re Clint...
 
Overstated my prejudice, because like you said, we are on the cusp of doing a credible mic'd amp with several softwares out there already. Even the ancient POD Farm can compete beautifully. Amplitube, S-Gear, Guitar Rig (with a bit if intense love), HeadCase. Peavey Revalver 4 is dynamite.AmpLion, Kuassa (guardedly...)
 
So many others that sit like a real thing in a mix if you got enough floor ambience to mask the flaws of an isolated presentation. You can even set some of these to an extrapolated state of better than live in some ways.
 
My complaint is when they come in with a Marshal, Orange stack, whatever. Almost always an eq setting imposed on a digital square wave. Nothing ultimately Orange or Marshal about it except for the price.
 
Way more respect, and lend credibility to the guys out there who tell you up front, here's a fuzz box you can tweak around to get a good sound. Call it what you want and save the settings, but it ain't chasing some brand name.
 
Okay, off my soap box for now.
 
John
 
 
 

I always said that amp sims just sound bad. I have to amend that though. It depends on how you get the guitar signal into it that matters. I mixed a song for someone how used a clean signal and Amplitube sounded really nice. I tested my Eleven Racks clean signal and I will use Amplitube if needed. I used to use a Roland Octa-Capture and Amplitube sounded horrible.
 
Demoing software is a good idea.

...Guitar Rig (with a bit if intense love)

I'd sure like to know the secret for getting GR to sound good. I bought the full product this year on sale, on the presumption that my previous failures were due to only having a small subset of the full package. Unfortunately, it still sounds pretty awful. Since buying it I haven't been able to use it even once.
 
I guess that story negates my earlier claim to have never bought anything without trying it first.

Practically speaking, I have bought plugins without demoing if you count all the stuff in sonar. There are other things too.

In general I'm careful with my money. The most expensive software is software you don't use.

But demos have not been great predictors of what I use.

Thanks all. I guess the middle ground between ordering now and saving $50 and not ordering at all, is waiting until the demo comes out and see if it's worth it.
 
That's what I'll probably do. I agree the real thing is the best, but there are times I want to add a little sauce to a track.
 
I also know there will probably be some kind of sale later--maybe much later, but hey, if it's that good, I'll be willing to pay for it or wait for it.
 
Thanks again.

 I'm a fan of many of the amps and custom pedals in Amplatube but nothing is worth buying before trying except large sample based libraries maybe , I may grab it one day but It's not going to be until I can try it and still get it for $100 or less. I'm guessing it will be sooner rather than later that a sale comes up.

Bit,
 
regarding Guitar Rig,
 
Decent third party compressor upstream mellows it out. By itself, lots of good effects, but the distortions sound harsh and artificial otherwise (to me anyway). Try a comp first, compensate with the GR noise gate. There are impressive sounds to be had. The initial presets feel too much biased toward metal overkill.
 
John

Well, it isn't just slapping a brand name on it - there's an arduous process as these are no slouches in the industry and they have all be very particular - MESA has been a very hard process and I understand the reluctance to believe that there's more than just a business deal behind all of it - but there is.  MESA was the toughest and frankly I'm surprised this is even coming out since it was that tough to please them.  Orange and Fender were also very picky and we were poised to actually get something out on time in the case of the latter but they had a very big issue with what was a near-inaudible (actually inaudible in almost every conceivable and tested case) issue and we went back to the drawing board to get it exactly right.  But opinions are opinions, sound quality is subjective, and all that and I admit that most of us here obviously still drool over the best hardware / tube amps / etc.   But if you want the most accurate version of the companies we model officially, even they say (and genuinely so) that it comes from AmpliTube.
 
Anyway, I really just came here to point out that I've stressed that there are a lot of you on forums, social media, etc, that would love to see a demo available before the preorder pricing is over.  I can't make any guarantees but I did my best to make the point that it was a legitimate concern being voiced.

Thanx, Peter!

Peter,
 
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, and respect the depth of engineering involved in IK effort, as far as I can understand. Amplitube is cool, and navigate to Amplitube 2 for some subjective aesthetics hard to achieve in ver 3 for whatever reason.
 
My point that the real life, rubber meets the road end point delivery of a specific amp is too far advanced for us to do a decent job on the interaction between amp and cab. Amp tubes heated up for several hours to a sweet point. Interaction with cab hysterisis bouncing against melting nalgahyde. Real world complexities versus attempting to recreate some semblance of the real thing with a limited digital software program
 
Nothing does the task digital by any developer yet, IK or anyone else. Pending for what it is worth years up the line, but not yet. We are getting better thru time, but still neandrathal in our efforts to deliver the real thing. Cannot be done, period. Mortal endorsements have no weight or claim when the end product falls short of the glory. Just where we are at. Will get it worked out in this lifetime however (if you are younger than me...)
 
John