How to get more sustain out of an Amp Sim?

[LGK_Dude]

I'm demoing the UAD ENGL amp sim, and I dont really care for the sound too much (everything seems boxy to me - a first impression without really tweaking too much yet) but I LOVE the sustain! The sustain on it is just so smooth and beautiful for lead playing. When I compare it to amplitube, I cant get nearly the same sustain. Any advice?

I've tried adding the amplitube 3 compressor pedal before the amp, and/or the tube compressor after the amp, and it for sure helps, but its not quite the same. Any further advice would be appreciated.

[lfm]

ENGL is kind of hi gain amp - and that might be the reason. So amp model do most of the work since tube saturation brings sustain - but compressors help as you discovered.

But just picking your favourite amp for sound requires extreme compressor settings to keep tone level up.

You could try a separate compressor or limiter plugin. If all you want is same signal but almost endless - a limiter might be your choice.

I found you only get so far using plugins - and went external gear more and more and finally only external gear.

If you play the guitar try tube driven compressors like EHX Black Finger as a start. Takes some experimenting but in the end is worth it. Your tone you get into computer will be much phatter.

Keeley compressors are really good too.

[Tubeman]

I'd like to correct that it's the guitar which brings the sustain and amps or compressors only amplify it to give the impression the sound is longer. After all, the electric guitar is an acoustic instrument.

As for the difference between Amplitube and the UAD, if you are using the same interface for both it could be that the UAD has some feedback simulation in it which is what many guitarists use to their advantage in real amps when they go stand next to the amp while playing.

One trick is to put a distortion plugin before the amp sim and automate it to boost its level or distortion at parts where more "sustain" is needed. You could probably make this live with hosts like Reaper. You'd need to assing the boost/distortion to respond to guitar input amplitude level.

Also if you like the sound of AT, disable the speaker cab in the UAD if possible and put AT after it and use only its fx/speaker cab. Chances are you can make the UAD sound very similar this way as the speaker tailors the sound a lot.

[CableChannel]

I'd like to correct that it's the guitar which brings the sustain and amps or compressors only amplify it to give the impression the sound is longer. After all, the electric guitar is an acoustic instrument.

While that is true it is not the whole truth. The amp controls sustain, too. If you crank up gain to max you will have longer sustain, of course together with more distortion.

I also assume that different amps have different "response curves", speaking dynamics. Something like a built-in compressor, which might be the case for ENGL and which might not be for Amplitube.

My reccomendation: Kuassa Amplifikation Free. That one has a really high gain amp. And if you like it you can buy the full version, Amp One or Amp Creme.

[Teksonik]

I've never been able to get the sustain out of any computer based amp sim than I can out of my hardware Johnson J Station and Lord knows I've tried. I have AT3 with the Metal expansion. I'd love for someone to come up with a patch that gives me that kind of sustain......

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I complain all the time that a lack of sustain is where amp sims fall apart for me. Adding distortion pedals before an amp help, or a compressor afterwards, but it's just not comparable to a real amp IMO.

Now, if you're in the same room as an amp, a lot of the sustain you'll be hearing will just be feedback. If you were to play your amp sim at ungodly loud levels with low latency, I'm sure you'd get much closer.

However, feedback or not, I think amp sims really are missing something on the sustain side.

[chroma]

he's saying he can get the sustain out of the UAD engl, which is a sim, so it's already possible to get what he wants, at least for high-gain sounds. i doubt you need a compressor - high gain from preamp->amp will already do that for you - so it's a matter of finding a model that accomodates that in a way you like (though a compressor might also work, it's different).

you know, i've never tried this, but as i understand it, the feedback part of sustain is really the magnetic fields in the speaker driving directly (or adding to the string fluctuations) the pickup in the guitar. so, if you have something like live, you could try generating a real feedback loop, and mapping it to a pedal or something (for controllability). you can do this in live by dropping it as a return into an empty audio rack, set to 100% wet, and map the send from the return back into itself (among other ways). even better might be to route it to a second fx return with some EQ or a convolution with a pickup model to more accurately model the effect of the pickup on the feedback.....

[Jafo]

Play in front of the speakers

[Tubeman]

you know, i've never tried this, but as i understand it, the feedback part of sustain is really the magnetic fields in the speaker driving directly (or adding to the string fluctuations) the pickup in the guitar. so, if you have something like live, you could try generating a real feedback loop, and mapping it to a pedal or something (for controllability). you can do this in live by dropping it as a return into an empty audio rack, set to 100% wet, and map the send from the return back into itself (among other ways). even better might be to route it to a second fx return with some EQ or a convolution with a pickup model to more accurately model the effect of the pickup on the feedback.....

It's correct except it's the guitar's sound from the speaker aka air (sound) moving the magnetic field of the guitar's pickup that gets fed back to the amp through the guitar. Hence the term feedback. This will repeat and repeat and it will literally start feeding and amplifying its own sound in the amplifier. Too much of this though and it can burn your speakers.

[chroma]

sound (a pressure field) doesn't interact with a magnetic field, and it's not likely to have a significant impact on the strings either. the string moving in the magnetic field of the pickup is what produces the output. although, the body of the guitar does have an influence on the sound, in that the string is physically connected to it at both ends and so acoustically, it is possible that the sound could interact with the body enough to vibrate the strings.

i haven't tried that though, and from anecdotal reports from variax owners who have, vibrating the body isn't sufficient to generate useful output, you need a mag pickup to do it. a speaker is effectively a big electromagnet (in addition to producing sound) so would seem to be more likely the transmission method.

[Tubeman]

I'd like to correct that it's the guitar which brings the sustain and amps or compressors only amplify it to give the impression the sound is longer. After all, the electric guitar is an acoustic instrument.

While that is true it is not the whole truth. The amp controls sustain, too. If you crank up gain to max you will have longer sustain, of course together with more distortion.

I also assume that different amps have different "response curves", speaking dynamics. Something like a built-in compressor, which might be the case for ENGL and which might not be for Amplitube.

My reccomendation: Kuassa Amplifikation Free. That one has a really high gain amp. And if you like it you can buy the full version, Amp One or Amp Creme.

But in order to have the amp controlling the amplification of the sustain, the guitar has to ring in the first place. If the strings die there is nothing to amplify except hiss.

All tube amplifiers like Engl are practically compressors unlike solid state amps which are hard clippers. You could think tube amps as limiters with smooth curves. Of course the tube stages will be overdriven to get distortion. High gain amps like 5150, Soldano Slo and Mesa Rectifiers have all one tube stage that clips heavily while the other stages are smoother. Sustain differences between amps could come from different eqing of the stages, like older Marshalls whose distortion is generally middle range heavy and gives long sound when driven hard.

[Tubeman]

sound (a pressure field) doesn't interact with a magnetic field, and it's not likely to have a significant impact on the strings either. the string moving in the magnetic field of the pickup is what produces the output. although, the body of the guitar does have an influence on the sound, in that the string is physically connected to it at both ends and so acoustically, it is possible that the sound could interact with the body enough to vibrate the strings.

i haven't tried that though, and from anecdotal reports from variax owners who have, vibrating the body isn't sufficient to generate useful output, you need a mag pickup to do it. a speaker is effectively a big electromagnet (in addition to producing sound) so would seem to be more likely the transmission method.

Trust me, it picks up its own sound not magnetic field. You can have feedback from several meters away and speaker's magnetic field does not reach that far. You can actually record sounds like loud drumming with guitar pickups.

[chroma]

i guess it does vibrate the strings directly enough to get output (i have tapped on a guitar body and gotten output, but in that case it's also passing through the strings to the pickup). i guess resonances make it work. surprising, but interesting. that would not work as well as any kind of vst or effect then... would be very hard to model.

[gavriloP]

For best results you can use good DI box that has link option. You can link your guitar signal to any guitar amp and even put some od/distortion between the link and amp. This way you get real feedback without any latency that you'd get from monitors etc. Now your clean DI signal that goes to preamp and interface has that same feedback but without the sound of an amp. It is great for screaming feedback but also when you keep it just under the feedback you get amazing sustain and all in all great sound. Only problem is that you have to play real amp and it has to be little loud. But then again the quality of an amp don't matter and you're better off with some cheap small parctice amp, you could perhaps even use some miniature amp.

[Tubeman]

i guess it does vibrate the strings directly enough to get output (i have tapped on a guitar body and gotten output, but in that case it's also passing through the strings to the pickup). i guess resonances make it work. surprising, but interesting. that would not work as well as any kind of vst or effect then... would be very hard to model.

Yes it actually vibrates the guitar's body similarly like the strings do when you strike them. My explanation was quite bad so here's a better one:

"When a microphone is used to amplify the output of an acoustic guitar, the amplified speaker closes the loop between the input and output when the radiated sound from the speaker reaches the guitar. (See the dashed green line in the figure.) At this point, the sound can further enhance the vibrations of the guitar. If the gain is excessive, this enhancement results in instability dubbed "feedback" by the musician. In such cases, the guitar starts vibrating excessively at a particular frequency and this vibration produces an audible tone. For guitars, this typically occurs at lower frequencies, ranging between 100 and 200 Hz, and results in a "hum."

A similar mechanism occurs when amplifying the output of an electric guitar. Structural vibrations induced by acoustic feedback can magnify the signal generated by the sensors embedded in the guitar to "pick up" its sound, which leads to instability. Equalization can control feedback by reducing the gain at the frequency at which this problem occurs. One must take care in setting the equalization so as not to eliminate the natural harmonics of the instrument over a desired frequency range, however."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... dback-in-a

So the correct word to call it would be acoustic feedback.