Why Your Guitar Ampsim Plugins Aren't "Accurate"

[metalifuxx]

If you want an accurate amp model representation of how the ampsim plugin developer shot and calibrated their plugin with the real amp model, start by setting your interface's input/DI gain to 0, then watch these videos, and adjust your ampsims INPUT gain (or use a trim plugin if needed if it wanders outside the plugins gain trim range) accordingly, following this spreadsheet chart link. If your goal was real amp tone accuracy and your interfaces preamp/DI input was gained up (like how you gain stage a mic for optimum SNR level, or what interface companys have told you in the past), you have been doing it wrong. Well, not necessarily wrong if you do like the sound, the interface gain will just act as a boost, and it will also drive your ampsim like a hardware boost/overdrive pedal. This poses a problem if you are fighting to get what should be a super clean sound on a setting or a preset that should be really clean, but its crunchy or breaks up too early when you play it on your setup, especially with single coil or low output pickups.

Many thanks to Ed S (Edward Sokolowski) for bringing this to light and his pushing for ampsim plugin companies/interface manufacturers to disclose their gain staging references and ideal values used. Ed has contributed a lot of useful nerdy tech info on this subject for doing proper captures and profiles on the Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) facebook group, a big reason why you see people list the gain staging db values for the amps and equipment used on the Tonehunt profile download pages, to best give the end user a faithful way to setup the profile with thier interface/guitar within NAM input gain control to reflect the real hardware amp's tonal and gain structure and response.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

[zerocrossing]

I learned this a long time ago when experimenting with Amplitube. I had experience with some of the included amps, so I knew what expect and I wasn’t quite getting it. I started to realize that just sending a nice healthy signal in was not going to give me what I wanted. I didn’t watch the videos, but I do know that whenever I demo an amp sim to play with the gain before I do anything.

[Tj Shredder]

Like with real amps, you play with the gain…