he is not asking for a real amp

 

s gear 2 its good for everything,the distorsion doesnt suck,i love this app.
Lepou amps are good for lead too,you need to find good impulses.,just do a search on youtube for satriani lead tone,focking great!!!
kuassa is focking good,you need to find good presets!!

 

i'm playing on s gear hard rock tones are awesome

 

It really is crazy how much of a difference the cab makes isn't it?! I'll have to check out AE Nebula cabs, not heard of those before! Thanks for the shout!

I've been using Fractals CabLab as my IR loader/ mixer recently using some of the Ultra-Res ML cab packs and Ownhammer ones amongst others. Most recently I picked the ML Bulb Zilla 2x12 Cab pack. My god every single mic position sounds so so good especially with the ultra high res feature you really do get so much more realism in the feel when playing and for mixing. You can mix IRs, adjust phase discrepancies, high/low cut each IR to your liking. I feel like I'm doing a commercial for Fractal now haha. They are great though! I'd highly recommend getting CabLab too!

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2017

Most of what I said comes from experience and experimentation with various setups and with various sims. I've actually said many of the same things you did before. It just takes a lot of careful gain staging, optimisation and tweaking at every stage of your tone to get somewhere good. Don't be afraid to experiment with using a plugin EQ to roll off bass or boost treble before the amp sim too! Sometimes a colourful EQ can do wonders for digital tones.

Ownhammer are great and have some fantastic cabs with hundreds of mic options. The benefit of using high resolution cabs (48 and above) would only be helpful and sound comparatively better (than 44.1) if your amp sim and IR loader are capable of oversampling. These are just more things you'll have to experiment with but if you can (it's heavier on CPU) I'd use higher resolution cabs with oversampling when mixing to get the highest quality realism out of the cab/ amp combo. If you're just using them for practice it doesn't really matter too much.

I'm not sure I have a favourite amp sim but I've managed to get some great sounding tones from Bias recently as well as TSE x50 for high gain stuff. For clean tones I love S Gear (as Nightwalker mentioned) and actually Waves GTR can sound great too.

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2017

Some info here about using Acustica's Nebula 3 Pro for cabinet simulation:
http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/viewforum.php?f=90

And not to lead you to another forum, but this is pretty much what I'd say about using Nebula in place of IR's for cabinet simulation. Also links to several different libraries of cabinet presets for Nebula to give you an idea of what's out there.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=458087

I've got the Ownhammer Nebula libraries as well, and they are pretty good, but I think I ended up using AE's libraries mostly. Gain staging is kinda funny with them, I have to turn eg. Amplitube down to about 25% volume or else the over light turns on in Nebula. (Don't forget to turn off the cab simulation in your amp sim if it has that.)

Nebula is CPU hungry, so latency may be an issue for you depending on your setup. I'd not use it to track, just track with an IR, then use Nebula when you're mixing. I actually record just the DI of the guitar, and y out into my trusty Roland GP-100 for monitoring purposes while tracking.

As for clean tones, I get a lot of use from Henry Olonga's Nebula Libraries where he has sampled things like Fender Twin, Champ, etc. Roland JC-120, and many other nice clean tones. You don't even need to run an amp sim to use those.
I also like his GK Bass presets.

 

not true. just not true. they don't sound all bad. the problem is the user side. great playing skill and quality setup make a big difference. poor skill, cheap guitar, cheap interface like your alpha, slow laptop - this won't cut it. how come Greg Koch finds Amplitube impressive and you find it to be a toy? it's ridiculous. ten outta ten, I'd rather trust Greg Koch over you. and to demonstrate what I'm talking about, compare these two reviews. they both have the same exact plugin, yet one guy can rock, the other sucks. not plugin's fault!

 

The biggest problem with amp sims is that the huge majority of them do not preserve the original tone of your guitar. Plug a 1959 Les Paul into one of them, or a cheap Chinese guitar with similar pickups and they'll sound pretty much the same.

They'll suck out the overtones of your single coils and flat out the already naturally compressed sound of your humbuckers...They make my tele, strat and P90 equipped SG sound pretty much identical.

That being said, Bias, in my opinion, is the best one in terms of sound fidelity....However, if you're in love with your guitars like I am, you don't want to record them through these tone-suckers.

I'm not saying you can't get good tones out of amp sims. You definitely can...They'll just suck out your guitar's soul and chew it up beyond recognition.

 

I'm going to choose 3, like they did the post of 3 guitarists.

1) TH3
2) revalver 4
3) amps + impulses (* le pou / ignites / free / etc ...)

Always thinking of being able to use my own impulses.

Th3 is really light on cpu and ram.

 

once again, it's mostly about the player. good one can make things sound as they should. in the clip with Greg Koch playing different guitars through new Fender Collection 2, you can't mistake Strat for ES, ES for Tele, and Tele for Strat. the character of all guitars is preserved. it's about can you pull the right sounds from yer guitar.

 

My 2 cents .... gain staging Blue cat audios gain (free) before and after everything in your chain , an 808 pedal ( tse ) before your your amp tightens the low mids , any of the amps mentioned in other posts but the emissary for low end clear power is awesome sidechain the fucker with a 456 or one of vadim taranovs amps and prepare to kill dude knuckleheads great for low tuning single note riffs , ownhammer through a nebula is imperative , then a gentle kiss with decapitator or some other saturation to give it sizzle and finally eq the shit out of it till you nailed all those horrible whistles . P.S. patience patience patience is the name of the game and it helps if youve got a sound in mind before you start ............

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 13, 2017

totally nailed it dude wuss fingers make wuss amps in real life and in sims , if you want shit hot tones become a shit hot player practice practice practice .........

 

You can't really say that when you don't have any comparison basis. Try comparing an amp sim with a real decent amp connected to the same cabinet and you'll know what I'm talking about. The different in sound fidelity is night and day.

Don't take my word for it. Go on and try that by yourself.

I've done it many times. In fact, I do that every time a new amp sim comes out...There's always that "I want my tone back" feeling, that's only satisfied when I plug my guitar back into the real thing.

 

now if your talkin about playing through a real cab and comparing a plug in sim to a real amp then i agree and thats why there’s such a beast as the Kemper but we are wandering off topic , i think pelao is talking about being totally in the box ...................

 

the only thing that i have is the cheaper alpha XD and i did not specify what gender i want to do that is metal, so amplitube has really good CLEANS i like the jazz amp but for metal is only a shit, and s gear has a more realistic Fender 57

 

For some reason I can get much better tones with the free lepou plugins + a decent cabinet impulse than ANY commercial amp vst I've tried. For metal sound I recommend always using a TSE808 before the amp plugin and an EQ after the amp and cabinet simulation to filter out unpleasant frequencies.

 

all i can suggest dude is take some time out and try some of the suggestions some of the posters have recommended (they really do know what they are talkin about) and experiment for a bit i think you will be surprised , but dont do it live , you cant listen and play , track some grooves into your DAW then mess with different chains so you can A/B properly ..... good luck mate ...........

 

le pou le456 ans mesa recto are the best from lepou and yes are better than any commercial software

 

i've recorded some samples and aplied the ampsims in reaper. I started with thermionik

 

Just remember how subjective a guitar player thinks their tone is. We all think we have the best tone with our equipment. Until we get something new that we like better. Jimi, Jimmy and Zack have all said that 99% of your tone comes from your fingers, and I agree. Great thread. For software though, I use the amps and pedals from Amplitube 4 into Nadir with loaded Rosen or Ownhammer IR's with a pre amp plug-in first.