I mean if anyone needs more proof, listen to this shit lmao

playing aside, listen to how lifeless and shit the guitar tones sound, especially that rhythm guitar, i mean i reckon they probably wanted that, but still, that sounds like an old cat about to hit it

Probably the only time the "lifeless" way of NeuralDSP works well...

i agress with you, although when it comes to bass my goto was and still always is Darkglass, Parallax on the other end, is too loose for me, harder to control in a mix situation where the bass has to be real tight... maybe Parallax for rock would be better?

 

@MrLyannMusic

This is obviously subjective, but the Tim Henson plugin can sound surprisingly good, I like it better than the John Mayer X.

 

If you’re playing keys live and relying on onboard effects, that’s one thing. But once you’re recording into a DAW, avoiding plugins entirely doesn’t really make much sense.

Keyboard and synth manufacturers have never really prioritized onboard effects, even going back to the first digital boards, they were often an afterthought. That’s why keyboard players leaned so heavily on outboard FX racks. (or the studios')

Plugins are for way more than just guitar players.

 

Don Airey - Keyboarder (Deep Purple)
used a Pedal Board a Moogerfooger ring modulator, a volume pedal and a Boss RV5 Digital reverb.

Gear Run: Don Airey / Deep Purple

 

Probably I didn't explain myself correctly. I also use plugins and I also have synths connected to pedals. I was referring to Neural DSP plugins that (to me) seem much more useful to guitarists than synth players. But, of course, I could be wrong...

 

Because it sounds dated : no dynamic, no personality.
I have enough experience in guitar AND mixing to tell you : it sounds totally flat, like a 2000's average sim.

Listen to that :

And compare to that :

Helix being released ... 10 years ago already.

 

About NDSP Tim Henson sounding like sh*t, it is because of him.
His sound is overloaded with obvious pitch shifting, telephone like, bit crusher ... effects in the demo.
If you can't hear those obvious effects, it is time to stop judging guitar sound ... or any sound.

Here is something more serious :

 

Back to the Roots

Simon McBride (DEEP PURPLE) - Gear Rundown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_McBride

Steve Morse's Pedalboard & Engl Amps for Dixie Dregs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Morse

 

True, doesn't deny the fact that this sounds shit for a what guitar amplifier should sounds like though

 

I'm not the biggest Neural DSP fan, but if you think that they sound "lifeless" or "shit", then I think that you'll also find real amps terrible.

You can get some incredible, life-like tones out of old and free plugins like the ones from LePou. And Neural DSP are definitely in the top 5 of amp sims, so if you can't get them to sound good, it might be something else

 

one could argue there's a lot in the fingers and your vision of the sound.
James Wilsey did a monster of an album with gearbox... so theres's that.
in case you don't know the guy, it's the guy behind the guitar of Chris Isaak's Wicked game and his first 4 albums

 

Easy cure: Put them on an aux send.

 

From what I've seen and heard, you really need to reduce the gain on the sound card and reduce the gain on John Mayer's plugin. Otherwise, it saturates very quickly. That's how it works, apparently. Is it a bug in the first version? I don't know... The video is in French, but you'll see how the guy does it.

 

From this alone, i wonder if you have been near an actual amplifier with the speakers being right in your face?

not sure how can you compare low end amp sims to real amps, the fact that you did tells me all i need to know.

If you head read my previous comments you would understand my point, but you couldn't help but jump to the easiest conclusion, "These are good plugins HOW can you not see that?"

There's alot of free amps that blow Neural sims out of the competition without even trying, Nam Profiles and Tonex ones already put these to shame, and not, to a someone besides yourself that have actually worked with both can tell the difference... and to quote myself, these amps do sound good on their own, but will not sound good in a mix, hell given enough patience, you can get those to sound decent with the right processing, but why would i bother putting in the effort to get Ok-ish results that i can have with other plugins such as STL with the 1/10 the effort?

To sum everything up again for you so you might actually understand my point, NeuralDSP are the Waves-tier plugins, they aren't "bad" per say but they aren't good either, requries alot of post processing to get them to sit right, mixing situations aside, they are decent and they're good enough for live performance, or maybe to pickup the guitar and have a nice 10minutes of practice, so for the price that they're asking i do not recommend them, cause to put it plainly they're "lifeless"... STL do deliver way better results, they're already 7.5/10 on stock settings and they have a way better results and way better offerings, plus they translate your playing way better...

I'm actually condering making a quick video comparing the two...

Anyways, hope you haven't bought some of the company stocks, might need to sell those.

 

Honestly do not get it the hype with Neural DSP. There is one Neural DSP that I think is good. I like Plini but for me it's unusable due to heavy cpu requirements. I think I have tried all virtual amps. For me there is only one that fit all my needs and it's TH-U Premium. I know there are some that hate the GUI and I can agree that they could do better. But for sounds it has everything anyone could need. The cpu requirements are extremely low. What I have notices it that I get the best sound by using high in the master setting both for humbucker and sigle coil. I play every kind of styles från heavey metal to purest clean funk. TH-U has it all. I never use any other IR. Only use TH-U. Last thing. The tone is in your fingers. If you can't get TH-U to sound good I do not know what's wrong.

I was very curious about the John Mayer but I was very disappointed. Sound was not I what was expecting and the cpu requirements was very high.

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2025 at 11:35 PM

In a mix, nobody hears the amp sim you’re recording with—no one even tries to. When using the same IR, it’s hard to tell similar amp sims apart; the differences are truly marginal.
Despite testing countless plugins, I keep coming back to the free STL Tones, Helix Native, and Otto Audio II II II II. I also recommend checking out Audio Assault and Three Body Tech Cabinetron as ultimate ir loader.

I believe that 90% of the tone comes from the IR and post-processing anyway.

Merry Christmas, nerds.

 

Not correct, if we're talking about sims, then maybe but you're still a bit far off, while IRs do most of the "shaping", tones and how an amp reacts to your playing or your style comes from somewhere else...

If we take real amps and run them through the same chain (Guitar (recorded DI) pedals and an amp head) then yes IRs do affect the tones most... as most real amp heads have that aggressive, alive sound to them...

But the conversation here isn't about that, it's about how sims aren't faithful to the amps they try to recreate, they sound dull, 2D and uncharacteristic, the idea here is that not all sims are created equally, some are more faithful than others, some do react better to the player better, some chugs better some do not, and to find an amp that does most of these good enough is hard, and this is where NeuralDSP fails...

as someone who has to work with dirty guitars and high gain distortion, most amp sims do lack that bite, that can be added post processing... but there's no post processing that can fix a bad amp sim, not amount of time you can put will make them sound really good...

PS: most of 2025 tones do actually come from the guitars, mainly the pickups, you may wanna invest a 159usd into a new pickup and use free stuff, than buying some of these Neural joke of amps.

 

Because amp sims are not about simulating a guitar cab blasting in your room, they're about simulating the recording chain of a guitar.

Again, I don't even particularly like Neural DSP. I'm a sort of old school DSP bro so I prefer the circuit modeling offerings as I don't like the 100% signal modeling approach (but that's simply from my purist point of view, in reality I'm aware that both approaches sound good). But let's be honest you're hating too much for nothing. I wonder if Neural DSP were an unknown developer with a shitty GUI, you would think that they are good. But because they're the trendiest thing in town, it feels so rewarding saying that you find them so bad, because it's like saying "everyone is tone deaf, only I have good ears". It's the same BS with audiophiles. They like to use left-field things because it makes them feel elite, above the plebs. It's peak r/guitarcirclejerk lmao.

It's far too common to view guitar amps as this magical and irreproducible piece of equipment. It's also the fault of the plugin devs marketing, who often like to say that you need the absolute latest and greatest tech to reach the sonic qualities of real amps that previous products were supposedly missing. In reality, it's been a while that blind tests comparing a decent amp sim (and there are many) vs a real amp are putting even seasoned guitarists and engineers out of their depth. You should check this video if you haven't already. This guy puts together a couple of simple guitar pedals with some DIY EQ, and manages to get a sound that is SO close to the real amps, with dramatically different circuit architectures :

And this is with analog constraints ! Imagine what decades of research in digital circuit modeling will allow you to do. SPICE was created more than 50 years ago...

Neural DSP are absolutely in the "sounds like a real amp" category. They know what they're doing, even if they picked a muddy SLO-100 to measure.

If you put Neural DSP in the "bad amp sim" category, well it sounds like a skill issue to me. If you said "The stock Diezel emulation in Studio One", I would agree. There is nothing that can save this one.

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2025 at 2:24 AM

Friend you somehow managed to avoid my point, you dodged it, then went out of your way to talk about a million other thing...

You twice now tried to shift this into a "Skill issue" on my part, when i clearly explained that the Neural amps on their own are good enough, and i clearly expressed that these amps are ok for Live sitatuions as well as practice or solo, not in a mix sitatuion, yet you argue and talk and use technobabble, while completely avoiding a straightforward argument... if i didn't know better i'd say you're a seasoned politician...

Since you're somehow a smart guy and somewhat cocky (that's how you sound like anyway) but completely lack the ability to communicate,

Real amps (and to be clear, I am not talking about loudness or blasting a cabinet in a room) have an inherent aggressiveness and controlled harshness—call it grit—that naturally translates into a mix. They tend to sit wide and full with little to no additional processing.
Amp sims, by comparison, often sound smoother and more polite. To achieve the same sense of presence and density in a mix, they typically require extra processing—EQ, saturation, and sometimes even tape-style coloration—to restore the edge and complexity that real amps produce on their own.

Now, back to the “skill issue” argument. If you compare two amp sims using the same full chain—overdrive pedal, properly dialed amp settings, identical IR or cab—and one sounds bad while the other sounds good (even on stock presets), calling that a skill issue doesn’t hold up.
If two tools are set up under the same conditions and consistently produce different results, the difference lies in the tools. If a car drives poorly, you don’t blame the driver by default—you question the car... i still can't fathom the skill issue argument on an amp Sim


Anyways, a small trick I’ve noticed from my own limited experience: a good amp sim will sound wide on its own, won’t have that 2.2–2.7 kHz bump that makes it sound like it’s being miced with an old cheap mic, and won’t have harsh high frequencies. The mid-to-high range will feel balanced and “exciting” without any digital harshness.

If you re-amp through a well-maintained real amp head and pan hard left and right, you can get guitars that are 85–90% mix-ready. Bad amp sims, on the other hand, usually need a lot of work just to get to around 75% at best—and even then, they often end up sounding flat or 2D.

i wonder what kind of politician-level reply you gonna come up with tho

 

Ah yes "inherent aggressiveness and controlled harshness" that somehow can't be achieved digitally by whatever magic reason. Goddamn, in 2025 we have algorithms that can generate photo-realistic images and videos from text prompts, but we STILL didn't figure out an algorithm that can reproduce analog amp circuits faithfully, tsk tsk tsk...

Your point was that Neural DSP somehow sound shit, "requries alot of post processing to get them to sit right" and "not amount of time you can put will make them sound really good", and then went on talking about how real amps have "that aggressive, alive sound to them...". My response was about why that is complete non-sense, and why I recognize that audiophile BS of "Mainstream product = bad". In a well run blind test, trust me, you won't be able to tell the difference.

If you can't get a single Neural DSP plugin to sit right in a mix, then it's a skill issue. They sound great out of the box. I both use Mercuriall, STL Tones, Nembrini, Overloud, Amplitube and Neural DSP stuff, all of them behave like real amps in how they mix, unlike subpar amp sims like VStomp or Tubular. Of course all of them have their good and bad amps. I don't like Neural DSP's Soldano or Matchless, while I don't like STL's 5150, or Nembrini's Bogner. First of all, that's just my personal preference, and also it's more probably due to the particular units they had, far less because of their modeling techniques. All of these devs nail it.

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2025 at 3:32 AM