Bias Amp 2 Reviews...Holy Crap

[wagtunes]

Saying Sim A SOUNDS better than Sim B is has NOTHING to do with a DEBATE or MERIT.:

Whether I prefer the Peavey 6505 to a Bogner Uberschall.. well that's completely a matter of taste.

For the final time, saying Sim A sounds closer to Amp A than sim B, where Amp A happens to have the tone I am looking for. If you are telling me that a Guitar Rig 5 Van 51 patch sounds as close to a real live Peavey 6505 as the Axe FX II XL+ 6505 amp model.. that's like saying The Legend emulates the Minimoog no better than some Synthedit emulation from 10 years ago

You can even say you think the Synthedit sounds better, but that doesn't make it a closer emulation.

/peace out.

If getting a Minimoog sound is important, you use an actual Minimoog. Otherwise it doesn't matter, as long as the "attitude" or "spirit" of the gear is present.

If you expect a $200 plugin to sound exactly like a $3000 piece of analog gear, the problem is not the plugin; the problem is your expectations. If the free synthedit Minimogue gets you even remotely close to the idea you were trying to convey, then it is no better or worse than the modern counterpart.

After all, tools don't write music; people do. If your song sucks, it doesn't matter if your synth was a free plugin or the latest and greatest big-money emulation, or even the legendary hardware itself. And if your song is amazing, then the quality of the plugin will only really account for a very marginal improvement anyway.

Alas, this is a plugin forum, where the songs generally don't matter.

In a sense, I agree and disagree. Yes, it starts with the music. If your song sucks, nothing is going to save it. On the other hand, poor sounding anything can ruin a good song.

No better example of this than myself. People here, as much as they detest me, have admitted that I've written some pretty good songs.

BUT...

Almost EVERYBODY agrees that they're ruined because I use Vocaloid for vocals instead of a real singer.

So I'm sorry, but sound DOES matter. Use enough really horrid sounding Synthedit plugins (and there are plenty to choose from) and no matter how good your song is, it's going to sound like crap.

Otherwise, why do professional song producers use millions of dollars worth of equipment?

It's extremely difficult to make something good out of a turd. But dip sterling silver in enough mud and dog poop and it's just not going to look as good as if it were newly polished.

Presentation matters.

[martinjuenke]

It's extremely difficult to make something good out of a turd. But dip sterling silver in enough mud and dog poop and it's just not going to look as good as if it were newly polished.

I recommend the good old German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche for bedtime reading...

[funky lime]

edit, nevermind

[imrae]

Taste and genre do also impact what people look for as "quality". I find most of the J-pop I've heard to be very... ROMpler-y? I'd hear it as cheap/old in a western pop track but I'm pretty sure those producers know exactly what they're doing.

I can believe that there will be a similar thing where "flat" amp simulations are well-suited to certain styles.

But all these posts are ridiculous to suggest that there is no real scale of quality and that only emulation accuracy can be assessed. Lots of plugins have unintentional and largely unwelcome artefacts: aliasing, noise, needless phase mangling... We can objectively talk about how level-dependent amp saturation is, how much headroom there is, how transients are handled, etc. And we can discuss how useful the features and sound are to us, in which case a bit of context is nice.

[Julien Unison]

Well, I am part of those who have been harsh against Positive Grid plugins (I was telling they sounds great but are very slow and almost impossible to use due to their slowness).

I had BIAS FX already.

I 've recently read about BIAS AMP 2, have listened to some demos, inspected all it's abilities...


... And finally I have bought the Elite version of it (that is far less expensive in euros = 230 than in dollars = 299).

I totally changed my mind about Bias plugins. THIS Bias Amp 2 is very much more stable. And it sounds amazingly.

The Hiwatt clean sounds, the Twin Reverb sounds, the bluesy sound amps... I'm more interested by clean and crunchy sounds than by metal sounds. And I can tell you this plugin can excel into this.
And its online sharing presets bank is HUGE.
Its matching tool (to create a new simulated amp based on a miked real life amp or on a wav file) is really powerful too.
And the Celestion cab impulses are really super good.

I finally asked for a refund, as the plugin is definitely too slow to be a pleasure to manipulate, and the sound is not top notch at all...
Today I have tried SGEAR 2 and Mercuriall SPARK, and the 2 combined can give awesome and stellar sounds and very satisfying results (+ they are SO MUCH more responsive). So I want to buy those 2 when I will receive the refund of Positive Grid.

[SiliconDeath]

I don't know. I tried S-Gear and Mercurial TriAxis trials (I'm fan of Dream Theater guitar metal sound, so I was expecting TriAxis to capture that) but I didn't get better sounds than I get with Bias FX. I haven't played enough with Bias Amp 2 trial (I own both FX and Amp 1) but the FX I can vouch that I've got positive results with.

Yea the loading time on Bias plugins is slow, and the expansions sort of feel like "cash grab". These are two biggest problems of otherwise good package. If something better comes along I'm more than happy to trial it.

[EvilDragon]

Mercuriall's Triaxis sim totally nails DT tones...

[BMoore]

Okay, I'm not a guitarist (well, I do play but don't consider myself one) and I'm not extremely picky about amp sounds (I think both Guitar Rig 5 and Amplitude 4 sound fine) but reading the comments on Bias Amp 2, you'd think it was the worst piece of garbage ever made. I don't know. I heard it and I think it sounds fine. And with the ability to build a custom amp down to the tubes used, what's not to love? Granted, the price for the full thing is pretty steep, but sound wise, I don't hear this horrible thing that almost every comment I read is claiming.

What am I missing? Is this just typical Internet hate or is this really a poor product with both Guitar Rig 5 and Amplitude 4 being far superior?

Clue me in.

Why are you even starting threads like this. It's a very simple issue to understand.