best on the market for sure. i have nearly everything they've released. they truly are worthy of all of the hype. the Plini may be my favorite. just bc of how much ground it covers. the cleans are just so crystal and the heavy tones are crushing.extremely dynamic plugins. i remember the first time i plugged my strandberg into the cory wong suite... my god. it sounded and felt EXACTLY like plugging into my tube amps. coil split, HB, everything just sounded and responded.. right. what i REALLY can't wait to get my hands on though is the new neural quad cortex. its a QUAD CORE floor modeler like a helix or kemper. its hard to get one right now though. they keep selling out. i think the only place you can buy them (besides direct from neural) is sweetwater.


also

if you haven't checked out ml-soundlabs stuff yet i would also recommend giving them a whirl. the guy who owns/runs it is part of that circle of guys (nolly, misha mansoor, plini, the neural team, etc.) and started out doing cab ir packs, that are incredible btw, and has moved into amp sims in the last year or so and they are pretty damn close to neural level as far as true to sound to the hardware. the UI's aren't as flashy or quite as in depth as neural's but damn do they sound awesome and respond extremely well. and they are EXTREMELY fairly priced (like 40 to 60 bucks) you can try them out free as well. i've purchased several of those too and just got the newest one a few days ago and its top notch. its the Stevie T suite and omg does it rip. shit i actually think that one of the stevie t amps are a free download to get you to try em out.

https://ml-sound-lab.com/

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2021

figured i'd share this demo from andertons of the quad cortex. the gauntlet has been laid helix and kemper...

 

Thanks for sharing! Will get to it soon.

I do agree with the GUI being different and that it may not be intuitive for some. But I like its clean and minimalistic look. The only thing that's different in the Helix GUI is the use of sliders instead of knobs. Otherwise the Fractal stuff has a similar GUI too. I have to say that Helix was the first major unit that had such a clean UI with a high-resolution display (remember the older Fractal units?), and it pushed other manufacturers to follow suit too.

That's hilarious!

Agreed! Mikko is doing some great things. I've messed with the free amp from Amped: Roots, and it sounds great to me!

 

I knew it had to do with something along these lines (Neural...DSP). This is probably the future of gear modeling.

I've heard somewhere that, during this kind of modeling, programmers were really surprised because the neural network uncovered some details that they weren't even aware before.

Nothing new, actually. These are the same guys who did Brainworx' amps. Cool, but nothing extraordinary.

 

Maybe cause aside playing solo, I often open youtube backing tracks and jam over them for testing purposes. I guess in time I got used to that overall slight darkness.

If I jump neural, I'll definitly make a preset of that Kemper-style eq in the rig-player THU has. Its really something else, without anything else its so easy to blend a sound to any mix.

 

i own the Plini, but always revert to Scuffham S Gear ... i am just really love the flexibility of it

 

no Fender for me ?
was hoping there's a Bassman somewhere in there. Well, on the bright side, I like the Darkglass!

 

The problem with most amp sims, including TH-U, is dynamic response and fidelity to the guitar tone...In other words, they're tone suckers.

I own several guitars, some cheap, some expensive, and I always disliked how amp sims made them all sound the same, more or less.

NDSP's amp sims are the first ones I've tried which are faithful to my guitar's natural tones...And believe me, I've tried them all.

Also, there's the case for articulation and note separation, which are somehow elusive concepts.

If you play a lot of legato, for instance, or palm muting, you'll immediately notice how NDSP's plugins sound better than the rest. It's really night and day, in my opinion.

People who use amp sims only for mixing, non-guitarists and beginners probably wont notice much difference...Even the first Amplitube sounded good enough for mixing non-guitar centric music (of course it wouldn't work for a blues or classic rock project)...But if you're an experienced player, there was always this missing "feel" factor. Well, not anymore.

I'm not a fanboy or something. I'm just excited. This is really grounbreaking technology.

Amp 2 in Cory Wong's plugin is supposed to be based on a "fender like" amp.

 

The Neural DSP amp is a joke compared to the SURREY Guitar Amp Suite. Nothing sounds close to this in plugin, nothing! You can't tell the difference between this or an hardware.
Happy New Year!

 

@RMorgan, Thank you for your little review. I've been looking for opinions about Neural DSP plugins.

 

Useless for me, since I can't get it to work with less than 512 samples of latency on my system, which is pretty robust, by the way...Even then, it eats all my PC's resources.

So, not playable in real life situations...It sounds amazing, though.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2021

duplicated post

 

That's true for a lot of things though. I'm sure Surrey sounds great, but if it's not possible to actually use it in real-time without the use of a quantum computer it kinda defeats the purpose :/ I would love to be able to buy a PC that can handle a full mix with say 30-40 instances of Aqua plug-ins in zero latency mode without problems but it would just cost too much.

 

I recently got into mixing videos again. Youtube suggested me a Masterclass with Nolly.

And MAN....i have to say im really impressed too! Their Drum Libraries sound really good,
the Smash/Grab Compressor makes me really wanna have it. Really simple Interface.

After that i heard the latest Songs from Rabea Massad, and i think he used the Nolly Amp.
What a Blast!!! Does anyone know if the Nolly Amp is k'd for Mac??

For Heavy Music, i think it will be another 'Standard', like Valhalla for Reverb!

greetings
easy_kid

 

Not really, the lite version has been released. Check it out

 

LE version is out. I use a MacBook Pro from 2020 and it works just fine, surprise why people are complaining.

 

Slightly off topic, but are any of you using these in a live situation?, or primally studio work? Been messing with the Darkglass ultra and the Parallax, (Parallax sounds really good)
I see @RitchieM has mentioned using it live, any pointers? Im a Bass player and currently changing my setup, Signal chain will be Bass > Radial JDI > Focusrite scarlett 2i2 IN > Laptop (Gig Performer) > Focusrite scarlett 2i2 OUT > Power Amp > Full range Cab.
Bit stuck to try it at the moment, as the majority of my gear is in a lockup at rehearsal room and weve just gone into lockdown again.
Thanks for any input.

 

Sorry, I meant I use the Helix for live work.

 

No problem, Thanks anyway.

 

No crack for mac yet, but wait a couple of weeks and I'm sure someone will do it!

GGD kontakt libraries are really good sounding right out of the box! I still use SD3 because of the insanely good workflow and huge library of MIDI beats, but GGD Invasion is a really good alternative for producing metal.