Voxengo Boogex Guitar Amp (alpha)

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Indeed, it will be dynamic, but in a different way. BTW, speaker cabinet as a system is also pretty 'static', with predictable (though, complex) response. Tubes are of the same league.

In fact, I have not found any deep enough 'conceptual' description of how guitar amp stages work and interact with each other - in terms of digital signal processing. Differential equation is available, but this usually does not tell much - i.e. its a 'black box', without any means of adjusting it to needs.

[jens]

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

that's very generous and all but I'm quite convinced you could really nail it with a bit more investigation into the subject and then release it as succesfull payware...

Hey! Don't talk the man out of freeware! Some of us like generosity!

I like it as well very much - my post wasn't meant like this - but I'm still excited about the idea of what Aleksey could acheive if he'd put a bit more work into it... - it's not as if this man couldn't code good analog-sounding distortion...

[kylen]

This has already been mentioned mostly...

For me the "amp" sounds I like are Fender rock & blues sounds. The components of that are guitar body/pickups, string guage/tuning, amp preamp, power amp, bias, speaker size/type, room.

Fender 60's blackface Super Reverb and 80's blackface Concert amps are what I like to play a solid body telecaster w/stacked humbucking pickups. That's the sound and feel I know about.

Everybody knows sounds of Fender, Marshall, Ampeg, Peavey from concert outings or their favorite commercial recordings. Playing thru one is different though and that's where feel, touch, expression and nuance start to come into the picture. Equipment choice and condition make a big difference in certain sounds I like - pickup coil windings (loose or tight), solid body, semi-hollow body guitar, tube amp/transistor amp, tube types, Fender speakers or Electrovoice replacements. The pre-amp, amp, speaker combination can be set to get different tones (distortion) individually or all together. Even the guitar strings, when lowered a half or full pitch and heavier strings are used (SRV-Hendrix), can overdrive the pre-amp tubes a certain way and send the entire chain into some beautiful growling oblivion...that's when you can really feel the dynamics, touch and expression of the entire rig. Not that dynamics simply means when you hit a string harder the sound gets louder...after passing thru the pre-amp and amp tubes, powered by the rectifier tubes, and sent out the speakers, whose cones may be vibrating and resonating near the edge of extinction the sound can be a lot fatter, spongier, darker...then there's the room.

I don't know what all that character means in dsp - sorry...

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Kyle, thanks for the story. It's all complex and multi-part, but from the DSP side of things, all these elements can be decoupled from each other. Those parts which cannot be decoupled can still be decoupled if additional feedback (interaction) connection can be established. At least this is how I see it.

[Funkybot]

In fact, I have not found any deep enough 'conceptual' description of how guitar amp stages work and interact with each other - in terms of digital signal processing.

Have you looked at www.simulanalog.org and read their research work into the subject? I'm not sure how helpful it would be, but as far as I'm concerned, their JCM900 plug-in is pretty spot on, and I played a few gigs with one on loaner. It's a little dark, but there's nothing about it that couldn't be fixed in a mix with some EQ to sound very convincing. It's at least as good as what Line6 was doing in their POD 2 series (which is pretty good IMO), damn shame it's one of my least favorite Marshall's, and I'm also not huge on their Fender Twin. Anyway their papers could be helpful in developing an amp in DSP.

[kylen]

Kyle, thanks for the story. It's all complex and multi-part, but from the DSP side of things, all these elements can be decoupled from each other. Those parts which cannot be decoupled can still be decoupled if additional feedback (interaction) connection can be established. At least this is how I see it.

That seems reasonable Aleksey...I was just tryin to throw out some keywords I guess, haha. There might be one thing that ties the pre-amp and amp together a little and that is the rectifier tube. It stands to reason (maybe) that when a tube or section demands more power (because it is passing more current) this would put more demand on the power tube, if this happened fast enough there might be some kind of short lag in the power available (usually caps compensate for this but not always) - maybe long enough for a brief psychoacoustic episode - this gives a kind of spongy feel to the touch, kind of like pushing into a compressor momentarily. In the big scheme of color and tone I don't know how big a deal it is - maybe more expression or touch releated.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Funkybot, they have *math* which deals with analog schematics. Speaking more specifically, a numerical method to simulate/calculate an analog scheme. It's not the most convenient/scalable/flexible way in DSP. Probably that information does work, but I personally cannot adopt it - nor anybody else adopted it so far it seems (except guys at www.simulanalog.org themselves).

[Klemperer]

edit: out of topic question about guitar tones that wasn't answered. Had nothing to do with Boogex.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Kyle, this IS a conceptual description I was referring to. I personally can work with it... I mean, thanks.

[akisd28]

Aleksey, thanks for this awesome plug!:)

I didn't try it on guitar, since I have 3 beautiful, all-tube Marshalls sitting right behind me, but it's very nice for vocals, drum loops etc.

Would it be too much to ask you to add a 'bypass' switch for the speaker simulation section?

Thanks again!

[ouroboros]

Thank you Aleksey!
I immediately ran some bass and drums through and loved the sound. Very generous of you

[kL]

Better than simply a bypass switch, a blend control on the impulse section would be great; then it could be used for reverb as well.
Great work, Aleksey, and thank you.
In terms of replacing amps: it doesn't need to. It sounds like it sounds, which is good.
All tube amps don't react the same anyway (around me right now are a blackface twin, an old ampeg super echo twin, and a tone king imperial -- which reacts to dynamics and technique the best of them all -- and an old Marshall 4x12 loaded with greenbacks to play any of them through, and none of them sound or behave the same.)

[Stupid American Pig]

Been playing my epi sheraton through this one. It sounds great when I am playing 1 string, and the cab modelling is actually VERY good, and has that chunky woody sounding thud that a real cab has. The problem that I hear is when more than 2 strings get played, it all just gets completely WASHED out, the sound dissappears. If you can sort that out, you will make me sell my Jstation and go software...

[Rellik]

Been playing my epi sheraton through this one. It sounds great when I am playing 1 string, and the cab modelling is actually VERY good, and has that chunky woody sounding thud that a real cab has. The problem that I hear is when more than 2 strings get played, it all just gets completely WASHED out, the sound dissappears. If you can sort that out, you will make me sell my Jstation and go software...

AFAIK, you just need to tweak it. I'm getting great results playing chords through it... with certain settings.

I don't really understand the graphical display... but it's fun . I can't tell if it's an EQ or a Waveshaper...

[akisd28]

Better than simply a bypass switch, a blend control on the impulse section would be great; then it could be used for reverb as well.

That would require an amp bypass switch, too. Furthermore, it might render some of Aleksey's commercial convolution plugs unnecessary and I don't think Aleksey (or any other developer) would like that.

So, yes, a simple blend knob would be even better, without the ability to bypass the amp section.