Waves GTR vs Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2

[Guitarjeff]

Hmm nice comparisons. To my ears nothing beats the warmth of the soldano and the marshall cab just yet... The key thing i'm interested in is the dynamic response so i'll just have to try the demos soon. (Waiting for Amplitube 2 though for better A/B comparisons).

For dynamic response, both GTR and GR-2 are pretty good with the slight edge going to GTR IMO.

To me, The thing about these amp sims that still leaves a lot to be desired is when turning "knobs". With a real amp (and even with a POD to a certain degree) tweaking the tone controls provides subtle and still good sounding differences, while these AMP sims sound good in only a few select settings and sound pretty awful once you deviate much from them.


Jeff

[fritzman]

Hi Jeff,

while I'm not really a Soldano fan I like the Soldano with Marshall cab sound the most of these. The Marshall cab takes some of the cheesiness of the Soldano away, good. GTR sounds better here than GR2. I agree with your comments about the amp and cab sim. I simply don't like Amplitube, again. What do you get with the POD that sounds into this direction and which models do you use then?


Best wishes, FRitz

[Sascha Franck]

I really dunno what sorta amp sounds you folks like. The GTR file to my ears is sounding boxy and mid-ish.

[fritzman]

I really dunno what sorta amp sounds you folks like. The GTR file to my ears is sounding boxy and mid-ish.

Well,

the GR2 example sounds too nasal for me. Also the poor "air" simulation of GR2 is nicely exposed on this example. On the other hand the distortion of the GTR example sounds more "erdig" (sorry dunno an english word that describes it better what I mean). With more equal equing it would be easier to hear the real differences between the two.


Best wishes, FRitz

[Guitarjeff]

Hi Jeff,

while I'm not really a Soldano fan I like the Soldano with Marshall cab sound the most of these. The Marshall cab takes some of the cheesiness of the Soldano away, good. GTR sounds better here than GR2. I agree with your comments about the amp and cab sim. I simply don't like Amplitube, again. What do you get with the POD that sounds into this direction and which models do you use then?


Best wishes, FRitz

I use the "Modern High Gain" model on the POD mostly (the Soldano model) The real amp sounds much better!

I think all of the sounds are usable with the exception of the AT-1. I like the tone of GR-2 better, but I like the "thump" GTR has also. I think I'll experiment with using both. I have to check if you can use the cabinet emu only on the GTR.

Still, with the X-box available, I think re-amping a real amp is the best solution if you can get away with it where you live. This way I can record at night or whenever I want, get the take I'm happy with, then run it through the amp only once during the least offensive hour for my family and neighbors.


Jeff

[Guitarjeff]

I really dunno what sorta amp sounds you folks like. The GTR file to my ears is sounding boxy and mid-ish.

I like the cabinet thump with GTR. I think the GR-2 is more "open" sounding though. I'd like a combination of those 2 traits for a more Ideal amp sim.


Jeff

[cheul]

Ok I spent quite some time trying to mimick this one http://www.outlandmusic.com/Soldano-Marshall-4x12.wav (using the DI file)
and here it is: http://killbenonline.free.fr/CheulTest13.wav

Not spot on of course, but I'd like your opinion.

[bduffy]

Am I the only one that liked all Guitarjeff's tones? I think any of those could sound great in a mix!

[Lunch Money]

Far too nasal. Is it band-passed? Seems to be missing something in the top.

Out of GuitarJeff's, it's still hard to guage because they're all tweaked fairly differently. Actually, none of them were what I really like in that kind of tone. The real amps weren't in the top 3, even, though--

I liked GTR overall, but it WAS too 'boxy'. A bit more air in there and we're home free. The Soldano-Marshall file had a kick-ass 'attack' kerrrraaaang to it, but then the body of the tone was also to midrangey.

And the funny thing is, I LIKE mids. These tones might even make it to the final mix in one of my tracks; however, on their own the midranginess of them is too apparent.

Well, except for the Amplitube version. It actually stood up fairly well, IMO, but was too high-gain or non-dynamic compared to the others. I think the gain needed to be dialed down a bit to make it more 'similar' to the other ones.

Greg

[Vervil]

Ok,

You people want to hear comparisons? Check these.

I have the same guitar file playing through GTR, Amplitube, GR-2,Reamped with my x-box and My Soldano SLO through a Palmer Speaker Simulator (the new reissued one) and reamped with x-box and My Soldano through a Marshall 4x12 mic'ed with a Shure sm 57.

To my ears, the Soldano/Marshall cab wins hands down of course, but the interesting thing is that GR 2 sounds closer to the Palmer track while GTR sounds closer to the Marshall cab track. I think the amp sim part is better in GR 2, but the cab sim is better in the Waves plug. Amplitube is not even in the ballpark IMO.

I tried (not too hard) to emulate the sound of the Soldano by modifying existing presets on all 3 amp sims.

These are recorded with my Black Les Paul custom straight into my Motu Traveler and into Nuendo.

Grab them here:

Soldano/Marshall

Soldano/Palmer

GTR

GR-2

Amplitube-1

Direct file

I have a respect for the effort you have put into making those clips, but I really don't think that those matches really help in any way. For them to be accurate, someone should really know his way with all those plugins and real amps. In those clips, sounds are even not close imitations, so how this can be useful? Just to ilustrate, here is Amplitube clip (because it was obviously poor job done, and everyone disliked this one)but with some EQ to match spectral picture of Soldano Marshall clip.
www.milking-rosewood.com/mp3/Amplitube_Matched.mp3

So now it is obvious how different your clips were, and even if Amplitube does have a lot of fizzy, gritty unpleasant character, just different EQ-ing has made it sound much closer, and I think with some more tweaking of plugin itself even more closer match could be achieved.

I have no doubts that miced amp sounds better than amp sim, difference is easy to hear in a most of cases, just wanted to point out how much depends on skills when it comes to sound, and people often dismiss some sims because they were unable to get good results fast. Those "Shootouts" of different plugins are never quite fair, and I think sometimes people even simply tend to make patch sounds worst because they dislike plug and expect it to sound in certain way.

[stash98]

running gr2 in high quality made a big differnce for me. GTR is ok i guess.

[Guitarjeff]

I have a respect for the effort you have put into making those clips, but I really don't think that those matches really help in any way. For them to be accurate, someone should really know his way with all those plugins and real amps. In those clips, sounds are even not close imitations, so how this can be useful? Just to ilustrate, here is Amplitube clip (because it was obviously poor job done, and everyone disliked this one)but with some EQ to match spectral picture of Soldano Marshall clip.
www.milking-rosewood.com/mp3/Amplitube_Matched.mp3

So now it is obvious how different your clips were, and even if Amplitube does have a lot of fizzy, gritty unpleasant character, just different EQ-ing has made it sound much closer, and I think with some more tweaking of plugin itself even more closer match could be achieved.

I have no doubts that miced amp sounds better than amp sim, difference is easy to hear in a most of cases, just wanted to point out how much depends on skills when it comes to sound, and people often dismiss some sims because they were unable to get good results fast. Those "Shootouts" of different plugins are never quite fair, and I think sometimes people even simply tend to make patch sounds worst because they dislike plug and expect it to sound in certain way.

I never claimed they all sounded that similar. I just spent a very few moments with each tweaking from a preset that was already there. I think the general character of each is appearant though. I'm a guitar player. I don't want to have to tweak something for days to get a good tone. I want to plug in and play. GR-2 and GTR both allow me to do that although I like GR 2 a little better overall.

Your AT-1 clip is certainly better than mine. Kudos for being able to figure out that plug better than I can. I've had it for a while now and consider it one of my worst purchases.

Jeff


Jeff

[Vervil]

Your AT-1 clip is certainly better than mine. Kudos for being able to figure out that plug better than I can. I've had it for a while now and consider it one of my worst purchases.

Maybe I did not explained myself well... I was not doing anything with Amplitube, just simple 2 minutes EQ job on existing amplitube clip because there was obviously too much high mids and low bass compared to clip everyone liked. Nothing complicated. Personally I dislike all existing sims, using POD when I need to do something quick, for the same reasons you have mentioned, I plug, switch to any amp and have instant decent results.

As I have already said, my post was just for a cause of "fairness" of your shootout.

[Guitarjeff]

Oh OK! Nice EQ job then!

I agree, I still will use the POD for quick sketches due to the ease of use. I think GR-2 will probably sound better than the POD in a mix though. The thing I don't like about the POD is the extreme woofiness on the lower strings. Especially when Palm muting. If I use it for a final track, I have to cut lows in the mix and the guitar ends up sounding rather small.

Then again, I have the X-box and Soldano, + 2 different Marshall heads and a Line 6 Flextone 2XL so maybe GR 2 won't get much use. I own it, so I'd like to learn to use it and make it work in my mixes.

I won't bother purchasing GTR, I don't think I'd end up using it much.


Jeff

[Vervil]

The thing I don't like about the POD is the extreme woofiness on the lower strings. Especially when Palm muting. If I use it for a final track, I have to cut lows in the mix and the guitar ends up sounding rather small.

Are you using POD 2.0 or XT? I have old POD, but will buy XT soon. If you are on XT and need distorted guitars , metal add-on pack will make a significant difference, especially 5150 mod. Also, when mixing, you can try producer Andy Sneap's trick of using multiband compressors just one band,(on all dist guitars together grouped on one bus) to tame lows around 150-200 Hz, so it can work better with bass and tame palm muting on places a bit.

Cheers!