My 2 Cents On Amp Modelling |
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Aug 10 2010, 12:55 PM
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And you can get more dynamics from a real tube amp!
-------------------- ::: Main Gear ::: Guitars: Washburn N4 Vintage | Washburn N2 | Washburn WI67Pro | Washburn WG-587 | Washburn EA20B Amps: Laney GH50L (head) | Laney GS410 & GS212IE (cabinets) | Rocktron PROGAP Ultra (rack preamp) | Rocktron Velocity 150 (power amp) | Marshall VS230 (combo) FXs: Rocktron Intellifex + custom pedalboard (check my video demo) Other: Shredneck | Intellitouch PT10 tuner Picks: Esseti Picks Software & Recording Gear: Cubase 4 | Overloud TH1 | Mackie Onyx 400F | EZdrummer | Korg Pandora PX4D ------------------------------------------------------- myspace.com/jerryarcidiacono Check out my video lessons and instructor board! |
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Aug 10 2010, 01:09 PM
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For home use amp models are really nice. But i dont think i will use it live
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Aug 10 2010, 01:39 PM
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Totally agree.
Amp modellers sound like guitars recorded in the albums, but live music sounds better, because you are listening to a real amp roaring through its real cab, and no ipod or hifi system can ever sound like that, because it's not a guitar amp. -------------------- Guitars:
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Aug 10 2010, 02:25 PM
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I agree partially. For demo purposes, indeed software modelers are way to go. This doesn't mean you cannot achieve very good results with a real amp. It only means it will be cheaper and easier to record for demo purposes.
The part where this doesn't stand is in the studio when recording an album. Software modelers are good to use only for pilot takes in these situations. Simple example would be when the drummer is doing as session and you need to play along with him. It's practical to use modeling and send it to drummers headphones, then to mic a cab (specially if you only have one recording room in the studio available!). But if you indeed want the best recording possible, you cannot go for modelers. Although they are good, they are not that good today. I will draw a parallel with vintage 3D games that tried to replicate the reality and make it bloody  , like Doom. Doom is a game that was very popular, but you cannot compare Doom with modern 3D games, let alone our physical reality. Perhaps in 50 years games will very much look-alike our reality, but today, and when you look back at games like Doom - they look very primitive. Same thing with modelers today. They are too primitive. In 10-20 years, when simulators achieve possibilities to replicate faithfully entire circuits in today's tube amps, and when speaker systems become more precise and advanced, capable of producing specific nuances of any speaker available today - this is when we will all use software modelers for recording. And because technology is advancing, it is not hard at all to record a miced tube amp these days. In a semi-pro studio with a good recording room, it is understood that you will mic a real amp, not only because of the amp itself, but the whole chain. You have more possibilites in real world for experimenting and finding tone that you want. Not only that amp+speaker are involved, but you have microphone placement, speaker placement relative to the room, choice of many microphones, different kinds of natural reverberation. All this IS available in today's modelers, GR4 and Amplitube 3 give nice simulation of that, but it still very very limited compared what you can achieve in real world. -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
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Aug 10 2010, 03:20 PM
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QUOTE (Ivan Milenkovic @ Aug 10 2010, 03:25 PM)  I agree partially. For demo purposes, indeed software modelers are way to go. This doesn't mean you cannot achieve very good results with a real amp. It only means it will be cheaper and easier to record for demo purposes. And because technology is advancing, it is not hard at all to record a miced tube amp these days. In a semi-pro studio with a good recording room, it is understood that you will mic a real amp, not only because of the amp itself, but the whole chain. You have more possibilites in real world for experimenting and finding tone that you want. Not only that amp+speaker are involved, but you have microphone placement, speaker placement relative to the room, choice of many microphones, different kinds of natural reverberation. All this IS available in today's modelers, GR4 and Amplitube 3 give nice simulation of that, but it still very very limited compared what you can achieve in real world. +11 Agreed on every point here. You can mic a "bedroom" amp at a very low level and still get a better tone/response than in an amp modeller. Besides that, most of the effects in amp modellers is real lousy compared to original one's or dedicated effects in DAW's. Technically wise, the problem is that most people has bad computers, therefore cannot the manufactorers design a good amp modeller since the users wont have the DSP & memory for processing a really good emulation. Here is where hardware modellers like Digidesign Eleven & Axe Fx comes in that have real power DSP's designed just for that purpose. (and then You have to buy additional power amp & speakers to use it live) However, personally I cant see the point of having 200 guitar sounds under Your feet, normally I use maybe three, both live and for recording purposes. I rather spend that 1500-2500 EUR on a good amp and some mics instead. //Staffay --------------------  Guitars: Ibanez AM-200, Ibanez GB-10, Fender Stratocaster Classic Player, Warmouth Custom Built, Suhr Classic Strat, Gibson Les Paul Standard 2003, Ibanez steel-string Amps: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Marshall JMP 2103, AER 60 Effects: BOSS DD-20, Danelectro Trans. Overdrive, TC-Electronics G-Major, Dunlop Wah-wah, Original SansAmp, BOSS DD-2 Music by Staffy can be found at: Staffay at MySpace |
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Aug 10 2010, 04:29 PM
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QUOTE (VictorUK @ Aug 10 2010, 05:13 PM) Amp modelling gets a whole lot better when you start using impulses as i only found out about 2 weeks ago lol, you can make impulses sound almost like the real amp and if you hook your computer up to some e.g. big 200w speaker P.A. system with a tube power amp im sure it can sound very good live. Yeah, but impulses handles only the speaker emulation in a room. There is a software called "Recabinet" that only models different cabinets via impulses. Btw. it is used in both Revalver and GR4. A solution would be to have Your regular amp producing a line-signal and then run it through recabinet. However, a normal computer can never reproduce a room simulation like for instance the TC-Electronics 6000 series, because of bad DSP-power. A factor not mentioned so far is also the sound-card, an amp-sim will sound a lot better with an expensive soundcard with good AD/DA converters, and I bet the manufactorers of Amplitube, GR4 etc. used top-notch soundcards when recording their demos. Personally, I use a TC-Konnekt 48, which is not a cheap one, but still I dont think its good enough. //Staffay -------------------- Guitars: Ibanez AM-200, Ibanez GB-10, Fender Stratocaster Classic Player, Warmouth Custom Built, Suhr Classic Strat, Gibson Les Paul Standard 2003, Ibanez steel-string Amps: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Marshall JMP 2103, AER 60 Effects: BOSS DD-20, Danelectro Trans. Overdrive, TC-Electronics G-Major, Dunlop Wah-wah, Original SansAmp, BOSS DD-2 Music by Staffy can be found at: Staffay at MySpace |
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Aug 10 2010, 04:50 PM
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QUOTE (Staffy @ Aug 10 2010, 02:20 PM) ... Technically wise, the problem is that most people has bad computers, therefore cannot the manufactorers design a good amp modeller since the users wont have the DSP & memory for processing a really good emulation. Here is where hardware modellers like Digidesign Eleven & Axe Fx comes in that have real power DSP's designed just for that purpose. (and then You have to buy additional power amp & speakers to use it live) ... //Staffay Very true. Even those that have dedicated DSP cards have potential limitations as with some you can hear the zippering particularly at the range extremes. If you multilayer the modeling plug-in the issues become more and more apparent. QUOTE ...impulses handles only the speaker emulation in a room. There is a software called "Recabinet" that only models different cabinets via impulses. Btw. it is used in both Revalver and GR4. A solution would be to have Your regular amp producing a line-signal and then run it through recabinet. However, a normal computer can never reproduce a room simulation like for instance the TC-Electronics 6000 series, because of bad DSP-power. A factor not mentioned so far is also the sound-card, an amp-sim will sound a lot better with an expensive soundcard with good AD/DA converters, and I bet the manufactorers of Amplitube, GR4 etc. used top-notch soundcards when recording their demos. Personally, I use a TC-Konnekt 48, which is not a cheap one, but still I dont think its good enough. Again very true - Convolution impulses need to be very carefully recorded to be at all convincing and all to often mic placement isn\t well thought out resulting in a smearing of the sound. WRT to the AD/DA - we use Lavry and if anything any issues with modeling become even more apparent. Excellent AD/DA is more likely to expose issues than hide it IME. But yes they may well have recoded the demos using Lavry or similar conversion to expose the issues in order to deal with them at mixing before making the demos public. Also wrt to the demos - IMHO it's difficult to accurately judge the sonic quality of something based on a recorded audio file as there are too many variables that you are not aware of. This is exacerbated if the demo is a Youtube or similar recording where it has been multiply compressed. Product demos on Youtube etc at best IMO give you a general idea of what something is like which you then need to check out thoroughly in person. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
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Aug 10 2010, 06:19 PM
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FREE GUITAR MODELING EFX PLUGINS
My producer buddy (Matt Rowles of indieatl.com) pointed me to this. A bunch of free plugins for emulating guitar effects pedals including the spiffy Digitech Whammy which has pitch shifting. PC and Mac AU/VST. Enjoy! http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/08/...cts-for-mac-pc/  Todd This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Aug 10 2010, 06:33 PM |
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Aug 10 2010, 09:11 PM
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QUOTE (Mudbone @ Aug 10 2010, 08:25 PM) I think the whole recording process is a compromise to begin with. So much is lost in translation. You guys should check out Widek, he produces some nice stuff with amp modeling. This video here is recorded with a cheap line6 toneport, although now he uses revalver I believe, which I think sounds better. Yeah, agree 100%. Its a compromise. Even that we have digital equipment today that can produce decent sound for very little money, we are far from what a real studio can produce with both analog/digital equipment. And the product (the CD) are downsampled anyway to 44,1 kHz and then people make MP3's out of it..... In order to enjoy the possibilities with the digital format, there must be a new standard and people must get some decent audio equipment. But still - nothing beats live music, if the musicians are good enough - a good band shall always sound better live, otherwise something is wrong. I dont dismiss modellers, I use them frequently. I wrote a whole article serie bout modellers in the WIKI bout a year ago and tested nearly everyone available back then. When it comes to model a distorted sound, especially heavy distorted one's, You can come very close to the original. But when it comes to a clean sound with a lot of dynamics.... To tell the truth, I havent heard one modeller yet that can replicate what a simple Fender amp does. The clip sounds very good - but he's a skilled player, and what goes in goes out - I think it would have sounded even 5 times better with real amps.... //Staffay -------------------- Guitars: Ibanez AM-200, Ibanez GB-10, Fender Stratocaster Classic Player, Warmouth Custom Built, Suhr Classic Strat, Gibson Les Paul Standard 2003, Ibanez steel-string Amps: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Marshall JMP 2103, AER 60 Effects: BOSS DD-20, Danelectro Trans. Overdrive, TC-Electronics G-Major, Dunlop Wah-wah, Original SansAmp, BOSS DD-2 Music by Staffy can be found at: Staffay at MySpace |
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) That's the best part of playing and probably what gives some of the vintage and or botique amps their appeal. It's their uniqueness. The first time you play almost any amp you may not be immediately blown away, but after you get to know it, you most likely will find something sweet.
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Aug 11 2010, 11:39 PM
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Getting some things lost in translation is normal thing with recording. But software modelers don't have that "luxury" at all. They are simply emulations, trying to emulate the sound of real gear. When you go into the studio to record an album, will you choose emulation of (for example) Marshall amp, or the real Marshall amp with good microphone next to it? If there is no choice of using real tube amp, or you simply want to experiment, there is nothing wrong using software, good results are possible. Good news is technology is progressing, as dedicated DSP devices become faster and more complicated, emulations will become better and better. I think speaker+air+microphone is the biggest obstacle to emulate today, not the amp itself, but impulses are becoming more sophisticated, as recording equipment and samples rates develop and become better, impulses will mask the source signal better, so all this will contribute to more "practical" tone, processed, ready in a small box, not needing to lug 20+KG equipment around.
This post has been edited by Ivan Milenkovic: Aug 11 2010, 11:41 PM -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
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), and its really cheap. In order to get that other 10 to 20 percent you have to spend thousands of dollars. |
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Aug 12 2010, 01:42 AM
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Thanks my friend. We talk about the same thing basically, I agree with Staffay as well, the music is most important. There are megahits with snares sounding as tin cans and guitars thin as paper, and it doesn't matter.
We can continue the topic, making comparisons between analog and digital, we already made quite a few of those on the forum, and the general view is that digital processing is still in development. Some people may hear of feel the difference more than other, but if we try to stay objective and real - Spending thousands of dollars is not what it is all about if you are on the budget. Renting a good tube amp and average studio for a day will all run you not more than 100-200$. This may be big bucks for someone, but if you need serious recording, it's the way to go. General public that doesn't understand the difference between these two methods will perceive the difference but cannot describe it. The difference is still there, for me clear as a day. Another paradox to the topic, important factor that was already mentioned is the fact that average listener will normally listen 128kbit mp3 file of the song without half of cymbals, in urban surroundings with lots of noise, where even an expert would have troubles hearing the differences properly. But there must be a reason why all known bands use real gear right? Problem is we are indeed on the crossroad, and the whole industry is slowly changing in front of our eyes. Real gear still rules the studios, but slowly (but safely) software is coming on back doors. This post has been edited by Ivan Milenkovic: Aug 12 2010, 01:43 AM -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
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