Sonic Reality

iDavid · Post by **iDavid** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 7:00 pm

I am seriously thinking of moving from AT1 to AT2. I dig high gain, but a great deal of AT1 high gain patches have a fair amount of hiss when not playing. I know use the gate....

Is this improved in AT2... (in the gate better..etc)

I know high gain is distortion.... its in the hiss family and all, but you get the idea

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 8:20 pm

Well, then you know that real amps have noise as well. But, anyway, to answer your question I think that AT2 in this regard and many others is a major improvement over AT1 and also over other amp sims out there. There's also a thread specifically about hi-gain in the effects section of KVR where users have shared the same opinion.

AndrewSimon · Post by **AndrewSimon** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 8:48 pm

AT1 vs AT2.... how's the hiss?

I find that both of these plugs add very little hiss/hum.
On very high gain thou every little hiss/hum becomes huge so it's very important to start with a clean signal.
Use humbackers, shield everything, move away from CRT's, use balanced power and so on.... whatever it takes to make sure no noise originates from the guitar.

Other then that you can get a good gate/expander (the gate in AT2 is a joke).
I use the gate built into GAC-1, it's one of the best ones I ever heard:
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1664.html

And yes I think AT2 is a little better when it comes to noise but if the signal is spoiled at the source (guitar) nothing you can do down the line to fix it.

Vocalvoodoo · Post by **Vocalvoodoo** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 1:38 pm

iDavid wrote:I am seriously thinking of moving from AT1 to AT2. I dig high gain, but a great deal of AT1 high gain patches have a fair amount of hiss when not playing. I know use the gate....

Is this improved in AT2... (in the gate better..etc)

I know high gain is distortion.... its in the hiss family and all, but you get the idea

Hi iDavid. I found the same problem with AT1. But AT2 is a HUGE improvement. Having less noise in high gain situations is one of the first things I noticed with AT2. I think a part of that is that you don't have to drive AT2 as hard to get nice sounding high gain. The gate does seem to be better to me too.

Squids ir right, AT2 is a huge improvement overall. And I'm talking about in every area. I personally think it's the best sounding software amp sim out there. At least compared to the ones I've used. GTR, GR1 & 2, AT1, Simulog (or whatever it's called. I was never impressed by it personally). YMMV.