I've been tracking electric guitars off cabinets and direct using processors for decades. If I owned a Kemper, that's pretty much all I'd want now. Acoustics... always micing

I've almost always used an sm57. Tascam portastudios or reel to reels sound amazing on high gain amps.

I also now will always take a di. 

My new home setup is all itb and the new amp sims are killer. Amplitube 5, TONEX, THu, and nueral DSP really hold their own, Against tube amps and hardware amp models. Each have their strengths.

It really does make a difference what di and/or preamp you use for amp sims, so if you have access to a good preamp it really will improve things. You can also really blow out the pre amp which will sound gross on its own but can work great once an amp sim is added. In that case I'd take a clean and blown out di signal.

Aside from the quality of the modern amp sims, it's the ability to have versatility, so I can really dial in appropriate sounds for any genre, and blend amps together and various stomp box models. Plus there's instant, precise recall.

I still plan on getting a couple tube amp heads when I move into the new place but I'm definitely still planning on relying on amp sims. They're tough to beat now.

Here's a demo video of amp vs some Sims

Thanks Chirs and kmetal!

I think I would also go with a Kemper (just slightly above my budget right now). User PJH gets some amazing tones out of his..

Thanks also kmetal for the video.. I can hear really subtle differences but wow, those all sounds amazing. Hadn't heard of the tonex but it sounds great. Well, they all sound great to be fair.

I guess I'm wondering how much better a sound I could potentially get above and beyond the current plugin I'm using (Bias Amp 2). I heard somewhere that Angus Young is a fan of Amplitube which makes me lean more so towards that but would it really be that much better, I'm wondering. I'm just using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 to get my guitar in..

Cheers,

Ben.

benhj wrote:
Thanks Chirs and kmetal!

I think I would also go with a Kemper (just slightly above my budget right now). User PJH gets some amazing tones out of his..

Thanks also kmetal for the video.. I can hear really subtle differences but wow, those all sounds amazing. Hadn't heard of the tonex but it sounds great. Well, they all sound great to be fair.

I guess I'm wondering how much better a sound I could potentially get above and beyond the current plugin I'm using (Bias Amp 2). I heard somewhere that Angus Young is a fan of Amplitube which makes me lean more so towards that but would it really be that much better, I'm wondering. I'm just using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 to get my guitar in..

Cheers,

Ben.

Guitar tone is subjective so it's really difficult to say how much better it would be, if at all. Nueral DSP and THu are the two most realistic sounding to my ears. There's also the "feel"aspect of it.

I mainly got amplitube 5 because it was part of the ik multimedia Max bundle which went as low as $200. It's an insane value at that price. It comes with full amplitube and basic Tonex, and I upgraded to the mid level Tonex for $50, again on sale.

Another consideration is latency. Kemper has a fixed latency of a couple milliseconds or so. For people with interfaces that can beat that latency spec, it might be worth skipping a Kemper, all things considered.

Probably the best thing to do is download a demo of the amp sims your interested in, and compare them what your using.

I tend to learn towards plugs that are using some form of convolution, and not strictly algorithm based only. Tonex and ik tapes falls under this catagory, so does nueral DSP, amd THu among quite a others.

kmetal wrote:

benhj wrote:
Thanks Chirs and kmetal!

I think I would also go with a Kemper (just slightly above my budget right now). User PJH gets some amazing tones out of his..

Thanks also kmetal for the video.. I can hear really subtle differences but wow, those all sounds amazing. Hadn't heard of the tonex but it sounds great. Well, they all sound great to be fair.

I guess I'm wondering how much better a sound I could potentially get above and beyond the current plugin I'm using (Bias Amp 2). I heard somewhere that Angus Young is a fan of Amplitube which makes me lean more so towards that but would it really be that much better, I'm wondering. I'm just using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 to get my guitar in..

Cheers,

Ben.

Guitar tone is subjective so it's really difficult to say how much better it would be, if at all. Nueral DSP and THu are the two most realistic sounding to my ears. There's also the "feel"aspect of it.

I mainly got amplitube 5 because it was part of the ik multimedia Max bundle which went as low as $200. It's an insane value at that price. It comes with full amplitube and basic Tonex, and I upgraded to the mid level Tonex for $50, again on sale.

Another consideration is latency. Kemper has a fixed latency of a couple milliseconds or so. For people with interfaces that can beat that latency spec, it might be worth skipping a Kemper, all things considered.

Probably the best thing to do is download a demo of the amp sims your interested in, and compare them what your using.

I tend to learn towards plugs that are using some form of convolution, and not strictly algorithm based only. Tonex and ik tapes falls under this catagory, so does nueral DSP, amd THu among quite a others.

 

Thanks, that does sound like an insane deal on the max bundle.. Having googled for it, I see the Total Studio 3.5 max suite is < 200 euros (which includes Amplitube 5 MAX) on the ikmultimedia site.... yet Amplitube 5 MAX alone costs £625 on the gear4music site.. Are they different versions? I guess they must be.. (?)

What is a convolution-based plugin?

Thanks!

Ben.

No it's the full amplitube 5 max that you'd buy standalone. Same as the other Max collections included. That's why the deal is rediculous. I paid $250, and it went to $200 a month later, but it's a killer deal.  Keep in mind the Tonex included is super basic, they have an upsell for that.

A convolution based plugin is basically a sample (a recording) of how a room or a piece of gear responds. It's like taking the gears fingerprint. 

You feed a burst of noise into the gear or room and get it's "fingerprint". Then the convolving process sorta puts that fingerprint on whatever you feed into the plugin like your guitars di signal.

I don't have a real great understanding of convolution but that's the basic idea. There's different types of convolution one is static like a finger print, the other is dynamic like a how a fingerprint stretches or contracts when you move your thumb.

This new dynamic style is what the most realistic amp sims and plugins are using right now. Not that other convolution stuff can't sound awesome, it can and does, it's just the dynamic type seems to do certain things better.

kmetal wrote:
No it's the full amplitube 5 max that you'd buy standalone. Same as the other Max collections included. That's why the deal is rediculous. I paid $250, and it went to $200 a month later, but it's a killer deal.  Keep in mind the Tonex included is super basic, they have an upsell for that.

A convolution based plugin is basically a sample (a recording) of how a room or a piece of gear responds. It's like taking the gears fingerprint. 

You feed a burst of noise into the gear or room and get it's "fingerprint". Then the convolving process sorta puts that fingerprint on whatever you feed into the plugin like your guitars di signal.

I don't have a real great understanding of convolution but that's the basic idea. There's different types of convolution one is static like a finger print, the other is dynamic like a how a fingerprint stretches or contracts when you move your thumb.

This new dynamic style is what the most realistic amp sims and plugins are using right now. Not that other convolution stuff can't sound awesome, it can and does, it's just the dynamic type seems to do certain things better.

thanks for the overview -- I ended up googling about it and found a load of posts on convolutional reverbs which kind of made sense. But I had no idea it would be possible with guitar amp modelling. I guess this is the impulse response thing that a load of the new modelers have built in..

Yeah lots of them have impulse Response for cabinets. Some use it for the amp, others are entirely algorithmic. Cheers!

The simplest way to capture your guitar is to plug it directly into your audio interface's instrument input: just connect your guitar cable to one of the quarter-inch jack inputs. (Make sure you press the 'Inst' button to engage the high-impedance (hi-Z) circuitry).

Greenlal's solution, the most simple and obvious is usually the way I do it - despite having plenty of guitar friendly cab mics. I play guitar, but would not pretend to be a guitarist. I don't collect cool pedals and have a line 6 floor box for a line 6 guitar, but an ancient behringer blue coloured rack mount thing that makes what I think are nice noises - and if I want those noises, I plug it's output into the interface. The DAW has loads of guitar processing stuff - zillions of cabinets, loads of effects and I find them just too much to use. With the simple things, one of the presets will usually be spot on. So - for me, with loads of choice, the simple solutions are quickest. Probably not best, but unlike my guitar serious friends, just not something I intend spending hours auditioning and tweaking. But then, I'm not a guitarist. I have a real tube guitar amp somewhere - maybe it will heat the room a bit?