Amp reivews

[glitchrock-buddha]

A nice addition for suite owners who don't have a guitar amp sim already. It's perfectly usable. For those of us who do (I have guitar rig 4), I doubt I'll get much use out of it. But I do like the simplicity of it. With guitar rig you have to get certain settings just right (input/output volume). I could maybe see myself pulling this up for something really quick. I have to agree that the price is absurd for non-suite owners. This thing should be 70 dollars at most.

Anybody have any data on the CPU hit of the different amps/cabs?

They are generally reasonable. Funny enough the clean model is actually the most cpu hoggish one. On my system, most of the amps are about 5%, the clean more like 8% (This is on the meter though just using one track so it would actually be less once the system was stressed on the cpu was going at a higher rate). Cabinet doesn't use much, maybe another 1-2% on my meter.

[anybody human]

I own a bunch of amp sims but don't use them anyway. I'd agree with what Leeds says about what to compare it to. I was always against Ableton having an amp sim but now that they do, I think it's nice to have an amp and speaker cabinet emulation for use with software instruments. For guitar, I don't like amp sims anyway. As an effects processor they are quite useful and Amp isn't as good as the dedicated 3rd party stuff but it's a useful addition. Don't think the price is appropriate as an individual add on though.

[skipkent]

I now was a bit disappointed on first check, did try right now like half an hour after breakfast, haha. The rack presets are eating way too much cpu and do not sound so impressive, especially if you compare them with the GR library.
Amp is quite cpu-intensive as well. I have a macbook 2Ghz and for liveconcerts I will need to continue to use my pod in order to keep cpu-usage down.

But cabinet is a nice little effect, if you put saturator, distortion, redux or whatever in front of it. makes it all sound like real strange guitar amps.

I noticed the cpu usage as well. I lined up about 5 tracks with different instances though, and the usage never went up. Interesting.

[Parametex]

AMP is great!

Just tellin' ya mofos!

[UncleAge]

I posted last night after giving it only a brief run through. After tweaking things a bit more today I'd say Amp has some pretty decent tones to offer. I ran it along side the AT Fender plug from IKM and I got some pretty decent complimentary sounds out of it. Now I don't do the over-saturated-wall-of-distortion type stuff so I can't comment on whether or not that's a plus or minus. But I was able to get a pretty decent slightly overdriven sound that was something that I could use in a mix. Overall I think the presets are a bit over-the-top in every direction. But that can be said for almost every plugin that I have ever purchased.

Later today I'll run my 5-string bass through it to see what it has to offer on that front. I have been partial to Studio Devil's VBA for quite some time. However, based on what I got from it on the guitar side of things it may be better to compare Amp with SVX instead.

[jpga]

Like it!

[Schnauzer]

Like it too!
Finally some decent grit in ableton.
Within 5 minutes i find myself spicing up synths and drums with this baby.
A thing I only scarcely did with guitar rig.

[pepezabala]

now after recording the first things with my guitar and my bass tomight, I like it a lot much better.

[gurumonkey]

not a review, but just wanted to express my joy that this exists and that i get it free! woot. as far as how it looks from the video, i'd say it's pretty simple. keep in mind that rarely in other guitar plug ins are there presets that are only amp and cab, so i'd just like to suggest to the community that those of us who are guitarist should spend some time creating sounds in conjunction with the other native's that suite comes with in order to create presets that might match a bit more! hope i get to download this later tonight! woot.

[mholloway]

so I've been dropping amp on Synth channels and tweaking and actually getting some pretty sweet results, kinda like using the Overdrive plug but with more flexibility.....can beef shit up good, ya know?

so I feel pretty happy with this "freebie".

Oh, and those little amp drawings? THING IS CUTE.

-M

[friend_kami]

well. as an electronica artist, i really like amp. its a saturator on crack.
as a guitarist and a bass player i have to say that it really does sound like shit.
ok, that wasnt fair. ill rephrase it: it sounds incredibly digital and you spot a mile away that its emulated.
also, id rather have all the models separate in a rack style fashion (guitar rig anyone?), that way i might actually make it sound good.
i do realise you can stack an amp, then another amp after that one and get the same result, but do you really want to load several instances to achieve a decent sound?
i dont. for electronic music its great but as soon as you plug a guitar in (unless you play the clean sounds, then) you take a big breath, shake your head and go make a sandwich instead.

ableton, no offense but you really should go back to working on fixing live 8 before you work on partnerships, extra instruments and other candy that is unuseable if you cant have a stable product.

[H20nly]

I downloaded and installed 8.2 last night. How about you friend_kami? It was late but AMP came with it. I was pretty excited to try out the new version and new toy. When I went to authorize it online the authorization just went round and round and round... I brushed my teeth... that type stuff and finally decided to just let it roll and rolled my ass to bed. that was about midnight... it was still trying to authorize this a.m. so I never got to try any of it.

Whats poppin Abes?

in all fairness I almost never take my DAW online except to update/download/auth music software. the only browser on it was I.E. 6 so I updated to 7 this morning and I'm hoping I can get authorized tonight... cuz I know it ain't happenin this weekend right!?!

[Tone Deft]

I don't know what a Suite owner is anymore.

I was a Suite owner at Live 7. with 8 I didn't care about Collision or Corpus so I skipped those. I tried Amp last night and only had the uneditable racks so I guess I'm not a Suite owner anymore?

[deva]

I quite like Amp so far... but then I am using it on synth and percussion and in conjunction with other effects... As a guitar amp, I have tried out the major amp-sims and none of then really feel/sound quite like the real thing anyway. I have never actually purchased an amp-sim cause they just feel complicated and I am not a serious guitarist. I like how simple Amp is and how it integrates into the racks and will actually use it much more than a more complicated plug-in for this reason. Seems like a fine addition to me and for free, I cannot go wrong.

[stonee]

i feel bad about bitching about something I get for free, but...

I'm fairly dissapointed. I was thinking YES! finally an amp sim that fits right into my workflow! i can bust out the guitar more.

but it sounds like utter shit with guitars. i've never heard such a flat, dead sounding amp sim. It destroys all the dynamics, and you cant get any punch out of it.

the clean sound in amp are sorta alright i guess. they're ok for a quick idea. but any of the distortion is completely useless.


its actually ok to put on a few synths though, especially basses and kicks.