Comparison of guitar ampsims and effects SW

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Just wanted to hear people's opinions on the current crop of in-the-box guitar FX sims.

Specifically interested in:

- Guitar Rig
- Amplitube
- UH-X
- Neural
- DiBiQuadro
- Softube

I've always liked the Softube stuff but hardly ever hear their guitar line mentioned. DiBiQuadro, too.
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When I just need a good amp sound I like DiBiQuadro. Their Mars800Free is nice. They are pretty responsive to support requests too. When I want a more effect based sound, (delay, reverb, chorus, etc) Guitar Rig is the best. The crossovers, parallel processing, and parameter modulation components are great for sound design. I like Softube Amp Room too, but sometimes loading takes an unreasonable amount of time.

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It depends on the style you play and the software workflow. I think the first four are good, but I haven't tested the last two. In my opinion, if you have Amplitube, you don't need anything else, since you can now use IRs from other manufacturers. Ik Multimedia is very versatile and solid. :tu:

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Thanks for your feedback, fellas. Do you have any favorites for clean tones?
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My current GoTo for guitar is Melda's MGuitarArchitect, which is absolutely mindblowing.

(for bass it's Softube Amplifiers/Bass Suite)

I have most of the usual suspects (and then some) by the way.

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Wow, yeah, totally forgot about that one. I'll keep it in mind, it looked good when going over the features list.
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AmpliTube loaded with Tonex captures. The cleans are excellent.

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Uncle E wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 5:26 am The cleans are excellent.
That sounds promising! Cleans is what I want 8)
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JerGoertz wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 7:50 am
Uncle E wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 5:26 am The cleans are excellent.
That sounds promising! Cleans is what I want 8)
I'm a big fan of the Tonex ENGL Fireball 60 cleans.

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Fractal Audio Icons. 1st installment is all Fender with others to come. I've had been waiting for this to replace my AXFX hardware mainly because with this I can more easily save with my daw projects and it's the same sound and quality. It replaced all my other amp sims and I've got a ton of them. Not saying Icons is necessarily better than every amp sim I own but I have a much easier time getting guitar tracks to blend with my music.
Last edited by dblock on Wed Feb 25, 2026 8:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Two notes Genome is pretty good

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I haven't tried the Fractals yet, but it looks like Vol. 2 covers a lot of ground.

Also, Universal Audio often gives the Showtime 64 away and that's another great clean amp.

Lastly, here's one I just installed yesterday that seems pretty cool. It's called AmpBrowser and it directly integrates the NAM library from tone3000.com:

https://giannichiarello.com/product/nic ... s-plugins/

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Uncle E wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 8:10 pm I haven't tried the Fractals yet, but it looks like Vol. 2 covers a lot of ground.

Also, Universal Audio often gives the Showtime 64 away and that's another great clean amp.
I have UAD amp sims. The sound of the amps is very good but I found them all to be way too noisy and especially noticeable on clean guitar parts even with the gates so I quit using them.

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Appreciate everyone's input, looks like I'll be going with Tonex for the moment (until something else shiny and new becomes irresistible)
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Tonex is great. Tonex CS and AmpliTube CS are free and give you a lot.

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