Amplitube 3 - screenshot (from NAMM)

[hibidy]

So first question, did all the Hendrix models end up in A3 already? Second question, would there be any advantage to buying Hendrix now for $49 notwithstanding? I guess it will have the Hendrix presets, but that's not really worth $49 to me. Any other reason?

yes
no
I don't know, but I never used the presets myself.

[Agreed]

If you just really like giving IKMM money, go ahead and buy it, but you're basically just paying 'em $50 for presets. Now, they're pretty lovingly crafted presets that actually do sound pretty close to the album sounds they're aimed at (especially if you have the right instrument to plug in up front), but that's a lot of money for presets.

And, yeah, AT3 is a leap from their previous efforts, which were already some of - perhaps the - best sounding virtual amps out there. I've been working more with the effects lately too and the only thing I miss is TAP control. I wish like hell that time-related effects, from delays to other, LFO modulations, had a little "tap" button. I know this functionality exists globally but, man, I just want it on the modules themselves. It's handy. It's useful! It's... a little sloppy, compared to having accurate time signature info in the project, but damn it, I want tap tempo on everything

[maximilians1]

if you just want the presets just install the jimi and metal demos along with your full version of AM3 and they will be imported into am3, worked for me anyways

[Dewdman42]

nice tip, thanks

[redshift factor]

Yeah. One of my requests for AT3 is to load .ajhp, .at2p, and .atmp presets right out of the box without having to have the obsolete software installed. You can load .atxp presets directly, just by renaming them to .at3p, but they have use the same rack effect that was ported to AT3 (Metal's Digital Delay, Reverb, Digital Chorus and Digital Flanger; AT2's Parametric EQ, Rotary Speaker, Harmonator, Pitch Shifter, and Stereo Enhancer; and Hendrix Edition's Tube Compressor) or it will say the model cannot be loaded. I don't see why we should be forced to install hundreds of MBs of old software just to access our own old presets. The only answer is to install the old versions (demos will work) and then load each old preset and resave it as an .at3p preset.

[Dewdman42]

I dont understand what you are explaining. How is that?

[redshift factor]

I'm not sure what you're asking for clarification on. I went back and edited the info about using each edition's rack effects a bit to make it more clear, though. If that's what you're asking about, what I mean here is that you can simply change the file extension of any X-GEAR preset to .at3p, and AT3 will recognize it and load it, but if the preset uses the Tube Compressor from AmpliTube 2, for example, then it will tell you that the module can't be loaded because you don't have it installed. But if it uses the Jimi Hendrix Edition's Tube Compressor, then AT3 will load it, because that one is installed by AT3 (you can tell from the AT3 graphics). Of course if you have AT2 installed, then it should load the Tube Compressor module just fine in renamed X-GEAR presets that use it, and it will have the Hendrix Edition graphics, since that's the one AT3 uses. It's pretty stupid and arbitrary, since the rack Tube Compressor is the same in Hendrix and AT2, but just with different graphics, but that's how it works.

I'm hoping that IKMM will remove this arbitrary restriction so AT3 can load all AT2, Metal, Hendrix, and X-GEAR presets right out of the box.

[Dewdman42]

Ok let me get this straight.

- you can change any old preset to .at3p and it will load into A3 (check)

- if the "old" presets are using exclusively JH modules, then the will be perfectly fine because all of the JH modules made it into A3 with the same module names, etc.

- If the old preset happened to include any modules from the base A2 modules, then for some reason A3 may be confused by this. It doesn't seem to recognize some of the A2 modules, such as the A2 base tube compressor. Do I have that correct?

- If that is true, then I would guess that many A2 presets would not load into A3 properly since any of them using that are tube compressor would also have problems. Yes?

- seems to me its not necessary to have JH or metal installed together with A3, but rather you must have A2 installed in order to open some of the JH and Metal presets, since IK apparently screwed up and didn't provide backwards compatibility on some of the A2 modules. Or at least got confused on the naming of some of them.

Please correct me if I am misunderstanding the situation.

[Dewdman42]

I think I am understanding that renaming old A2 presets to A3 is simply not supported. The only way to load the older presets "properly" is to have A2 installed, in which case, the A2 presets show up under A3 and you can resaved as A3 preset. This is kind of lame I think. It means you can't easily convert all your old presets from A2 days.

Am I missing something?

[Dewdman42]

redshift, I think I can help you.

If you install Hendrix or Metal demos, or X-gear or A2, and then uninstall them; there is an option while uninstalling to leave the presets in place. So leave those in place when you uninstall them, and then A3 will recognize and load them just fine.

I do not believe its a supported feature to rename the filename extension of old presets to .at3p. Although that kinda sorta seemed to work for you, it obviously didnt work right all the time. I suspect that IK is doing some conversion magic when loading old presets and the only way to know its an old preset is by the filename extension and or the folder where its found.

what is silly is that you have to have the old style presets in a different location then A3 presets. On my mac, A3 presets go here:

/Library/Application Support/IK Multimedia/AmpliTube 3/Presets/

If you take the JH presets, leave them alone in their original form and place them here:

/Library/Application Support/IK Multimedia/Amplitube Jimi Hendrix/Presets/

Then they seem to show up already in A3, ready to play and they all load fine. And that is with the actual Jimi Hendrix product uninstalled. The only thing left behind are the presets.

There is no real need to convert them into .at3p files unless you change them, at which time, yes they will be saved under the A3 presets dir I guess, but not really sure.

Hope this helps. Thanks for taking me down this road, I now understand I don't need to buy JH edition since I have A3 and its all there!

[redshift factor]

Not exactly. Firstly, not any old AmpliTube preset can be renamed to .at3p and work with AmpliTube 3. Only .atxp presets from X-GEAR will work.

And for the X-GEAR presets, whether or not all the modules load depends on where each one came from originally. Of the modules that appeared in multiple AT editions, AmpliTube 3 culls it's modules from the following:

AmpliTube 2:
Parametric EQ, Rotary Speaker, Harmonator, Pitch Shifter, and Stereo Enhancer

Metal:
Digital Delay, Reverb, Digital Chorus, and Digital Flanger

Jimi Hendrix Edition:
Tube Compressor

So if you have an X-GEAR preset that uses the Rotary Speaker from the Hendrix menu and the Tube Compressor from the AmpliTube 2 menu, then you're screwed. But if your preset used the Rotary Speaker from the AmpliTube 2 menu and the Tube Compressor from the Hendrix menu, then you're set.

All of this only matters if you DON'T have the old plugins installed.
I'm talking about how to access old presets without the bloat of all the old obsolete AmpliTube versions clogging up your hard drive.
So your advice sort of defeats the objective.

Once AmpliTube 3 detects one of the old plugins on your system, then it can load those presets directly (including .at2p, .atmp and .ajhp presets from AT2, Metal and Hendrix, as well as .atxp presets from X-GEAR), and any edition's modules will be recognized in .atxp presets (assuming the base edition is installed), and will be loaded in whichever corresponding rack AT3 happens to feature. So using the above example, the .atxp preset with the Hendrix Rotary Speaker and the AT2 Tube Compressor will load into AT3, but will give you the AT2 Rotary Speaker and the Hendrix Tube Compressor.

So if you install an old version in order to nab the presets from it, and you copy them into the AT3 presets folder and then uninstall the old software, AT3 won't even recognize the old file extensions in your preset folder, since the old software won't be currently installed. You will have to leave the old versions installed and then resave all of the presets as .at3p presets in AmpliTube 3 to be able to continue using them once you uninstall the old plugins.

Got it?

What I'm hoping is that IKMM will remove the artificial limitation so that all old presets (.at2p, .ajhp, .atmp, .atxp) are loaded as is in AmpliTube 3 and all modules work correctly, even without the old plugins installed. Every module from all of those are represented in some form right out of the box in AT3, so in effect, users automatically should have access to presets that use those modules. It's just a matter of convenience. AT3 is huge, and it contains all of the modules of X-GEAR, which contains all of the modules of AT2, Metal, and Hendrix. So why force AT3 users to essentially install all of them 3 times? It's redundant and a waste of hard drive space. I have to install all of this software just to have full access to many of my old presets I made in X-GEAR. I should be able to forgo all the old versions and just open up an .ajhp preset in AT3 directly. Instead, I have to install all of these old versions, then I can load the old preset and then resave it as an .at3p preset to break the dependence on the old software once and for all.

[Dewdman42]

Red, you're making it way too complicated.

Just leave the JH, Metal, X-gear and A2 presets in their original locations when you uninstall those products. A3 will recognize them all as is.

[Dewdman42]

Once AmpliTube 3 detects one of the old plugins on your system, then it can load those presets directly (including .at2p, .atmp and .ajhp presets from AT2, Metal and Hendrix, as well as .atxp presets from X-GEAR),

This is where you're going wrong. Those old plugins don't need to be installed. Only the original presets need to exist in the original location with the original filename extensions.

So if you install an old version in order to nab the presets from it, and you copy them into the AT3 presets folder

Yea don't copy them to the A3 presets folder. Leave them in their original location

and then uninstall the old software, AT3 won't even recognize the old file extensions in your preset folder,

Correct, it won't recognize the old presets in the AT3 presets folder, but it will still recognize them in their original locations.

since the old software won't be currently installed. You will have to leave the old versions installed and then resave all of the presets as .at3p presets in AmpliTube 3 to be able to continue using them once you uninstall the old plugins.

No, you don't need to do that. You can uninstall the old plugins. The key is to leave the presets in the same locations where the old plugins were finding them. Leave them named the same way and everything else. Only AT3 presets should be saved in your AT3 presets location. Changing the filename extension on the old presets might work some of the time, but its clearly not supported.

What I'm hoping is that IKMM will remove the artificial limitation so that all old presets (.at2p, .ajhp, .atmp, .atxp) are loaded as is in AmpliTube 3 and all modules work correctly, even without the old plugins installed.

It will do so now. The only inconvenience in my view is that you have to keep the various presets isolated in different locations, per their old plugin, rather than all consolidated into one AT3 Presets folder. Also if you make any new changes, it will be saved as AT3 in the new location I guess.

[redshift factor]

The thing is, I moved from XP to Windows 7 shortly after AT3 came out, and I've got a clean install and didn't want to have to install the old ones at all to access my old presets.

[Dewdman42]

You don't have to. If you have your presets, just put them into directories that are located where they would normally be IF YOU DID install them. If you don't know where those locations are, then I guess you'll have to install to find out.

Hey I agree, IK could have made this easier, but its not the end of the world...