Guitar Rig 6 / Amplitube 5... what else compares?

[The Noodlist]

Anyone tried Softube's Amp Room?

[releasefromwithin]

Amp Room is fantastic and has become my go to. It's expensive, and it's a resource hog, but it has something that I don't get from any of the others. There's a clarity and touch that's really close to the response of a real amp. The Bluesbreaker through one of the Marshall cabs in the separate Marshall collection is magic. I wasn't impressed with any of the amps that come with the single amp models though. 90% of the time that I play these days is with sims and have most of the big ones and when I'm looking for just a great tone, I go here. It's not really a plug in that's immediate though. You're not going to plug in and go, ahhh, that's it, that's the sound. It takes work, but it's in there if you give it time.

Second favorite would definitely be the Neural stuff with Plini being my favorite of all of them. Gojira would be number 2 and then probably the Soldano. Neural just sounds great the second you plug it in.

Amplitube 5 Max is really nice, but it takes a lot of work to get there as well. But I find I'm always tweaking and I almost get there but never really do.

ML Sound Lab has some really nice plug ins - Flagship, Plexi, ML5 and Roots are all nice but they seem to be more interested in pumping out new sims and not addressing their shortcomings (the way they save presets is awful, their pedals are just OK, no MIDI implementation (well, they just put out one last week with that added). Mikko seems like a great guy and he does nice work, I'm just not comfortable giving them any more money until they deliver on the promise that they're updating their old plugs ins. Their older sims almost feels like abandonware.

Line 6 Helix Native is really impressive but I seem to spend wayyyy more time tweaking than I do playing. And then I end up butchered the tone so much that I trash the preset and starting over.... or get up and get out of the house. Same problem as Ampltube... there's almost TOO many choices.

S-Gear sounds great and is easy to dial in but I can't quite get what I'm looking for.

Haven't tried Guitar Rig 6 but version 5 did nothing for me. STL sounded really good but there wasn't anything in there I couldn't pull out of Amp Room or Neural. Some of the Brainworx still is nice, but again, I can get all that with what I already have.

All in all, its a great time to be a player. Whatever you pick, it'll probably sound pretty good. The trick is to find what works for YOU.

[jamcat]

I demoed some Softube amps.
I thought I was going to be much more impressed than I was.
For starters, their amp GUI design layout is schizophrenic. Some look like amps, some just look like a panel of knobs. The mic placement was not as versatile as I felt it should be. And most importantly, the amps sounded in a way that I can only describe as hollow, like there was no mid-frequency weight or substance to them.

[Agreed]

I am a massive nerd for amp modeling, loved it since the late 2000s and have used it since then exclusively to record everything I've ever recorded. I do not get tired of checking out new amp sims and putting them through their paces, used to be a chief feature of my work when I reviewed professionally... Please therefor forgive a big nerdy post about this stuff, pals I will try to bold some stuff for ease of parsing.

I don't hate Softube's amp modeling in Amp Room at all; especially the Marshall officially certified amps that I own of theirs (which is not all of them, I've got all but one from Amp Room Marshall piecemeal as they went on sale at $19 each last year, also don't have the artist signature models) were quite Marshally and the older-school ones sounded raw in a good way. But, I like Amplitube 5's better, overall, for example their PT-20 unofficial Friedman model is a great sounding "hot rodded Marshall" tone that I would reach for before the Softube options I have if I wanted that. And so with many late AT4/AT5 era models. They've been on a real hot streak IMO and many of their modern offerings sound great with nice feel factor as well.

Still, I quite like Softube's "Amp Room 2.0" (and later) cabinet IRs (especially, again, the Marshall ones that some well regarded pros did - some really nice sounds among those) and I like their effects very much as well, not to mention it loads a lot of Softube effects that aren't otherwise part of Amp Room if you own them too so it makes it convenient and in one place. The CPU usage scales with how much DSP is going on so I have actually made good use of it as an after-amp-sim general processor and liked it well in that role. But it is not my first or second choice in my kit for amp sounds on their own, admittedly. Amplitube 5 has more amps that stand out to me.

Another quick comparison, I have the PRS Supermodels kit from Waves and the Amplitube PRS Archon unofficial model is better than the Waves official one. Never really thought Waves was out front in guitar amp modeling, though, from the GTR 3 days onward IKMM has smoked them in my opinion. The Satriani pack, the Brian May pack, and the AT5 models from Amplitube are the most recent ones I own and I think they're really nice. I also make good use of the Jimi Hendrix collection gear they updated in the 2010s; even though it's older, to me it sounds and records very well. I appreciated the new X-Gear models they did for dirt pedals - to me those are significant improvements in some cases and well worth picking up. I haven't directly compared the modulations but I have the dirts and I like the X-Gear dirts a lot.

Guitar Rig 6 is not bad in parts but also overall not blowing me away, the new models using their ICM technology (big companies love three letter acronyms, huh?) are actually quite nice in it but there aren't very many of them and just to my ears the older models don't sound like NI went back and redid them, they sound the same as they have to me. Some of their pedal models are good, many of their effects are excellent & to this day they have my favorite modulation and within-the-plugin automation capabilities, but they have had almost the same capabilities there since at least Guitar Rig 3 back in the 2000s. Still, you can do them with a lot of nice sounding stuff now, props to them for keeping up with it somewhat over the years even though it is a long time between releases. And I really do think the ICM stuff is nifty and more on the level we're wanting these days.

On to the indies: I have a few Igor Nembrini done amps and I think they're great at what they do. Favorites would be the DC-30, which models an '80s Vox; the MRH-159 which is a Brown Sound modded hot-rodded Marshall; the HiVolt 103, which is the first Hiwatt model that sounds as good as the Amplitube one did to me and also allows you to blend the Normal and Brilliant channels which I love the sound of; and the recent Faceman, modeling a '67 transition-to-Silverface era Bassman. They are standalone (so bring your own pedal and effects plugins, he does make some free ones worth getting too), CPU efficient which saves my bacon on this old comp (kinda struggles if projects get busy with the bigger software suites, even if I love their sound I may not be able to track efficiently through them anymore at that point), and the sound on them is very nice. They have built in three IR loaders which I pair with Dr. Bonkers cabinet IRs mainly lately. I think the guy behind Dr. Bonkers is really smart in how he does his IRs and they mix super well, sound great to me. Standouts for me are the Hiwatt and Harry Kolbe 4x12s, and the Fender Excelsior 15" is really slick too. Igor did a bunch of models for Brainworx that are sold under Plugin Alliance and UAD, too, if you want to check those out, but his own branded products are newer.

I only own two products from Kuassa, their Wah effector (love it, you can make it an automatic-on wah like a Morley with DAW automation by linking the On/Off parameter to the Wah pedal position and setting it carefully to make it turn on when you move the pedal up at all)... and the Lancaster, which is a multiple Vox sim that I think gets the sound right. I don't know if I need any of the other ones, so many options for those in my kit, but I think Kuassa is pretty good at what they do.

I have one Mercuriall plugin, the SS-11x pedal model, which is their older technology but it sounds great to me. One of my favorite pedal emulations / preamps that I own. It makes me want the hardware, I bet it's sick. I used to have a bunch of preamps but I couldn't hang onto them over the years, love that kind of thing though. This model is really nice.

I have tried several Neural DSP products and felt they did a good job, but I haven't bought any yet. I feel like something they do in the low mids sounds thick and heavy while still being defined... pretty "in the room" kind of sound, but when I evaluated them it doesn't mix quite as easily in what I do. There is probably one for me among them, just haven't connected to the point of spending since they are pretty pricey individually. I can see why people like them though.

I think that's about all I have to say about that.

[ElVincente]

Just be sure to give axiom's amps a fair try, they are very good imho.

[The Noodlist]

I demoed some Softube amps.
I thought I was going to be much more impressed than I was.
For starters, their amp GUI design layout is schizophrenic. Some look like amps, some just look like a panel of knobs. The mic placement was not as versatile as I felt it should be. And most importantly, the amps sounded in a way that I can only describe as hollow, like there was no mid-frequency weight or substance to them.

I've tried the odd demo, I was shocked by how bad the presets were. Maybe they're better in the context of a mix.

[releasefromwithin]

Yea, I think Neural is about the only company with presets that actually sound good.

[j wazza]

amp room is the best sounding ive tried but all the ones mentioned here are good options, dont use presets its not hard to just pick an amp and cabinet yourself, i wouldnt pay full price for amp room tho i got it on sale for like 40 euros, maybe start with the free ones - kuassa amp 360, free amplitube, maybe others

[Mr Arkadin]

I demoed some Softube amps.
[...]
For starters, their amp GUI design layout is schizophrenic. Some look like amps, some just look like a panel of knobs.

I think maybe you didn't delve deep enough. When the amp is dragged into the GUI it has the knob panel layout. There's an expansion symbol (tiny I'll admit) on the pannel which expands it to a full amp if you prefer that look.

So far I have

Softube's Amp Room - really like the newer Marshall's which I got cheap in a piecemeal fashion like Agreed (in fact I'm only missing one Marshall amp from the collection).

AmpliTube 5 - lots of stuff here, maybe too much sometimes!

Nembrini - haven't used much yet, but I liked the DC-30 (Vox) model. There is an amp host available called Plugin Rig Host where you can load the amps and effects like AT5 or Amp Room.

Audiority - mainly for the effects pedals so far. Interestingly models solid state amps only at the moment.

Plugin Alliance - Friedman Buxom Betty, Chandler GAV19T and Gallien Krueger 800RB (bass amp) are my favourites here.

I was going to give Mercuriall a try, but they have a warning about their stuff not playing nice with Studio One.

[paradiso]

I have tried Guitar Rig 6, Amplitude 5, and Bias FX 2. My personal preference is Bias FX 2. It just sounds better to me, and i can dial in the sounds I want faster than with the others. Second place Amplitiube. Not very impressed by Guitar Rig. I have also tried Waves GTR3, but I find it horrible, really hard to get usable sounds out if it. At least, that's my experience.

[Mr Arkadin]

So we can summarise that some users like certain amp sims and some hate certain amp sims, and some are 'meh' about certain amp sims. Pretty conclusive I think.

[bagpipe200]

So we can summarise that some users like certain amp sims and some hate certain amp sims, and some are 'meh' about certain amp sims. Pretty conclusive I think.

Let's do Climate Change next!

[Agreed]

Oh dang somehow in that giant post I forgot one I quite like, Aurora DSP Rhino! It loads up with too much bass but there are like 5 or 6 different ways to cut it within the software and there are some great tones in it if you like higher gain stuff or cleans suitable for metal. It has four amp models, of sorts, but they aren't really modeling things in particular so much as giving you certain sound styles that you can shape how you want with the included tone shaping options (which are diverse and effective). Four up-front boost types, styled after pedal types also but not modeling specific things. Clever one-screen interface with each part expandable to a pop-over view to give deeper control of everything, and each module is probably more configurable than you'd expect at its typical $40-50 price tag on sale. Really is quite complete within its idiom - it impressed me when I started really digging into it.

I find it to be very articulate, lot of punch, good feel factor, not crazy CPU usage but it has its overhead. I think the effects on it are very well done also for the sounds it excels at. Nice 4 IR cabinet section that allows for quadrant-based blending, drag the dot between four points to blend the sounds. Comes with its own nice IRs that do the job but I load up those Dr. Bonkers ones I was talking about earlier and it's really cool. I used it for some heavies on my last track and thought it did great.

I honestly feel we are spoiled for choice in a great way these days. Plenty of room for everyone to pick their favorites, I just can't stop myself so I make it a point to try all that I can. Gotta shred 'em all

[cprompt]

Guitar Rig 6 is not bad in parts but also overall not blowing me away, the new models using their ICM technology ... are actually quite nice in it but there aren't very many of them and just to my ears the older models don't sound like NI went back and redid them, they sound the same as they have to me.

That's because they haven't redone the original models. In the original GR6 thread NI said that they would remodel the older stuff, and upgrade more models to use their ICM technology. Well, since then they've done neither which is a shame. GR6 has the potential to be good, but in my opinion it falls a long way short at the moment.

[jancivil]

Amplitube Jimi Hendrix is so well-modeled that if you push it right it can rattle and kind of groan.
too bad the company is such a PITA. I installed and authorized AT5 last year and it did the noise blast every couple seconds like I had no right.

I like Kuassa AmplifikationCaliburn for high gain, it has a nice high end that isn't fizz, lot of definition.
I liked the Fender Twin in Guitar Rig 1 a lot, its high gain jobs appear to need a lot of coaxing. Like many I use it for special FX /psychedelic.

the old Amp Room was a very different beast. I have not got into the current version, it's very diffuse with a lot of stuff while the original was focused towards a metal kind of use case. I really liked it, it was... dark