Poll: Guitar processing/sims, what do you expect from them?

[SJ_Digriz]

But I don't intend to play the guitar myself. So, the sound wouldn't be dependent on the guitar that I have which I think is a cheap guitar. Couldn't the sound designer at, oh let's say, Guitar Rig, just use a very good midi file of the songs that that guitar sound came from to test those presets and make it sound as close as they can to the original songs?

That's the way I would use it, I would just make up guitar riffs by penciling it in the piano roll and trigger the amp sim (Guitar Rig, for example).

that would be more modeling than amp sim. IK does Modo bass where they've modeled a bunch of bass guitars, pickups, amps and allow you to move things around. Again, if you have the real thing, they sound absolutely nothing like the model from a setting for setting basis. However, you can get convincing bass sounds out of modo bass.

[Deep Purple]

I expect them to have "guitar God" presets. My guitar God is Jimmy Page. I'm very bad at trying to make presets that sounds like the "real thing".

If would be great to have presets of guitar sounds for every Led Zeppelin songs. For example I want a preset that sounds just like the guitar sound from the song "I Can't Quit You Baby" from the first Led Zeppelin album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29PSPafL54o

I believe Jimmy Page played a Telecaster on the first album through an old beaten up Supro combo that he owned for years. Might be hard to match that combo with amp sims, especially the number of years hauling it around studios as a session musician.

[harryupbabble]

Instead of hunting down the original equipments that Jimmy Page might have used for those songs, why don't they just isolate the guitar sound from the CD or album and then use more sophisticated tools than Voxengo SPAN or whatever and visually match up the isolated guitar sound with their guitar amp sims? Even better, why not just capture the isolated guitar sounds note for note and put them in a sampler like Kontakt?

Sure, they might have to pay Jimmy Page a lot of money to do that but surely there's a lot of people that might want "guitar God" presets and maybe they (the guitar sim companies like Guitar Rig or is it Native Instruments?) can still make a profit? But since it's not being done maybe they don't think it's worth doing? But maybe it is worth doing? Aarrghh, I don't know. I'm pretty naive about these things. And lots of other things.

Okay, I'm off to try to get some sleep. Adios guitar dudes/gals.

[tapper mike]

Line 6 has done this in spades with regards to helix.

Actually JP used several guitars for LZ1

Harry tone is not an isolated incident. So much of performance affects tone that to assume it can simply be sampled and recreated even in a round robin method. Everything affects tone. String gauge, Picking attack, angle, distance of the pick in relation to how it's being held. placement of the pick along the bridge palm muting Characteristics of the volume knob (which can affect tone) characteristics of the position of the tone pot both of which can change during the course of the song as well as the pickup selector position.

[donkey tugger]

I expect them to have "guitar God" presets. My guitar God is Jimmy Page. I'm very bad at trying to make presets that sounds like the "real thing".

If would be great to have presets of guitar sounds for every Led Zeppelin songs. For example I want a preset that sounds just like the guitar sound from the song "I Can't Quit You Baby" from the first Led Zeppelin album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29PSPafL54o

I believe Jimmy Page played a Telecaster on the first album through an old beaten up Supro combo that he owned for years. Might be hard to match that combo with amp sims, especially the number of years hauling it around studios as a session musician.

Strangely, copies of both have just been released...

https://www.musicradar.com/news/namm-20 ... y-revealed

https://www.musicradar.com/news/namm-20 ... -zep-1-amp

Is old Jim skint after his never ending feud with Robbie Williams or something?

[jens]

Line 6 has done this in spades with regards to helix.

Actually JP used several guitars for LZ1

Harry tone is not an isolated incident. So much of performance affects tone that to assume it can simply be sampled and recreated even in a round robin method. Everything affects tone. String gauge, Picking attack, angle, distance of the pick in relation to how it's being held. placement of the pick along the bridge palm muting Characteristics of the volume knob (which can affect tone) characteristics of the position of the tone pot both of which can change during the course of the song as well as the pickup selector position.

And then it of course also depends on the context that the other instruments create... isolated the individual instruments will sound slightly or perhaps even drastically different than in the context of the mix and arrangement.

[harryupbabble]

@TapperMike

The impression that I get, from reading some of your posts, is that you are a genuine guitar guru with lots of experience.

And so, I guess you are right that the actual guitar tones in, oh let's say, the first Led Zeppelin album or CD are not perfectly capturable.

But I remember BONES stating something like "Guitar Rig collaborated with the guitar player from the band Rammstein and the presets are awesome". That's not word for word and BONES might pop in and state "That's not what I stated at all". But definitely, BONES was praising those presets. So, those presets might have come close to the actual Rammstein songs?

From Donkey Tugger's NAMM articles links, it seems that Jimmy Page is not above collaboration when it comes to his guitar sounds since he collaborated with the Fender guitar company.

Maybe Jimmy Page might eventually collaborate with guitar sim brands like Guitar Rig. Sure, the presets that might come from such a collaboration might not be perfect but it will have Jimmy Page's endorsement and more importantly his input and that might be good enough for a lot people, like me.

On the other hand, hahaha, I hope that Jimmy Page's ears are still good and he is not like one of these guys yet.

I USED TO DREAAAM OF HAVING IMAGINARY FRIENDS!

MAYBE YOU SCARED THEM AWAY YELLING AT THEM

WHAT?

[mumpcake]

I prefer the rack-like layout a la Guitar Rig over the stomp/amp/Post-fx model that Amplitube uses. I also prefer a "schematic" look over hyperrealism, especially if you have a pedal where you can't see what value the knob is set to because it is obscured by the lighting effect.

There are some days I want a configure-everything version of the amp model. Other days I want a simple version with just gain and tone controls.

I use amp sims as much for playing along silently to recordings as I use them as an effect in a daw, so naturally a standalone would be important.

[Bombadil]

I'm not sleeping well these days, so I was playing my Gretsch through Scuffham Amps at 4:00 AM this morning. They're great for that.

[Tilly]

I'd rather not see anything from Meldaproduction here tbh and leave it to the devs specialized on it. We don't need generic MTurboAmp or so and it's soundwise in a analog/emulation direction where Meldaproduction always said they didn't want to go because it's nonsense.

Bias Amp and Guitar Rig aleady satisfy all my needs. Waiting for Kemper to release a plugin version of their amp too.
Else I think a must have is a good library of amps and fx chains made from people who know what their doing, not just seeing it as a new challenge.

[trmupstage]

Personally, I'd be happy with a single amp sim that actually sounded like a real amp. I don't mean to sound like a troll. I've bought a ton of amp sims from Plugin Alliance, Softube, Line 6, and a few others. I spend a ton of time trying to get them to have the punch and clarity I am looking for. So much time and money. Out of absolute frustration after years, I take a Deluxe reverb (real amp) and stick an sm57 anywhere near the speaker. Instantly it sounds better than anything I could get from an amp sim. Night and day. No lie. Maybe I have not used the right amp sims. That could be. I'm just looking for that slightly crunchy sound that cleans up easily. The real amp does that all the time. I'm not a metal guy, but I imagine it might be easier to get metal tones from a sim. I just never found a sim to be anywhere close to the sound of a real amp.

I can see the need for amp sims if you are in an apartment or your family hates your playing loud. But, If you want a great sound, just get a tube amp and be done with it. I think of amp sims as a nice picture of an amplifier, but not really an amp. I know I sound so unenlightened, but trust me, in the last 20 years trying to get amp sims to give me the sound I was looking for. It just never was fully what I wanted.

OK, my troll session is done.

[Hink]

Personally, I'd be happy with a single amp sim that actually sounded like a real amp. I don't mean to sound like a troll. I've bought a ton of amp sims from Plugin Alliance, Softube, Line 6, and a few others. I spend a ton of time trying to get them to have the punch and clarity I am looking for. So much time and money. Out of absolute frustration after years, I take a Deluxe reverb (real amp) and stick an sm57 anywhere near the speaker. Instantly it sounds better than anything I could get from an amp sim. Night and day. No lie. Maybe I have not used the right amp sims. That could be. I'm just looking for that slightly crunchy sound that cleans up easily. The real amp does that all the time. I'm not a metal guy, but I imagine it might be easier to get metal tones from a sim. I just never found a sim to be anywhere close to the sound of a real amp.

I can see the need for amp sims if you are in an apartment or your family hates your playing loud. But, If you want a great sound, just get a tube amp and be done with it. I think of amp sims as a nice picture of an amplifier, but not really an amp. I know I sound so unenlightened, but trust me, in the last 20 years trying to get amp sims to give me the sound I was looking for. It just never was fully what I wanted.

OK, my troll session is done.

my problem with sims is simply latency, I just couldn't get the feel with them. My line 6 pod 2.0 and xt live did me ok for a while living in one bad apartment scenario because there was no latency but when I moved to a bigger apartment I started getting back to tube amps with attenuators (I have two webers), 4 lower powered tube amps and an iso cab. I was current at one point with AT3, waves gtr 3.5, guitar rig 4 and VANDAL (that's how long ago it was) and could re-amp using those to improve on the line 6 tone but I'm old and I just like a decent tube amp and tbh I play more than record.

With that said, probably the biggest came for me in the 90's, I had a Marshall 9000 stereo tube pre-amp (still do) and tried all kind of ways to get that to sound ok but little success in an apartment without a tube power amp. I traded some gear for a Sansamp GT2, possibly the first really accurate amp emulator (at least imo) and was blown away within seconds. I did use that for a long time, I still have it in fact but the tone back early this century was giving me ear fatigue.

FTR I have three Frenzel Amps, handwired, two are two watts the other can use any octal based power tube (for which I have many choices and it's single ended so no need for biasing) and runs from 2-14 watts, one of the two watt ones can bypass the power tube and be used as a pre-amp (also with a raw control at my choice to bypass the tone controls) with the 2-14 watt amp (either cascading or in bypassing the larger amps pre), an Egnater Rebel, a Jet City 50 (I put sovteks in it and put a metal grill on the front) and a Mesa Boogie SOB (60/100 watt, with the same metal grill as the Jet City)...I feel I have the bases well covered. In fact all of my amps except the Boogie can be used as just a pre into the single ended Frenzel power amp including the Marshall 9000 pre.

Back on topic, I would love to know what has improved as far as latency goes with sims since 2010 when I went back to tube amps. How do people work around it while tracking live?

[Etienne1973]

Back on topic, I would love to know what has improved as far as latency goes with sims since 2010 when I went back to tube amps. How do people work around it while tracking live?

I'm also latency sensible that's why I'm going for a Thunderbolt audio interface with <3ms (roundtrip: audio in > audio out) in the near future.

[SJ_Digriz]

I guess latency is less of a big deal to me. I have 15ms total latency. Which I could get to well under 10 if I needed to. But, I've played on stages with far worse than that.

[Hink]

Back on topic, I would love to know what has improved as far as latency goes with sims since 2010 when I went back to tube amps. How do people work around it while tracking live?

I'm also latency sensible that's why I'm going for a Thunderbolt audio interface with <3ms (roundtrip: audio in > audio out) in the near future.

interesting, I need a minimum of 6 inputs for my tube rig (two can be coax digital or analog, I use up to 3 mics but typically two, a dry direct from an aby box, line out from amps and the stereo return of a lexicon mx-400 so I can record and monitor through effects without committing to them). So my question is, is all thunderbolt technology 3ms or just the UA stuff? (I would have to spend 2k on a UA interface to suit my needs)