Overloud TH1 Guitar System released!

[buscemi]

Finally I test my TH1 demo. My only word is I am enloved to died with it, first time ever in my life I get such a pretty tone(s)from my axes. I am still touched with demos in TH1 site, In a Mellow Drive - Sergio Cruz - hold my thumbs up as the beatiful guitar sound and Overloud Tango - Carlos Arellano jazzpick - the most incredible musical demo I ever listen from a amp simulator, a song could go easily in a world class artist cd. Since I have a free iLOK key maybe I could purchase both TH1 and Breverb for my Mac, does Overloud to have some discount xmas offer in that sense? hopeful to found my registered version bottomed in my xmass tree :=).
Congratulations to Overloud team, TH1 is fantastic!

We have a bundle offer for Breverb + TH1 on our website.

Otherwise go to your local store or local distributor website to find out where to get the boxed versions. You might even save by going that route.

I must be blind - I don't see that anywhere?

[Simone Coen]

Hmmmmm I seem to recall someone asking for this on this very thread .....I don't see it on the site, and is it too late to benefit from it after having bought TH-1 last week or was it the week before?
thanks
rsp

It's here:
http://order.kagi.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi ... 6FFPN_LIVE

RSP, if you want to get BREVERB, PM me and we'll find a solution for you.

Best,

[dimitar]

Quick mix in Cubase 4 with TH1

[Genetic_Junk]

One thing that I am not to pleased about is the aliasing in TH1.

I asked the DSP developers to have an answer on this.
So I'll get back on this soon.

Best,

Thanks Simone. I'm looking forward to hearing what they say.

Here's the response:
- TH1 uses oversampling by default in all distortion pedals and amplifiers
- oversampling factor changes with sampling frequency to optimize CPU (it's fixed at 176.4 KHz for 44 and 88 for example)
- choosing the right oversampling is always a compromise: higher values reduce aliasing but forces us to use steeper filters which in exchange deteriorate the high-frequency spectrum
- the FIR filter being used is longer the higher is the oversampling factor: this filter if it's too long introduces a very long pre-ringing and post-ringing actually SMEARING transients and making end results sound worse in the high frequencies
- so the end result is fruit of a compromise where Overloud together with its listening gurus (I was in there too... I forgot...) decided to go for this compromise: clearer and sharper attacks, better high frequency rendition with a slight presence of aliasing
- also, don't take wrong assumptions on what it might seem aliasing: on distorted tones there can be a lot of inter-modulation distortion producing very wild results sometimes even in the real tube and analog world.
An example? Play a double stop G-string 14th fret and B-string 12th fret, then bend the G string slowly... you hear stuff which might sound as aliasing but it's intermodulation, same things happen in the real world.

In the end: we choose this compromise because it sounds better in real-life than it does with test tones, that's it.

Hope this helps.

I appreciate knowing the rational behind the compromise. Thanks for reminding me about other types of distortion that appear to qualitatively similar to aliasing. Although I am pretty sure what I am hearing is aliasing. I may upload a comparison a bit later.

[Simone Coen]

No need to upload comparisons for myself.
We have the real things, we have the other modelers. We know how they deal with this stuff. Thanks.

But if you want to upload them for other guys, then do that, but make sure to upload a FFT of the frequency/time/energy relation and a graphic of the impulse response of all the plugs you compare so that people can see the different time-domain responses which are IMHO much more important than aliasing when dealing with guitar tones and are the balancing factor in taking these decisions for every developer (not only Overloud).
If you do it this way, then you're doing a real unbiased and scientific-based approach.

If you just upload an mp3 snippet, then you're probably showing just the aliasing factor which in our case might be slightlly worse than some of the competition, but that mp3 can't show the time-domain response which is not as clear to hear but it's more important in the context of a mix and in real use.

Best,

[fas1piano]

i agree with simone that transient attack response of the amp in th-1 (i use darkface) is much better than that of other amp sims and also combo amps that i have used and liked.

the instrument that shows that the most for me is clavinet. before, i always needed to mix in a fair amount of the dry signal to keep some attacks, now i can use the same amps settings for clav, wurli, rhodes and it always sounds good.

fab

[electro]

Can someone A/B the TH1 Darkface with Amplitube's Fender Twin?

[Simone Coen]

Can someone A/B the TH1 Darkface with Amplitube's Fender Twin?

You mean AT Jimi Hendrix? 'cause AT2 doesn't have a Twin AFAIK.

[electro]

yes, its in A2JHE. Even better would be to include a real Fender Twin in the comparison if anyone has.

[Genetic_Junk]

No need to upload comparisons for myself.
We have the real things, we have the other modelers. We know how they deal with this stuff. Thanks.

But if you want to upload them for other guys, then do that, but make sure to upload a FFT of the frequency/time/energy relation and a graphic of the impulse response of all the plugs you compare so that people can see the different time-domain responses which are IMHO much more important than aliasing when dealing with guitar tones and are the balancing factor in taking these decisions for every developer (not only Overloud).
If you do it this way, then you're doing a real unbiased and scientific-based approach.

If you just upload an mp3 snippet, then you're probably showing just the aliasing factor which in our case might be slightlly worse than some of the competition, but that mp3 can't show the time-domain response which is not as clear to hear but it's more important in the context of a mix and in real use.

Best,

If we want to do a comprehensive scientifically oriented test between plugins that model analog devices, we run into problems from the start. If two plugins model the AC30, the difference between the two AC30s that are modeled may be significant enough to make comparing the modeling accuracy between the two plugins extremely difficult. Unless the plugins modeled exactly the same piece of gear at the same time or the piece of gear is known to be extremely consistent between individual pieces and remain the same over time, the only way to test the accuracy of the plugin is test it against the gear that is was modeled on.

All I want to test for is audible aliasing between amp modeling plugins. These analog devices on their own almost certainly don't alias. So since the comparison is only looking at one phenomenon that wasn't present at all in the original amps the comparison doesn't run into the problems of comprehensive comparisons.

I do acknowledge the fact there is a lot more to sound and response of an amp than whether or not it aliases. And I also realize the audible aliasing in TH1 is result of a compromise. But I don't think it is unscientific or useless to compare one aspect of the sound.

edit: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

[zerocrossing]

I do acknowledge the fact there is a lot more to sound and response of an amp than whether or not it aliases. And I also realize the audible aliasing in TH1 is result of a compromise. But I don't think it is unscientific or useless to compare one aspect of the sound.

edit: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

I think a lot of us (myself included) get bogged down with things like aliasing and comparing it to "the real thing" but I find it's way more important to spark up your laptop and start playing in an almost meditative state. If the software inspires, then who cares about anything else? If it doesn't, then life is too short and there are too many other options out now to dwell on the minutia.

Yesterday I had to turn off preamp and stompbox oversampling on my amp modeler of choice because I had a ton of crap running during a live jam (courtesy of Mobius and Augustus Loop audio loopers). When I really compare the tone I get with them on and off, I can hear the difference. I cringed at first but off they went to stop the popping.

The result? The popping went away and I quickly forgot all about it and had a really inspired jam. At one point I sat back and listened to all the loops I'd created. Was there aliasing? I bet there was but it sounded amazing to me and that's all that really counts.

Someone asked "can you compare AT2JH Twin model to TH1's Darkface..." Why don't you to it? Both products have free easily downloadable demos. Have at it. AT2JH is about $100 cheaper ($189 at B&H compared to $297) but doesn't offer nearly the flexibility that TH1 does. They're such different products that I bet it would be nice to have both. For a while I fretted about this lack of flexibility in Amplitube to do really experimental things... then I realized I was being jerky. I actually momentarily abandoned Amplitube and sparked up a combination of iZtope's Trash and KORE2 and I had sounds that made me think I must have licked a piece of paper Jimi handed me.

Pick your gear and "love the one you're with." I bet if I didn't already own all the IK amp modelers, POD Farm and iZotope's Trash I'd be asking Santa for this one. It's got the flexibility of Guitar Rig but it actually sounds good.

[Simone Coen]

If we want to do a comprehensive scientifically oriented test between plugins that model analog devices, we run into problems from the start. If two plugins model the AC30, the difference between the two AC30s that are modeled may be significant enough to make comparing the modeling accuracy between the two plugins extremely difficult. Unless the plugins modeled exactly the same piece of gear at the same time or the piece of gear is known to be extremely consistent between individual pieces and remain the same over time, the only way to test the accuracy of the plugin is test it against the gear that is was modeled on.

All I want to test for is audible aliasing between amp modeling plugins. These analog devices on their own almost certainly don't alias. So since the comparison is only looking at one phenomenon that wasn't present at all in the original amps the comparison doesn't run into the problems of comprehensive comparisons.

I do acknowledge the fact there is a lot more to sound and response of an amp than whether or not it aliases. And I also realize the audible aliasing in TH1 is result of a compromise. But I don't think it is unscientific or useless to compare one aspect of the sound.

edit: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

Hi,

The reason I cite 'scientific' testing is not to testify if one model is better than the other, but only scientifically prove things that are there or not (regardless of the 'quality' or percieved quality of the sound).
In my opinion, taking the aliasing problem without considering the time-response problem is like looking at the problem from just one side, which is not scientific.
It's like saying: "oh, this house is so clean from the outside!", when in fact it's totally dirty when you enter it.
Comparing the sound of the modelings is no real use here IMHO.

[Genetic_Junk]

If we want to do a comprehensive scientifically oriented test between plugins that model analog devices, we run into problems from the start. If two plugins model the AC30, the difference between the two AC30s that are modeled may be significant enough to make comparing the modeling accuracy between the two plugins extremely difficult. Unless the plugins modeled exactly the same piece of gear at the same time or the piece of gear is known to be extremely consistent between individual pieces and remain the same over time, the only way to test the accuracy of the plugin is test it against the gear that is was modeled on.

All I want to test for is audible aliasing between amp modeling plugins. These analog devices on their own almost certainly don't alias. So since the comparison is only looking at one phenomenon that wasn't present at all in the original amps the comparison doesn't run into the problems of comprehensive comparisons.

I do acknowledge the fact there is a lot more to sound and response of an amp than whether or not it aliases. And I also realize the audible aliasing in TH1 is result of a compromise. But I don't think it is unscientific or useless to compare one aspect of the sound.

edit: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

Hi,

The reason I cite 'scientific' testing is not to testify if one model is better than the other, but only scientifically prove things that are there or not (regardless of the 'quality' or percieved quality of the sound).
In my opinion, taking the aliasing problem without considering the time-response problem is like looking at the problem from just one side, which is not scientific.
It's like saying: "oh, this house is so clean from the outside!", when in fact it's totally dirty when you enter it.
Comparing the sound of the modelings is no real use here IMHO.

Hi

From a scientific point of view, the FFT and impulse response offer an understanding of a phenomenon beyond one mode of perception. They offer our eyes a way to see sound. In this sense, it does offer a more complete "picture" (sorry) of what is going on.

The problem is I'm not going to be giving an FFT and impulse response to my normal audience. Even if I did and explained to them what they both represent so they could understand, I bet most wouldn't care about either them. Perception through the ears is what is important here. So despite it being useful for a scientist who is modeling a piece a gear to have these other ways of analyzing sound I'm not sure how useful it is for my purposes. I'm interested in the quality of the sound perceived through the ears.

I do acknowledge the fact there is a lot more to sound and response of an amp than whether or not it aliases. And I also realize the audible aliasing in TH1 is result of a compromise. But I don't think it is unscientific or useless to compare one aspect of the sound.

edit: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this.

I think a lot of us (myself included) get bogged down with things like aliasing and comparing it to "the real thing" but I find it's way more important to spark up your laptop and start playing in an almost meditative state. If the software inspires, then who cares about anything else? If it doesn't, then life is too short and there are too many other options out now to dwell on the minutia.

Yesterday I had to turn off preamp and stompbox oversampling on my amp modeler of choice because I had a ton of crap running during a live jam (courtesy of Mobius and Augustus Loop audio loopers). When I really compare the tone I get with them on and off, I can hear the difference. I cringed at first but off they went to stop the popping.

The result? The popping went away and I quickly forgot all about it and had a really inspired jam. At one point I sat back and listened to all the loops I'd created. Was there aliasing? I bet there was but it sounded amazing to me and that's all that really counts.

Someone asked "can you compare AT2JH Twin model to TH1's Darkface..." Why don't you to it? Both products have free easily downloadable demos. Have at it. AT2JH is about $100 cheaper ($189 at B&H compared to $297) but doesn't offer nearly the flexibility that TH1 does. They're such different products that I bet it would be nice to have both. For a while I fretted about this lack of flexibility in Amplitube to do really experimental things... then I realized I was being jerky. I actually momentarily abandoned Amplitube and sparked up a combination of iZtope's Trash and KORE2 and I had sounds that made me think I must have licked a piece of paper Jimi handed me.

Pick your gear and "love the one you're with." I bet if I didn't already own all the IK amp modelers, POD Farm and iZotope's Trash I'd be asking Santa for this one. It's got the flexibility of Guitar Rig but it actually sounds good.

I agree with you here. That's why I bought TH1. It is extremely flexible and offers sounds that would probably be impossible to duplicate with a single instance of another plugin.

[gchirag]

Exactly.

with TH1 you can achieve a nice tone without any extra plug-ins whilst with other plug-ins you need extra stuff.

For example a JCM800 is not going to sound super high-gain but you will need Equalisizers and Distortion pedal to make it sound heavy but some people by fantasy think a JCM800 sounds heavy just by itself and they complain when it doesn't so it's the same with Plugins.

To make a Peavey XXX sound good also requires time and effort in tweaking it to make it sound the way you want.

I need more money to buy TH1 otherwise i would have had it by now.

[gchirag]

No complaining about the price.

I get fare more tones with TH1 then a single marshall head so the price of TH1 is actually much lower then it should be.