Amplitude & GuitarRig Vs. Vamp2 & Pod2

[chrishurley]

I have tried a lot of things. Nothing beats a real amp. Of course a real amp can be real inconvenient too.

The Toneport gives you most of the goodness of the PODxt, with the dual-rig capability of the Vetta (using an inexpensive splitting DI for now), losing the AC adapter of the PODxt, but requiring a computer for its use. The PODxt on the other hand seems to be quite miserable interms of its USB capability, so you'd need a decent sound ard on top of it.

I didn't like the GR2 demo much at all. I don't understand the fuss. It sounded like garbage to me. Amplitube 1 has some decent sounds and plenty of bad ones.

The SansAmp devicees are interesting because they can have similar characteristics to real amps, but their claim to work direct to board is deceiving. They require additional EQ to make them not sound obviously like a direct amp. I've had good luck running them into a cab simulator to get rid of some of the bees. In all of the sansamp devices I've owned (Tri-AC, Trademark 60, GT2, rackmount) none of them could do a modern metal sound. You can scoop the mids with EQ, but you can't get the distortion complexity in the mids that modern amps get.

I posted a message one time that detailed all of my experiences with this stuff. I should have saved it.

[Meffy]

Vs. Godzilla? ;)

How about just Vamp2 vs. Godzilla?

[silicon/silicium]

I have a vamp2 at home, one of my most valuable buy. less than 150€, pretty decent sound, I can play live with it, I even use it when I mic an amp, as a second track to blend them altogether. I never got as satisfied when testing those software, and finally find them too exepensive, and less handy than my vamp.
the only good point is that you can tweak the amp/effect/cab until the final mix, wich is a good option sometimes.

[championrabbit]

Amplitube has proper, full-on aliasing problems. Forget Amplitube.

Vamp is noisy and it's output is way too low. Forget Vamp.

Guitar Rig is also noisy, sounds (to my ears) bad, and has that stupid pedal thing.

The only thing I've heard that's better than Simulanalog is the Waves GTR thingy. If I was going to buy something, I'd buy that.

I use Trash all the time, but only for bass and strange guitar sounds. I couldn't rely on Trash for day-to-day sounds.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I bought a late 60s Selmer 50w valve head, a 1x12 (closed back) cab and a Weber attentuator for less than the price of Guitar Rig...

[warren]

Vamp2 might be able to beat Godzilla one on one... but not if he had his partner Jet-Jaguar with him. Jet-Jaguar knows karate, dude. Karate. You can't mess with that. I don't think even Chuck Norris could take those two together...

Ok, I'm being silly. Of course Chuck Norris could beat them.

Anyway, as far as plug-ins go? I'm going to say that the free simulanalog guitar suite just can't be beat. Seriously. Bar none, yo. When you chain the sd-1 in front of the jcm900? Best high gain sound in a plug-in. It's chunky, with the perfect amount of mids and lows as to sit perfectly in a mix with little or no tweaking. And if you want to get creative you can stick the voxengo boogex after it, turn the amp emulation off and use just the speaker emulation to add some space, or air to the sound.

Don't waste your money on those expensive plug ins when you don't need 'em. Get the free stuff!

For hardware just get a dang podxt and call it a day. It's either that or get yourself a nice amp and a couple sm-57's.

[rockstar_not]

Vamp is noisy

I have a V-Amp 2 and use it in addition to strictly software amp sims. This statement is true to an extent.

and it's output is way too low.

Never found this to be true - always had plenty of gain.

Forget Vamp.

I never forget mine when I have to play out and don't want to haul an amp around (most of the time).

It's the best $100 (actually now they are $70) I ever spent on hardware - hands down.

-Scott

[/quote]

[guitarzan]

I've tried a lot of stuff beginning with the original SRD Rockman, ADA Ampulator, Mesa Boogie Studio Preamp, POD Pro (not XT, the first one), V-Amp2, AMplitube, Guitar Rig, and others.

I'm mostly looking for a smoking Fender blackface tone, and until very recently GR2 and the POD Pro blackpanel models were my favorites - BUT I have been working with all the free stuff and now my favorite direct guitar tone uses the following freebies:

GreaseTube used as a tube preamp; Simulanalog's JCM900 on the clean chanel, bass set very low and mids set low; Voxengo's Boogex used as a, well I guess a mic. tube preamp/eq sorta - I load an impulse of the POD's Blackpanel model with no fx or speaker or anything and it gives the setup some of the mid complexity of the POD but without all the phasey/hazy muffled crap going on in the POD. I use some compressors here and there and the BJ Tremolo, Kjaerhus Classic Delay and Reverb, and a TLs_Pocket_Limiter.

Anyway, be sure to not to miss all the freebies - they're some of the best stuff going right now, I think.

[Jeremy_NSL]

For the money, I can't imagine any way to beat TonePort UX2. (well, the UX1 has the same guitar sounds, etc., but the UX2 brings so much more to the equation that I feel it's worth the extra).

What exactly is worth the extra $ in the UX2?

[Lunch Money]

Jeremy: It's mainly the S/PDIF out (so that I can use it with my existing soundcard) and the phantom power for the mic inputs. I already have phantom-powered pre-amps, but this eliminates one more step in gain staging since I prefer TP's models to my pre anyhow.

To me, those 2 things were worth it. But additionally: independent headphone/output volume knobs (UX1 just has one 'output' knob), extra mic input (for tracking acoustic guitar with stereo microphones-- though I'm usually fine with mono, too, so this isn't one of my "must have" features), padded guitar input (for when I get that EMG-equipped sucker, which I don't have yet). Those, in addition to my two biggies (S/PDIF and phantom power) are enough extra features to make the extra few dollars very worthwhile.

[silicon/silicium]

no special noise nor low level here on vamp. I can easily saturate my soundcard input with the vamp output.

[Joxer the Mighty]

Well, since somebody on here said it already, I'll also say that GR2 sounds like garbage to my ears. I downloaded the demo and didn't care for it at all. I ended up getting a Toneport UX2, it's MUCH more to my liking.

[championrabbit]

no special noise nor low level here on vamp. I can easily saturate my soundcard input with the vamp output.

See, this interests me.

I have a bass Vamp 'pro' (pro? How so?) and I cannot get a satifactory output without gain/volume/master maxed. Obviously this is a very noisy 'solution'.

*edit*

This is whith a bass fitted with active PUs

*edit over*

I assumed (from things other people say) that this is true of the whole Vamp line, but maybe not.

Maybe the non-'pro' Vamps are louder than the 'pro' Vamps!!

[rockstar_not]

no special noise nor low level here on vamp. I can easily saturate my soundcard input with the vamp output.

See, this interests me.

I have a bass Vamp 'pro' (pro? How so?) and I cannot get a satifactory output without gain/volume/master maxed. Obviously this is a very noisy 'solution'.

*edit*

This is whith a bass fitted with active PUs

*edit over*

I assumed (from things other people say) that this is true of the whole Vamp line, but maybe not.

Maybe the non-'pro' Vamps are louder than the 'pro' Vamps!!

I don't think so. The 'Pro' unit has both line level and balanced outs, as well as SPDIF. Why not try SPDIF? If that is what you are using, then it makes sense that you would have to max the output control - there should be no reason to clip a digital out.

If you want to unload your bass v-amp pro for a some cash, I'd be an interested customer. I like my V-Amp 2 so much that I'm looking to get a bass unit for my recently acquired bass.

In the 3 years of V-Amp use and forum talk back and forth, I've never heard anyone else ever complain about low level output. Noisiness is a common complaint, but I've always found that with proper gain staging in my entire signal chain, I can get a decent enough signal out so that any self-noise of the V-amp is buried in the mix.

-Scott

-Scott

[_niko_]

Hm, sounds strange. I have the VAmp pro (not bass) and have no level or noise issues. I am also using it as a d.i. for bass via the aux send and the level is fine there too. Maybe you have a faulty unit?

[Waynemendozza]

Well, to me there's not much of a dynamic difference between pod2 xt, AT1 and GT rig2. It's all digital processed and swings pretty much the same, in my ears. I think very good dynamic should be possible with waves GTR as mentioned above. They ship a guitar hardware plug with it. Take a look at it, there're also some videos you can watch.