound BAD, I do think that they exhibit a kind of sterile sound that isn't there in a real amp and speaker with a mic. I prefer to use real, but have used modeled also in the past. In a blind A/B test, I think I could pick out the sterile sound I'm referring to. It's as if there isn't enough randomness to the sound to my ears.
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:16 AM   #30
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While I don't have the viewpoint that amp sims sound BAD, I do think that they exhibit a kind of sterile sound that isn't there in a real amp and speaker with a mic. I prefer to use real, but have used modeled also in the past. In a blind A/B test, I think I could pick out the sterile sound I'm referring to. It's as if there isn't enough randomness to the sound to my ears.
Unfortunately it's not very realistic to find out.

I say unfortunately because I really wish there was a lot more blind test studies in the world of audio engineering.

I very much suspect that there would be a lot of surprises about what people really can and can't hear.
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:18 AM   #31
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Thread in general... Maybe people can list a bunch of commercial tunes recorded in the last couple of years and let us know which ones are SIMs and which ones are real minus prior knowledge?

Quote:
I think I could pick out the sterile sound I'm referring to.
You can always let me know which tracks in which songs in my sig are sim or amp. There are at least five different real amps and 3-4 different amp sims used there and plenty to choose from. Not saying you can or can't (your ears not mine LOL)... just giving an example where it's easy to test your theory accurately because a little of everything exists there and I can always pull up the projects and confirm which was which.
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:19 AM   #32
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Maybe people can list a bunch of commercial tunes recorded in the last couple of years and let us know which ones are SIMs and which ones a real by sound alone, minus prior knowledge?



You can always let me know which tracks in which songs in my sig are sim or amp. There are at least five amps and 3-4 different amp sims used there. Not saying you can or can't just giving a example where it's easy to test your theory.
Nice, interesting to see what happens with this one.

Just out of interest, which sims are used?
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:24 AM   #33
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Nice, interesting to see what happens with this one.

Just out of interest, which sims are used?
You tell me. Otherwise, I'll update with my thoughts on the matter and which SIMS at a later time, which is always in flux FWIW (my thoughts that is).
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:36 AM   #34
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
You tell me. Otherwise, I'll update with my thoughts on the matter and which SIMS at a later time, which is always in flux FWIW (my thoughts that is).
Well I don't claim to even be able to tell the sim from an amp never mind which specific sims.

But if he can tell them easily but it turns out it's guitar rig or something it wouldn't really mean much when talking about more up to date ones
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:38 AM   #35
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Since we all have our opinions, the only thing I would say is that, in my experience, it's very much a minority view that today's top amp sims don't sound as good as real amps. The view that they actually sound bad in any way is even more so.

I do wonder if there are people who already believe that there will never be an amp sim that sounds like an amp. Obviously that can't be based in reality but it means they'll never listen to one objectively.

I'd personally be very surprised if anyone could tell in a blind test.
The idea that you can't get a good sound using an amp sim is largely due to inherent confirmation bias, subjective prejudice and a lack of understanding on how to properly gain stage an amp sim. And also of course, which amp sim you are using. All amp sims are not created equal that's for sure. My personal favorite lately is positive grid bias/FX.

I have fooled numerous fellow musicians who swear that the only way to get that 'real' guitar sound is to use real tube apps in a room. But in blind tests they have been unable to tell the difference.

One mistake many guitar players make is judging a sound when it's all by itself rather than considering how it sits in a mix. For example, most guitar players when jamming around by themselves want a lot of thumpy bottom end. But all of this bottom end will just be rolled off in the mix anyway to make space for the bass guitar and kick drum.

Some will tell you that you need the interaction between pickups and your guitar amp. This is not altogether untrue as the interaction between your strings and the sound in the room definitely plays a part in the real world. But there's no reason you can't get that same effect directly from your studio monitors. The strings and pickups on your guitar don't know what kind of speaker or what type of cabinet are pushing air in the room. Sympathetic resonance can be achieved regardless.

The advantages of being able to re-amp and have complete recall far outweigh any slight perceived advantage that a tube amp may offer. This is further elevated considering that many musicians that are trying to record don't even have a great mic and or room to record the sound and in the first place. So depending on your situation, if you have the big bucks for tens of thousands of dollars worth of amplifiers and microphones and preamps and an engineer to go with them by all means crank up your Marshall stacks.

In my opinion however, the concept that this is the only way to get a guitar sound in this day and age is more an issue of predisposed preconceptions than actual reality.

That's just my two cents, worth admittedly maybe a half a penny.
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:43 AM   #36
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You can always let me know which tracks in which songs in my sig are sim or amp. There are at least five different real amps and 3-4 different amp sims used there and plenty to choose from. Not saying you can or can't (your ears not mine LOL)... just giving an example where it's easy to test your theory accurately because a little of everything exists there and I can always pull up the projects and confirm which was which.
Read back to where I said "in a blind A/B test" (and I mean playing the same line with the same approximate tone by that). You are proposing picking the amp sim without a non amp sim to compare with back to back, and with lots of other music surrounding it.

In a mix with other shit going on, unless the amp sim is a really bad one, most likely no one would be able to ID it, but playing isolated guitar through an amp followed by isolated guitar through an amp sim, I'm fairly sure I could tell.
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Old 09-17-2018, 10:00 AM   #37
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I have fooled numerous fellow musicians who swear that the only way to get that 'real' guitar sound is to use real tube apps in a room. But in blind tests they have been unable to tell the difference.
I have the same problem trying to get a real amp to sound exactly like another real amp.

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One mistake many guitar players make is judging a sound when it's all by itself rather than considering how it sits in a mix.
Even with guitar as my primary instrument, this is why I mix alone during the nitty gritty details of the mix when other musicians are involved.

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Some will tell you that you need the interaction between pickups and your guitar amp.
About the only real example I know of is a real fuzz pedal, it's one of the only circuits that load the guitar down and cause the sound to be very puffy and low-endish with a lot of highs rolled off (this is why you can never put anything between a vintage fuzz and the guitar which acts as a buffer and still sound as expected), but when you turn the guitar volume knob to even 8 from 10, it goes country clean and extremely bright which is the opposite of how guitar volume knobs usually work (they usually get darker and don't clean up as much).

There's no way for an incoming sound card signal into a DAW to know any of ^that and react accordingly, though they can do a 'decent' rendition of a classic fuzz with the assumption the guitar knob is on 10.
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Old 09-17-2018, 10:04 AM   #38
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Read back to where I said "in a blind A/B test" (and I mean playing the same line with the same approximate tone by that). You are proposing picking the amp sim without a non amp sim to compare with back to back, and with lots of other music surrounding it.

In a mix with other shit going on, unless the amp sim is a really bad one, most likely no one would be able to ID it, but playing isolated guitar through an amp followed by isolated guitar through an amp sim, I'm fairly sure I could tell.
Chicken.

More seriously, I asked because if it is a problem for the "result" then there should be no excuses when being asked to try. This means means we have one very important qualifying question to answer....

Is this about the player while he/she is playing or the final result (saying the result sucks because I wasn't inspired isn't allowed, you're a pro, deal with it - proverbial you). That distinction matters a LOT to most of the replies in this thread and keeping them mixed together means most of the value here is nil.

Lastly, there were plenty of comments in the thread about how SIMs sound, seems to me like that can be heard in production no? It's a sincere question so that I understand the conversation better.

My feelings are the mix/song doesn't give shit, and it doesn't... so I freely use what the mix/song is telling me it needs whether that is a real amp, a sim, or a string tied to a broom and a washtub. I have on more than one occasion swapped a sim out for an amp AND vice versa.
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Old 09-17-2018, 10:16 AM   #39
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Some will tell you that you need the interaction between pickups and your guitar amp. This is not altogether untrue as the interaction between your strings and the sound in the room definitely plays a part in the real world. But there's no reason you can't get that same effect directly from your studio monitors. The strings and pickups on your guitar don't know what kind of speaker or what type of cabinet are pushing air in the room. Sympathetic resonance can be achieved regardless.
There is also the idea that each amp has a different input impedence, so it will load your pickups down differently. The hardware versions of the Helix can model this (in that the guitar input can be set at different impedences), but you do need some sort of special hardware to do it. Of course, if you are using an active guitar, then it is a moot point anyway since the preamp does the loading.

I feel like all of this discussion is kinda beside the point anyway. The OP asked which plugins they might use to get a good sound similar to hardware modelers, not whether or not they should use "fake" amps at all.
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Old 09-17-2018, 10:18 AM   #40
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Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
Read back to where I said "in a blind A/B test" (and I mean playing the same line with the same approximate tone by that). You are proposing picking the amp sim without a non amp sim to compare with back to back, and with lots of other music surrounding it.

In a mix with other shit going on, unless the amp sim is a really bad one, most likely no one would be able to ID it, but playing isolated guitar through an amp followed by isolated guitar through an amp sim, I'm fairly sure I could tell.
But isn't the point that you would only ever hear the guitar in a mix anyway? So it kinda doesn't matter what it sounds like in isolation.
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