I have Amplitube 3.5, Guitar Rig 4 & PodFarm 2.5 and I use all three for various duties. I love the cabinet simulations in Amplitube 3 so many times I will run the guitar rig or pod farm amps into the Amplitube cabinets and then back into another GR or PodFarm plug for post amp effects (I use the GR4 instance for pre effects.

Try this

hockeyjx


Rain,

Thanks for reminding me about Amplitude, I just downloaded it ...finally.

I like GR4 a lot though, and think it sounds great with infinite versatility. I have delved in to the amp sims & IR/Impulses world and that helps a little bolster the sound as well.

The thing is, if you go by what you did pre-daw, the sound won't be the same. If you take it for what it is, and work on tweaking the sound with a good guitar(not a Hondo or one of these $100 guitars), I really think the sound can be GREAT. Whether that is by bumping up the sample rate and some other tweaks that have been suggested around, I can't fathom how an inspirational tone can't be made with any of the products.

I've been a guitar player for 25 years and I think the new way is more conducive to me being creative than trying to get my real rig mic'd up ...that never sounds as good to me even with a good room and good mic.

Absolutely. That's one of those things that's become even clearer when I started using GTR, most likely because A: it sounds good pretty much no matter how you set it and B: there's not a whole lot to tweak. 


I've somehow managed to gain back the old perspective of: ok, that's how it sounds, that's my amp now. I can focus on my playing and recording, to a point where it's pretty much just like the old days. Back then if I wanted a clean sound, I'd simply dial one in my Valvestate and make it work. In recent years with amp sims, I've spent way too much time switching virtual amps for any and every reason, but the underlying reason was that I clearly never was that happy with any of them. It was quantity over quality.


Looking back, I think a lot of it had to do with speaker simulation. IR was pretty much the only solution that'd work for me. Especially in a mix context - that's the only way I could get a guitar to sit in a mix. 


With the current crop of amp sims, it's like we're finally there. I know lots of them use IR by default. Amplitude (if I'm not mistaken) is 100% modeling and I must admit that they're doing an outstanding job. I think these are the first cab models that really cut it.


That doesn't keep me from adding stuff to my arsenal - I bought an old Supro model and a Vox model from the IK Custom Shop last week. But they're there to add a bit of variety, not because the other models just don't cut it. They're all good enough so that you could probably just use one and get all sorts of decent tones from them, from clean to crunchy to driven, just like the hardware they model.

Another vote for Amplitube 3. But it still doesn't come close to the real sound of air moving. 

For only a few hundred bucks you could get a semi-valve small practice amp like a Vox Valvetronic or similar, and stick a Cascade Fathead ribbon mic in front of it. Annoy the neighbours for best results.

For those of us who don't always have a nice room for your amp, you may launch a search for amp coffin. Alex Lifeson from Rush used to use these. They are basicly a box designed with the speaker in one end with a mic on it. The box extends out a little longer to allow the air to move around some. The thing is soundproofed inside. The top opens up so you can change mics or adjust the mic or add another mic on the other end of the box. I think they come with interchangeable speaker boards so you can change out size and brands of speakers as well. The whole thing is about 3-4 feet long. It only houses one speaker since we really only mic one anyway. The beauty of it is when it's sealed up, it's almost silent. You monitor thru your sound system or thru the board in the studio.

http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/iso-cab-speaker-coffin-isolation-cabinet/85438418Here is a link for what I was talking about. Similar anyway.

For the Amp Coffin, Sidroe had put HERE at the end of the link.

http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/iso-cab-speaker-coffin-isolation-cabinet/85438418

If you're running 32 bit DAW, check out GTR3 - it's the only guitar amp sim I've found realistic with feel and responded well to rolling back the volume knob, etc. 
 
Waves STILL doesn't support 64 bit DAWs (frustrating.)  Others have been able to get it working, but I haven't had such luck, despite lots of time spent trying.
 
Russ
 
 

Yes, and then some.  I have to add that I sold my Ultra about a month and half ago... so I could upgrade to Axe-FX II.  Not because I felt the Ultra lacked anything, but because I'm afflicted with a bad case of G.A.S. and I really wanted to see how it could possibly be better.

Genghis,


Amuse me, what kind of $$$$ are we talking about?

I think in the end you just have to try and find something you're comfortable with. 

Ever since I've been using amp sims, I've seen/heard people getting great tones out of each one of them - Revalver, Guitar Rig, Amplitube, you name it... Yet I couldn't get something I liked out of them. Unless I tweaked and tweaked and started re-equing, and adding impulses, etc. So much that I started questioning my own abilities. 

For me GTR seems to work pretty much all the time. I just plug in, adjust a bit and hit record - and I have something I can mix 99% of the time. But I've heard guys dialing great tones w/ Guitar Rig or Studio Devil as easily as I'd do it with GTR. 

Not 2 people hear the same thing the same way and I guess we all react differently to those apps as players - GTR provides me the type of sonic cue I need to be able to intuitively set it up. For others it may be any other.

Sidroe


Thumbs up on the Acme Bar Gig stuff for hard metal. It's hard to get anything real clean out of them though. The free Shred is great! Someone mentioned Sansamp. There used to be a freebie software clone of Sansamp called NoAmp online. I've used many times with some good results. I have GTR3 and 4. I use them a little but I always end up going back to Amplitube. The new version with the amp shop is unbelievable. Get Amplitube Free and give it a try. BTW, when you are recording into the amp sim you are recording just the raw untreated guitar track. What I do to save time is record my track with the plug to get a sound I'm comfortable tracking with. When I get to the studio, we break out all the amps in the room. I remove the plug. Output the guitar track into a real amp in the room. Then we try all sorts of combinations of amps, speakers, mics, etc. This is what the previous post was about. It is called re-amping. He is right! You will never get the sound out of a plugin or pedal that you will running thru an amp in a good room with a great mic on it. Even if you only have one decent amp, try re-amping. The air in that sound makes all the difference.

Yep, agreed, to me ABG kills em all. But I'm biased....I work for the company. LOL! Sid, it's actually not hard to get a clean tone bro. You just have to know how to go about it. We're currently working on Headcase which is what replaced "Shred". There were some people on the Reaper forum that were getting noise and had a problem getting clean sounds. So I made this video to help them out. If you check it out, you can see that it's pretty easy to get great sounds out of this plug. The sounds in the video took me less than 60 seconds to get. They aren't perfect, but what sound is for under a minute? :) They definitely work though. Check out the vid as well as HeadCase. I think it's one of the best guitar plugs ever made.
 
Here's the video link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/DannyHeadcaseFun.zip

I didn't read through every post, so I apologize if this is a repeat. Have you tried any free IRs off the web? There is a free plugin that will play them. I use those with GR4 and Amplitube 3 with good results. Just turn off the cab sim in GR4 and add the IR plugin in the fx bin after GR4. I also add EQs in there too.

Yes, I have many an IR that I use. You can implement it the way you mentioned, or just insert Reflecktor in lieu of the cab and run it therre (if you have Komplete 7). Some good sites I've found:


http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/

http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/


I started with those and splintered out.