Both preamp/poweramp and cabinet/mic modeling involve digital processing and algorhithms, the fact that most cabinet models are "just" impulse responses doesn't matter. The question is which part of the signal chain corresponds better to what we hear from real gear. What method is used to make these "models" is irrevelant.

sorry all for a slight ot

if you want to emulate the speaker coil check out Weber attenuators

This is what many of their attenuators use



carry on (I have nothing to say about the topic at hand)

I use multiple cab sims, I use multiple amp modeling suites. Amplitube is my go-to, but I see plenty of use for some of the other stand-outs in my collection (I've been really impressed with S-Gear 2, for example, it's simple to use but man it sounds great, or Flying Haggis, another totally dead simple sim with a lot of neat sounds nonetheless, and I would be totally remiss if I didn't give Guitar Rig 4 mad props for its flexibility and the killer sound shaping you can do with it, it's almost more synth-oriented than guitar-oriented sometimes imo).

I voted amps as being the thing that's most "right" these days. I still will not hesitate to record a track fully in the box (well, past some nice converters ), but all cab sims could be a little better, some could be a lot better. Nothing quite like the real interaction of electricity, push-back, cabinet involvement, speakers varying in their physical configuration as they reproduce the waveform and get interference and all that good stuff, and just a whole lot of air moving!

I'm also with Dean/Nekro (my man! keep rocking) that stomps have room for improvement, but then I'm a bit of a connoisseur for reasons that should be obvious from the signature. But like amps and cabs, that's gotten a lot better as time has gone on, too. We're a gigantic leap ahead of where we started, even where we were a few years ago when I first got really, really interested in amp modeling as a technology and a tool for my studio. Like, compare gear added with each iteration of a particular software tool and see if you don't agree - the Tubescreamer in Amplitube 2 vs. something as everyday as the BOOST stomp in Amplitube Slash, or the Custom Shop stomps... You won't get me near the early AT2-era overdrives now that I've got the later stuff and the CS stomps. The level of sophistication is much higher and the fidelity to hardware much greater.

Amazing time to be a musician. We can do so much these days, I almost hate to kvetch about this or that not being perfect when it's so close.

not that I disagree because I don't in whole but close to perfect what?
Perfectly sounding real? If you want real that is already an option. Besides it is real, it's a guitar signal amplified and tweaked for a desired tone by the player. That's as real as it gets, perfect.

OTOH if you're saying sims are getting close to sounding really great I have to disagree because I think they already do sound great. I really believe that amp sims really nailed it on this generation and they got over a hump if you will and now they are there. But then perfect doesn't exist in this case, in the above there are no degrees of real but in the latter there is no perfect sound. FWIW I'm glad there isn't, but I'll keep looking for it because I have so much fun along the way.

I really agree on how it is being a guitar player right now, I'm glad I didn't blow my ears out or burn myself out years ago like so many my age. I honestly have never had a better amp rig whether it be hardware or itb than I do now (I have both well covered as you know). All the years in bad environments with poor quality audio to flipping on a few switches for sonic utopia is more than a dream come true. Staying up an extra few hours when everyone is in bed and knowing no matter how late it is no one will complain is liberating.

I guess I did have something to say But honestly I cannot say which is better because which is better really is about "which is better at for a specific purpose?" I do weird things

This is a good point. However, since the amp and cab models work together as a system, I wonder how you can really judge them separately. One is not going to sound good without the other.

Unfortunately, only Vandal (from MAGIX) offers cabinet MODELING. To a physical level.

And it sounds WAY BETTER than IR based stuff in my view.

I really hope that IK and Recabinet are working on that. Switching to cabinet and speaker modeling.

Really adds another dimension to the sound.

More info about cabinet and speaker modeling :
http://www.vandalamps.com/en/technology.49.html

By the way Recabinet 3.1.1 offers some modeling for the speaker. Like the way it vibrates. Subtle, but definitely an improvement !

See here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sandnFGWpdo

This is the same argument between IRs for realistic spaces vs algorithmic reverb, and the same pros and cons apply - realism vs dynamics. I think the future of cab simulation is in hybrid modeling, which we actually pioneered with the introduction of AmpliTube 3, and now others are beginning to move towards as well.

Well, by the time cabinet and speaker modeling is going to be done right, which will come, nobody will speak about IRs anymore for guitar stuff .

Fact is, modeling speakers and cabs is more complex than going for IRs or hybrid.

So development time and cost would be higher first. But when you'll come with a good algo and get some experience, it should be fast. As always with new development.

Yeah, R&D hello ?

That said, Brian, have a look at the AmpliTube forum, I posted something about bass, maybe IK could grab ideas there.

Yes, we are sorry to, going slightly stray from topic.

Thanks for suggestions, I had a link to those yesterday. Very affordable it seems - $90 for 25W model. Only thing is you need cabinet emulation after that - but can be a good thing really if finding real good ones. I find cabinets are really doing the work in bringing the tone.

Tend to use TH-2 at the moment, with their built in cab modeller - not the IRs.

Recabinet's Speaker Dynamics feature accurately models all of the nonlinear aspects of speakers. The IRs accurately model all of the linear characteristics. Together they form an exact model of the sound of a speaker cabinet with different microphones.

In other words, IRs and physical modeling are not mutually exclusive. In fact, put together, the two approaches can create an exact model of any analog hardware I can think of.

Do they model them in a generic or a specific way? I use Recabinet quite often but this is something I don't really understand well. It's sort of like in S-Gear, there's that "z"-factor knob which adjusts the impedance relationship to make it more dynamic as you'd get with the variable output of an amp's power section and a cabinet responding to that. It's electrical, though. There are a lot of factors to take into account, I think Recabinet does a solid job but I am curious if whatever the Speaker Dynamics process is was done on an individual level or if it's sort of a generic thing that's good enough for most work (because, I mean, really, literal 100% fidelity is a bit of a high goal to shoot for given our processing constraints, even now with very powerful processors largely deprecating DSP).



Though speaking of powerful processors and DSP, have you seen what nVidia and AMD are up to lately with their workstation lineups? Some really impressive HPC opportunities, we could have generalized DSP processing without the need for proprietary hardware. Tremendous processing power and memory bandwidth connected pretty much directly to the execution pipeline at a very low level, and deliciously low latency, but of course that's all great in theory... It'd be awesome to see some of the guys like yourself move toward supporting GPGPU, since processing IRs and realistic simulation of dynamics is a complex task but one which can be highly parallel, there are several plugins out there as "proof of concept" if nothing else. If someone with a real stake were to put his mind to it, I think the results would be exciting.

Not advocating replacing DSP with GPGPU, but as a supplement to native rather than a sort of "stand against" native, would be a treat. Sure, we've got brutally powerful processors, but GPUs make 'em look marginalized or ancient at some tasks which happen to lend themselves well to audio. OpenCL is getting better all the time, and CUDA is a notably mature API, though somewhat proprietary since it's nVidia only. But the API being proprietary to hardware is rather different than software being proprietary to hardware, and the option could always exist to let the CPU handle it instead, just accept the increased processing load.

Hey Shane; could you talk about what the dynamics knob in Recabinet is actually doing?

What do you think of the Two Notes Torpedo plug-in if you have ever tried the freeware version ?

http://www.two-notes.com/en/software/torpedo-pi-free/

(I'm working for Two Notes, I don't want to hide it )

I like it, Have a Torpedo Live rack unit on the shopping list dude actually, Possibly two of them

Cheers

Dean