Favourite plugins to use with your amp sims

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Bettermaker EQ232D
Bettermaker BM60
Kiive Tape Face
TBT Kirchhoff EQ
Soundtoys EchoBoy
Soundtoys MicroShift
Eventide H910 & Dual H910s
Eventide H949 Harmonizer
Fabfilter Pro-Q 3
Waves GEQ Classic
Waves H-Delay
Waves Q10
BBE Sound Sonic Maximizer
IK Multimedia Sunset Sound Studio Reverb
UAD API Vision Channel Strip
UAD Brigade Chorus
UAD Empirical Labs Distressor
UAD EMT 140
UAD EP-34 Tape Echo
UAD Galaxy Tape Echo
UAD Lexicon 224
UAD Oxide Tape
UAD Precision Channel Strip
UAD Precision Delay Mod
UAD Precision K-Stereo
UAD Precision Reflection Engine
UAD Pultec EQP-1A
UAD Pultec MEQ-5
UAD Pure Plate
UAD Studer A800
UAD Studio D Chorus
UAD 1176LN Rev E

 

[Sleezy E]

Valhalla supermassive is great for solos

Soundtoys echoboy for any and all delay duties

On L R panned double tracked guitars I've had good success putting the sound toys decapitator on one of the tracks to give it a different flavor

I have a collection of Lexicon 480 ir's that I use all the time too

 

[2112]

Soundtoys Microshift, Valhalla Vintage Verb and Fabfilter Timeless get a lot of use in my DAW. The UA 224/480 and Distressor go hard too.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

another one that I forgot:

Electric Matter - Vintage BBD Flanger Plugin (VST2, VST3, AU, AAX)

Faithful simulation of the EHX Deluxe Electric Mistress. Available as VST2, VST3, AU and AAX plugins!

www.audiority.com

great quick n dirty flanger

 

[NightWalker]

- Arturia’s Memory Man, just a perfect memory man model as far as I’m concerned.

is Arturia Brigade

 

[theimageofall]

Soundtoys (pretty much all of the effects)
Valhalla
Eventide
I like Softube’s Tsar reverb to add room vibe to guitars as well

 

[Sascha Franck]

Now, related to guitar plugins... I wonder what all of you would choose for a live pc rig. Would you choose a complete suite like Helix Native, TH-U, etc... or would you mix plugins with any kind of host?

I'd defenitely use a host. Likely Mainstage for a start (because I'm a Mac user anyway and it's dirt cheap), perhaps Gig Performer in case this would become a real thing (which it actually could one day, I'm sort of re-thinking that option).

Would you choose a complete suite like Helix Native, TH-U, etc...

I think I'd rather use a mix but likely with a preference for individual plugins. They're just easier to switch on/off than in whatever kinda complexed multi FX modeler.

Also curious about whether you would use the same plugins at home/studio as gigging out there.

Likely the same. But with different preferences. For example, all those lush FX very often don't work well live. Also, I can't see myself playing stereo live, which rules out yet another bunch of things I might use for recording.

Btw, these days, it's really worth thinking about such a setup.

Have a look at the Macbook Air. Even the smallest of them should be sufficient already (depending on what you plan to do, you may want to go for 16GB RAM, though, but for a plain amp sim setup, 8 are more than sufficient). No moving parts at all, doesn't get hotter than lukewarm when you close the lid, not even under plenty of load. And talking about load: I can run 3-4 fully loaded instances of HX Floor at 32 samples buffersize, so that's more than sufficient for any live purposes.

Add pretty much any MIDI controller and you're good to go already. Personally, I'd likely slap the computer and interface into a well dampened rack caddy, so it'd be safe from all those beer showers. This setup would even be able to run the longest gigs on battery power only, go figure.

But the biggest advance would be no more waiting for companies to deliver all the goods.
No capture block in the HX ecosystem? Well, just use Genome, Tonocrazy, the NAM player, whatever.
Always lusted after those wicked IR based reverbs but don't want to spend a fortune on hardware (with unknown additional latency issues...)? Just add your favourite IR plugin, done.
Etc.

It's really not that expensive anymore, either.
- Macbook Air M3 base configuration: €1,299. You could of course as well get a Microsoft Surface, but there's less compatible software for their ARM Windows). Or a Mac Mini (smallest model would be sufficient), but you'd have to find a decent solution to completely control it from an iPad or add a monitor and keyboard. So let's just stick with that MBA for now.
- Motu M2 interface (3.5ms RTL), around €230.
- MIDI Captain floor controller, €160, add 2 EXP pedals (the M-Audio ones are working fine) for $20 each and you're at €200.
- Add a neat rack, floor controller could go inside. Another €200, maybe €300-400 if you wanted some fancy things.

All in all, that'd be around €2k for the hardware. If you went for Mainstage, that'd be another €35 for the software, and given that Mainstage is coming with all of Logic's FX, all you needed in addition was, say, Tonocrazy, which is free. Purchase, say, Amplitube Max when they're having one of their stupid sales and you're all set. Or use your license of HXN from the days when you had a Stomp.

Whatever, for less than €2,500 you'd get a super flexible setup already. Regarding stability issues: There's none. Number of crashes ever since I bought my MBA? Zero. And I hammered it a lot more than what would be the case with a "walled garden" amp sim setup.

 

[Sedaxel]

I'd defenitely use a host. Likely Mainstage for a start (because I'm a Mac user anyway and it's dirt cheap), perhaps Gig Performer in case this would become a real thing (which it actually could one day, I'm sort of re-thinking that option).



I think I'd rather use a mix but likely with a preference for individual plugins. They're just easier to switch on/off than in whatever kinda complexed multi FX modeler.



Likely the same. But with different preferences. For example, all those lush FX very often don't work well live. Also, I can't see myself playing stereo live, which rules out yet another bunch of things I might use for recording.

Btw, these days, it's really worth thinking about such a setup.

Have a look at the Macbook Air. Even the smallest of them should be sufficient already (depending on what you plan to do, you may want to go for 16GB RAM, though, but for a plain amp sim setup, 8 are more than sufficient). No moving parts at all, doesn't get hotter than lukewarm when you close the lid, not even under plenty of load. And talking about load: I can run 3-4 fully loaded instances of HX Floor at 32 samples buffersize, so that's more than sufficient for any live purposes.

Add pretty much any MIDI controller and you're good to go already. Personally, I'd likely slap the computer and interface into a well dampened rack caddy, so it'd be safe from all those beer showers. This setup would even be able to run the longest gigs on battery power only, go figure.

But the biggest advance would be no more waiting for companies to deliver all the goods.
No capture block in the HX ecosystem? Well, just use Genome, Tonocrazy, the NAM player, whatever.
Always lusted after those wicked IR based reverbs but don't want to spend a fortune on hardware (with unknown additional latency issues...)? Just add your favourite IR plugin, done.
Etc.

It's really not that expensive anymore, either.
- Macbook Air M3 base configuration: €1,299. You could of course as well get a Microsoft Surface, but there's less compatible software for their ARM Windows). Or a Mac Mini (smallest model would be sufficient), but you'd have to find a decent solution to completely control it from an iPad or add a monitor and keyboard. So let's just stick with that MBA for now.
- Motu M2 interface (3.5ms RTL), around €230.
- MIDI Captain floor controller, €160, add 2 EXP pedals (the M-Audio ones are working fine) for $20 each and you're at €200.
- Add a neat rack, floor controller could go inside. Another €200, maybe €300-400 if you wanted some fancy things.

All in all, that'd be around €2k for the hardware. If you went for Mainstage, that'd be another €35 for the software, and given that Mainstage is coming with all of Logic's FX, all you needed in addition was, say, Tonocrazy, which is free. Purchase, say, Amplitube Max when they're having one of their stupid sales and you're all set. Or use your license of HXN from the days when you had a Stomp.

Whatever, for less than €2,500 you'd get a super flexible setup already. Regarding stability issues: There's none. Number of crashes ever since I bought my MBA? Zero. And I hammered it a lot more than what would be the case with a "walled garden" amp sim setup.

Thank you, mate. Lots of good thoughts here.

My approach (I'm always noodling around the idea of a pc rig) was always to have a small config. That is, headless system, a mini pc, small interface (with low RTL and good noise/interference resistance levels).

Of course, the flexibility is a big plus. Thanks again!

 

[pipelineaudio]

Out of curious what all are you using these on?

Typically for my guitars and bass I’m using the effects in the plugin/modellers. Do you typically record dryer into the DAW specifically to use these after, or do you find benefit experimenting with these even if somewhat wet already?

I think this is a huge point which seems to be in a lot of guitar type forums but never on recording forums

There is an idea out there amongst many guitarists, that the sound they hear of their favorite artist on a record is the chain they see the artist using live.

That's almost never even partially the case (though often it can be one of the guitars you usually see them with, maybe an amp head they often use)

Even if it was exactly the chain you see them carry around live or in magazine pics, even then it really would be only a tiny part of the picture. Move a mic 2 degrees or half an inch and you are WAY past the difference between any two amps. What gets done in terms of filtering for instance to a recorded guitar tone would make most tone purists cry, yet they cite those exact tones on record as their favorite. Sometimes, theres a part where a solo guitar plays or light instrumentation and there, the (nearly) full range of the mic'd cab can be heard, but once everything is on, there's usually some serious hi and lowpass filtering going on and through psychoacoustics, your brain still hears the full signal, as you were primed with it earlier in the song (Check out Megadeth's Almost Honest for a huge example). And even then, the amount of post processing that gets done to that guitar sound renders it so drastically altered from anything you'd get in the real world.

Even at the mastering stage, more eq and dynamics is being added to everything, guitars included, before you get to that sound people are talking about

On the individual guitar tracks, there is often (usually, almost always) some pretty serious dynamics going on. Try to play any of that modern chugga chugga stuff and notice how different it sounds than what the magazines claim was the chain. Often (a big part of) the missing element there is the [Andy] "Sneap Trick" where a multi band compressor or dynamic eq is drastically clamping down on the low end mud bloom that comes from palm muting very loose strings

All that babbling aside, since becoming a Helix user, I have used the Helix Native for a lot of post processing, and some pretty serious recording tools like the 3 band compressor are in there! For real surgery, I still use other plugins for guitar processing (we actually made our own plugin to make a much more powerful and targeted "sneap trick"), but its pretty awesome what's in Helix Native

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

I think this is a huge point which seems to be in a lot of guitar type forums but never on recording forums

There is an idea out there amongst many guitarists, that the sound they hear of their favorite artist on a record is the chain they see the artist using live.

That's almost never even partially the case (though often it can be one of the guitars you usually see them with, maybe an amp head they often use)

Even if it was exactly the chain you see them carry around live or in magazine pics, even then it really would be only a tiny part of the picture. Move a mic 2 degrees or half an inch and you are WAY past the difference between any two amps. What gets done in terms of filtering for instance to a recorded guitar tone would make most tone purists cry, yet they cite those exact tones on record as their favorite. Sometimes, theres a part where a solo guitar plays or light instrumentation and there, the (nearly) full range of the mic'd cab can be heard, but once everything is on, there's usually some serious hi and lowpass filtering going on and through psychoacoustics, your brain still hears the full signal, as you were primed with it earlier in the song (Check out Megadeth's Almost Honest for a huge example). And even then, the amount of post processing that gets done to that guitar sound renders it so drastically altered from anything you'd get in the real world.

Wish more players would realize this.

In fact, sometimes what the artist is using on stage is simply for looks to impress (HUGE MARSHALL STACKS, DUDE!!!); with the real amp hidden backstage. I recall a photo someone shared (on the way-back-in-the-early-2Ks Plexi Palace forum) of Angus & Malcom's *real* amps tucked away underneath the stage.

A prime example of this trickery would be Billy Gibbons' "Tower of Expandoras" on stage:

...but 10 bucks says he's plugged into an old Fender Tweed mic'd up - lurking backstage...

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

To add: As a friend (studio rat) told me once:

"What you hear on an album is an illusion"

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

And even then, the amount of post processing that gets done to that guitar sound renders it so drastically altered from anything you'd get in the real world.

Anyone can experience this by going to YouTube and pulling up an ISO'd guitar track of their selected band.

For example, Metallica's Enter Sandman - guitars ISO'd:



Even more pronounced - Metallica's One - guitars ISO'd:

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I think this is a huge point which seems to be in a lot of guitar type forums but never on recording forums

There is an idea out there amongst many guitarists, that the sound they hear of their favorite artist on a record is the chain they see the artist using live.

That's almost never even partially the case (though often it can be one of the guitars you usually see them with, maybe an amp head they often use)

Even if it was exactly the chain you see them carry around live or in magazine pics, even then it really would be only a tiny part of the picture. Move a mic 2 degrees or half an inch and you are WAY past the difference between any two amps. What gets done in terms of filtering for instance to a recorded guitar tone would make most tone purists cry, yet they cite those exact tones on record as their favorite. Sometimes, theres a part where a solo guitar plays or light instrumentation and there, the (nearly) full range of the mic'd cab can be heard, but once everything is on, there's usually some serious hi and lowpass filtering going on and through psychoacoustics, your brain still hears the full signal, as you were primed with it earlier in the song (Check out Megadeth's Almost Honest for a huge example). And even then, the amount of post processing that gets done to that guitar sound renders it so drastically altered from anything you'd get in the real world.

Even at the mastering stage, more eq and dynamics is being added to everything, guitars included, before you get to that sound people are talking about

On the individual guitar tracks, there is often (usually, almost always) some pretty serious dynamics going on. Try to play any of that modern chugga chugga stuff and notice how different it sounds than what the magazines claim was the chain. Often (a big part of) the missing element there is the [Andy] "Sneap Trick" where a multi band compressor or dynamic eq is drastically clamping down on the low end mud bloom that comes from palm muting very loose strings

All that babbling aside, since becoming a Helix user, I have used the Helix Native for a lot of post processing, and some pretty serious recording tools like the 3 band compressor are in there! For real surgery, I still use other plugins for guitar processing (we actually made our own plugin to make a much more powerful and targeted "sneap trick"), but its pretty awesome what's in Helix Native

I agree with lots of this, but in the same way - a lot of what’s written on guitar-centric forums make it sound like guitars always go through TONS of processing in the studio and often it’s pretty minimal, if anything at all. More often than not it’s just very well captured at the source and sweetened a little along the way. Stuff that’s processed heavy at any stage tends to end up weird Always exceptions to that rule, but with Andy Sneap for instance, I bet more of his guitar tracks don’t use waves C4 than do.

 

[pipelineaudio]

More often than not it’s just very well captured at the source and sweetened a little along the way. Stuff that’s processed heavy at any stage tends to end up weird

I've done albums with everyone from Rick Rubin to Max Norman and I've never seen this once. NEVER anything close to this on a country album. Some folk stuff had some less invasive stuff done, but anything even pop folk, forget it, the dynamics on those wouldn't even be possible to create in realtime without piles of latency

And if you are talking about anything made after around 2003, you mean albums with around 6 bits of dynamic range. That resembles nothing even close to what a raw guitar could ever sound like. Most of these albums even feature dynamic inversion on the guitars

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Most of these albums even feature dynamic inversion on the guitars

Utterly absurd thing to say - SOME records have daft amounts of limiting on them, but to suggest that most have so much that the dynamics are fucked? NOPE.

Rick Rubin

Famously the guy who doesn’t engineer anything, brags about having no technical knowledge or knowing how to use an console, and basically shows up to the studio once every blue moon just to listen.

Sorry, but if you think the vast majority of guitar tones are the result of heavy processing and not great playing, solid gear choices and great engineering then I don’t know what to say. The processing eases things along the way, sometimes it might get someone out of a pickle. If the source isn’t good, they probably didn’t even hit record before swapping gear out.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Many famous records couldn't even make use of all that processing, simply because the equipment didn't exist or you couldn't easily integrate it.
If you look at some consoles and outboard gear rigs, it's clear that you simply couldn't, say, put a dedicated compressor onto each recorded track.
Things such as those and what not (reamping for instance), limitless routing and processing options are just around 2.5 decades old (before they were only available to some really exclusive studios, if at all). Before you had to get things right at the source level. And boy, engineers were incredible at it. Listen to some of the multitracks of some famous songs that are around (yeah, I know, questionable stuff, but originally they were leaked backups from digitalized analog recordings), it's an eye opener. Just pull all faders up and it'll almost sound like the finished production already. Which is why you really needed both engineers and musicians knowing their thing.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Utterly absurd thing to say - SOME records have daft amounts of limiting on them, but to suggest that most have so much that the dynamics are fucked? NOPE.

Name me an album where people talk about the guitars made since 2005 that has more than a 6 bit dynamic range

Sorry, but if you think the vast majority of guitar tones are the result of heavy processing and not great playing, solid gear choices and great engineering then I don’t know what to say. The processing eases things along the way, sometimes it might get someone out of a pickle. If the source isn’t good, they probably didn’t even hit record before swapping gear out.

The source sounding "good" has nothing to do with any of what I said. Whatever the source sounds like, just the process of mastering changes the dynamics so utterly fundamentally as to not even be a caricature of what can possibly exist in the real world according to the laws of physics on anything post Volume Wars, never mind all the individual processing on the guitar tracks themselves

Go ahead, leave the low pass filter off of the guitar track and lets see where your kick drum and bass are

 

[pipelineaudio]

Many famous records couldn't even make use of all that processing, simply because the equipment didn't exist or you couldn't easily integrate it.

Before the early 70's sure

If you look at some consoles and outboard gear rigs, it's clear that you simply couldn't, say, put a dedicated compressor onto each recorded track.
Things such as those and what not (reamping for instance), limitless routing and processing options are just around 2.5 decades old (before they were only available to some really exclusive studios, if at all).

All that goes out the window during the mastering process

Before you had to get things right at the source level.

Getting the source right, and getting the finished sound at the source are two totally different things, and don't normally exist in the same universe unless you are talking about the 50's

And boy, engineers were incredible at it. Listen to some of the multitracks of some famous songs that are around (yeah, I know, questionable stuff, but originally they were leaked backups from digitalized analog recordings), it's an eye opener. Just pull all faders up and it'll almots sound like the finished production already. Which is why you really needed both engineers and musicians knowing their thing.

Most of those MOGGs already have piles of processing done to them. They aren't raw multitrack dumps usually, and you can tell by what are often on the same tracks. They ARE incredible to listen to, but for instance, the boston and queen ones contain parts of the post processing like reverb often.

Just from a pure math standpoint, you cannot get a 6 bit sound out of a guitar amp thru a cabinet, they have a wild dB swing them under any sort of normal guitar use. That alone throws all the "its what the guitar sounded like in the room" right out the window

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Name me an album where people talk about the guitars made since 2005 that has more than a 6 bit dynamic range

Not sure what your point is here - there’s plenty of dynamic and undynamic guitars on LOADS of albums that sound great. I’d even say more guitar tones sound good these days than bad. The amount of dynamics has nothing to do with fidelity, it’s all about context. I don’t even listen to John Mayer, but you’re telling me that his guitar tones are the work of a ton of processing? I think the issue is you are listening to the wrong music if you can’t find anything that sounds decent. There’s tons of it around, dynamic and not.

just the process of mastering changes the dynamics so utterly fundamentally as to not even be a caricature of what can possibly exist in the real world according to the laws of physics on anything post Volume Wars, never mind all the individual processing on the guitar tracks themselves

sorry but again, nope. I’ve been in the room with some of the planets top mixing engineers, as well as had a ton of my own work mastered by the biggest names at Sterling/Metropolis etc. It’s very rare that the master comes back THAT different from what I’m sending them as a reference.

Once a mix is approved from everyone involved, the master SHOULDNT drastically change from here. If it does, it’ll likely get rejected, or at least revised to match the ref mix.

There’s a bit of limiting but the integrity of the mix is preserved otherwise i’m calling the mastering engineer up and saying “WTF have you done to my mix?!”. What the mastering engineer sends back to me is within a couple of dB to what I send to them, they are never doing drastic limiting or clipping because they don’t need to. If I sent them a mix with messy dynamics, maybe they’d get more heavy handed. But usually when each stage is handled properly, no one has to get their hands dirty - you just leave it in a better state than what it arrived to you as and don’t drop the ball.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

All that goes out the window during the mastering process

either the mixes have issues, or you need to hire a different mastering engineer. Great mastering engineers know when to do nothing at all, and that’s not uncommon. Mastering engineers commonly do things in half dB steps and is usually respectful to the source material. If the mix has issues, maybe they’ll dig in more, but mastering is nothing like the destructive process you’re making it sound like.

Most of those MOGGs already have piles of processing done to them. They aren't raw multitrack dumps usually, and you can tell by what are often on the same tracks. They ARE incredible to listen to, but for instance, the boston and queen ones contain parts of the post processing like reverb often.

Lots of those Mogg’s aren’t original performances, they’ve been re-recorded or embellished to meet the requirements for a video game. Lots of those were recorded on minimal tracks, or the source material wouldn’t translate to what rockband needs. Chris Baseford worked on lots of it and has spoken about it too.