What is your opinion in what context would you use each one?

 

I like them all and I try to use both after laying down my bassline then choosing the best for that particular mix, but the Darkglass I'd pick is from Nembrini, not Neural.


https://www.nembriniaudio.com/products/blackice-beta-gamma-bass-amplifier
I just looked it up and it's on sale for 27 fucking dollars. There's no reason to not pick it up, like goddamn.

 

the Nembrini Blackice is super dope.

 

Yeah, it got the same audible "woah" from as when I tried out the Ampeg SVT Suite. All these plugins are useful though. If I need shitloads of distorition on bass then I go with Parallax. If I need less distortion but still need tons of character then Darkglass. But if I need a full, deep and clean bass then Ampeg.

 

have you tried clicking on the "Output" on the SVT, the SVT DI + Saturation control will pop out, it is kinda nice for DI sound or anything ever for saturation. I assume you already figured this out.

 

You're talking about the parallel DI signal? I know that feature is bannanas. They thought of everything and they did an amazing job replicating the SVT. It sounds pretty damn identical to me.

 

I like Parallax a bit better than the Darkglass, but they are both good. If you want more Ampeg-esque tones, go for the Darkglass. If you want more high-gain metal bass tones, go for the Parallax.

I really wish that Neural DSP would make a proper bass amp sim! Maybe an Archetype bass plug-in together with some famous bassist, or simply an Ampeg SVT+B15 inspired plug-in (yes, I know that literally everyone has an Ampeg sim, but I think NDSP could make a spectacular one).

I guess that if they would release a full fledged bass amp plug-in, it would be a sim of their Darkglass Microtubes 900v2 amp, and therefore it would not be much of a difference in tone from the B7K plug-in

 

I wish that someone would put MarkBass back in the limelight. Fender Rumble and Hartke need to enter the plugin market, me thinks.

 

MarkBass has their own plug-in, made by Overloud. It's okay, at best. Fender works with IK Multimedia, but Amplitube mostly has guitar amps. The only bass amps are the old Bassman 53' and 59' (which are modelled more for guitar use than bas), the modern Bassman 300 and the TBP-1 tube bass pre-amp. The Fender Pro 810 cab in Amplitube is pretty nice though!

 

Overloud has Markbass, I've recorded few songs using it. Not bad at all. Me, I want a proper Ashdown amp. Overloud has one but it's not that good.

I have like 20+ Fender guitars/bass + Amps combined, love Bassman and all its hot-roded everything, but when it comes to Bass amp, I hate Fender to death. Played few and even bought a Fender Rumble combo some 15 years ago, sold it after 3 months and bought a 15" Ampeg after. I just can't. Hate it too much haha. Personal taste I guess.

 

That's exactly what I meant by back in the limelight, that plugin is over 10 years old now. Don't get me wrong, I never disliked it and actually thought it was quite good. I just felt like we need a newer version which could probably be made better today. Or at least a version 3 from Overloud would be nice. I always dug those tones, in the plugin and in real life.

Oh yeah, I love my copy of Amplitube. Been using it since the previous version and I have loved every bit of it. They don't have a whole lot of selection for bass in Amplitube but there are definitely a few options choose from. Hope they get more though, a host for both bass and guitar would be pretty useful I think.

I never fret too hard if there aren't a lot of IR's so long as the amp sounds good and I could thrown in my own IR's which I have a large collection but I gravitate towards Redwirez & Dr.Bonkers a whole lot. His Aguilar 810 is pretty good, the AGI and AGI2 are used pretty regularly by me. He has like every size of cab you could want in a cab impulse response file.

If you play bass then I think that Dr.Bonkers might be worth your time because Bass IR's are harder to come by than guitar but he's got a pretty large selection of every size here: https://www.drbonkerssoundlab.com/product-category/bass-guitar-cabinet-files/

I also follow this thread on TalkBass to get news on new Bass Cab IR packs coming out.
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/cab-impulse-response-megathread.1326190/

Holy hell that's nice, congrats! Yeah, I love me some Bassman myself. I like the Rumble, I just don't like it nearly as much as Ampeg which scratches a similar itch but better. After a guitar purchase I will save up for an Aguilar I think, it's either that or the Darkglass. I still gravitate towards the Aguilar a bit more though.

 

I woke up today and had to do some bass tracking, so I tried using Parallax, just browsing through the presets, minor tweaking. The Equalizer module seems very useful and does more than a traditional EQ would. It is versatile but the hard part is to match with the right cabinet that complement the distortion. I failed to get some satisfying tone if using the distortion module alone (cab turned off) with other amps and IRs but those that comes with Parallax seems to do the job very well. Also when you split the bass track into low and high frequency it is also hard to get the best out of Parallax. I think it is designed to process the whole track, the low compression section kinda give it away.

Must say that it is not for me because I am more of vintage bass tone type of guy and I enjoy those low mids barking old Ampeg cranked on the edge of breakup kinda distortion more compared to the modern high gain type. I think a lot of modern (metal) records these days has the type of tone presented in the Parallax and should be suitable for that type of player. Is it shit ? no, it is not at all, but for me personally, I'd rate the NDSP Darkglass way above it.

 

You have to keep in mind that the cabs in Parallax are guitar cabs, and they are only affecting the distorted mid- and high-bands. The low-band is not processed by the cabs, only by the comp and EQ. That's probably why you felt that it doesn't work with other IRs. If you place an IR-loader after Parallax, those IRs will affect the whole signal, not just the mid- and high-bands.

I also use Ampeg tones way more than I use the kind of distorted tones that Parallax is great for, but I don't really like the Vintage mode in the Darkglass plug-in either, so that's why I barely ever use the Darkglass. For now I prefer Plugin Alliance's Ampeg plug-ins, but I also really dig the Ampeg Suite from Line 6!

I can't use Line 6 software on my machine though, because they have still not fixed the issue with "disk 0". To run any of their software, your OS needs to be on disk 0 in your machine, and in my machine (Intel NUC) disk 0 is the older SATA slot for 2.5" SSDs or HDDs, while the M.2 slot is disk 1 (which I obviously have my OS on). And since you can't change drive ports/slots on a NUC I'm basically out-of-luck. The fact that Line 6 haven't fixed this yet, even though they know that there are tons of paying customers who are complaining that they can't use software they paid a lot of money for (or their Helix/POD software editors), is just mind-bogglingly stupid. This problem is caused by their protection as well (AFAIU), which just makes everything even more stupid

 

Ah I see, that explained it. I should've read the manual ;P . I didn't know that. Thanks for the explanation.

Yeah, me too. I like the SVT Suite for now but sometimes Rig-libraries from TH-U for the Ashdown. I only use the vintage pedals from the Darkglass just to add a little shine.

what the hell. sad. So even the SVT Suite ? cant run that thing as well ?