NI Guitar Combos - I'm intrigued

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Dont ask me, that was when I was 16 and the amp was 2nd hand...

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Looked like the top one.

I took 2 tubes out to get down to 50watt,
still it was very loud...
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DSP with attitude

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Acolmitzli-- that noise is being generated by all your pedals, particularly if both your distortion pedals are on at the same time. Not much way to eliminate it completely.

Other than that, I've still never figured out whether mixers can handle hi-z inputs or not, or what the difference is... I plug my guitar into the mixer, it sounds like a clean guitar, but I've been told my mixer (a UB802) isn't actually made to directly accept hi-z. :?

Seemed to work for me, and now I've switched to a TubeMP, which has literature that also doesn't specifically refer to hi-z, but has settings for electric guitar.

The whole thing mystifies me. ;)

Greg
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Lunch Money wrote:Acolmitzli-- that noise is being generated by all your pedals, particularly if both your distortion pedals are on at the same time. Not much way to eliminate it completely.

Other than that, I've still never figured out whether mixers can handle hi-z inputs or not, or what the difference is... I plug my guitar into the mixer, it sounds like a clean guitar, but I've been told my mixer (a UB802) isn't actually made to directly accept hi-z. :?

Seemed to work for me, and now I've switched to a TubeMP, which has literature that also doesn't specifically refer to hi-z, but has settings for electric guitar.

The whole thing mystifies me. ;)

Greg
Yeah not a clue on the hi-z thing. My signal seems to be hot enough, so that would suggest pluggiing straight into a mixer is fine. I'm thinking of selling my Phaser pedal because I really don't use it that much, that might help to relieve some of the noise I think.
My Youtube Channel - Wires Dream Disasters

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veseli koljac wrote:
zeoy wrote:I must be blind but I see only the Guitar rig demo in NI's site. Not the Combo's demos :?:
go on:
http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.p ... rcombos_us

and look on the left side of screen.
Thanx man! I must 've been blind but now I see ... :lol:

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AndrewSimon wrote:Hmm just dowloaded and installed.
Then I got a message:

Your Demo has expired. :?: :-o

Any ideas?
Besides the fact that I had Guitar Rig demo installed as well (that one still works)
Solved it.
I reinstalled and checked the "start trial" checkbox :shock: duh :shock:

Sorry guys I just don't get it.
For me on scale of 1 to 10 Amplitube is an 8.
Guitar rig and Guitar Combo is somewhere around 3
Thou I like Guitar Combo better then Guitar Rig

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Well, I had a quick dickaround with the Plexi, and I think it's pretty good actually. A/B against the GDI21, though, and I couldn't tell the difference. Part of that was because I was still running it through the Guitar Rig on clean (therefore the speaker and tone stack were still active), so there's going to be a lot of overlap, but really they sounded quite similar. Without sitting down and doing an extensive test, I don't give either one the edge in sound.

But the GDI has 2 other amps, different speaker and gain options, can double as a D.I. with ground lift, is a hardware unit with zero latency. It seems to have the edge so far in value for money, even if you don't ever use the GDI's other two amps. That's $35USD well spent, plus the cost of a 9V power supply if you don't already have one (which I did).

Compared against a real Marshall, I can't make an A/B, but I can tell you my opinion based on what I know-- the Simulanalog is a different kind of amp, and while I like it, I find the distortion too mucky. But it's not mucky by half compared to Amplitube's model. People who prefer Amplitube probably like it because it is capable of higher gain and more furious distortion. I've already admitted that I don't like hi-gain as an aggressive sound anyhow, and the hyped distortion of Amplitube's Marshalls wins no points with me. Sure, it can be backed off, but when you do I find the result fairly lifeless compared to the other three options listed in this thread, meaning that its only redeeming quality is the higher gain settings.

Or, in other words-- I don't know that ANY of them are really a Marshall, but I think that the GDI21 and the Guitar Rig are closer to a crunchy Marshall sound (regardless if they got the actual model correct or not) than Amplitube or Simulanalog.

Greg
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Alcolmiztli, if you want to have a heavy overdr.dist. sound with few hizzrumblegrumble, follow the next steps : adjustable highcut before and after the OD-DS pedals (to have better control over highs and harmonics, wich are extra amplified in the DS-OD), now a noise-gate and adios to the noiz... .. .

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Midiworks wrote:Guitar Suite's Rednef (the Twin) is the real deal.

Rednef is true to the original in sound, reaction and feel.

You played a real Tube-Amp (Plexi) and recommend Guitar-Suite instead of NI Combos?!? Sorry Midiworks, but all the belief in your 'Amp' (whenever it will be released...) is gone now.

Guitar-Suite is cool, because it's free, but to say it's Amps are more original in sound, reaction and feel than NI-Combos or the amps of Guitar Rig are (don't tried out the Combo-Demo yet), is just ridiculous!

Btw: do you use Component-Modelling for your Amp?

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@_patch
Looks like you have not A/B'ed AcBox with Rednef
Thats what I did.
Just do the same. ;)

btw. in some but not all parts.
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DSP with attitude

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Ok, that does it. Now I just have to throw in a few lines.

1. Could people please shut the f**k up about sound quality if they don't even know what a Hi-Z input is and what using a normal mixer channel does to your guitar sound.

2. @ Midiworks: Ok, you've convinced me now that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Could you please stop proofing it. I don't see much hope for your amp-sim.

3. No, I'm not going to explain shit. Do your homework first.

4. No, I'm not a NI employee.

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All you needs is a pair of ears,
thats all there is to it. :hyper: :D
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DSP with attitude

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I tried the AC-Combo and the Plexi-Combo with my Rig-Kontrol. The AC sounds great, like it does in Guitar-Rig. Plexi does all in all a better job in Guitar-Rig, because there you can add another miced Cabs for a richer and fuller Marshall-Sound.

Pädy is absolutely right: you have to bring your Guitar to a Line-Level with a Hi-Z (Preamp) first, to hear all the real goodies ;-)


_patch,
not a employee for anyone!!

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Pady, it's a bit harsh to assume that I don't know from guitar tone just because I don't know exactly what Hi-Z is. Obviously I knew enough to know that the NI Combo sounded pretty good. ;)

So, while I know you may not have the energy for it and I can't expect it, I can at least ASK the following question(s?):

Isn't using a D.I. box just to bring your signal up to line level? I know that a guitar signal produced by passive electronics isn't line level, and if that's all that's meant by Hi-Z then I guess I knew and I just didn't have the terminology. The impact, then, would be that a guitar-level signal going directly into a line-level input will be a weak-ass signal will just plain stink. It won't drive the amp sim properly, and adding all that gain from within the host in order to get it up to a decent level will introduce noise. In the grand scheme of things, without a proper input level, your tone will be flaccid and muddy. That much I know.

The part I DON'T understand and that confuses me still is that if I plug my guitar into a mixer with pre-amps, doesn't adjusting the gain and levels then get my signal up to the proper level for a line-level input? My understanding is that it's all about levels, no?

Now, by extension, without first going through a guitar D.I. box, you'll need more gain in the mixer to get it to the right levels. That means bringing up the noise floor, which can negatively impact your tone as well. Theoretically, though, wouldn't a noisy D.I. with a pristine pre-amp still be causing more noise than simply going direct into the mixer (taking the noisy D.I. out of the equation) and adding more gain with the same pristine pre-amps?

It takes a brave and intelligent person to admit ignorance sometimes. It takes a graceful and intelligent person to help educate them. Since I've admitted my ignorance, I'd rather be educated than simply ridiculed for not knowing.

Really, it's starting to become clear to me that it's much better to never admit to ignorance. There will always be someone to jump on you for it. I consider myself otherwise quite knowledgable about guitars and tone, but there will always be gaps in knowledge. I would never tell someone that they have no right to talk about tone until they can tell me what kind of tone a white limba body lends itself to in a guitar.

At the end of the day, someone might not be able to tell me that korina is slightly snappier than mahogany, but still retains the warm tones that mahogany is famous for and thereby produces an overall more encompassing range of sounds. I may not be able to to tell you exactly why I need a D.I. AND a mixer with pre-amp (do I?). But if we're knowledgable enough and have good enough ears, we can still both tell you what's working and sounding good, and what's not.

Greg
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Greg, sorry for not being able to explain it any better, but Hi-Z has got nothing to do with line level or so, but it's all about impedances. DI-Boxes will convert your guitar signal to low impedance, so do Hi-Z inputs (or better: they accept high impedance input).
A mixer however might be capable of boosting your signal, but the input of that very mixer is still optimized for low impedance (Lo-Z, so to speak) signals.

As said, I can't explain things more properly (especially as english isn't my native language), but I'm sure you could look the difference between high and low impedance signals up somewhere.
You could also do a little test. Usually (at least that's my experience), when running a high impedance signal straight into a mixer, the sound interaction will be all different as when running the same signal into a device suited for Hi-Z inputs.
Just run your axe into a mixer (with no buffers or whatever) and turn down the volume on the guitar. Then do the same while running it into a clean amp.
What you *should* experience is a WAY more drastic reaction on the mixer setup - no way to do fine controls between, say, 100% and 80% of level - which is a breeze using any guitar amps.
If you can, do the same test, but this time insert a DI box before you run the guitar signal into your mixer - most likely you'll notice a way better volume pot curve (similar to running it through an amp).

Sorry again for the un-scientific explanation, I'm not all that much of a tech-head, but I happen to know by experience that this is all about impedances (rather than about levels).
There are 3 kinds of people:
Those who can do maths and those who can't.

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Nah, that's fine. ;) Because this forum is such a valuable resource to me, I sometimes forget that it might be just as easy to Google for information. Thanks for at least trying. :D I'll do a search.

I haven't done a direct A/B the way you've described, so I should give that a go.

Greg
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