I'd love an AMP SIM CHALLNGE; where you could A/B a miked rig versus sims at the same volume in a silent control room. We secretly replaced his Marshall stack with...
 
It could be great marketing for someone.

Unless it's an amp that's entirely unfamiliar to the player, I doubt you're gonna fool him. In my experience guitarists are pretty finicky about "their sound", at least the ones that bother dragging around expensive tube amps are, and no emulation is going to be 1:1 for that specific amp.

hockeyjx
Out of curiosity, I wonder if a lot of people who use the traditional setup have their opinion altered from hearing the amp in all it's glory in a live room or JUST the mic'd signal.
 
Because a Marshall in a room of course has more power than a sim.

Once tracked you're always hearing/mixing just the mic'd signal so it is a matter of comparing like with like. Nothing to do with the impact of volume either. A sub 1 watt valve amp isn't very loud, especially if kept on the clean side. As for playing live, once the venue is to big for something like a Deluxe Reverb, AC15 or Tiny Terror you'd normally be going into the PA anyway, at which point unless you're playing a stadium the sound person will often tend to get unhappy if you turn a 50W Lead or a Twin up above about 3. The days of 100 watt amps that go to 11 are gone, and that's really not a bad thing.

I'd add that I've never really understood why the software sims bother with emulated microphones in the first place. Useful if you specifically want the sound of e.g. a Jensen C12 after filtering by the emulated response of a virtual SM57/whatever I suppose, but otherwise the microphone is a compromise made necessary by mic (or DI of course) being the only way to record a "conventional" setup.

The older Sansamps had mic emulation of a sort, though it was really more of a basic tone control than anything. The Character series Sansamps don't and to me they are better without it.

Sanderxpander
Unless it's an amp that's entirely unfamiliar to the player, I doubt you're gonna fool him. In my experience guitarists are pretty finicky about "their sound", at least the ones that bother dragging around expensive tube amps are, and no emulation is going to be 1:1 for that specific amp.

Funny related story. When I was doing sound design for Gibson's FBX one of the goals was to create some sounds that emulated other existing guitars (e.g., Strat). We set up an environment for A-Bing guitars where I would have either the FBX or the guitar being emulated, and Frank Johns from Gibson would have the other one. The musicians couldn't see us or tell who was playing what. 
 
When we started the process, they identified the real one almost 100% of the time. I'd go back and tweak the sounds some more, and eventually we got it to the point where no one could tell reliably which was which.
 
Then I'd say "let me do one more tweak." After hearing it, almost invariably they'd say "Well, now you've lost it again...I can tell that guitar A is the real Strat." Except guitar A was actually the FBX. The final tweak I did was to add just a little bit of emphasis to the characteristics people associated with a particular guitar. In other words, I was closer to the sound they heard in their head as representing the guitar compared to the guitar itself.

A common mistake that guitar players often make ( myself included at times ) is they often think that an amp sim is gonna magicaly inspire them to play and sound better than they actually do
think about what I am saying here because that is actually putting the cart before the horse …
the horse will still have all the power of his legs but what happens here is when the horse is behind the cart
his nose is going to be way to sensitive to be able to push the cart ..even w all his above average Equine strength ...
 
I'm sure I'm not alone on this board when I mention that I have done many sessions as a guitarist for hire in NYC and LA ….
I  have brought multiple amps,  multiple guitars and pedal boards to a session …...probably lugged a half a vans worth of gear into the studio and wound up not having gotten to play out of most of it …or any of it ….
 
Now if that has happened to you …good …..then you have some idea where I'm going with this 
 
Every producer and engineer I've ever worked for has wanted me to lay down a useable workable guitar sound that they could sculpt and manipulate after it was tracked using the whole power of the studio …
my personal preferences about what tone  I thought was best always took a back seat ...
the truth is , I was thinking little picture , they were always thinking about the big picture 
 
let me tell you what I am getting at …
I stopped using guitar sims in the traditional way that people try to use them
I decided to go  with an old school approach ..
I put the full power of my DAW upfront in the signal chain first by using the studio emulated plugins just like an real engineer would  
 
now what do I actually mean by that ? 
I do my best to nail my guitar part with a workable sound that I can sculpt using the more powerful and versatile plugs that come w SONAR or Logic …first …just like in the old days when I was in the studio 
 
example I will use the VC 64 as my guitar compressor or the Sonitus delay as if I'm using these plugs in a virtual pedal board . the same goes for EQ , then as my last step I will hit them with a touch of an amp sim just as I would use my amp in real life / real world 
now when I use the amp sim last I treat it as if I'm using it just like a reverb ..
I want just enough to imply not over power ...
it has been my personal experience that by using the more powerful and versatile plugs before hitting the amp sim  
I can get a more idealized / unique guitar tone …
if you happen to have the time to give the first 4 tunes in the link 15 or 20 seconds worth of a listen ...
you will be able to hear I hit everything hard in SONAR first . my amp sim was the last object of my signal chain 
 
https://soundcloud.com/guitarist-kenny-wilson 
 
disclaimer,  what I might consider a good guitar tone using an amp sim  might be somebody else's idea of nails scraping away on  chalk board 
 
Kenny
 

Anderton
If you put your ear three inches from a Marshall's speaker cone, it's not going to sound all that great.

And yet that's exactly what ends up on the album usually, and gets called 'classic tone' or whatever.
 
I am 95% convinced that most of the arguments over guitar sound are entirely psychological and largely the result of confirmation bias with a dose of 'louder = better' thrown in. Many albums are being done with amp sims these days and no listener can tell the difference. But then I've also seen guitarists perform live through sims that have 1/10th the fidelity of modern sims (eg. the venerable Behringer V-Amp2) and everyone at the gig seemed to think it sounded great.
 
For me, the key is to not use your judgement of how it sounds in the room to decide what tone to put in the mix (nor to assume that a tone that works well on a recording will sound good in a live setting).

kennywtelejazz
 
I do my best to nail my guitar part with a workable sound that I can sculpt using the more powerful and versatile plugs that come w SONAR or Logic …first …just like in the old days when I was in the studio 
 
example I will use the VC 64 as my guitar compressor or the Sonitus delay as if I'm using these plugs in a virtual pedal board . the same goes for EQ , then as my last step I will hit them with a touch of an amp sim just as I would use my amp in real life / real world 
now when I use the amp sim last I treat it as if I'm using it just like a reverb ..
I want just enough to imply not over power ...
it has been my personal experience that by using the more powerful and versatile plugs before hitting the amp sim  
I can get a more idealized / unique guitar tone …
if you happen to have the time to give the first 4 tunes in the link 15 or 20 seconds worth of a listen ...
you will be able to hear I hit everything hard in SONAR first . my amp sim was the last object of my signal chain 
 
https://soundcloud.com/guitarist-kenny-wilson 
Kenny

Kenny, I'm not accustomed to your idea of putting the amp sim last in the chain, and it seems illogical.  That said, I listened to your sample songs.  First off, I have to say you've done a great job on those pieces.  Really well done!  Your guitar tone is excellent.  I certainly may try your idea for an experiment.  However, I'm finding tweaking with an amp sim (like Amplitube) and applying effects within it, I can also easily produce some great sounds to my liking that fit within a song.  That said, it's clear you've nailed your guitar sounds, and really your performance on them, the notes you're hitting and your pieces are really nice.  I'm glad I had a chance to hear them.

Great post Kenny. Spot on. You given me homework that will take me HOURS to complete ...I don't know how I feel about that 
 

Kylotan

Anderton
If you put your ear three inches from a Marshall's speaker cone, it's not going to sound all that great.

And yet that's exactly what ends up on the album usually, and gets called 'classic tone' or whatever.

 
I was referring to the post that talked about how playing an amp in a room has a very different feel compared to listening to a miked sound.
 
But I don't know how many people just stick a mic 3 inches from a cone. I put a lot of effort into capturing some room sound, sometimes using a ribbon's Figure 8 to accentuate pickup on reflections. I also check out the sound of a mic angled, closer to the edge of the speaker, etc. Sometimes I place an open back amp flat on the floor so the floor acts as a baffle and gives more lows. The point is an amp is a multi-dimensional sound source and I think incorporating that into a track, even if it's just backing the mic away a bit from the speaker, contributes to a more interesting sound.
 

For me, the key is to not use your judgement of how it sounds in the room to decide what tone to put in the mix (nor to assume that a tone that works well on a recording will sound good in a live setting).

I think the issue here is more about what's going to inspire you as a player. I'd venture to say that more guitar players would prefer to play in a room with an amp than listen to a sim on headphones. Presumably this is why people like to re-amp - they can capture a performance that was inspired, and deal with the tone that works best for the mix later. Then again, for some guitar sounds like the multiband distortion stuff, I'd much rather listen on headphones with a sim - because if I had to create that sound with a physical setup, it would take hours (and hours), and I'd probably want to go get a stiff drink afterward  

hockeyjx
Great post Kenny. Spot on. You given me homework that will take me HOURS to complete ...I don't know how I feel about that 

This is exactly what I mean by you really have to work with amp sims to get the sound you want. I did one setup that involved 24 (!!) stages of EQ external to the sim; if you bypass any one of them, you can hear the difference (and it's not a good one).
 
Now, you might think "why not just mic an amp?" but a sim with this degree of EQ was the only way I could get the sound I wanted. And as has been pointed out in this thread, guitar players can be very picky about tone - guilty as charged, your honor