Voxengo Boogex Guitar Amp (alpha)

[IIRs]

btw, i played a strad once..

[Lunch Money]

Sorry Frippertronix, but I'm unconvinced. Why?

Because I play with my fingers rather than a flatpick. Everything about my style depends on whether I've played the note with my fingernail, the pad of my finger, or if I've dug in and popped that sucker against the frets. I'm not even saying I'm a particularly skilled player. Many players here are better. But I'm a confident player, I can play exactly the way I WANT to play, and part of getting the right sounds absolutely relies on the way the strings are approached. If hitting the string hard and then lightly plucking the string end up producing almost the same sound, the whole performance might as well be a write-off.

I also disagree about the strat and Bassman. You set up an awesome tone recipe and put the guitar in the hands of a neophyte or someone not really caring, and you'll get nothing but suck.

I'm hugely against voodoo. I don't think tubes are magical, I don't think instruments by themselves work wonders, and I don't even think that with a bit of distortion there's much difference between a guitar with a basswood body and one with a mahogany body.

I DO believe that amp sims can and do work great, so I'm not a purist.

HOWEVER-- I think that the amp and the guitar are secondary to the player's hands. I wasn't trying to turn it into a mystical tone equation thing, either, like what the blues players talk about. It's very simple: Your skill with fretting, muting/damping strings, and the nuances with which you attack your strings are what separate a real guitarist from a guitar player.

You want to hear how 'string attack' can affect tone and intention, all you need to do is listen to some Mark Knopfler off the self-titled Dire Straits CD, especially when he's not just doing the 'widdly widdly' part in Sultans of Swing that people seem to focus on.

Greg

[xander]

So many negative comments.

I like Aleksey's approach -- less beautifully rendered 3D graphics of screw heads and knobs and more relevant controls like the EQ handles.

I like Boogex and I like where it's headed. I have no idea what 'digital nastyness' is, but the term sounds wonderful! I hope I can get a 'digital nastyness' plugin soon!!

veseli -- you can click my sig to hear more of my music and you can offer as much critique as you wish in the cafe, otherwise I have ignored your comments, since they are irrelevant to the thread. I like the saying: "Put up or shut up." (there's another contest vote I'll never get )

I want to offer encouragement to a dev that is way more responsive than most others, makes indisputably great f**king products at more-than-reasonable prices, and is generally a nice chap all round who seems to spend his entire waking existence trying to improve his products and please everyone. Power on mate!

When's the last time someone from NI came in here to address all the bollocks and general shite in Guitar Rig?

Now I'll quit this thread because I'm just a ignorant stupid, half-arsed musician and have no clue wtf this thread is about anymore anyway.

Cheers,
Alex

[Lunch Money]

I think we've bashed Guitar Rig fairly recently, actually.

[Frippertronix]

Any 1st chair 11th grade violinist could make a Stradivarius sound incredible,

i don't have the words to express how wrong that statement is..

Try and give me some. I'll wait...

If you can bow a string without screetching, you can make an excellent violin sound good. "Incredible" was probably the wrong term to use, but it will not sound "bad" because the violinist isn't Isaac Stern. If they can make their own violin sound good in passages that aren't too complicated for them at their level of skill, which is often fairly high (since many 11th grade violinists have been playing for 10 years or so), they will wound better on an excellent violin than they do on a student violin, even if they are below "concert master" skill.

Just the same as that, it doesn't take SRV to make a '62 Strat sound sweet. A two year novice could do it. Would it sound "interesting" for more than a few minutes of listening? Probably not, but that goes beyond the issue I'm talking about, which is the pure issue of drawing good tone quality from a good instrument. It takes a certain level of skill, harder for some instruments (oboe), easier for others (piano) to get a good sound out. That's not an issue that has anything to do with phrasing skill, etc. Only the pure physical task of drawing tone from the instrument, assuming its there in the instrument to begin with.

This started as a thread about amp emulators and whether dynamic response to pick attack was more or less important than the believability of the tube distortion/warmth/speaker model. I stated that, assuming you could only have one instead of both, which would be preferable the pure emulation of the amp's sound would be most important to the success of the plug. More important than dynamic response, and even more important than tone shaping options (even very novel one's like Aleksy's).

A simple test for that? Have ten people who aren't guitarists per se but love rock music sit in front of you while you plug into a rig that runs through a digital amp emulator. First plug into a very dynamic and touch responsive program that happens to sound like a lot of tonal varitions of a buzzing mosquito (as some of them do). Now plug into a totally compressed and non-dynamic emulator that, when a power chord is strummed, sounds astonishingly close to the sound of a full open JCM800 stack w/ Greenbacks. Which one will the audience sustain an interest in listening to longer? The heavily dynamic "mosquito amp" with lots of mosquito-like tonal pick response, or the non dynamic uncanny Marshall crunch emulation?

[Lunch Money]

Well, sure... if you could only have one OR the other, a good-sounding amp with poor dynamics will beat a horrible-sounding amp with great dynamics.

That's really taking the point to a useless level, though. ANY argument can be reduced to something similar. For example, I would rather have an unknown singer on my track who's having a great day than have a famous (and skilled) singer on my track who's experiencing a bout of laryngitis.

I mean, nobody will use a crap-sounding amp, full stop. That's so obvious that it's just taken as a given. However, the point being made is that while a good but non-dynamic amp is better, it's also not ideal. It gets frustrating using amp sims that don't care at all about the player's touch.

With the complexity that the signal is already being altered by, you'd think the developers would want to get the whole thing right instead of just being half-assed.

(again, this post is technically off-topic because I'm not speaking at all about Aleksy or Voxengo, still not having tried the Boogex)

Greg

[Sascha Franck]

I'm ranting because I think it's offputting to "unseasoned" musicians to act like it's some kind of esoteric skill to make a good instrument sound good. It's not that hard.

I completely disagree.
Of course I don't think good tone is anything "esoteric", yet, most guitarist show a complete lack of it. I won't be calling names, but out of the various guitarists here on KVR I've heard maybe 10% actually having a "good tone". They might get away with it as long as pure rhythm playing is happening, but as soon as playing of any lines is involved I often start to cringe. The best amp sound in the world won't help them.
And no, this is not only true for the KVR-axemen.
Thing is, most guitarists don't even practice "tone". And yes, it's possible easily. Over the years (I've been a professioal guitar teacher for quite some years) I developed quite a few lessons mainly adressing tonal control and phrasing. They are just as valid as scale lessons and they're just as hard to master. Just, close to nobody does them - at least I would assume so.

Which one will the audience sustain an interest in listening to longer? The heavily dynamic "mosquito amp" with lots of mosquito-like tonal pick response, or the non dynamic uncanny Marshall crunch emulation?

That's totally irrelevant to me. I just want both, or at least a good mixture of things.
Apart from that, whenever you play any proper Marshall crunch emulation, it usually *will* be quite a responsive sound too. At least this is true for all halfway faithful emulations I fooled around with, regardless whether they're analog, digital, hardware or plugin based. Or a hybrid of some sorts.

[soulata]

I'm ranting because I think it's offputting to "unseasoned" musicians to act like it's some kind of esoteric skill to make a good instrument sound good. It's not that hard.

I completely disagree.
Of course I don't think good tone is anything "esoteric", yet, most guitarist show a complete lack of it. I won't be calling names, but out of the various guitarists here on KVR I've heard maybe 10% actually having a "good tone". They might get away with it as long as pure rhythm playing is happening, but as soon as playing of any lines is involved I often start to cringe.

ditto.

tone practicing is important. for every instrument.
a friend of mine /experienced classical and jazz pianist/ can tell apart many pianists just from the sound of a piano.

k

[mman]

Just want to share something.

I didn't try this plug yet, I would like to say that how you play is far, far more important, than how good is the actual sound (amp).
I'm a guitarist not grate but not bad either. When I listen to a guitar track I usually listen to the guitarist, the sound is just a cream on the cake. By that I mean his touch, feel, musicality, the sound is usually the last thing (for me at least).
I don't understand whay pople are so touchy about the sound. Tube this tube that, solid state no good.....
What's that all about , first learn the instrument and than worry about the sound. If you ask me almost all amp emulators on the market are good enough to create a decent guitar sound. The price tag is something else but that's another story.

I'm not pointing fingers here, jut thought I should say this.

[scuzzphut]

Aleksey

Ignoring all the other crap in this thread............



I just tried boogex for the first time (v0.93) and I am seriously impressed
The EQ window is a great feature - I find myself dragging the low shelf up above 100Hz in most of the presets to avoid muddiness - but I guess that would vary from guitar to guitar (mine's a tele custom II)
I agree with an earlier comment that as the distortion becomes more intense, it also becomes more like digital clipping - back it off a little and the sounds are great, though. If you are working on anything, I would suggest that the high-gain distortion needs a bit of tweaking

I assume that the tone knob is a "mix" for the straight / overdriven(drive knob) sound and I like the one-knob compression - nice and easy

the easy selection of cab models is a real bonus - nice feature well implemented.

Latency is no problem, either - I've been enjoying playing live through this (I even started playing an old Iron Maiden riff )

Please keep the enthusiasm going, Aleksey - and if you need beta testers, this is one plugin that I'd love to help bring to market.

[IIRs]

they will wound better on an excellent violin than they do on a student violin, even if they are below "concert master" skill.

Probably not. It takes an enormous amount of skill to make a strad sound 'like a strad'.. even your 'concert master' (whatever that is) would need to practise on one to learn how to unlock that sound. Its also a personal thing.. the strad I tried (very briefly) lived at the time in a double case alongside a Guarneri.. the soloist in question had arranged to borrow the strad for a tour to see if it suited her or not.

Just the same as that, it doesn't take SRV to make a '62 Strat sound sweet. A two year novice could do it.

You get more wrong with every post. If a two year novice picked up SRV's strat, they would shred their fingers on 13 gauage strings and a monster action! There's a story that Jeff Beck once picked up SRV's guitar, and couldn't get a note out of it..

[Aleksey Vaneev]

scuzzphut, thanks.

[jens]

If a two year novice picked up SRV's strat, they would shred their fingers on 13 gauage strings and a monster action! There's a story that Jeff Beck once picked up SRV's guitar, and couldn't get a note out of it..

now now... - it might be hard but it ain't that hard!

[bduffy]

I really liked the Boogex...sounds great on Bass! Would consider buying when ready!

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I've released it as a freeware plug-in already