Dear users of guitar plugins such as Ample Guitar, Shreddage, Riffendium, etc.,

When using your favorite guitar plugin, do you rely on the built-in amp sims or third-party options like Amplitube, Guitar Rig, Neural DSP, and so on?

Here’s a second question: When using amp sims, do you prefer to use the built-in effects (like reverb and delay) or those provided by your DAW?

IMO, it’s better to use the DAW's reverb and the guitar plugin’s delay.

 

I like the sound I customized so I usually tweak my own mixing chain no matter if I play directly or use a midi guitar plugin. It just gives me the sound I want without having to keep experimenting. For effects, I usually use third party plugins that I know but sometimes I will dabble with something new.

 

Those on-board sims are pretty bad imo. 3rd party for me (usually Neural). For sure I don't like Shreddage. I've not used Ample Sound. The effects depend, I think Neural's generally sound fine.

 

regarding amp sims, these days there is nothing better than nam which is open source anfd free (especially if your computer can handle the hyper-accuracy captures). You can get a very good free loader called nam universal.

If you want an all-in-one solution, Genome by two-notes, is cheap ($80), supports nam and other capture formats, has now full midi implementation and offer very good quality fx that will cover pretty much all your needs.

 

You don't absolutely have to use third-party amp sims, you can get useable tones with the amp sims in most DAWs, but they are usually not the best. If your music is very guitar focused and you yourself enjoy a really good convincing guitar tone, then you're better off using something like Neural DSP, NAM, IK ToneX, Mercuriall AmpBox etc. There are also good old white-box modelling amp sims that sound great. Most of the stuff from Line 6, Aurora DSP, Audio Assault, Kazrog, Softube, and even the old TSE X50 sound really good.

In the end it's just up to your preferences and what works for the kind of music you are doing that decides if you need a third-party amp sim or not. If you are already satisfied with the tones you are getting from your DAWs amp sim, then there's no reason to venture outside of it (unless you simply want to see what's out there).

Btw, the only DAW that you actually need to get some kind of third-party amp sim for is Reaper. It doesn't have it's own since the devs believe that there are so many great third-party plugins for free that there's no reason for them to spend time on developing stock plugins other than the very basic necessities. IMO that's just a good thing. It leaves the small development team more time to focus on the actually important aspects of Reaper.