Can you tell the difference between amp sims and a mic'd amp recording?

[memyselfandus]

Can you tell the difference between amp sims and a mic'd amp recording?

If so.. what do you hear?

If not.. what are you listening for? that would tell the difference?

[itneveris]

In the context of a full mix, no almost no one can.

And if they can they haven't listened to music to enjoy it for a long time

[Aleatoriac]

I can only tell the difference if I'm playing the guitar through one of each.

Just by listening to a recording, I cannot tell the difference.

* Must add also that a sim through a power amp and an actual speaker feels far more like the real thing than a sim In The Box. I have no idea if it's just the latency or what, but sims all seem stiff and weak in the upper register.

[cookedvulture]

I think I can feel the difference while playing, but not hear it on a recording, maybe when it comes to feedback.. ,?

[SJ_Digriz]

* Must add also that a sim through a power amp

Using the power amp of a real head through speakers gets very close. DI, not so much. But again its hard to tell when you aren't playing it yourself. Pretty easy when you are.

[subterfuge]

Does even the best of amp sims sound the same through the studio monitors vs. real tube amps through the real cabs? Codestation is to something there, the difference is not even small. But, listening to recorded guitars, not playing them yourself real time and the difference could be even impossible to tell.

[SJ_Digriz]

Does even the best of amp sims sound the same through the studio monitors vs. real tube amps through the real cabs?

DI, no ... not even close. If you are in the room it is night and day.

But, listening to recorded guitars, not playing them yourself real time and the difference could be even impossible to tell.

Again, once mixed down, you are no longer listening through the amp/speaker and the difference diminishes significantly, to the point where unless they do something purposefully obvious, you typically won't be able to tell the difference.

[simon.a.billington]

Yeah, plugin latency is the main contributer for any differences as a musician.

So long as you have a pretty good emulation to work with, sonically they are definitely good enough for the part. Even Logic does a decent job with the emulations, although I have to confess Waves GTR is my main goto.

Maybe it's the combination of IR speakers and modelled amplification or maybe it's the boutique amps they selected, or both. Sounds sweet to my ears

[arkmabat]

Sometimes a plugin amp is drier and crispier. Like old leaves.

[Burillo]

Yeah, plugin latency is the main contributer for any differences as a musician.

no, not really. sound has a finite speed. a typical ampsim latency will get you in the ballpark of standing a few meters away from the cabinet, less if you're using something faster than 256 samples @ 44.1 kHz. there is latency through the real amp too, it's just the latency isn't due to processing, but due to the sound taking time to reach your ears.

on topic: ideally, no. usually, yes. but that's not because i have golden ears. it's just that whenever these tests are done, the real amp is usually recorded in a less-than-perfect room, with a particular mic placement, has noise and other real world artifacts that you don't get with an ampsim. also, a lot of these tests are also done by people who predominantly play through real amps and don't really know how to handle an amp sim and how to achieve good sounds through it - thereby spoiling the test in favor of a real amp. once the recording of a real amp is on par with amp sim in terms of all these things, it becomes extremely hard for me to tell the difference.

comparing a sound directly from the cabinet to a sound from your speakers is incorrect. either record the amp and compare it with amp sim (which gives you "recorded" sound out of the box), or output an amp sim through a guitar cabinet (disabling the native cab emulation, of course) to get the "live sound" out of the amp sim. otherwise it's apples to oranges.

oh, and for that "poweramp sound", you might try the free Ignite Amps TPA-1. it's really great.

[subterfuge]

it's just that whenever these tests are done, the real amp is usually recorded in a less-than-perfect room, with a particular mic placement, has noise and other real world artifacts that you don't get with an ampsim.

True. But testing (comparing) real amps with the amp sims is a bit different game than simply listening recorded guitars while not knowing how they are actually done. In the latter case, all throught the history we've never really known what has been used unless we were there ourselves or if we can trust what has been told to us.

comparing a sound directly from the cabinet to a sound from your speakers is incorrect. either record the amp and compare it with amp sim (which gives you "recorded" sound out of the box), or output an amp sim through a guitar cabinet (disabling the native cab emulation, of course) to get the "live sound" out of the amp sim. otherwise it's apples to oranges.

Of course it is, but there's a point there which gets neglected so easily. Amp sims will not sound and feel like real amps when they are both compared in their "natural" environment, amps/cabs out in the room and sims out of the box. When you present both via the recording medium, the differences may become negligible, but the player still has (or wants) to play in the environment they have to play. Neither is bad per se, but they are not the same either.

[Burillo]

Of course it is, but there's a point there which gets neglected so easily. Amp sims will not sound and feel like real amps when they are both compared in their "natural" environment, amps/cabs out in the room and sims out of the box. When you present both via the recording medium, the differences may become negligible, but the player still has (or wants) to play in the environment they have to play. Neither is bad per se, but they are not the same either.

i'm not sure i understood what you said correctly, but if i did, that's exactly what i said. the "natural" environment of an amp sim is recorded guitar sound, not a live guitar sound. therefore, comparing both in their "natural" environments is apples to oranges comparison. so in order for a comparison to even make some sense, either real amp has to be recorded (or listened to from the control room), or the amp sim has to go through a real cabinet.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I plan on buying a Fender Princeton Reverb reissue in the next few months, and I'm sure one of the first things I'll do is mic it up with a 57, use my DI to ABY, and compare it to the Amplitube version at the same settings.

My guess: Amplitube will sound better. Why do I think that? I think the "microphones" are a bit idealized in AT3 and not at all representative of an un-EQ'd microphone. I suspect a lot of the 57 honk will be mixing and Amplitube will sound more hifi and polished, whereas the mic'd version will sound more raw and lofi without any EQ.

[Jace-BeOS]

In a recording? Hell no. Outside a recording? Yes, maybe, but only in that there's a lot more variation in sounds when you have a sim and plugins vs a dude with an ax and an amp. I've played through an amp and it has one sound. The settings don't vastly change it. To change it dramatically, you add stomp boxes or change amps. It also is easier to get feedback on a live setup as opposed to DI (where feedback is almost impossible). As a guy with hearing damage, I think it's cool to be able to get a similar sound without exposing my ears to potentially dangerous volume spikes in real amp situations, but I do miss the sounds and chaos of feedback. Some sims try to accommodate for that by plugging some of their own output back into the input but it's not controllable like it is when you're standing in front of the amp (but then, I'm not a real guitarist, so probably other people have better technique). I think some sims even insert a mains hum and air noise. Some sims sound more rough than others (my old Peavy TransTubeFex sounds much more aggressive and dirty than my relatively newer Line 6 Pod XT Pro).

I suspect I PREFER the simulations. When I plug a guitar in, I want to treat it like a synthesizer and get vastly different sounds from it. Not being a pro at guitar tweaking, that's easier with sims than actual amps. When I read that Trent Reznor used early Reaktor like a guitar processing suite (during the Fragile), I thought "cool. If that's what I'm hearing, I like it. I should try that". Of course I have no idea which ensembles or effects were actually used, or if they were recorded in the box or from an amped speaker with a mic. Basically, the pint is this: music I like a lot has used this stuff since it was available and it's always transparent to me. I only care about the end result.

[jancivil]

there've been shoot-outs and discussion here and some people believed this and some people believed that about a naked result of a sim.

I don't know, it depends, maybe, I don't know if I care a lot.
For myself using them, I tend to cut and begin a shelf around 6khz because of a certain fizziness, depending. Amplitube particularly. I use Guitar Rig for things that aren't necessarily naturalistic so it's a different consideration but I think I like its highs better.