Swanky Amp (release 1.4.0)

[guitarzan]

Voxengo's Boogex 3 (free) has got a dynamic cabinet session which works similarly to Mercuriall Cab.

Definitely interested. After all, if it's Voxengo, it's great!

I'll have to check that one out too. The original Boogex was pretty much where it all started for me as far as VST amp sims and IRs go.

[garrinm]

Minor patch incoming: version 0.4.2.

https://github.com/resonantdsp/ResonantAmp

I moved the "filter" control to the pre amp section and named it "low cut" to help clarify it's use, since I've seen now a few messages about the sound having too much low end. Hopefully this helps address that.

I also carefully revised the sag parameter range and scaling. It should be much easier now to dial in a good sag sound--but it's still not easy. As you move the parameter you can hear the transients get compressed a bit and the distortion ceiling coming down as notes are played hard. Near the end of the range you'll hear pumping. Note that with high drive the sag has much less effect.

Thanks for all the comments and discussion. I'm not really shooting for a state of the art cabinet emulator here haha, but it does seem like a missed opportunity to ignore those dynamics. Anyway, this would be for later down the road, for now I think if you're aware of cabinet dynamics you likely have a plenty good plugin for that xD.

I read the instructions again and I think if I increase the Filter parameter in the Staging section it will take care of it.

That's probably the best way to get rid of stubborn low end build up. I moved that parameter to "low cut" in the "pre amp" section to help clarify. Still works the same way.

It's fun to play; it breathes. Thank you!

You're welcome! And thank you for the feedback.

I don't really have anything constructive to add, but I just wanted to say thanks for sharing. This plugin sounds great and is fun to play!

Glad you're getting some good use out of it. Thanks for giving it a shot.

Cool! It took a while to find where I wanted to be, but tight pre and looser power also with more drive in power than pre, sag right up there at 7 or 8 gets somewhere in the tweedish/supro zone I think. I think I had grit way down (I need to read the control instructions again, don't know what Grit is for really).

I am finding it hard to dial in anything that isn't super bassy on the neck pickup, even bass all the way down and cab brightness up, but I am using earbuds tonight, so that could be part of it.

Oh… I'm already an update behind! Will have to wait until tomorrow.

I know it'll never sound exactly like one of those amps but I'm glad you got something reminiscent of them. When you get a chance to try out the new update, I'll be very much looking forward to knowing if you find it easier to dial in a good sound with the new changes. I'm wondering if the plugin covers too large or to small a range of sag effects.

I'm finding that I like the "tight" control way up (9-10) on saturated sounds, 6-8 on chunky and midway on clean. So it's a lot like the sag settings for me.

The tight and sag controls affect similar aspects of the model, so you certainly can hear some compression from the pre amp tight control, and some from the power amp sag control. The sag control can be much more audible and is more directly related to compression. But if you don't know what you're shooting for it's a bit mysterious as it has a bunch of subtle repercussions. I programmed it and I still don't fully understand it xD.

[acousticglue]

I think the EQ section needs a bit more Q or something to separate a bit more between mids and lows

[guitarzan]

No crazy Neil Young stuff yet, I paid more attention to getting a balanced tone that sounded good with all pickup selections ("big" single coils, Dynasonic style) — full big sounding clean with chime (bloom, etc) when picked normally (guitar volume cranked) and nice overdrive with mild sag when I dig in, like a well maintained "in spec" vintage amp might when set to the sweet spot, and for that I have:

PRE AMP:
Drive 04, Tight 06, Grit 01, Low Cut 08(!)

POWER AMP
Drive 04, Tight 04, Sag 07

STAGING:
Stages 02, Slope 0

TONE STACK
Low 03, MID 06, High 07

With these settings you can wail on the strings and the amp will take it, nothing goes squarewave digital haywire or anything, which is great! It compresses and sags a bit, just like it should.

I did get a hint of possible meltdown-mode capabilities yet to be unleashed when I was messing around with the Grit control's interaction with other parameters — got into gated Fuzz Factory territory! Unexpected. Is Grit like a bias control?

Yeah, this thing is a challenge to keep stable, but it would lose a lot of character if it was to be too well refined. I guess that's what you're trying to pin down right now.

At least for normal amp tones, Sag sounds funny to me much above 07 — but everything is so interactive that there may be situations where 10 won't seem like enough as far as I know now.

As I have everything set now Sag behaves pretty naturally at about 07 IMO, but it's a bit on the subtle side, maybe more in the Fender blackface neighborhood than tweed — what exactly does "Sag" adjust, Threshold? Is the recovery time (Release) baked in, or could that be adjustable? I would love to try a longer Release, but it's nice now and I'm not sure at all of any improvement, at least for most uses, so maybe not worth putting any real time into changing it. Plus, I've only tried a tiny percent of the possible settings.

EDIT: I tried putting the Mercuriall Cab DLL both in the VST2 and VST3 folders but Cakewalk never seemed to find it — anyone got a clue?

[jbraner]

EDIT: I tried putting the Mercuriall Cab DLL both in the VST2 and VST3 folders but Cakewalk never seemed to find it — anyone got a clue?

I'm pretty sure it needs some support files to be installed too. Check p4 of the manual
https://mercuriall.com/freestuff/Mercur ... Manual.pdf
This is getting a little long in the tooth though.

[guitarzan]

EDIT: I tried putting the Mercuriall Cab DLL both in the VST2 and VST3 folders but Cakewalk never seemed to find it — anyone got a clue?

I'm pretty sure it needs some support files to be installed too. Check p4 of the manual
https://mercuriall.com/freestuff/Mercur ... Manual.pdf
This is getting a little long in the tooth though.

Thanks — I'll give that a try tomorrow. There was a folder with the download, but it's named MacOS or something — I downloaded it twice to make sure I was hitting the Windows button. Maybe the links are mislabeled.

[prodigal_sounds]

With SAG at 9-10 I get volume-swell type attacks which can sound very musical but in practice you'd want more control. Anything less than 8-9 and I honestly can't hear a difference but that may be my untrained ear. I leave it at 6 for the most part.

I agree with acousticglue that the EQ controls could use a little more definition but no big deal.

Since 0.3.0 there are more "sweet spots" attainable but it takes work to find them. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Question: Are the parameter values quantized to whole numbers? or does adjusting the knobs actually use values of 4.7 ? I haven't noticed any jumps in the tone when adjusting a knob during playback. Could we get a visual readout of an additional decimal place?

[jbraner]

PSA - thanks to the guys on the Scuffham forum, I found a good free noise suppressor
http://pvamps.blogspot.com/2015/05/pvnonoise.html
(in case you've got noisy single coil guitars and/or noisy pedals)

But while I was there, I also found this
http://pvamps.blogspot.com/2015/05/cab-driver.html
which seems to be a "coupler" between a power amp and speaker cab.

It won't do you any good if you just want to use ResonantAmp with it's own cab - but might be worth it with 3rd party cab sims. I'll give it a whirl.

[DaveClark]

I programmed it and I still don't fully understand it xD.

Hi Garrin,

I had to laugh when I read this, but it's also discomforting to be in that situation, having to choose between achieving goals and a complete understanding. I fully sympathize.

You've made amazing progress, absolutely outstanding.

Best regards,
Dave

[guitarzan]

But while I was there, I also found this
http://pvamps.blogspot.com/2015/05/cab-driver.html
which seems to be a "coupler" between a power amp and speaker cab.

Interesting — I've been thinking about different dynamic speaker emulations, and I seem to remember a post by a developer, I think it may have been regarding Mercuriall Cab, but they said they no longer were trying to do dynamic cab modeling because no one was making truly dynamic amp models, and that may have just changed — BUT, does Resonant Amp having the normalized output level limit the dynamic information available to a dynamic cab sim?

[guitarzan]

Question: Are the parameter values quantized to whole numbers? or does adjusting the knobs actually use values of 4.7 ? I haven't noticed any jumps in the tone when adjusting a knob during playback. Could we get a visual readout of an additional decimal place?

I was thinking of mentioning this earlier too — I notice differences in adjustments, but the parameter still shows the same number. That really doesn't bother me for day to day use, but when I was reporting settings earlier, pre amp and power amp drive both had a value of 4, but pre amp is before 4 a bit and power amp is a bit after, and that small difference does change the behavior. I guess it won't matter much at all once presets are all sorted, but it does matter a little at the moment.

[garrinm]

Question: Are the parameter values quantized to whole numbers? or does adjusting the knobs actually use values of 4.7 ? I haven't noticed any jumps in the tone when adjusting a knob during playback. Could we get a visual readout of an additional decimal place?

I was thinking of mentioning this myself — I notice differences in adjustments, but the parameter still shows the same number. That really doesn't bother me for day to day use, but when I was reporting settings earlier, pre amp and power amp drive both had a value of 4, but pre amp is before 4 a bit and power amp is a bit after, and that small differnce does change the behavior. I guess it won't matter any once preset are all sorted, but it does matter a little at the moment.

The values are *not* quantized, I just formatted the labels that way to cut down on visual noise. But on second thought clearly 1 decimal place is important since many parameters are quite sensitive (and it gives the wrong impression to show just numbers rounded to integers). I will change things, thanks for the tip.

does Resonant Amp having the normalized output level limit the dynamic information available to a dynamic cab sim?

Good question, and the answer is fortunately not at all! The output normalization is actually done through a calibration curve computed ahead of time (before the plugin is even compiled). Essentially I run an actual guitar signal through the DSP model, sweep the parameter which I want to normalize, and measure the loudness difference at each parameter point. It's limited and is a bit off for different pickups, but having dynamic normalization would add an entire gambit of un-amp-like effects. You can see one such calibration curve here:

https://github.com/resonantdsp/Resonant ... ll.dsp#L32

having to choose between achieving goals and a complete understanding. I fully sympathize.

That's the software engineering trade off isn't it. The only real currency you have is time, and then you just have to choose how to spend it to get as close as possible to a successful outcome. Thanks for the encouragement.

[garrinm]

With SAG at 9-10 I get volume-swell type attacks which can sound very musical but in practice you'd want more control. Anything less than 8-9 and I honestly can't hear a difference but that may be my untrained ear. I leave it at 6 for the most part.

At least for normal amp tones, Sag sounds funny to me much above 07 — but everything is so interactive that there may be situations where 10 won't seem like enough as far as I know now.

As I have everything set now Sag behaves pretty naturally at about 07 IMO, but it's a bit on the subtle side, maybe more in the Fender blackface neighborhood than tweed — what exactly does "Sag" adjust, Threshold? Is the recovery time (Release) baked in, or could that be adjustable?

Alright, I fully sympathize that it's hard to tune in a good sag sound, and it quickly goes from "that sounds about right" to "that sounds very ... experimental" without ever reaching that coveted Rust depth.

This is related to my implementation: I considered that only the signal up to some effective clip level in the power amp will actually contribute to power draw. That is because signal beyond that level doesn't flow through the plate, hence it is clipped and not in the final waveform in the speaker. And if there's no current in the plate, it's not drawing power. The end result is there's only a limited range of signal that can contribute to the power draw, once it gets too large then the compression is always at the same value since there's no *additional* power being drawn. And to compound this limited range, part of the effect of the sag is to reduce that range. So the amp can (too) quickly get to a state where it's constantly starved of power no matter what you play.

BUT, after careful consideration I realize the signal above the effective clip level will still contribute to power draw, both from leaking in the screen and also just from the pre-amp stages drawing power (but that would be probably much smaller than the power amp power draw).

What this all means is: this power sag issue is a beautifully convoluted mess. I think to really nail down a good sound it's important to chase down those side-effects. I realize my current implementation is wrong, and more importantly how it's wrong. And that's the first step to improving it. No guarantees yet though since, as you can probably infer, the results can be very unexpected.

[garrinm]

I think the EQ section needs a bit more Q or something to separate a bit more between mids and lows

I'd like to do something about this. Do you think the lows are too wide or the mids? For example, is the issue more that when you try to cut the lows you end up dropping too much from the mids. Or does it feel more like when you boost the mids you end up picking up too much from the lows?

Thanks,
Garrin

[acousticglue]

I believe boosted mids brings bass with it