Vandal perfection through simplicity

[rauchen]

I have recently purchased Magix Vandal. I gotta say I am more than satisfied, as I hoped, since I also use samplitude as a DAW. My problem with most amp modelers is that they spend too much time trying to look good and have an individual lood for all the different amps. This is cool and fun but, I want the tone and thease of making presets. Vandal gives me this.I have made presets for Pink Floyd, Satriani, Accept, Guns and Roses, Jackyl, Metalica, and Rammstein. I have found, for myself, that creating presets is very hard to do in other amp sims. Not to say that the procedure is complicated, but trying to mix and match to get the sound has been the ultimate problem for me. I think mostly,because the chain of effects usually is just too long to get the tone you want. I don't particularly care if this is to emulate the real world or not. I just wanna jam. Let's face it using an amp sim is not the real world, so let's not delude ourselves into thinking the process has to be as complicated as the real world counterparts.
It just seems that with Vandal you don't have to worry about using the "proper" stomp pedal, amp, or cabinet. Instead, just let your ears do the work till you get the sound you want. So far every preset I have made for myself has only taken a matter of minutes, instead of hours. I realize the presets I have mentioned are not all that complicated, except for Satriani, and to some extent Pink Floyd. but even these were pretty easy. I will admit, my Satriani preset is not perfect, but I have not come across one for any other amp sim that was perfect. Nonetheless, it's damn close. I am not gonna take the time to upload these presets or give written instruction, for two reasons. 1.Vandal makes it simple. 2. Whenever I have used other peoples presets, I have not been satisfied, because people don't take into account how much difference a different guitar makes. So my presets are set for my guitar. Anyway I just can't say enough good things about Vandal. I have seen that they are working on improvements, which is great. But I am happy already. In closing I will say the only other amp sim I have is Revlaver MKII Live, which is a great host for Vandal. And I do really like some of the clean tones that I can get with Revalver. But for comparison I have used, at great length, Amplitube 2, and Guitar Rig 3. Of those two Amplitube has it hands down, but compared to Vandal, I'm not so sure. I do know that Vandal is a hell of a lot lighter than Amp2, plus I don't have to go to my buddy's house to use Vandal

[chokehold]

Here we go again...

[chj]

I'm so suspicious of Magix Vandal. This KVR member has 4 posts. The others basically praise Samplitude which Vandal was originally offered with. Now this post for Vandal. Many of us are already familiar with another similar thread. I noticed another KVR member who joined on the same date as his post, just to praise Vandal. There also seem to be regular KVR members that genuinely like Vandal and that's fine, but I think there's some shennanigans going on here.

[Aloysius]

Hey rauchen . . . how do you rate 'support' at MAGIX? My recent experience was very bad. Like pulling teeth. What a bunch of dissatisfied employees was the impression I left with!

[Agreed]

I thought Vandal came with Samplitude 15. Would you have to buy Vandal if you owned Samplitude 15?

Edit: Man, this is confusing... The web site says some version of Vandal is included with Samplitude 11, and Samplitude 11 is the latest version I can see on the official web sites, but places are selling versions 14 and 15?

I don't understand the progression of the software. Regardless it is suspicious imo when anyone posts pretty much exclusively in support of a company, especially several months apart, in perfect timing for a new release. Not necessarily a shill, that's an accusation that's awfully difficult to prove, but it starts flashing some alarms in my head all the same...

[chj]

I thought Vandal came with Samplitude 15. Would you have to buy Vandal if you owned Samplitude 15?

Yeah, see. Shennanigans I tell you.

[Seaside Music]

Vandal does come with Samplitude 11 Pro. Samplitude is distributed by Magix who also tagged the Samplitude name onto their low budget consumer audio software for some reason I'll never understand. The Pro version costs over $1,000, but some people confuse the $50.00 software with it since they share a name. The consumer grade products are up to versions 14-15.

In any event, if the OP has Samplitude 11 and paid for Vandal, he wasted money since it's already included.

[zerocrossing]

I'm so suspicious of Magix Vandal. This KVR member has 4 posts. The others basically praise Samplitude which Vandal was originally offered with. Now this post for Vandal. Many of us are already familiar with another similar thread. I noticed another KVR member who joined on the same date as his post, just to praise Vandal. There also seem to be regular KVR members that genuinely like Vandal and that's fine, but I think there's some shennanigans going on here.

Oh, I'm sure of it. The thread started by SlientBurp was one of his few posts and prior to that he said exactly the same thing about Amplitube. It's a way to keep Vandal in the "Latest Posts" column.

[PurpleCatfishBettie]

--In closing I will say the only other amp sim I have is Revlaver MKII Live, which is a great host for Vandal.--

How does revalver host Vandal?

I'd thought Vandal was a VST; and that Revalver was also a VST. Is Revalver a sometime VST host?

[xybre]

Oh no! KVR has been vandalized!

[Hink]

I thought Vandal came with Samplitude 15. Would you have to buy Vandal if you owned Samplitude 15?

Edit: Man, this is confusing... The web site says some version of Vandal is included with Samplitude 11, and Samplitude 11 is the latest version I can see on the official web sites, but places are selling versions 14 and 15?

I don't understand the progression of the software. Regardless it is suspicious imo when anyone posts pretty much exclusively in support of a company, especially several months apart, in perfect timing for a new release. Not necessarily a shill, that's an accusation that's awfully difficult to prove, but it starts flashing some alarms in my head all the same...

samplitude pro is 11, Samplitude 11 producer (119 bux) has Vandal le, samp pro has the full version of vandal. It's not uncommon for samp users to be an upgrade or two (sometimes more) away from current being more comfortable for their needs with what they have (they're not gas addicts like us).

It's really not that complicated if you spin counterclockwise for a minute before you try to understand it

[Hink]

--In closing I will say the only other amp sim I have is Revlaver MKII Live, which is a great host for Vandal.--

How does revalver host Vandal?

I'd thought Vandal was a VST; and that Revalver was also a VST. Is Revalver a sometime VST host?

If I recall correctly Revalver allows you to open vsts in it.

[eduardo_b]

Here we go again...

So many amp sims...so many amp sim threads.

[Agreed]

Here we go again...

So many amp sims...so many amp sim threads.

I used to do big comparisons of the amp modelers, where I'd try and shoot for the same kind of sound out of all of them, but it ended up basically becoming an unsustainable combinatorial explosion of effort, and completely burned me out of talking about them all for awhile. There are a TON of modelers out there right now, it's (in my opinion) an unsustainable situation. The market just can't be that big, something's got to give.

I'm much more content to just thoroughly explore each amp modeler on its own terms now and discuss the relative merits of it as a contained piece of software. In reviews, that's the editorial purview anyway; but here on the forums I think it helps to inform my perspective when discussing what different things do well or not. I don't think I can ever go back to doing huge comparisons, though, it's just so much work and frankly I doubt readers will put the effort in on their end to listen to two dozen clips just so they can hear which modeler does a Marshall sound I like best. This was confirmed numerically with the last few real comparisons like that I did, my audio host tracks listens and downloads and they just dropped off incredibly after people listened to the bigger name software products.

I infer from that outcome that people are interested in hearing what software they are actually familiar with or have exposure to can do relative to other software that they perceive as being in direct competition with it. People seem to be most curious about, for example, how Amplitube 3 compares to Guitar Rig 4 in getting X, Y, Z sound. Which has made my blogging more fun, because it lets me go in-depth on individual software and discuss the process of creating patches, something I always wanted to do but had less and less opportunity to as the posts got bigger and more comprehensive. I mean, what the hell is there to say when you have 15 sound samples to listen to? At some point you just want to say "alright, let's take a step back here, who wants to play guitar?"

[pandashake]

--In closing I will say the only other amp sim I have is Revlaver MKII Live, which is a great host for Vandal.--

How does revalver host Vandal?

I'd thought Vandal was a VST; and that Revalver was also a VST. Is Revalver a sometime VST host?

If I recall correctly Revalver allows you to open vsts in it.

You are correct, Hink, and it's really cool that it does. Makes all those freeware vst amp and "pre-amp" heads we've seen in the past couple of years real easy to work with as far as using Revalver's IR cab module.