What are amp plugins not doing?

[Orvillain]

What are amp plugins failing to do for you?

 

[MirrorProfiles]

What are amp plugins failing to do for you?

It’s a good question because it’s hard to answer.

The things I want:

- 1:1 featured and controls of the reference amp
- top tier modelling of distortion, nonlinearities and dynamic behaviours
- proper poweramp modelling, with full attention paid to negative feedback interactions
- A decent UI that captures the feeling of actually using the amplifier. Avoid extras that get in the way, or that inhibit the experience.

I think a handful get pretty close, although there are simply too few out there that nail all of these. Usually there’s some compromise that inhibits the overall experience. What the user needs is something somewhat simple and straightforward, most trip up somewhere.

Cab sections are a whole can of worms, and I think very few are nailing this for me. I think this is another thread though.

I also think plugins by their very nature lend themselves to mixing and matching. It’s all well and good adding more and more to plugins to make them “all in one” but too many add a lot of filler that is both worse than standalone options, AND makes the other aspects of the plugin worse.

If a plugin has a tuner or gate or cab section or fx that sucks, then i’m going to use something else. And I’d rather they simply weren’t there than being there but not really offering much.

 

[Enchilada Jones]

They arent as tangible as a shiny piece of hardware and at the same time they tie me to a piece of hardware that is not designed specifically to facilitate the enjoyment of using them.

Maybe if the software developers all created and adopted an industry standard for the musicians physical interface with their software then hardware would be created for us to use to access our 'amps'.

Im typing this on a laptop that was purposely designed for gaming. Other than the video card I dont think it actually has any 'gaming' advantage but if someone built a laptop with a bit of audio interface, purposely designed IO and control into it I would probably use my plugins more since I invariably have a laptop with me any time I do use them.

Other than that I dont think they get the attention I should give them.

 

[Eagle]

What are amp plugins failing to do for you?

No inspiration in the playing experience.

 

[madmarcus1960]

Genome is the only one that makes me lust for a hardwae version. I've had 3 instences of CODEX(thir NAM loader) running with <20% CPU usage.

 

[GTR37]

Genome is the only one that makes me lust for a hardwae version. I've had 3 instences of CODEX(thir NAM loader) running with <20% CPU usage.

I am pretty sure there will be one maybe NAMM 2027
They took a lot of feedback in another thread

 

[laxu]

For me most of them are annoyingly dumbed down for power users. I get why they have separate sections for each effect, amp vs cab etc but once you know the plugin, those just get in the way and there often isn't a good overview of what your preset contains.

I really like how the UA Paradise Studio is laid out:

You always have access to your amp controls and whatever effects are about as close to a pedalboard-like interface as you can get on a plugin without painstaking MIDI knob controller mapping.

Its cab sim is way too simplified, but the rest of it is pretty nice for what it aims to do. I think it's a good template for amp sim plugin usability. The pedals still have that skeumorphic flavor that people like, but it feels made with purpose to fit the plugin rather than just copy-pasting the pedal or rack unit.

Otherwise I think too many of plugins try to do the exact same thing: popular amps and effects. I get why, it sells better.

I think plugins would be a good place for painstaking replicas of unique amps like say a Mesa Mark V. So far afaik only ML Sound Lab has tried that and it's pretty decent but not up there. Even that still skips a number of features from the real amp like the power scaling, tube/diode rectifier, triode/pentode, variac mode etc that all have a noticeable effect on the behavior of the amp.

Most amp sims do the same thing because those features are considered often volume reduction rather than what they really are - feel shapers. Even Fractal skips this stuff and you have to dive into advanced settings to try to figure out how to emulate it when it could be just a "Normal/Variac power" switch that does it for you.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Make me coffee.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I think plugins would be a good place for painstaking replicas of unique amps like say a Mesa Mark V. So far afaik only ML Sound Lab has tried that and it's pretty decent but not up there

IMO it’s better than ML, and I like that all of their Mark emulations have all the modes and switches

You always have access to your amp controls and whatever effects are about as close to a pedalboard-like interface as you can get on a plugin without painstaking MIDI knob controller mapping.

I thought I’d love this plugin but the layout is bad. I don’t mind the kind of “fisher price” aspect of it but it dedicates too much space and attention to things that shouldn’t have priority, and simple things require way more work than they should.

A DAW can simply handle all of that MUCH better. You can move plugins around easily, choose whatever routing you like on a per effect basis. You can mix and match your favourite plugins freely. You can have as much or as little visible as you like. All in one plugins concede a lot to cram this stuff into a plugin, all so you can either save presets or run them standalone. Lots of those tasks are a total pain to do in Paradise.

IMO it’s a strong case for why a plugin shouldn’t try and do too much. Annoyingly, it sounds fantastic, so you’re trading off great sounds for an annoying workflow. I felt similar about Softube’s Amp Room except the tones aren’t as good in that.

 

[Orvillain]

UI wise.... I really hate the Paradise UI. It is a large part in why I didn't go for the super discount they offered me at one point. To me, it feels completely purposeless, and like they wanted the impact of "real" stuff, but didn't want to go to the effort that it really requires.

 

[Orvillain]

One of the big problems with Amplitube is always having that browser on the right visible. The amp feels squashed in. The amp really needs to be front and centre, and the main visual focus, because that's what you're buying, and that is what you're interacting with 90% of the time.

I like the features of Amplitube a lot. But the workflow is a bit gammy. I don't see why you need to see the signal flow and the amp AND the browser all on screen at one time.

To me, I want to compartmentalise and focus on one thing at a time. That means paged views like:
Effects
Amp
Cab
Post-EQ
Routing

That kind of thing. And each page should have a menu or a modal browser dialog window that is quick to open and close after you make a choice. That offloads all of the decision making for what you're going to load into another window. Once you've decided, you no longer have to think about what and only have to think about why.

 

[Orvillain]

Also, I spent a long time thinking about the "all at once" approach that some advocate around here.

In real life, I cannot think of a single time where I've adjusted an amp control at the same time as my pedal controls. In fact, the pedals are often the thing furthest away from the amp controls!!

 

[newholland]

im 100000 years behind on them and i dont use really high gain amps- but i think for me they just feel sluggish, and kinda dark and airless. like i said though- im super three generations ago and ultimately, i think largely not because of sonics- more just that i dont want to mess too deep into parameters with my spare time, i just want to play.

 

[laxu]

I thought I’d love this plugin but the layout is bad. I don’t mind the kind of “fisher price” aspect of it but it dedicates too much space and attention to things that shouldn’t have priority, and simple things require way more work than they should.

A DAW can simply handle all of that MUCH better. You can move plugins around easily, choose whatever routing you like on a per effect basis. You can mix and match your favourite plugins freely. You can have as much or as little visible as you like. All in one plugins concede a lot to cram this stuff into a plugin, all so you can either save presets or run them standalone. Lots of those tasks are a total pain to do in Paradise.

IMO it’s a strong case for why a plugin shouldn’t try and do too much. Annoyingly, it sounds fantastic, so you’re trading off great sounds for an annoying workflow. I felt similar about Softube’s Amp Room except the tones aren’t as good in that.

I hate doing window management.

If I think of how I set things up for my own work (programming), I pretty much put all my apps and their windows in a specific place and use virtual desktops to switch between sets of apps/windows. This way I have to do almost zero window management in my everyday life and instead the window management is inside specific apps - a web browser and its tabs, IDE with different files of code, database editor with different tables etc.

To me the ideal is "the less I have to spend time opening up the thing I want to work on, the better".

IMO all-in-one plugins don't make a lot of sense to try to use standalone for a few effects but work best if you just use whatever it offers as your whole chain. Like sure, I can try putting UA Paradise -> Tonex -> UA Paradise for pre/post effects but that becomes a pain in the ass to manage as a whole.

Most amp sim plugins are ultimately suites of effects anyway - even if it's just drives, delays and reverbs. Almost nothing is just an amp/cab sim.

For me, just "get me a good guitar tone and some effects" is more straightforward to do inside a plugin that has all that stuff designed to work as one, rather than manage several different plugins with their own windows, workflows and whatnot.

PS. I picked Cubase as my DAW of choice because it seemed to be highly configurable, known to do a lot and cross-platform. But god damn, for a non-pro user it is so unintuitive to configure to your liking when everything is littered around several places, buried in menus and even the manual's guides often don't work like they say.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I hate doing window management.

To me the ideal is "the less I have to spend time opening up the thing I want to work on, the better".

These are the things that made Paradise worse to use to me, because to see what you want to work on you have to do multiple clicks in different small parts of the UI, and do lots of scrolling and searching around.

With dedicated plugins you click once, type the name of your plugin and it’s one click to open or close it. If you want to move, it’s click and drag. Moving FX in paradise was pretty limited, and you can’t really do much in the way of routing for individual fx or panning.

In theory the Paradise thing would make sense, but when you try using it, you spend a lot of time finding specific controls. Plus you get tons of information on screen at once, small text, small controls, knobs bunched close together and all kinds of other compromises that individual plugins don’t have to worry about so much.

I’d MUCH rather use my choice of tuner, a UA amp sim, cabinetron, and UA Lexicon 224 than trying to cram it into a single plugin with all its compromises. I think I could build that rig, and navigate presets within each plugin much more elegantly and quickly than in an all in one.

 

[GTR37]

I actually thought one of the Mcrocklin suites was decent I think it was called Numchuck or something dumb name but a pretty decent Jcm800 / modded 800
I had it on a trial a few years back , I think he has had a few since then but that amp model was good

 

[Someoldqueenorother]

I think a handful get pretty close, although there are simply too few out there that nail all of these. Usually there’s some compromise that inhibits the overall experience. What the user needs is something somewhat simple and straightforward, most trip up somewhere.

Cab sections are a whole can of worms, and I think very few are nailing this for me. I think this is another thread though.

I also think plugins by their very nature lend themselves to mixing and matching. It’s all well and good adding more and more to plugins to make them “all in one” but too many add a lot of filler that is both worse than standalone options, AND makes the other aspects of the plugin worse.

If a plugin has a tuner or gate or cab section or fx that sucks, then i’m going to use something else. And I’d rather they simply weren’t there than being there but not really offering much.

This is why Fractal Icons is working for me. I bought pack 3 and the Super Reverb is my amp of choice. The standalone application gives me an instant plug and play option. That's gotten me practising doing things I've never tried before, right down to the Comfortably Numb solo and a lot of Hendrix things. Cripes, even SRV came up last week. Fuzz pedal and overdrive pedal going into Icons = win. It's simple and it works.

Today I had two instances of Icons open in Gig Performer with pre-amp effects (Valhalla parallel delays, Audiority reverbs). Substitued in Helix Native and played with pre- and post-amp FX. Helix Native for effects combined with Icons is a very powerful pair.

Would I like Icons to be more complex? No. I like what it does. I'd like a separate complex product, the dream of Fractal Native

 

[[Nathan]]

I wrote a thesis which basically turned into "what would I do if I was launching an amp sim brand" as opposed to "what are amp sims missing".

Anyway, I think all the answers are out there some just do things perfectly and fail spectacularly on other things and vice versa. Overall I'd say NDSP for a one shot vst style sim is good, and STL amphub is the one I go back to for a "whole suite" style setup. They're not perfect but they do the most right for their styles imo.

Make it sound right, make it look good, make sure the interface isnt jank, have good amps on offer... win

 

[TSJMajesty]

Costing me thousands of dollars? Not making it harder to buy more guitars?

 

[JiveTurkey]

Costing me thousands of dollars? Not making it harder to buy more guitars?

Why not both gif. Obviously