I think I finally hate amp sims!

[justin3am]

I'm not much of a guitar player but I work with some guitarists. As much as I love mic'ing cabinets and recording loud shit, sometimes it's just impractical.

Luckily I have no problem getting the results I desire with one of the three amp sims I use. I have an Eleven rack, Guitar Rig 4 and the Ableton/Softube amps but honestly, the one I use most for guitars is the Eleven rack. It's immediate, sounds great, I can control it from the computer and it's easy as balls to use. Now maybe my ears aren't trained well enough to hear nuances of the dynamic response of the amp models (again I'm not really a guitarist) but I can definitely get results I'm happy with. Also, since I'm recording clean onto the track, I can always re-amp later when it is practical to get loud.

Then again, I'm one of those guys who's never met a piece of gear he didn't like.

[dhalfen]

I'm with Hink -- Vandal's my personal favorite, and I tend to do minimal tweaking with it. I make a few quick adjustments, and it's ready to roll. Really, it's "zee best" at the (and maybe any?) moment.

[Teksonik]

BTW I'm only 51

Kids...........

I'm with Hink -- Vandal's my personal favorite, and I tend to do minimal tweaking with it. I make a few quick adjustments, and it's ready to roll. Really, it's "zee best" at the (and maybe any?) moment.

Except for the $200 asking price of Vandal I'd be inclined to buy a Pod or another hardware unit...............

[Hink]

BTW I'm only 51

Kids...........

I'm with Hink -- Vandal's my personal favorite, and I tend to do minimal tweaking with it. I make a few quick adjustments, and it's ready to roll. Really, it's "zee best" at the (and maybe any?) moment.

Except for the $200 asking price of Vandal I'd be inclined to buy a Pod or another hardware unit...............

dude a POD is just a software sim

[Teksonik]

BTW I'm only 51

Kids...........

I'm with Hink -- Vandal's my personal favorite, and I tend to do minimal tweaking with it. I make a few quick adjustments, and it's ready to roll. Really, it's "zee best" at the (and maybe any?) moment.

Except for the $200 asking price of Vandal I'd be inclined to buy a Pod or another hardware unit...............

dude a POD is just a software sim

Of course it is......just a different form factor............But I'd rather have the dedicated hardware box than a bunch of ones and zeroes.................but only in the case of guitars. For synths I'm 100% militant software.

[aciddose]

the thing with real amps is this:

- no aliasing
- interaction between eq bands
- eq _before_ input to the gain stage
- generally utter crap

you just never realized how crap your cabinet/amp combo was because it was what you had. pick any software with the three features i listed above and use it; remember, utter crap is a feature.

i can't even bring myself to "tweak" an overdrive three-band input like you find on most cheaper amps. you just it and forget it. usually it's something like +50, +75, -25 or so. then just set the drive to about 50% and go. the difference between 50% and 55% is almost impossible to notice. they're usually parameters that could have gone with seven-step drawbars without any issue.

[Hink]

BTW I'm only 51

Kids...........

I'm with Hink -- Vandal's my personal favorite, and I tend to do minimal tweaking with it. I make a few quick adjustments, and it's ready to roll. Really, it's "zee best" at the (and maybe any?) moment.

Except for the $200 asking price of Vandal I'd be inclined to buy a Pod or another hardware unit...............

dude a POD is just a software sim

Of course it is......just a different form factor............But I'd rather have the dedicated hardware box than a bunch of ones and zeroes.................but only in the case of guitars. For synths I'm 100% militant software.

I can see that, I have a POD 2.0 and an xt live...I've got the boogie half stack too though, I mean I still have to have a tube amp...I think it's like a law or something. After almost 15 years I moved and actually am capable of mic'ng it up and cranking it a little more. I'm still in an apartment but the we have this huge walk in closet and the guy downstairs is 1/2 deaf, never in that room and would never complain anyhow...he says you gotta live, which for him his blasting c&w through an old mono radio. So I can at least turn up enough for feedback

[Teksonik]

the thing with real amps is this:

- no aliasing
- interaction between eq bands
- eq _before_ input to the gain stage
- generally utter crap

you just never realized how crap your cabinet/amp combo was because it was what you had. pick any software with the three features i listed above and use it; remember, utter crap is a feature.

My J Station sounds better than anything you could cobble together in software of that I am quite confident............

[dubbelQ]

I used to love ampsims. But on the other hand, I hadn't played with a real for years. I stopped playing for about ten years. If it hadn't been for ampsims I wouldn't picked up the guitar again. So for that I am thankful for ampsims. But after a couple of years I wanted to buy a new guitar and went to a shop and tried som guitars with hardware and it made me remember how good hardware sounds and how bad ampsims sounds in comparision. I came home and didn't want to play becuase ampsims sucked so much after playing with the real thing. Unfortuneatly its not possible for me micing up a real amp in my flat. I can even hear my neighbour pissing, so no real amps is out of question. Bought a vox tonelab st. Not as good as real amp of course but at least it makes a difference if I play soft or hard. A little step better. But the cabs sucks like in ampsims and I have to use cabimpulses. Next time I move to a better flat I will buy a amp. And like you said, with ampsims you need to tweak and tweak to make it sound better. I still use Vandal for bass though with cabimpulses. But the guitarsound in Vandal is awful. There are many better free ampsims than Vandal.

[Hink]

the thing with real amps is this:

- no aliasing
- interaction between eq bands
- eq _before_ input to the gain stage
- generally utter crap

you just never realized how crap your cabinet/amp combo was because it was what you had. pick any software with the three features i listed above and use it; remember, utter crap is a feature.

My J Station sounds better than anything you could cobble together in software of that I am quite confident............

[Teksonik]

I can see that, I have a POD 2.0 and an xt live...I've got the boogie half stack too though, I mean I still have to have a tube amp...I think it's like a law or something. After almost 15 years I moved and actually am capable of mic'ng it up and cranking it a little more. I'm still in an apartment but the we have this huge walk in closet and the guy downstairs is 1/2 deaf, never in that room and would never complain anyhow...he says you gotta live, which for him his blasting c&w through an old mono radio. So I can at least turn up enough for feedback

I've owned a Fender a Marshal Peavey tubes........hated them......Played for years through a Tom Sholz Sustainor/EQ...... liked it but sold it when the J Station came along........never got a sound close to the J Station. The only "real" amp I ever played and really liked but didn't own was a Laney............

I agree the hardest part about owning real amps is finding some place to crank them up without getting arrested for disturbing the peace. Another reason to like a dedicated box like a Pod or software like Vandal.........headphones.....

[Teksonik]

Self portrait?

Hink just before getting a lap dance........

[Hink]

I used to love ampsims. But on the other hand, I hadn't played with a real for years. I stopped playing for about ten years. If it hadn't been for ampsims I wouldn't picked up the guitar again. So for that I am thankful for ampsims. But after a couple of years I wanted to buy a new guitar and went to a shop and tried som guitars with hardware and it made me remember how good hardware sounds and how bad ampsims sounds in comparision. I came home and didn't want to play becuase ampsims sucked so much after playing with the real thing. Unfortuneatly its not possible for me micing up a real amp in my flat. I can even hear my neighbour pissing, so no real amps is out of question. Bought a vox tonelab st. Not as good as real amp of course but at least it makes a difference if I play soft or hard. A little step better. But the cabs sucks like in ampsims and I have to use cabimpulses. Next time I move to a better flat I will buy a amp. And like you said, with ampsims you need to tweak and tweak to make it sound better. I still use Vandal for bass though with cabimpulses. But the guitarsound in Vandal is awful. There are many better free ampsims than Vandal.

for an amp go with a weber attenuator

http://www.tedweber.com/atten.htm

the key is the speaker motor instead of a resistor, it does go to zero, you can get them with a balanced line out as well (they come with an unbalanced out) and the prices are great. Turn around time for mine was about 4 weeks

[Teksonik]

Ok Gotta go.....football game on.

Everybody should use what they like.........soft hard real sim or emu..........

[aciddose]

the thing with real amps is this:

- no aliasing
- interaction between eq bands
- eq _before_ input to the gain stage
- generally utter crap

you just never realized how crap your cabinet/amp combo was because it was what you had. pick any software with the three features i listed above and use it; remember, utter crap is a feature.

My J Station sounds better than anything you could cobble together in software of that I am quite confident............

it must not meet the "no aliasing" criteria, or something else then.

yes i agree, i have a four-transistor design that sounds a million times better than any software i've ever used or any hardware i've ever used. i know roughly the function for it, but it's so difficult to compute that with a reasonable 4/8/16x oversample in addition to the cost of the eq it becomes ridiculously expensive.

that doesn't mean it's impossible, but yeah it doesn't really exist.

the jstation is an amp sim as well, it just has the ability to use 100% of a dedicated processor for a single task. i think most software authors are _afraid_ to do such a thing in a vst plugin. the thought is "who would ever consider using a plugin which requires 100% cpu power on the latest processor?".

my point though was that if you _don't_ get picky with your hardware, you don't need to get too picky with your software either. while your jstation may sound great, most cheaper $200 cabs do not.