IKM 5 plug-ins of your choice, what are the best for you?

[MeanMrMustard]

Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Strip
The Farm Stone Room
Sunset Sound Studio Reverb
Fame Studio Reverb
Tascam 388

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I also don't like their AI modeled guitar thing. It's edgy and weak sounding to me. Something is seriously lacking in the critical 1-5kHz region.

Probably it's just me..

We can probably discuss in a different thread, but regarding TONEX: it's definitely just you .

I've done over 200 captures of my own tube amps and pedals and I'm telling you, what you put in is exactly what you get out once gain-staged properly (tip: it needs more gain on the input than any sane person would want to track with so the input gain slider is your friend). I've also got lots of great captures from Amalgam audio and Tone Factor amongst some others, and literally getting the best, most realistic guitar tones I've ever heard. If you don't like TONEX, you either heard bad captures or don't like the sound of mic'd up tube amps. Some of the additional features are lacking (I don't love the spring reverbs), and the workflow is clumsy, but when it comes to amp sounds, it's truly exact to what the person who profiled it put in. I liked it so much, I bought the pedal and built a pedal board around it with some stomp distortions before and an H90 after. It's a great little portable rig I could gig with if I wanted to.

Note: I'm not a crazy high gain distortion guy at all. A JCM800 is about as high gain as I can stand, and a Soldano sounds good to me but is already a bit too much when pushed hard. So if you're out for ultra-heavy tones, I'm not the person to ask/judge, but for classic rock, indie, blues, funk, jazz, early metal tones...yeah, TONEX nails it with the right captures.

[ramseysounds]

Why the hate for space delay?

It's basically unuseable as an insert, as I pointed out recently in its thread (after making the mistake of getting it without demoing first, falsely assuming I could trust IK), as output-gain and saturation amount are one and the same single knob.

Use it as a send then

[zvenx]

yeah, I was with him on the Amplitube, then he went with AI stuff and we parted company sharply there .


Back on topic, I too am keen to hear what people are recommending.. So far, Leslie is the only one that has caught my ear, that I don't own already.

rsp

[bmanic]

I just installed Sunset Studio Reverb, never tried it before, and I'm absolutely blown away by how good it sounds! The two plates and the hi-fi spring reverb are just absolutely gorgeous sounding!

I tried all the other IK multimedia impulse reverb rooms (the stone room thing and the other studio) and they are nowhere near the same quality in my opinion.

Sunset Studio reverb is the only one that stays incredibly phase coherent somehow.. not sure what the hell is going on but it's the only one where the brutal Howie Weinberg mastering room in VSX doesn't sound all smeared and weird (a typical problem when you have bad reverb settings).

So yeah, definitely picking this up. I also tested all the tascam/teac plugins and I'm probably only getting 388 as I found it hi-fi enough for almost any task but also the ability to go nicely grunge too. The porta studio thing was way too lo-fi for my taste and I already have a lot of other plugins covering that area.

Now I need 3 more to fullfill the 5 plugin requirement.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Now I need 3 more to fullfill the 5 plugin requirement.

I do like Fame. It's not "THE" Muscle Shoals Sound Studio that first made that tiny Alabama town famous, but the studio that got started up by the house band from the original and where the Stones recorded some great songs (Brown Sugar, No Expectations). Crazy to think this tiny Alabama town had two recording studios putting out some MASSIVE records! I dig the organ/keys settting on pianos and keys for some air, and the plate has the decay time that Sunset lacks from what I recall. I dig it. Will stick it on pianos and occasionally guitars mostly (though I prefer the Sunset booths on guitars).

EDIT: see a few posts down below, I got this backwards. Mea culpa.

[BuddySpencer]

White 2a is my favorite opto comp itb

[jens]

Why the hate for space delay?

It's basically unuseable as an insert, as I pointed out recently in its thread (after making the mistake of getting it without demoing first, falsely assuming I could trust IK), as output-gain and saturation amount are one and the same single knob.

Use it as a send then

nah, not gonna happen - I consider sends a major pita for the most part of them... they made a lot of sense back in the day when you had that one single hardware device in your rack - later on, inside the box, when processing power was rather limited, it still made sort of sense... but now? Thanks, but no thanks. Why would I?

[jens]

White 2a is my favorite opto comp itb

It's my favourite comp full stop.

[jens]

Now I need 3 more to fullfill the 5 plugin requirement.

I do like Fame. It's not "THE" Muscle Shoals Sound Studio that first made that tiny Alabama town famous, but the studio that got started up by the house band from the original and where the Stones recorded some great songs (Brown Sugar, No Expectations). Crazy to think this tiny Alabama town had two recording studios putting out some MASSIVE records! I dig the organ/keys settting on pianos and keys for some air, and the plate has the decay time that Sunset lacks from what I recall. I dig it. Will stick it on pianos and occasionally guitars mostly (though I prefer the Sunset booths on guitars).

That plate sounds like no other plate to me - and it's gorgeous!

And for the backing band Fame is totally my go to now - if I am not using Palace instead, that is - but almost always the studio B ( - and "FOCUSED" about nine out of ten times or so). I love that room - it just works.

[jens]

I just installed Sunset Studio Reverb, never tried it before, and I'm absolutely blown away by how good it sounds! The two plates and the hi-fi spring reverb are just absolutely gorgeous sounding!

I quite liked Sunset until I got Fame - now I never touch it.

[osiris]

They must use AI spambots. I don't have a single product yet my Spam folder is full of nothing but promo emails from this company.

[jens]

I do like Fame. It's not "THE" Muscle Shoals Sound Studio that first made that tiny Alabama town famous

It totally is - the other one was founded much later by key Fame session musos (and relocated ten years after that)... so you got it completely backwards actually.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I do like Fame. It's not "THE" Muscle Shoals Sound Studio that first made that tiny Alabama town famous

It totally is - the other one was founded much later by key Fame session musos (and relocated ten years after that)... so you got it completely backwards actually.

doah! Yeap. Thanks for the correction! That's the problem with having 2 huge studios in one tiny town. It's confusing.

Now we're going to need a Muscle Shoals Sound Studio set then to complete the set.

[bmanic]

I just installed Sunset Studio Reverb, never tried it before, and I'm absolutely blown away by how good it sounds! The two plates and the hi-fi spring reverb are just absolutely gorgeous sounding!

I quite liked Sunset until I got Fame - now I never touch it.

For me it's exactly the opposite way around. Fame just doesn't work for me. It has too many weird phasey frequencies all over the place. I only found 3 or 4 room positions that were kind of "ok", the rest I didn't like at all. And I didn't really like the plate either.

Studio B Live room's "slap back" setting was really cool though. If I find no other plugins to fill the 5 plugin requirement, then I may buy Fame for that setting alone.