Amplitude & GuitarRig Vs. Vamp2 & Pod2

[Jason Brian Merrill]

I think all guitarists should understand how to build a sound from the ground up. Is it mandatory to "prove" that you're a real guitarist? Of course not... but on the other hand I don't know any guitarists worth their salt who can't get themselves into the right ballpark within a few minutes.

Greg

strange. I consider myself a "real" guitarist and I just plug into my marshall, turn it up, and love the sound.

no fiddling to be done there.

I can also get great sounds with guitar rig and podxt -- but It would be nice to have an ampsim that delivered the instant gratification of a real amp (none do yet) along with the tone shaping abilities of more intricacies.

[dogod]

Yup, when I use ampsim, I take off my guitarist's/mixer's hat and I put on my producer's hat ... i.e. forget the fartin' around and make that hit already hehe

[Lunch Money]

Yes! But that's exactly my point, too! Not that you have to be a master craftsman, but that you have to understand how to get to what you want. Jason's sound is a cranked marshall with no fiddling.

The only thing missing in his estimation, is the response he gets from a real Marshall vs. the current crop of sims, which is fair enough. Regardless, when using a sim, to get as close as possible he'll load a Marshall sim and crank it. Perhaps in a sim he'll back it off a bit more than he would IRL, but he'll still be where he wants to be.

I also said that it's NOT mandatory to being a "real" guitarist, for those who care to read.

I don't want to make it seem like I'm against presets. I use them. I just know that I could easily live without presets, and therefore whether I use them or not, they're not an important part of an amp sim product, which was the point I was responding to. The quality of the sim is all that matters.

[Sascha Franck]

Any noise you get in the amp simulators such as Vamp and GR is present in your chain already and is just getting amplified. 1s and 0s DON'T make noise...

Nono, sorry!
The VAmp amp models are noisy indeed - no idea whether it's the amp models per se or the input converter quality which get's louder by compression. But a comparable setting on a POD, using the same guitars and cables is defenitely a quieter solution.

Anyways: the VAmp is a great bang for the buck nonetheless, but if I'd go for a hardware solution, I'd get something based on the POD XT engine, which is just sounding great for a simulation.
Another idea might be a SansAmp, but I never tried one thoroughly myself, so no comment. The demo sounds on their website are better than most others though.

As fas as software goes, I would think about it twice.
I just got Guitar Rig including the Rig Kontrol. Unlike others I find it to sound excellent - you *need* to tweak it, the presets don't do it justice at all and even the raw amp models at default settings aren't sounding all that brilliant (you need to enter advanced mode and fool with the variac, bias and whatever parameters).
The problem about GR being that it's quite a CPU hog. Big guitar arrangements are only possible with freezing or when printing things into the track while recording (if your host allows for that).
Integration of their Rig Kontrol is less than ideal as well, I can only hope NI will adress this.
I'm quite happy with it though because the sound (IMO) is excellent. I would almost go as far as to say it's on par with the POD. But ymmv.

There's a whole bunch of useable freebies as well, the best probably being the simul analog stuff indeed.
Most important when it comes to using software: A proper high impedance (=instrument) input bringing your guitar up to line level. A standard mixing console usually won't do the job, even if a D.I. box in front of it might help.
Without a proper input each and every amp sim will sound shit.

However, if you are dead serious about your guitar sound, you still want an amp, a speaker and a mic in front of it.
If you need to record it in a home environment, build yourself a dead box with 1 12" speaker inside. That's what I'm gonna do somewhen in the next months (anybody got some schematics handy?).

[Jason Brian Merrill]

the podxt is definetly quieter.

[silicon/silicium]

the first vamp was definitly noiser than the vamp2, it was almsot unplayable with large drive, but the v2 really improve this point. I m not that fan of behringer, I just try to keep point of view balanced. I also owned a pod 2 which wasn't any better, except on crunch sounds (and not to my taste in dist sounds), and never tested pod XT which is a bit expensive.
I also tested the tonelab think, which is better than vamp1/2 and pod classic in term of dynamics, pretty good sounding, but need some help to go in the extreme range of dist.

[AudioWhore]

Vox Tonelab is teh shizzle.. I use him on rhodes. Has a nice fender twin and stereo tremelo

[Jason Brian Merrill]

the first vamp was definitly noiser than the vamp2, it was almsot unplayable with large drive, but the v2 really improve this point. I m not that fan of behringer, I just try to keep point of view balanced. I also owned a pod 2 which wasn't any better, except on crunch sounds (and not to my taste in dist sounds), and never tested pod XT which is a bit expensive.
I also tested the tonelab think, which is better than vamp1/2 and pod classic in term of dynamics, pretty good sounding, but need some help to go in the extreme range of dist.

Ive owned vamp2 and I currently own podxt. nuff said.

well no really.. vamp2 is definetly the price/performance winner, but if you have the cash, the podxt is well worth it.

[Vervil]

As fas as software goes, I would think about it twice.
I just got Guitar Rig including the Rig Kontrol. Unlike others I find it to sound excellent - you *need* to tweak it, the presets don't do it justice at all and even the raw amp models at default settings aren't sounding all that brilliant (you need to enter advanced mode and fool with the variac, bias and whatever parameters).

Judging from few mp3s I have heard from you and your posts here, you have good taste in guitar sound, and your comment about GR2 suprises me and really makes me curious.
I have had a chance to try GR2 just briefly, and it was a really terrible experience for me. Unlike Vamp or Pod where the basic character of models is there for you to hear and when you tweak it, it changes but you can hear what you are doing from the beginning, with GR2, I got lost in tweaking zillion of parameters, changing the sounds but never getting close to anything usable (as you can guess I am talking about distorted sounds). Also, combinations that should give good results by logic and real world experience, for instance using tube screamer in front of lead channel in high gain amp sound nothing like they should. Some models were pure uglyness by themselves, Boogie head especially. I remember that I have got kind of decent sound with some kind of strange combination, sansamp intot bass head and something else involved, but again nothing comparable to Line6 stuff.
So if you have any kind of mp3 clip with distorted sound, or if you have spare time to record it, it would be really nice to hear how you make it to sound like, as all other soundclips of GR2 I have heard were really inferior to Behringer Vox or Line6 stuff. Simple riff of some kind with two guitars panned left and right playing the same thing would be just great!

[Sascha Franck]

I'll gladly see what I can come up with later on, Vervil.
I'm not a heavy player though, but I should be able to get some standard rock riffs done.

And yes, you're completely right, some "default" combinations just don't sound right (leave alone great).
For instance, IMO the Boogie (or "Gratifier", as NI calls it) has a really bad response by default IMO.
But it's getting quite a bit better as soon as you turn* variac* up, "sag" towards "silicon" and "bias" up as well. The sound is getting *way* more punchy that way.
The funny thing being that almost turning off anything they invented to make things sound more vintage is actually making the sound worse IMO.

Also, as just another example, so far I found the "Tweedman" to sound quite a lot better through some "Gratifier" cabinet.

And as said as well, the presets coming with it really aren't all that great. Some of the compressed, clean and highly effected sounds are cool, but you can have that without GR as well.
As far as some other presets go, I found them to be matched rather. Big level differences, some are too muddy, some are two shrill...

Finally, GR seems to be rather picky about its input signal. It's all fine with the Rig Kontrol (unfortunately I miss quite some other things on that one), but just yesterday I tried one of those small Presonus tube pres (considering to buy one) running into my Indigo I/O - the results being pretty shrill. Seems it just doesn't like any additional brilliance added at the input stage (which the Presonus has plenty of).
In addition, I find it extremely important to get *all* the levels in the chain right. And there's quite some of them. Input level (before conversion), GRs internal input level, stomp box levels before you run them into an amp (seems more picky than a real amp) and finally amp levels before you run them into the cabinets.

In the end, you *need* to tweak it a lot, even for rather simple sounds. But as you can overwrite the "init" settings (the ones you get when simply adding whatever module), it should become easier after a while.
Yeah, pretty much different than with a real amp... and also pretty much different from a POD or VAmp (even if I find both the non-XT POD and the VAmp to sound way too bassy on most amp models).

As said, will try to get one or two clips done later on.

[Vervil]

Thanks Sascha. I do not own GR myself, but I am sure people that have it will benefit from your tips. As I have already said, I am just curious what sounds you have ended with as I have tried myself and failed, and also haven't heard even one decent clip of distorted guitars.(not including people posting bad clips but still convinced that their guitar sound is great) Thanks in advance for clips, take your time!

Cheers!

I think all guitarists should understand how to build a sound from the ground up. Is it mandatory to "prove" that you're a real guitarist? Of course not... but on the other hand I don't know any guitarists worth their salt who can't get themselves into the right ballpark within a few minutes.

I agree. You and I have been already talking about this on the other thread as I recall, but I'll partly repeat myself:
I feel that relying on reamping too much is not a good thing, in a lot of cases. Sometimes it is better to miss the right sound few times and learn, record again with different sound etc, like in "old days" because it makes you concentrate more, plan in advance, visualize (not really right word to explain hearing sound inside your head but you know what I mean) what guitar will sound like in mix even before song is ready for mixing etc. For a professional player, it is a must, I cannot play live gig DI-ed with lame sound and reamp later Or go into studio and record only di guitar, because people hiring me want to hear how guitar sounds like in contest of theor song and decide about what I will record based on this.
Actually, except when someone is 100% sure what he wants but problem is of technical nature (recording DI guitars because someone lives in appartement, and reamping them in the studio later), I feel recording DI guitars would give me too many choices in a wrong way.

[feyshay]

Nonetheless, you always should have that DI track recording (while you're micing your amp). It can't hurt. I had to tweak with the POD XT Live a long time. With my Les Paul Standard it was way too easy to clip at the input unless I turned the volume knobs on the guitar down to about 4. Even then. I was ultimately not that impressed with the POD. I got tired of spinning knobs going through menus and not being too happy with it. Forget the presets or the downloads of what others thought were good presets. Forget it. After awhile I tried the computer amp sims and found them better (not Amplitube, but Guitar Rig). You have to tweak some. As I noted earlier, best to use a DI/preamp and have some decent conversion going in, rathe than using the Guitar Rig pedal (which is a piece of crap in my opinion).

[Sascha Franck]

Sometimes it is better to miss the right sound few times and learn, record again with different sound etc, like in "old days" because it makes you concentrate more, plan in advance, visualize (not really right word to explain hearing sound inside your head but you know what I mean) what guitar will sound like in mix even before song is ready for mixing etc. For a professional player, it is a must, I cannot play live gig DI-ed with lame sound and reamp later Or go into studio and record only di guitar, because people hiring me want to hear how guitar sounds like in contest of theor song and decide about what I will record based on this.

[...]
I feel recording DI guitars would give me too many choices in a wrong way.

Amen to all of that! I feel *exactly* the same.
Re-amping surely has its benefits, but some of the best sounding guitar based albums (featuring sounds which are like "role models" for all amp sims) have been recorded without any re-amping at all.
Might also be a matter of playing feel. You just play different when the sound is different. You only play kickass if the sound is kickass. And why would you need to re-amp a kickass sound?
As said, there's quite some benefits, but IMO they're not as huge as the companies are suggesting.

Even if I like GR, I don't intend to use it for re-amping a lot (I mean, it's a CPU hog anyways). I'd rather use it as a plain amp sim and record the drive/amp/speaker combination straight away.
Too bad that's not possible with Logic/PC, can't print a plugin straight to the recorded file.
But then, I still plan on building a dead box for my real amps and use GR (plus a combination of other things) live.
I'm just running my Soldano preamp through it, using it as a cab sim only - quite a good thing it seems (too bad the Soldano tubes are really worn out). May even have to think about a rack again. Whenever I find a proper combination I'll record some snipplets.

[Sascha Franck]

Nonetheless, you always should have that DI track recording (while you're micing your amp). It can't hurt.

While it certainly can't hurt, this is rarely done in recording studios though. They just know how to set up that Plexi riff sound so they don't need to change much while mixing (apart from some EQ-ing and additional FX).

[Vervil]

Nonetheless, you always should have that DI track recording (while you're micing your amp). It can't hurt. I had to tweak with the POD XT Live a long time. With my Les Paul Standard it was way too easy to clip at the input unless I turned the volume knobs on the guitar down to about 4. Even then. I was ultimately not that impressed with the POD. I got tired of spinning knobs going through menus and not being too happy with it. Forget the presets or the downloads of what others thought were good presets. Forget it. After awhile I tried the computer amp sims and found them better (not Amplitube, but Guitar Rig). You have to tweak some. As I noted earlier, best to use a DI/preamp and have some decent conversion going in, rathe than using the Guitar Rig pedal (which is a piece of crap in my opinion).

You do know that there is a software, line6 Edit that allows you to tweak pod easily and transparently, on the computer, save and load patches etc?
Please, have in mind that I do not know your level of experience, but what you are describin can simply be a result of wrong set up of guitar (pickups to close to strings etc), because the only time I have seen clipping on POD is when guy came with guitar (Les Paul too with high output dimarzios) where pickups were close to touching strings. Lowering pickups solved the problem. That could be also the reason why none of the presets sounded all right with your guitar.
Also if you are into heavy sounds, expansion packs for POD XT make a world of difference, most sounds I liked were recorded using metal model pack.

Too bad that's not possible with Logic/PC, can't print a plugin straight to the recorded file.
But then, I still plan on building a dead box for my real amps and use GR (plus a combination of other things) live.

That is something I was thinking about for some time too. If you get to know a site with details, or detailed explanation about building it, let me know! I need it, as I am a complete idiot when it comes about those "do it yourself" stuff.

I'm just running my Soldano preamp through it, using it as a cab sim only

mmmmmm...Soldano (in Homer Simpsons voice) I am hooked on a Mesa Boogie Studio Preamp in last few weeks, it sounds terrific thru amp or just slave, but failed to make it sound right directly to PC and then thru some impulses of guitar speakers. It would be nice to hear what you are getting with Soldano GR speaker emulation combined too, if you can manage that