This is a real gem of a post if you're hunting for a bass guitar setup.I just built the perfect, free bass amp using ruby tube and convolution for the cab simulation. It's a little complicated, but the sound is better than any commercial amp sim I've heard - believe me.
The real trick is using quality impulses of speaker cabinets to accurately simulate the acoustic properties of those big 15 inch speakers (or 8x10 aluminum cone things - you name it!). The best thing is: you get the characteristics of the expensive mic's used as well as the room the speaker was in. Perfect sound in headphones.
for the amp sim: rubytube
http://www.silverspike.com/rubytube.html
i use it in limiter mode, driven almost halfway up. This gives a slightly distorted tube sound, with lots of treble without adding too much noise.
My favourite bass cabinet impulses are from this archive:
Phil_Fee Guitar and Bass Cabs from this page:
http://www.noisevault.com/index.php?pag ... &cat_id=18
the impulses are from an SWR workingman amp. The impulse set contains different mic. positions. the trick is to use two of these impulses simultaniously:
Work 15 441 Cent 48s.wav
and Work 15 441 edge - 6dB.wav
these are made positioning the mic at the center and the edge of the speaker - like a read recording ingeneer would do in a studio. Check out the other impulses too - some of them might be more suitet to your taste.
to use the impulses get Revolverb from this link:
http://noisevault.com/plugs/RevolVerb_L.zip
be careful with this free beta convolver though. It crashes your host if it cannot find the impulse you used in a song... so don't move your impulses around! It's great though, free, zero latency and good quality.
Add the two revolverbs in parallel. You can do this in modular hosts like plogue bidule (free).
I use Energy XT if you like I can upload the .ext file - but XT is not free (although is's almost free - about 50 bucks for a full audio / midi sequencer and modular VST host - basically : it's a steal - I can't help advertising it...)
good luck.
I have been using this for a while and it's a great solution to the thorny problem of a freeware Bass modelling setup.
Two things I would add.
(1) George Yohngs W1 Limiter (or the betabugs remix) is good to add to the end of the chain.
(2) If you don't have Energy XT , you can use this freeware fx chainer to set things up so that they can be recalled instantly.
Many thanks to Ohm for the heads up on this.
