Real amps vs modelling and plugin amps

[Uncle E]

It’s not that obvious or loud, but once you hear it, it is always there and nothing can touch it.

Just try the capture after a capture thing. It works really well for me.

[zerocrossing]

It’s not that obvious or loud, but once you hear it, it is always there and nothing can touch it.

Just try the capture after a capture thing. It works really well for me.

Load up Obsessive-Compulsive. It's an IK Factory patch that's very high-gain. It's a Fultone OCD into a Peavey 5150 through a Orange PPC412. Gobs of gain. Oodles, one might even say. Tell me there's aliasing on the highest note of your guitar, and I'll tell you that you're lying. Not only can I not hear it, I can't see it on a spectrum analyzer. Not from a guitar output, not from my analog triangle wave. Actually, I switched my triangle wave source to a Melbourne Instruments Nina, as it's a bit cleaner and allows me to morph from triangle to saw to get more harmonics, and I ran a high E (fret 24) and when I bend it up, I can barely hear a bit of aliasing in the noise floor and the scope shows me it's at -68 db. There is absolutely no way anyone could hear that in a mix, and if you're wailing on that high note from a synthesizer (a guitar can't produce a sawtooth) all alone, you're so annoying, I can't imagine anyone staying around to hear it, so enjoy it. You'll have it all to yourself.

[guitarzan]

It’s not that obvious or loud, but once you hear it, it is always there and nothing can touch it.

Just try the capture after a capture thing. It works really well for me.

Load up Obsessive-Compulsive. It's an IK Factory patch that's very high-gain. It's a Fultone OCD into a Peavey 5150 through a Orange PPC412. Gobs of gain. Oodles, one might even say. Tell me there's aliasing on the highest note of your guitar, and I'll tell you that you're lying. Not only can I not hear it, I can't see it on a spectrum analyzer. Not from a guitar output, not from my analog triangle wave. Actually, I switched my triangle wave source to a Melbourne Instruments Nina, as it's a bit cleaner and allows me to morph from triangle to saw to get more harmonics, and I ran a high E (fret 24) and when I bend it up, I can barely hear a bit of aliasing in the noise floor and the scope shows me it's at -68 db. There is absolutely no way anyone could hear that in a mix, and if you're wailing on that high note from a synthesizer (a guitar can't produce a sawtooth) all alone, you're so annoying, I can't imagine anyone staying around to hear it, so enjoy it. You'll have it all to yourself.

There are high frequency overtones on every guitar note — way above the fundamental. They are always aliasing in ToneX — always. Ignoring the fact that every guitar note produces loads of high order harmonics does not make them go away. The fundamental frequencies are good, the upper harmonics are aliasing. It’s a fact.

[Uncle E]

Load up Obsessive-Compulsive.

Subtle dig

[guitarzan]

You deaf bastards just continuing in denial. Cj ck ck every note. It is there, just because you’re an IK fanboy and refuse to hear it or accept empirical test data doesn’t mean anything in reality changes you know… science, Nyquist, all that crap.

[guitarzan]

Guitar harmonics go way way beyond the 24th fret e string, octaves. And they are present on every note, every fret. Can you not understand that? Does this have something to do with overwound humbuckers that sound like someone is sitting on the guitar? Overtones are real and ever present and aliasing like a bitch on ToneX,

ck ck ck ck

[Uncle E]

You deaf bastards just continuing in denial.

I resemble that remark!

[guitarzan]

There is absolutely no way anyone could hear that in a mix, and if you're wailing on that high note from a synthesizer (a guitar can't produce a sawtooth) all alone, you're so annoying, I can't imagine anyone staying around to hear it, so enjoy it. You'll have it all to yourself.

I can hear it, to hell with “the mix”. Upper harmonics, octaves above the highest fundamental on a guitar… they alias, all the time.

It’s there, there is no way that it cannot be there. Anyone can hear it, but you refuse. It is still there, and it could be reduced, but any changes made by IK would be an admission that it wasn’t perfect all along and that would make the fanboys cry.
Go f#¢k yourself.

Your homemade half assed sweep is not up to snuff. You want to dismiss the sweep used on the Gear Page tests, but Mitchell is a trained audio engineer, with a degree and a job as an audio engineer. His sweep adds 5th order harmonics because they are there in real life. You heard the results. In real life tons of those harmonics are aliasing all at once, so you get a focused noise rather than audible oscillation. On virtually every note.

[stoopicus]

Yeah but in the mix you're just going to EQ/LPF all that ultrahigh bullshit away anyway. Which (coupled with oversampling) is exactly what IK would do internally to begin with.

[guitarzan]

Yeah but in the mix you're just going to EQ/LPF all that ultrahigh bullshit away anyway. Which (coupled with oversampling) is exactly what IK would do internally to begin with.

It’s exactly what IK should have done internally to begin with. That’s all I’ve been saying. The tests on The Gear Page (and my own ears) prove that they didn’t, or at least they didn’t go far enough.

I don’t want to hear it while I play because it’s irritating, regardless of whether you can hear it in a mix or not (I said from the beginning that it really didn’t stand out to me on recorded material). So I vote yes on IK doing… something, anything. LPF and more oversampling would be best

[zerocrossing]

Yeah but in the mix you're just going to EQ/LPF all that ultrahigh bullshit away anyway. Which (coupled with oversampling) is exactly what IK would do internally to begin with.

You miss the point, which is that, for the most part, you don’t have to EQ out anything, because it’s not there, or under the noise floor. I had to force Tonex to alias by feeding it a much more harmonically rich waveform, and even so, it was still very quiet. In a real world situation, nothing like that would happen, unless you are hitting a fuzz or distortion box first, which I suspect would have a negative impact on your sound. The key is, bake the pedal into the capture, like the Tonex preset I mentioned did with the OCD pedal.

The idea that I’m too deaf to hear it is stupid, because I’m also looking at the results in a spectrum analyzer, where you can see it quite clearly, if it’s happening. That’s how I knew it the db levels.

[stoopicus]

Yeah but in the mix you're just going to EQ/LPF all that ultrahigh bullshit away anyway. Which (coupled with oversampling) is exactly what IK would do internally to begin with.

You miss the point, which is that, for the most part, you don’t have to EQ out anything, because it’s not there, or under the noise floor.

Oh no doubt, I totally believe that. What I was saying was that even if it WAS there, at that far out on the frequency spectrum, unless it was truly heinous it could be dealt with.

[guitarzan]

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index ... t-39840674

Tell me again what I can’t hear. Those 5th order harmonics are always present on a guitar note — the tests shows the highest order harmonics are aliasing.

The sweep clearly shows that there is no sufficient internal LPF or sufficient oversampling to prevent audible aliasing on those high order overtones.

Outside of a controlled sweep, in the real world all that high frequency aliasing on all the highest overtones simultaneously makes a noise that you may be mistaking as pick attack, but it is quite different from actual pick attack on an amp.

It’s a short burst of noise and I do hear it. So do you probably. I think it sounds like bridge rattle, but nothing can lessen it, it’s just there on every note. It’s not that big of deal recorded but I find it highly irritating. ck ck ck-ck-ck… every overdriven note.

I absolutely do hear something and those tests prove to me conclusively that it is aliasing. I see no other possibility really. It’s on many sims, some way worse, but I only care about this one right now.

[zerocrossing]

Yeah but in the mix you're just going to EQ/LPF all that ultrahigh bullshit away anyway. Which (coupled with oversampling) is exactly what IK would do internally to begin with.

You miss the point, which is that, for the most part, you don’t have to EQ out anything, because it’s not there, or under the noise floor.

Oh no doubt, I totally believe that. What I was saying was that even if it WAS there, at that far out on the frequency spectrum, unless it was truly heinous it could be dealt with.

Tonex is huge. If it were a systemic problem, it wouldn't be huge. Simple as that. Guitarists tend to be a picky bunch. When some jerk wandered onto Gearspace and declared some Italian plugin to be the best emulation known to human kind, he got chased off the forum by everyone who heard a mediocre emulation with a lot of aliasing. I can't even remember that plugin, as I'm sure it's been relegated to the dustbin of software history.

It is curious that some captures and models seem worse than others, regardless of gain settings. Either it's a bug or something is happening in the capture process for Tonex. Maybe it's what happens when you clip the incoming signal? Total guess. Why the Mark IIC+ Amplitube model is so bad... has to be a bug, like some oversampling process got accidentally turned off for that model. Maybe they'll fix these issues, maybe not, but there are plenty of models and captures that are great, so I'm not going to worry about it.

[stoopicus]

It is curious that some captures and models seem worse than others, regardless of gain settings.

Yeah, I would just follow Occam's Razor and assume a bad capture in those cases. No big deal. Doesn't detract from the overwhelming value of the device at all.