The Big Guitar Amp Sim Roundup + Review

[Blue Cat Audio]

Awesome!! Great to know!!!! Are there any high quality sound demos around that you’d recommend?

What do you mean? On Linux? I am not sure I understand what you are looking for.

[Mats Eriksson]

Regarding this thread. Ok so it's comparing amp sims between amp sims. Not real amps. I have a sense that it will turn out an never finishing job. Remember it's a very crowded market, both of freeware plugins, as well as elaborate and costly software, meticuously carved out.

It would be fun to see, some kind of comparison between amp sims of a set brand of real amp, say, we decide on Fender Twin, and see if all of them sounds the same, or there is any difference. Or any other amp as well. Regarding what I said earlier, I've got the best Plexi sound from a combination of effects from Guitar Rig and S-Gear, and no one of them uses any amp that is supposed to be "inspired" by a real Marshall Plexi. It was some effects from Guitar Rig 4 into S-gears Duke. Not an amp famous for anything Marshall like, it takes its inspiration from Dumble tone stack (which in turn was a supposedly hot rodded Twin).

I used to rile up the user patches section over at Native Instruments way back when you could provide your own presets. With A/B testing and the A/B split you could have in there. So I wound up with the A-side with their take on Fenderish Twinnish things (factory preset), and doing my own on the B side with different amp, different pre and post EQ and different cab, and in the end it sounded exactly the same. This was guitar rig 3. They hated me, and took of both my forum nick, and the presets. In Guitar Rig 5 some of these things were harder to nail, but in real life I have a very hard time getting a Marshall Plexi sound like a Fender Twin, not matter what I put in front of it, or EQ-ing after. I was considederd the social gadfly around there for a while. What was that good for I hear you ask? Well, there was some that complained that in the end, after a while, all the amps tended to sound ... kinda ... the same. There were some sameness to them all. I don't know. Haven't got a clue.

However, this is NOT a thing that was possible with S-gear amps. I tried to do the same thing there. It's not so with any amp sim at all.

[Anderton]

Yes, that's indeed a bit of a challenge, but that's why it offers an input selector and additional tone controls that can be used to "calibrate" your own instrument (there is a calibration procedure explained in the manual) or to tweak the response by ear.

I did the calibration, and it is indeed helpful. The only complication is when you play different places on the neck; the profiling with BIAS FX 2 compensates for different responses at different parts of the neck, it records your tone at different positions and compares it to the "ideal." Of course even that will be an inexact science...you can only compensate so much for the sound of guitars with different scale lengths, or different pickup angles.

I have tried many systems that take measurements of your instrument (most of the time that's some sort of impulse responses) and (to my ears) the result is usually worse than what you can achieve by ear.

This is a bit off-topic, but I think you'll appreciate the story. All the FBX emulations started with a spectrum analyzer on the first pass, but then immediately went to doing it by ear, based on playing over the full range of the guitar. We tested the emulations by getting half a dozen guitarists as listeners, and two players. One had the FBX, the other the guitar being emulated. Both were behind a curtain so the guitar players couldn't tell who was playing at any given moment.

At first, the guitarists could always tell which was the real one and which was the copy. Over time as the EQ got tweaked by ear, the difference became closer and closer until no one could tell the difference. But then I would do one more "subjective" tweak. For example if it was a Strat, I made the FBX sound just a little bit "glassier" than a Strat sounded in real life. As soon as I did that, the guitarists would say "wow, what did you do wrong? It doesn't sound like a Strat any more" when they were listening to the Strat! Eventually I realized...I had created the idealized Strat sound they heard in their head with the FBX. It was like putting makeup on a Strat.

So this is why I said you get useful tonal variations with Re-Guitar. The Re-Guitar single-coil may not sound exactly like a Strat...but then again, it may sound better.

Similarly, I don't use out-of-phase pickup switching any more, I have a set of curves for my guitars that (to my ears) sound like the best possible version of an out-of-phase sound

It's ultimately all about the tone, it doesn't matter what gets you there.

[Anderton]

It would be fun to see, some kind of comparison between amp sims of a set brand of real amp, say, we decide on Fender Twin, and see if all of them sounds the same, or there is any difference.

Line 6 often gets a dozen or more of the same amp, like an AC-30, and they pick the one they subjectively think sounds best. So I think the only way to have a totally valid comparison would be if the companies all modeled the same physical amp, with the tubes having gone soft by the same amount, the bias trimpots set the same, the same production run so that the components had the same sourcing, the same mic the same distance from the amp, the same room, etc.

I think people who expect amp duplicators will always be disappointed (at least for the foreseeable future), while people who accept amp simulators will use them for what they do best, and get on with making music.

[audiojunkie]

Awesome!! Great to know!!!! Are there any high quality sound demos around that you’d recommend?

What do you mean? On Linux? I am not sure I understand what you are looking for.

Youtube audio demos of Axiom that showcase what Axiom sounds like—like more of the videos that you posted above.

[mmann]

There are many ways of using amp sims; some of my main uses include:
1. Treating the sim as real gear with traditional pedals and amps (I use AmpliTube 4 this way).
2. Creating complex soundscapes and ambient music (I use Axiom this way combined with Unfiltered Audio TRIAD, iZotope Trash, Eventide Blackhole and Jam Origin MIDI Guitar 2 among others).
3. Playing along with a backing track (the only time I use AmpliTube 4 is Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street' for the Hugh Burns guitar solo).

The backing track amp sim has to sit well with the other instruments and the amp sim of choice will vary with the style of music. When that style of music is hybrid picking/chicken pickin' then I mainly use the amp sim covered in this mini review.

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 Pro
The Interface:
Clean and easy with three window height settings which are set and remembered in the Options settings. The limitation with a single rack is that the Split Tool is more awkward to follow than with certain other sims.

The Amps:
My picks; Cool Plex, Jazz Amp, Twang Reverb and Rammfire are all quite competent.

The Effects:
My picks; Psychedelay, Treble Booster Twin Delay and Fast Comp are the ones I use the most. Special mention for the Modifiers which are very versatile and easy to use.

In conclusion:
Not the first amp sim I grab for most music styles, but if I'm playing with the backing tracks for James Burton - 'Workin' Man Blues' or Jerry Reed - 'East Bound and Down', Guitar Rig 5 gets the job done.

[Anderton]

Mike - totally agree, excellent choices and a good summary of what Guitar Rig does best.

Not to hijack the thread, but what do you think of Jam Origin?

Thanks again for your contributions.

[mmann]

Jam Origin MIDI Guitar 2 is great for my usage; full arpeggiated chords sent to slow attack synths sounds; i.e. Spectrasonics Omnisphere or Native Instruments Kontakt with appropriate pad library both work very well. Piano or other quick attack sounds I'm not impressed with; these work much better with my MIDI keyboard controller (an old Yamaha CS1x). Still I prefer the tracking and sounds to the hardware I used back in the day.

My first was a Roland G-303 guitar controller and the GR-300 analog guitar synth. This one definitely tracked the best, by a significant margin, but with very limited sounds and no MIDI.

Second setup was a Roland G-707 guitar controller and the G-707 which was just a JX-3P in a floor controller. This setup didn't track very well at all. My third go with hardware was a Roland GK-2 pickup on a BC Rich guitar (model long since forgotten), which tracked even worse yet!

So for me the Jam Origin has been the most satisfying solution to date when it comes to controlling synths with a guitar.

[adXok]

Jam Origin MIDI Guitar 2.2.1
Jam Origin MIDI Bass 1.2.1

are both fantastic plugins! Indispensable tools if you are a guitarist and not a keyboard or grid-board (?) player.

[Mats Eriksson]

I use MIDI Guitar 2 too ... the first version tracked and triggered considerably better. Now it's full of glitches, and double notes triggering. It's too sensitive now, since they changed the algorithm. Use if for slow attack instruments only, or for triggering arpeggiator sequencers inside synths (Juno-60, Strobe etc) and play on top over them. I do think the idea is great though, they are on par with hardware hexaphonic pickups anyway. Same "latency" if any. But that's off thread, let's not hijack it more than this, I've done my share of that now.

[Blue Cat Audio]

It would be fun to see, some kind of comparison between amp sims of a set brand of real amp, say, we decide on Fender Twin, and see if all of them sounds the same, or there is any difference. Or any other amp as well.

It can definitely be done, however in this case you want to compare apples with apples:
- If you are comparing an amp sim with a real amp in the room, then you'd have to play the amp sim thru a FRFR cabinet, not thru studio monitors or (worse) headphones & computer speakers.
- If you want to compare the entire recording chain, then you want to use monitors (and probably some room reverb on the amp sim to get the sensation of space) - not sure you want to compare the "feeling" of it here either. Also, in this scenario you are probably more interested in checking the tone in the mix rather than isolated.

One of the problems with "amp sims" (or whatever you call these guitar tone builders) is that both things are often mixed up in the same discussion, adding quite a bit of confusion.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Youtube audio demos of Axiom that showcase what Axiom sounds like—like more of the videos that you posted above.

There are a couple of examples (mixed with tutorials or walkthroughs) on the Axiom software page, also directly available in the Axiom YouTube playlist
And there are some more videos on the tutorials page.

However it is probably a good idea to try out the demo version, as there is nothing like playing thru the software to get an idea about how YOU and your instrument(s) can sound with it.

[Blue Cat Audio]

I did the calibration, and it is indeed helpful. The only complication is when you play different places on the neck; the profiling with BIAS FX 2 compensates for different responses at different parts of the neck, it records your tone at different positions and compares it to the "ideal." Of course even that will be an inexact science...you can only compensate so much for the sound of guitars with different scale lengths, or different pickup angles.

Yes, when you want to simulate and completely different instrument (with a different scale length, and pickups located in different places), that's another story. The reason why we have not even tried to do it with Re-Guitar is that it requires the ability to use different filters for each string, which response also depend on the position of the fingers. So you also need individual pitch tracking on each string too.

That's why Roland V-Guitar systems and Variax guitars have hexaphonic pickups (on early models you can hear the filters moving because of pitch tracking quite clearly, and that's also why palm mute is often a problem with these systems). All other systems that claim doing the same thing without access to individual strings signals will sound very awkward.

If you are interested in the explanation of the phenomenon, this good old series of articles about the physics of electric guitars and pickups is worth reading.

It's ultimately all about the tone, it doesn't matter what gets you there.

Yes, definitely! And a lot of it comes from the interaction between your fingers and gear/software. It is incredible how the brain is able to change the way you play depending on what you hear.

[magicmusic]

Youtube audio demos of Axiom that showcase what Axiom sounds like—like more of the videos that you posted above.

There are a couple of examples (mixed with tutorials or walkthroughs) on the Axiom software page, also directly available in the Axiom YouTube playlist
And there are some more videos on the tutorials page.

However it is probably a good idea to try out the demo version, as there is nothing like playing thru the software to get an idea about how YOU and your instrument(s) can sound with it.

I try the demo of your ampsim and add doppler effect(doppler dome) after your speaker sim for frequency above 4 khz only. because the problem of speaker sim is that a wide range speaker have lots of doppler effects in high frequency because the membrane move lots on low frequency. this make the high freq sound much fuller and not harsh so a microphone record of real speaker sound better as the line in record. try out yourself with doubler dome(its free), and maybe you can create a doppler effect that is more simular to real speakers. I think tube can good simulate, but the main problem is the harsh high frequency. and for this help simulate doppler effect of wide range speakers.

it also help when the phaser can only work at frequency above 1-4 khz. this also make the high frequency sound better.

[killahpl]

I'm gonna chip in with my 2 cents from a bit of a different angle.

I'm not a guitar player - I play the keyboards - but I'm the one responsible for doing most of the composition and arrangement in my... let's be generous and call it a band and I want to make my demos sound as much as a polished final product before I hand the various parts over to each band member to put their spin on them. To that end, I have purchased three virtual guitars - Prominy V-Metal, Ample Sound's Metal Eclipse and Heavier 7 Strings by a Chinese company called Three Body Tech.

I put amp sims on them. Out of the three, H7S is unique in that it actually has it's own amp and cab sims, which you can also put on other virtual guitars. The two other ones come completely "clean". So far, I have used the following amp simulation software:

1. Guitar Rig 5
2. Amplitube 4
3. Audio Assault's Grind Machine
4. Bias Amp

as a result of having read through most of this thread, I have tried the TH-U Overloud and the Line 6 Helix Native as well.

I should probably say at this point that I use clean tones sparsely as we tend to gravitate towards what can probably best be described as melodic metal, so there's a lot of blazing lead tones and a lot of heavy rhythm guitars as well.

This may be due to the fact that it's still new to my ears, but the Helix seems to sound the best out of all the stuff I've tried out of the box. Apart from that, I have probably liked the Bias Amp the least out of all the stuff I've listed.