Good FX racks in SUITE 8 to run my electric guitar through?

[cofane]

I'm looking for a nice clean tones and pop/rock distorition and delay tones.

Clean tones are okay to find so far but I can't seem to get any of the Audio devices to create even a decent distortion for my guitar.

What's my best route to take... especially if I don't want to buy external fx pedals?

[slirak]

I'm looking for a nice clean tones and pop/rock distorition and delay tones.

Clean tones are okay to find so far but I can't seem to get any of the Audio devices to create even a decent distortion for my guitar.

What's my best route to take... especially if I don't want to buy external fx pedals?

A dedicated amp sim plug in, like Amplitube or Guitar Rig. You really won't regret it. If you Google for "free guitar amp simulator" you'll find a few less pricey options.

But first and foremost, make sure you're getting a good signal in to your audio interface. Good as in not only a nice level, but also with a suitable input impedance.

Impedance is to alternating currents what resistance is to direct currents, to put it simple. Both are measured in Ohms. What you're looking for is (at least) 1 MOhm (mega ohm) for your average electric guitar.

If your audio interface doesn't have a (true) high impedance (aka hi-Z or instrument) input, chances are you're getting a pretty "dead" tone into Live and that'll make any plug-in (including amp sims) sound pretty stiff, dull, with poor sustain and other less desirable adjectives...

There are several options if that's the case, like a passive DI box (cheap), an active one (a bit less cheap) or a pre-amp with a hi-z input.

What audio interface do you use?

[cofane]

Thanks for the reply... I use an Apogee Duet interface. They're supposed to be quite good for guitar input correct?

[cofane]

What are your thoughts on Amplitube? I'm looking at it online now and it's about $100 less than Guitar Rig. I'd prefer to go with what's cheaper if I'm not sacrificing much. Have you used amplitube?

[4.33]

why dont you donwnload trial versions and hear for yerself?

[slirak]

What are your thoughts on Amplitube? I'm looking at it online now and it's about $100 less than Guitar Rig. I'd prefer to go with what's cheaper if I'm not sacrificing much. Have you used amplitube?

The Duet's perfectly fine, I use the Apogee One with my guitars and basses, with good results.

I use Amplitube 3.0 (and the rest of IK's guitar and bass plug-ins) myself and I'm happy with my choice. Before I got them I spent quite some time trying out both Amplitube and Guitar Rig and found both to be perfectly good choices. (Actually, I preferred the GR presets. But after mucking about with the settings myself, I changed my mind. This was with older versions though.)

Not sure what versions you're looking at, but AFAIK Guitar Rig 4 Pro is considerably cheaper than Amplitube 3 and those two are the comparable packages. Amlitube Hendrix, Metal and Live are based upon an older amp modeling engine and doesn't sound as good. Fender is based upon the newer engine, but only sports Fender amps and f/x (surprisingly!).

Anyway, there are fully featured 30 day limited downloads for all Amplitube plugs and there's at least a demo version of GR 4 Pro. So I suggest you download them all and decide for yourself. And do mess about with the settings yourself, you can't judge these kind of plugs just from the presets.

[cofane]

Thanks for the heads up! I will go ahead and download a trial version of one of them right now!

Thanks for all the help!

[Homebelly]

amplitube has a very cool basic amp sound.
I have the jimi hendrix edition and it comes real close to nailing the JTM Marshal tone.
Guitar rig has good amp tones but is a much better sound design tool as it has tools to help split tones for parallel processing and also odels some modular synth type modules like sequencers and filters.

If your into the learning curve then my suggestion would be to look at Amplitub, and then learn to use lives routing and devices.
With some work you can create some very cool and strange guitar tones not far off what you can do in GR.

[cofane]

I just downloaded Guitar rig trial version. AWESOME SOUNDS! only one problem though. I can't get it to work as a plug-in for Live. I've tried rescanning my plug ins and everything. It only works in standalone mode right now. What's the deal?

[bagginz]

Amp sim software eh?

I recently demo'd this http://www.vandalamps.com/en/#

and was mightily impressed with the drive and hi-gain sounds and particularly the mic and cabinet modelling.

1. Sound fantastic and responds like a real amp to playing dynamics

2. Uses a serial number - No dongle (a dongle is a deal breaker for me)

3. Great price.

I didn't spend enough time with it yet to see if I could dial up some of my personal favourite clean/on the edge of breaking up sounds à la my old 70's Fender Twin and veritable Mesa Boogie mk3 simulclass combo.

If it can recreate these then I'll buy it. Actually I'm considering it just for the cranked stack sounds...

There's a current thread on it at KVR here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4165328

Cheers,
bagginz

[4.33]

I just downloaded Guitar rig trial version. AWESOME SOUNDS! only one problem though. I can't get it to work as a plug-in for Live. I've tried rescanning my plug ins and everything. It only works in standalone mode right now. What's the deal?

reinstall it, making sure that you set correct path to the VST folder that Live uses.

[Martyn]

It's worth trying Voxengo's excellent free Boogex plugin before spending anything I recon, it has some really nice cabinet convolution impulses included. I use it all the time in preference to my rack herdware. It might be all you need.

http://www.voxengo.com/product/boogex/

[slirak]

2. Uses a serial number - No dongle (a dongle is a deal breaker for me)

Dongles suck. Fortunately, IK switched from dongles to challenge/response activation a few years back. A bit fiddly, but sure beats dongles or the horrible "please insert original CD" method.

I think GR uses something similar? It's not dongle protected, is it?

[bagginz]

2. Uses a serial number - No dongle (a dongle is a deal breaker for me)

Fortunately, IK switched from dongles to challenge/response activation a few years back

Did they? Thanks for the info.


I'm glad 1k wised up. They just won a potential customer. I'll actually look at their products now...

Dongles suck.

Big time.

Cheers,
bagginz

[leedsquietman]

Native Instruments often has sales on it's products periodically where they give a big discount. I had Guitar Rig 2 and upgraded for ridiculously low to Guitar Rig 4 when NI had a special on upgrades. The original GR2 was dirt cheap too, I bought it for about 60% off when they were about to release GR3. They have also had their virtual synths Massive, Absynth and Reaktor for $99 (with Massive at that price a couple of times) in the recent past.

It's all subjective - Vandal is getting some great reviews,it is supposed to have more tactile realism but I prefer the more modular design and extra FX with Guitar Rig, which I feel is responsive enough and the distortion sounds better than in previous versions, where clean and bluesy overdrive tones were good but hi-gain distortion not so much. Amplitube and me have never gotten on, although I haven't tried v3, ditto Waves GTR. Revalver by Peavey is also good.

Live's distortions don't sound like guitar FX distortions run through a speaker/amp. Logic, DP and Cubase have some good amp sim functionality built in, perhaps future revisions of Live will but it seems to me (so shoot me) guitar sounds are not a priority for a substantial amount of Live users who are geeking out over minimal techno and dubstep etc

Studio Devil and Recabinet are also good amp sims.