Will amp sims ever sound good?

I had Pod Farm 2, Gearbox before that, and now I have Amplitube 3 with the Orange, Fender and Ampeg SVX, and Soldano add ons. I just can't get into liking them. Believe it or not, using low res on Amplitube helps. To be fair, the bass amp sims do sound pretty good. I just don't get the hype about them though. To me, there is just too much harmonic response or saturation or whatever. Maybe if they did impulse cabs as opposed to whatever they do now?

How close are your studio monitors to actual guitar amp cabs? That makes a huge difference. I have a set of JBL studio monitors (4312's) that have 10 in speakers with 10 1/2 lb magnets behind them. When I run the Marshall amp from S-Gear through it, it sounds stunningly authentic and this is running alongside actual tube amps -blackface Princeton, Hot Rod Deluxe, etc.

I thought the whole point of an amp sim was using regular monitors as opposed to an amp cab? I can usually get the clean stuff to sound decent but distorted is out of the question.

I do notice that Pod Farm 2 sound better than Amplitube though. Pod Farm only has one input whereas A3 has two. I had it set so both inputs were used. I then set the second input to an unused input and it sounded better. I haven't tried setting the pan to either left or right but I don't see why that should matter but I'll try it anyway now that I just thought of it.
 
I don't have proper monitors though. I have an old set of Linear Dynamic consumer speakers. I know I should get proper monitors but this is the best I can do for now. Maybe I should do what I do for mixing. Check against audio either CD or online radio.

It is possible you just have amazing sensitivity to guitar sounds and sims can't meet it, but more likely there's something about your setup that's an issue. I find Amplitube 3 to be extremely good. So some possibilities:
 
1) Speakers. As noted, they need to be competent to reproduce the range of tones you want. If you have itty bitty desktop speakers that are competing with a huge guitar amp, well then they aren't going to sound near as good. So the question is, do your speakers sound good for guitar that's been recorded from an amp or not? If they sound good there, but not on the sim, then they probably aren't the problem. However if you mic and record an amp and the playback on your speakers is dissatisfying, well then that's likely the culprit.
 
2) For live guitar recording, the input matters. Do you have a proper input that is working well, and is setup for a guitar? This means capturing without digital distortion, or crackling, or skips or whatever. Make sure you check the dry track and that it sounds clean. If not, then you need to fix that. Also, a mic or line input isn't suitable for a guitar. Mic inputs are generally 600 ohms, line inputs in the 10k ohms range. Guitar inputs need to be like 400k ohms minimum and usually more around 1M ohm. If you don't have one of those really high impedance inputs it snarfs up the highs and sustain and makes your sound very dead. So you either need a card that has an input that can be switched to a high impedance mode for guitars, or you need a DI box to give the guitar a high impedance input and convert it to low impedance for your soundcard.
 
3) For sampled guitar, the quality of samples matters a lot. The Strawberry Electric Guitar is the one I've tried that makes me the happiest. Direct Guitar 3 is also decent, but noticeably inferior. So if you are using a sampled guitar and it isn't EEG Strawberry, maybe look at getting that. I particular if you are using samples they MUST be dry, feeding already amped signals in to an amp sim never gives good results in my experience.
 
4) Gain staging can matter with an amp sim. While with many FX gain doesn't matter much in the digital domain since floating point math allows for tons of headroom, that's not the case with amp sims. You need to make sure the signal level going in is appropriate, not too loud not too soft. Mess around with that some, see if it helps. I find a good sample like Strawberry is already at a good level, but others might not be.
 
5) If there's too much high harmonics for your taste, try what Craig Anderton suggested: Toss a steep EQ on the signal BEFORE it goes in to the amp sim. Put like a 48dB/oct lowpass filter at 4-5k using Pro Channel or another EQ before it goes in to the amp sim.
 
When given a good signal, I'm amazed at how good Amplitube sounds personally.

I have a long love/hate story with them. I own tons of them. Sometimes they work surprisingly well, others nothing I try will work.
 
I've learned not to draw any formal conclusion because I've heard people getting amazing results with each of them. 
 
IMHO, impulses often sound smoother but tend to be static - something you can compensate for by using multiple impulses, in part. By comparison, Amplitube's cab modelling is incredibly dynamic - but I'm not always so sure about the sound itself.
 
Though there are models I truly like - their Hiwatt, for example.
 
The problem is that, if you're not entirely satisfied with a sound, even if it's just that elusive little something that is missing, you'll start to analyze and soon enough, you're sucked into it and all you hear is those pesky details - which, often, aren't half as bad as we believe when we're over-analyzing it.
 
But it's hard not to fall in that trap.
 
Overall, I've had more consistent results w/ hardware, even though I'm rarely entirely happy w/ it.
 
 

Sidroe
I am happiest right now with the full version of TH2.

+1

Kalle Rantaaho
Hmmm...I don't quite get the point of blaming the monitor speakers or the guitar here.
I assume the OP has made projects both with real amps and amp sims, through the very same monitors with the same guitar (how else would he know the difference?), finding the real thing good and sims less good (??). 
If he has not, then, the alternative is he's comparing commercial recordings vs. amp sim recordings of ones own, which resets the scales, obviously. Then you have room for questions about the cabs, mics, instruments etc.
 

Beat me to it. Amp sims are for recording, not for sounding like the real thing in your studio through your monitors. You wouldn't listen to Rory Gallagher through speakers and think "That doesn't sound like the real deal. Perhaps I need to hook my CD player to my amp cab" - lol!

Clearly, I have a lot to learn about them. I tend to think it's not my speakers as I know them so well now. I mostly use a Blackstar HT-5 using the emulated out into my OC. I am happy to use it but want to use the amp sims also. I am recording both a clean channel and the Blackstar but the clean channel ends up being archived and set aside.
 
Those of you who have good success with amp sims, does your AI have a dedicated guitar input? I wonder whether my problem is that my OC uses preamps. Inputs 1 and 2 have the button for it but I don't notice any difference in the signal I'm getting. Again, clearly I need to work with it more.

Steve has a good point.
The tone/response affect how (and what) you play.

stevec
 
For me a big factor in all of this is how the guitar feels and sounds while being recorded, and that typically happens through monitors.  The less the amp sim + chain helps you to play the part the way you want, the less the performance.  Regardless of what it sounds on playback after all is said and done.   At least that's always been my take on it.  
 

Ditto. 
 
Furthermore,  amp sims only offer a representation of the real thing. Depending on the case, it can work wonderfully. Or not at all. Smoke and mirror don't always work.
 
A typical scenario where it practically never works for me is when the arrangement is absolutely sparse and the guitar is the center of attention. Say a slow blues, à la Led Zeppelin, with a smooth, mildly overdriven tone and nothing but that guitar in the spotlight.
 
Typically, that's where amp sims fail me, because they just aren't pushing the sound the way a cranked up amp tube does. Something's missing, and it's not a matter of frequencies or distortion type - those can be mimic'ed satisfyingly. It's a matter of behaviour, of gain, of intensity, of density. 
 
In other contexts, they do work, perfectly. All of them.
 
I just finished a song using the Engl model on the POD HD, creating this amazing wall of guitars. Beautiful...

As a musician, composer, engineer, and producer, I say, again "NOTHING WILL EVER BEAT THE SOUND OF A REAL DIALED IN TUBE AMP AND A WELL PLACED MIC!"
Amp sims are just some creative tools to fill a particular workflow. We can not write them off. They will be around a LONNNG time. Let's just hope they get better as we go. That's the most we can hope for.

As a guy with some experience in the amp world I find sims to be amazing. They do stuff real amps can't do without causing a fire. In real life I'd never dream of driving a Marshall 800 into an SLO 100 while using a half dozen time based effects. Never going to happen, nope.
 
When I play a tube amp and speakers, I can really hear and feel the tone, it becomes very personal. What you are hearing determines how you will play, and dynamics really come into it. There's not that many controls so you focus on your technique to give different sounds. 
 
I had the flagship Line 6 2x12 combo the year they came out. Kind of like programming an old Korg M1 through a little LCD display. It made great sounds but in a live situation it would just disappear. Kind of like a photograph. When looking directly at it you see this great image. Turn it sideways and it disappears. I find most of the sims are like that. They are like playing a recorded sound. Because of this I don't interact with a sim the way I would with a live rig.
 
I have many of the major sims and I'm still looking. My JTM 45 gets no love in the apt. My new focus is a little thing I am calling the Producer series. Small tube amps designed to deliver the best clean I can make. They are almost hi-fi, but provide an excellent base track to work with. I can record with that and then tart it up with plugs if required.

Like Frank Zappa once pronounced...weedly....weedly....spew. Amp or amp sim. Tone is relative. And subjective. In the extreme. And can be found for those seeking it...almost anywhere. Thank goodness.

Rain

 
Jimmy Page school of music production - whatever works...

Word.  

Sidroe
As a musician, composer, engineer, and producer, I say, again "NOTHING WILL EVER BEAT THE SOUND OF A REAL DIALED IN TUBE AMP AND A WELL PLACED MIC!"

 
Except, of course, a well chosen amp sim.  In the mix you can't tell the difference if it's done right IMO.