Favourite plugins to use with your amp sims

[Sascha Franck]

Before the early 70's sure

No. Limitless options for pretty much all productions only exist for around 25 years.

All that goes out the window during the mastering process

No way. A decent production needs little mastering.

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.

You're partially wrong. On some of those recordings, the reverbs were recorded with the source track.

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

Name an example of the sounds we're talking about here. Ideally, post one.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

@MirrorProfiles this may not be what you had in mind but since I do my mixing top down, I am always mixing into a mix bus that is filled with fun stuff. Therefore, some of the polish I use for effects is just used to augment what is already going on in the mix bus.

My main bus usually has the following to be enabled at any time:
Fabfilter EQ, Sonible smart comp, sonible smart eq, state mix rack, black box, Leapwing Root One, shadow hills mastering comp, Eiosis airEQ, Slate Virtual Tape / IK Tape, SPL Virtualizer, Sonible Smart Limit, Ozone 11, Weiss MM1, TC BrickwallHD, JST Clip

Otherwise, I like valhalla and eventide (blackhole immersive, micropitch immersive) for most of my delays, mod effects and reverbs. Neutron is also great to have for mud removal.

lol.

View attachment 26293

Lots of stuff I use (and like a lot!) here - but yeah, for this thread I was thinking more along the lines of Eventide and Valhalla than mix bus processing and utility stuff. Are you mixing in immersive/Atmos? I haven’t looked at those versions, I assumed for stereo they’d be the same as the standard versions?

 

[dean701]

Lots of stuff I use (and like a lot!) here - but yeah, for this thread I was thinking more along the lines of Eventide and Valhalla than mix bus processing and utility stuff. Are you mixing in immersive/Atmos? I haven’t looked at those versions, I assumed for stereo they’d be the same as the standard versions?

I'll delete my post then. I'm not mixing in surround but the Immersive do give the option to use stereo only.

btw, I responded to your post on the threebodytech forum. I'm not a fan of how they are completely vacant on their own forum.
Regardless, if you want to change the slope of the HP and LP for Cabinetron, you can use the mouse wheel.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I'll delete my post then. I'm not mixing in surround but the Immersive do give the option to use stereo only.

btw, I responded to your post on the threebodytech forum. I'm not a fan of how they are completely vacant on their own forum.
Regardless, if you want to change the slope of the HP and LP for Cabinetron, you can use the mouse wheel.

oh it was cool to have it, always cool to see how everyone’s doing stuff. But particularly interested in any kinds of creative fx you use outside of “guitar” based plugins :)

I was really hopeful for Cabinetron but it doesn’t seem like it’s evolved much since the early versions. It’s so close but not quite there for me…

 

[pipelineaudio]

This is just plain physics denial. Volume Wars masters have no relationship to the real world's dynamic range.

To claim you can get a real world guitar signal into that range without significant processing is just plain fingers in the ears.

If your master isn't significantly different dynamically than what you sent in, then you likely sent in a 6 bit mix. Sorry, there's no way around that math.

Look at guys like Streaky advocating mastering to -8LUFS. And how many consider his mixes "too quiet"

 

[pipelineaudio]

No. Limitless options for pretty much all productions only exist for around 25 years.

That would be a strawman

No way. A decent production needs little mastering.

Non sequitur

Name an example of the sounds we're talking about here. Ideally, post one.

Any song mixed to -12LUFS or less, so pretty much anything released in the last 20 years on any chart

 

[Sascha Franck]

Non sequitur

So your statements aren't?

Any song mixed to -12LUFS or less, so pretty much anything released in the last 20 years on any chart

You were talking guitars. Big difference.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Look at guys like Streaky advocating mastering to -8LUFS

“guys like streaky” are involved with click bait and scamming amateurs out of money. I’d tread carefully with anything he says, he spends more time making clickbait and content for instagram than he does mastering.

To claim you can get a real world guitar signal into that range without significant processing is just plain fingers in the ears.

If your master isn't significantly different dynamically than what you sent in, then you likely sent in a 6 bit mix. Sorry, there's no way around that math.

an entire mix features more than just guitars, dynamics are dependent on the song, and numbers mean nothing without context.

If we do want to talk numbers, 6 bit is approximately 37dB of dynamic range. 8 bit is 50dB of dynamic range. Not really sure if those are good or bad (especially without context) but maybe you can explain what an appropriate value is for a guitar tone? How many bits are being used at any one point depends on the song in question. You can’t arbitrary throw numbers around and say this is good because it uses another bit. Absolutely laughable way to look at this.

You’re insinuating that literally no guitar tones have had enough dynamic range since 2005 because mastering engineers are stopping it. It’s yelling at cloud bullshit that doesnt reflect the real world. Theres tons of great sounding records coming out all the time, and tons of killer mastering engineers making amazing sounding music.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Woosh! I’m out of this one as people either want to strawman, don’t understand math, don’t understand physics, don’t understand the recording process or some combination of these.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Woosh! I’m out of this one as people either want to strawman, don’t understand math, don’t understand physics, don’t understand the recording process or some combination of these.

Yeah, sure.

 

[dean701]

oh it was cool to have it, always cool to see how everyone’s doing stuff. But particularly interested in any kinds of creative fx you use outside of “guitar” based plugins :)

I was really hopeful for Cabinetron but it doesn’t seem like it’s evolved much since the early versions. It’s so close but not quite there for me…

Have you tried Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven for reverb? It might be my favorite all time reverb plugin. Their Reverberate plugin is also great.
additional favorites of mine: Heavyocity Vast (I love everything they put out), Rob Papen RVerb, UVI Plate, UVI Shade, most IK tapes and most compressors from IK, One, Sunset reverb...Eventide Split Eq, Leapwing (all of it), Tone Projects Basslane Pro, the Focusrite FAST series. it goes on and on.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Have you tried Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven for reverb? It might be my favorite all time reverb plugin. Their Reverberate plugin is also great.

Yeah, I have Seventh Heaven and Reverberate. They’re cool, but there’s something about IR based stuff (even with their fusion IR’s) that feels weird to me. I also like to dive into settings and the IR based stuff is a little less flexible in that regard. I use Reverberate a little more - there’s a few classic reverbs that are time invariant and have minimal settings (like a PCM60) that do the job there.

If you have Relab’s LX480, the developer mentioned about some settings in the RHall HD mode that get very close to a Bricasti. I like Exponential Audio and Lexicon PCM for modern style reverbs too.

 

[dean701]

Yeah, I have Seventh Heaven and Reverberate. They’re cool, but there’s something about IR based stuff (even with their fusion IR’s) that feels weird to me. I also like to dive into settings and the IR based stuff is a little less flexible in that regard. I use Reverberate a little more - there’s a few classic reverbs that are time invariant and have minimal settings (like a PCM60) that do the job there.

If you have Relab’s LX480, the developer mentioned about some settings in the RHall HD mode that get very close to a Bricasti. I like Exponential Audio and Lexicon PCM for modern style reverbs too.

thanks. there are so many plugin vendors I forget I have some of them.

I did a bit of a micropitch comparison the other day after I posted and dammit I actually like the Fractal version better than the Eventide software. There is an inherent warmness to the eventide that muddies things up. I know they have a built in hi-cut but I still ended up re-amping instead of staying in the box. It's not too shocking for me though since I bought the Eventide Micropitch and returned it in favor of the Boss Ps6 harmonist.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

thanks. there are so many plugin vendors I forget I have some of them.

I did a bit of a micropitch comparison the other day after I posted and dammit I actually like the Fractal version better than the Eventide software. There is an inherent warmness to the eventide that muddies things up. I know they have a built in hi-cut but I still ended up re-amping instead of staying in the box. It's not too shocking for me though since I bought the Eventide Micropitch and returned it in favor of the Boss Ps6 harmonist.

Ha it can be exhausting to compare every option! Have you tried the updated Eventide H3000 plugins? they sound fantastic to me

 

[Elric]

I <heart> Soundtoys.

 

[TwistedTape]

I am a big fan of Arturia and Sound Toys off the top of my head. If I could only use one plugin for guitar? I would pick Rift 2 by Minimal Audio. Its a distortion/multi effect. It can be a resonator, it can do classic modulation and all sorts of wild sounds.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

fairly old but gold, tame impala sounds for all. well worth getting anything soundtoys, especially when it’s free

PhaseMistress

Rich phase sweeps, deep analog vibe, and tempo-locked modulation.

www.soundtoys.com