Best Amp Sims

[Cooker]

I use an EHX Glove before the soundcard, can run hotter into the soundcard as it prevents clipping when very low gain (around 9, it retains the guitars natural eq very good if you want with mild tube-like breakup). Plug-ins for higher gain really benefits from that compression, less artifacts at more extreme settings.

I'm a fan of ignite amps. Tried bias elite at a friend, amps immediately reminded me of a control room sound in a studio but presets sucked.

[Burillo]

Audio Assault?

Brutal tones!

after reading Honest Amp Sim Review's reviews of their stuff, i got pretty much all Audio Assault amp sims on a sale yesterday (cheap enough, so why not), and i had Hellbeast on preorder.

i can't say the tones are all that "brutal". they sound heavy at first sight, for sure, but they still somehow sound thin, fizzy and boomy, not rich and powerful (how can they sound thin and boomy at the same time is beyond me...). Hellbeast in particular (their new release) i had to try very hard to make it not sound like crap with my more picky guitar, and it still didn't sound good enough to say that i liked the tone i'm getting. maybe Randall Satan isn't my thing (it's not the first popular high gain amp that i dislike), but Hellbeast sounds like generic distortion with an envelope follower, not actual amp.

it also seems that their modeling tech is far behind the competition. these amps don't clean up at all - rolling off volume doesn't have the expected reaction, instead it sounds (almost) the same but quieter. i mean, i didn't expect a "Satanic Intestine Shit Grinder 666"-style amp to have great clean and/or breakup tones, but their Grind Machine II claims to model quite a few clean/low gain/crunchy amps, so while i didn't expect them to sound authentic, i expected them to at least get the basics right. yet those amps fail miserably in the "cleanup" department compared to Kuassa Caliburn (which i use as a benchmark), so much that even i have noticed that (and i've never owned a tube amp in my entire life, and don't actually know first hand how tube amp is supposed to react!).

all of their older standalone amps (Emperor, Dominator, Bulldozer) also have impulse "modeling" that doesn't behave like what happens when you move the mic (changes in frequency response are all wrong, off-center doesn't sound like it should), and the "distance" knob is a miserable failure - it sounds nothing at all like increasing mic distance - instead it adds some kind of reverb which makes things mushy and thin, so avoid that knob like the plague. the one thing Hellbeast has going for it is that apparently they've switched back to using plain impulses, not this "modeling" gimmick, which has grealy expanded the usable range of sounds.

speaking of impulses... most of them don't sound that good, to be honest. they're either bland, boomy or fizzy - never full and heavy, or rich and creamy, or... anything good, pretty much. you can't blend them either, so you're stuck with whatever they offer unless you use external impulses. well, to its credit, Hellbeast can blend impulses, but you're stuck with 50/50 ratio.

many of the amps also have quirks and bugs. Bulldozer has a bug where if you have stomp boxes, they appear to be blended 50/50 with the amp signal (i first noticed it on clean channel, but it also happens on distorted channels as well). Dominator and Emperor have issues with value display - some of them are in % but with decimal point in the wrong place (e.g. gain knob goes from 00.00% to 10.00%), other times the values aren't in % but are displayed as such (e.g. gate knob goes from -150.00% to 0.00%). it's not the end of the world, but you'd think that by version 1.2-1.3 such obvious things would've been fixed.

their stomps, while are usable, sound nothing like their real counterparts. the tone control on the screamer, for example, is more like a tilt EQ than a low pass filter, and will actually add bass if you set it too low - who woulda thought that i can use a screamer to make bassy farts! other FX are usable, but pretty generic sounding. the compressor is not like a guitar compressor pedal, but more like a studio compressor in a stomp-box format - which i guess is okay if you only have one, but i've grown used to a two-knob operation in Kuassa's compressor stomp.

there are definitely positives though. Dominator, Bulldozer and Emperor take far less effort to make them sound good than Hellbeast. they also have more complete FX, and actually can use all of their stomp FX in an FX loop (take that Amplitube!) - so if you want to stick a screamer into an FX loop, you can. clean/breakup tones suck, but they can provide some good lead tones, provided that you don't attempt to play with knobs on your guitar. with the exception of Grind Machine II, the tones can also be self-contained in the plugin, which is a plus for jamming.

so, bottom line, while i liked some tones i was getting, and i can't really say that money was a waste (except for the $9 i spent on Hellbeast preorder on a whim - i don't like that amp one bit)... i was greatly underwhelmed. you'd think with names like "Hellbeast", "Dominator", "Bulldozer" and all sorts of other metal-sounding names, they'd excel at metal, but even the heavier tones... Mercuriall smokes anything Audio Assault has to offer. a single instance of ReAxis sounds heavier than any Audio Assault amp double tracked, and also gives great crunchy tones. now having experience with what Audio Assault has to offer, what little desire i had to check out the JST amp sims has vanished.

also, Honest Amp Sim Reviews, what's wrong with you?! how did you give Audio Assault stuff such high score? do you not have volume knobs on your guitars?!

[abhor]

Emperor is terrible and should be avoided like bird flu. Audio assault stuff is usually glitchy and clunky and one dimensional. It’s like the beginner distortion pedal version of an amp sim. However for 5 bucks dominator and bulldozer are ok as a cheap suite that can sound like something. Hellbeast is like a slightly more functional version of the same thing. Emperor sounds like crap and is riddled with bugs though.

Grind machine 2 is so much fun though but only if you buy the 2 expansions. It’s not good sounding but they sound nothing like other stuff on the market.

Also most of these sims break up badly at any decent volume level.

[xphen0m]

I bought Neural DSP's Fortin Natas sim over the weekend. WOW! That thing is a beast.

[dandezebra]

TSE X50 is still the king for high gain. My opinion...

Which is correct!

[lajosuti]

I totally agree on the audio assault stuff. Grind Machine 2 is somewhat interesting, but the free ignite emissary just smokes it without any effort.

[abhor]

The new emissary and nadir are perfect for modern metal. Comes with fun impulses too. Takes 2 minutes to sound good. It’s also free as everyone knows.

[imrae]

Does anyone have an opinion on the "dirt machine" distortion pedals plugin?

Burillo's take on the AA amps seems similar to my experience with the Waves GTR3: a decent range of tones that could work well in the right mix, but individually they feel "stiff" with a weird gain-dependence.

[abhor]

The dirt machine is alot like grind machine 2. It doesn't really sound like the pedals it's modeling but it adds an interesting color to your guitar. When it's on sale for $5 it's worth it.

AA, GTR3 JST..they are very stiff and gain dependent. They actually sound better in a mix than they do while playing because they don't "respond" at all. I know it's a fake amp but some of the better ones don't remind you of that all the time.

[pattonfreak1]

The new emissary and nadir are perfect for modern metal. Comes with fun impulses too. Takes 2 minutes to sound good. It’s also free as everyone knows.

Can confirm

[lajosuti]

By the way for clean/crunch SKnote Deluxe1 is just awesome With humbucker, with single coil, I am truly amazed that this is possible with a computer. Warm without being muddy, great treble without being nasty shrill, so happy with this one.

[reggie1979]

I've recently gone back to Kuassa Creme, but you have to set the oversampling high on it or you get some nasty artifacts bending high notes.

Not a metal guy but love high gain. Examples would be nice from some of you guys giving such high praise to certain units. Some of them I just couldn't get on with myself.

[reggie1979]

Also, I find that I don't like anything unless there is some verb mixed in as well. The "room" in IK is good for this w/o needing a bus send to verb. But I'm really finding it's not my cup'o these days.

[donkey tugger]

The only way to review something is to demo it. Besides, most reviews are simply a regurgitation of features. You have to play it and hear for yourself.

Am I the only one who thinks that nearly every one of these can be used effectively if you know how to eq properly and it doesn't really matter what others say? When Pete Thorn does a demo, it sounds like Pete. When Ola does his constant chugging he sounds like Ola. You are going to sound like you no matter what, it's simply preference.

(whoops, mistakes)

I don't know who those people are (famous modern widdly metel chaps one supposes..) but I'd very much agree with this. Whilst amps of course do have a character, a lot of the sound will come from the way you play and you'll always naturally gravitate to setting up any amp to sound similar. 'Back in the day', I used to play jangly indie pop in bands with a Washburn 'super' (I use the term advisedly) strat through a Marshall Valvestate - made it work...

[reggie1979]

Ola is metal, PT is pretty varied.

It's kinda like the story of EVH. People always want to play through his rig but they never like it. Ed sounds like Ed. I sound like me (which is most shite)