Are modellers as good as amps?

John_A

Having owned 20+ ‘good’ valve amps I’m left with the feeling I can’t feel the difference when I play my Helix

doesn’t mean either of us are wrong

professorben

sweepy said:

Having owned all 3 of the major modellers I’m left with the feeling that although they are all great bits of kit and have their uses, you can feel the difference under your fingers as they don’t react the same way as a “good” valve amp does

My helix does under my fingers. 
You don’t have my fingers, ears or brain. 
It totally reacts exactly as a valve amp does, if you can’t hear it feel that the issue is with you. 

Now let let me explain that, it’s not meant as a slur, I mean that you personally perceive sound in the way you do, no one else hears music as you do, you are, like all of us, unique.

you know that picture of the 2 guys standing either end of a big 6 drawn on the ground? One says it’s 6 one says it’s 9, both and neither are right, it’s perspective and interpretation. 

 I get excited by the sounds I am able to create, by the feeling of almost limitless possibilities of tonal exploration I can indulge in, by the simple knowledge that every single time I plug my guitar into my rig it will sound the same, that confidence and reliability is priceless, it allows me to get on with the part that really matters, delivering a show and pushing my playing right to edge of my abilities every single time. 

professorben

John_A said:

Having owned 20+ ‘good’ valve amps I’m left with the feeling I can’t feel the difference when I play my Helix

doesn’t mean either of us are wrong

It’s funny, when I first started playing my first few amps were SS, a Torque 100w combo, a Marshall mini head again 100w with a 2x12 laney Cab and then a Line6 Flextone combo, I didn’t get a valve amp until I’d been playing a good 8+ years and I hated it, it was a Mesa and it was terrible, so brittle and harsh and yet flubby all at the same time, then I started on a carousel of amps searching for something I knew I could hear in my head but couldn’t get in real life, I borrowed and traded and bought and sold so many, combos, heads and cabs, racks etc. 

Nothing was perfect, there was always a compromise with every amp, great cleans, terrible dirt, fantastic dirt but no lead boost, awesome cleans, fantastic dirt and an amazing lead channel but it literally weighs more than the moon and no one will help me load it in anymore. 

Now im a high gain player and the only good thing Fender amps ever did was make the EVH 5153 series, now that was pretty damn close to perfect, I just couldn’t get the switching to work with my pedals and balancing the clean and crunch was tricky, so I bought an HX Effects to use the midi switching and fx, and I was so impressed I started to look at the helix amp models, I took my laptop to rehearsal once and somehow via an interface plumbed Helix Native I To The fx return of my 50 valve amp and put it through my 4x12...... Jesus H Corbett!!!!
it sounded incredible, a few weeks later I get a chance to buy a s/h Helix Floor from a mate of this very parish, and I moved hell and high water to make it happen, even shipping my HX Effects to a guy in Italy to make the trades happen in good time, a few weeks rehearsing with my amp as just a power amp and I bit the bullet and sold it to buy the SD Powerstage 170 and a couple of back up pedals. 
Never looked back, never once thought ohhhhhh I miss xyz. 

soma1975

Last night I watched an Instagram Live John Mayer practice session thing. He was playing through a Fractal and it sounded fine. When asked about it he said he's got it dialled in pretty well now but the two things none of them have right yet are the attack/bloom which I guess is what we are all saying about the feel under one's fingers, and he said bends or doing stuff with three strings at the same time tends to lead to what he called artefacting on top of everything because he felt it was too much harmonic information at once and the modeller didn't yet know what to do with it. 

Thought it was interesting and worth sharing. 

WiresDreamDisasters

It doesn't really have to be an either/or thing anyway. Just use both.

PolarityMan

soma1975 said:

felt it was too much harmonic information at once and the modeller didn't yet know what to do with it. 

Thought it was interesting and worth sharing. 

Well it's certainly not because of that, obviously due to sampling every discrete time period has an identical amount of "harmonic information". 

lysander

Yeah souhds like bollocks and more ‘it’s not dialed in exactly how like it’ more then anything else.
Great players are not immune to tone bullshit though, see Eric Johnson who could supposedly hear the brand of battery in his pedals etc.

digitalscream

soma1975 said:

Last night I watched an Instagram Live John Mayer practice session thing. He was playing through a Fractal and it sounded fine. When asked about it he said he's got it dialled in pretty well now but the two things none of them have right yet are the attack/bloom which I guess is what we are all saying about the feel under one's fingers, and he said bends or doing stuff with three strings at the same time tends to lead to what he called artefacting on top of everything because he felt it was too much harmonic information at once and the modeller didn't yet know what to do with it. 

Thought it was interesting and worth sharing. 

Yeah...my first thought when I saw that was, "I'm not convinced he fully understands the words that are coming out of his mouth".

p90fool

soma1975 said:

Last night I watched an Instagram Live John Mayer practice session thing. He was playing through a Fractal and it sounded fine. When asked about it he said he's got it dialled in pretty well now but the two things none of them have right yet are the attack/bloom which I guess is what we are all saying about the feel under one's fingers, and he said bends or doing stuff with three strings at the same time tends to lead to what he called artefacting on top of everything because he felt it was too much harmonic information at once and the modeller didn't yet know what to do with it. 

Thought it was interesting and worth sharing. 

I kind of know what he's driving at, but maybe he's never noticed that kind of reverse sweep "whoop" you sometimes get when bending double stops on valve amps. It must be a good modeller if it's replicating the same effect. 

soma1975

Someone's made an article of it now so have it not paraphrased by me. 

https://www.guitarplayer.com/players/john-mayer-three-things-amp-modelers-havent-gotten-right-yet?fbclid=IwAR3h-D6kW3wslTOeW6R3dH6aZvoM5d0u3iAfwRcESZXyegLXsrQiJVNcfJE

digitalscream

soma1975 said:

Someone's made an article of it now so have it not paraphrased by me. 

https://www.guitarplayer.com/players/john-mayer-three-things-amp-modelers-havent-gotten-right-yet?fbclid=IwAR3h-D6kW3wslTOeW6R3dH6aZvoM5d0u3iAfwRcESZXyegLXsrQiJVNcfJE

As one of the commenters says...

"I love John’s playing, but he sounds a bit.... simple.... in this case. He’s come to a conclusion on what he’s hearing and backed it up with logic that doesn’t align with how the technology works."

That about sums it up.

soma1975

Fair enough. The semantics of what he is saying is happening might not be 100% but I certainly get the same feeling on the attack when I have played a modeller.

Greatape

I am not a zealot about these things, and favour the idea of 'suitable tool for the job.'

In a small(ish) combo, I love my valve amps. The feel, the detail....but in my present gig where I'm in the mix with keys, another guitar, 3-4 horns, etc, much of that is irrelevant. Thus, for reasons of reliability, consistency and power-to-weight ratio, I'm using a Blues Cube. It's a very good amp and surprisingly, I use it a lot at home. 

We recently did a gig where I got a backline Twin, and I was wishing for my BC..

p90fool

soma1975 said:

Fair enough. The semantics of what he is saying is happening might not be 100% but I certainly get the same feeling on the attack when I have played a modeller.

Me too, and I know exactly what he's getting at here;

“One thing it doesn’t respond to well is the change in guitar volume. Because it’s an amp modeler, it doesn’t quite understand gain structure. It doesn’t quite get it. 

"Amp modelers don’t quite understand two [other] things: they don’t understand the impulse of the note, so they don’t quite get the contact with the string correct - the way a tube goes ‘whoosh’; what I call the ‘wapoosh’ of the note. Amp modelers don’t yet know how to take a note and squeeze it the right way and send it out."

You don't have to have an intricate knowledge of how the algorithms are written to have an opinion on this stuff - modellers are fine for some things and not for others, and like Brexit, you'll never change the minds of those for whom it works just because you're frustrated by them. 

A  lot of guitar players regard dynamics and response to volume control changes as irrelevant, but if you need those things we're really not much closer than we were twenty years ago, they just SOUND better to the listener. 

I recorded a couple of albums in 1998 with a Zoom 2100 and it sort of worked ok-ish. I bought an Atomic Amplifire last year and although it sounded much more accurate, it still felt EXACTLY like the Zoom. 

soma1975

Yep for me the couple of things I was missing from a Line 6 Flextone II don;t seem to be addressed, while at the same time the tech in all other areas seems to have come on leaps and bounds. Like I said earlier, digital/modelling gear is at its best when it is being judged for what it IS and not what it ISN'T. 

lysander

I don’t understand the ‘change in guitar volume’ argument. 

16 bit of digital audio resolution is a hell of a lot more dynamic range than any analog amp will ever have when you take the noise floor into account so there’s no technological limitation.

And putting theory aside, I can’t remember any modern amp sim I’ve tested that didn’t respond to volume change realistically.

Now the first generation pods and stuff was indeed utter shit when it comes to dynamics but this was more than 15 years ago ?

professorben

lysander said:

I don’t understand the ‘change in guitar volume’ argument. 

16 bit of digital audio resolution is a hell of a lot more dynamic range than any analog amp will ever have when you take the noise floor into account so there’s no technological limitation.

And putting theory aside, I can’t remember any modern amp sim I’ve tested that didn’t respond to volume change realistically.

Now the first generation pods and stuff was indeed utter shit when it comes to dynamics but this was more than 15 years ago ?

Essentially. A lot of people played a Spider 1 in a shop about 15 years ago and are now desperate to justify the boutique box of bottles that gets turned up to 0.001% of its wattage every Sunday arvo whilst the wife/mother/carer is out buying their favourite Angel Delight again. 

professorben

p90fool said:

soma1975 said:

Fair enough. The semantics of what he is saying is happening might not be 100% but I certainly get the same feeling on the attack when I have played a modeller.

Me too, and I know exactly what he's getting at here;

“One thing it doesn’t respond to well is the change in guitar volume. Because it’s an amp modeler, it doesn’t quite understand gain structure. It doesn’t quite get it. 

"Amp modelers don’t quite understand two [other] things: they don’t understand the impulse of the note, so they don’t quite get the contact with the string correct - the way a tube goes ‘whoosh’; what I call the ‘wapoosh’ of the note. Amp modelers don’t yet know how to take a note and squeeze it the right way and send it out."

You don't have to have an intricate knowledge of how the algorithms are written to have an opinion on this stuff - modellers are fine for some things and not for others, and like Brexit, you'll never change the minds of those for whom it works just because you're frustrated by them. 

A  lot of guitar players regard dynamics and response to volume control changes as irrelevant, but if you need those things we're really not much closer than we were twenty years ago, they just SOUND better to the listener. 

I recorded a couple of albums in 1998 with a Zoom 2100 and it sort of worked ok-ish. I bought an Atomic Amplifire last year and although it sounded much more accurate, it still felt EXACTLY like the Zoom. 

The Brexit analogy is rather apt. 
A minority of enlightened rational souls being out shouted by a geriatric hoard of people refusing to believe its not the 1950’s.....

ymmv
  

dindude

professorben said:

lysander said:

I don’t understand the ‘change in guitar volume’ argument. 

16 bit of digital audio resolution is a hell of a lot more dynamic range than any analog amp will ever have when you take the noise floor into account so there’s no technological limitation.

And putting theory aside, I can’t remember any modern amp sim I’ve tested that didn’t respond to volume change realistically.

Now the first generation pods and stuff was indeed utter shit when it comes to dynamics but this was more than 15 years ago ?

Essentially. A lot of people played a Spider 1 in a shop about 15 years ago and are now desperate to justify the boutique box of bottles that gets turned up to 0.001% of its wattage every Sunday arvo whilst the wife/mother/carer is out buying their favourite Angel Delight again. 

Sounds like you’re still coming to terms with the fact that you’ve chosen the path of least toneistance. Not sure why else you’d be so bitter and angry about it all.

soma1975

professorben said:

lysander said:

I don’t understand the ‘change in guitar volume’ argument. 

16 bit of digital audio resolution is a hell of a lot more dynamic range than any analog amp will ever have when you take the noise floor into account so there’s no technological limitation.

And putting theory aside, I can’t remember any modern amp sim I’ve tested that didn’t respond to volume change realistically.

Now the first generation pods and stuff was indeed utter shit when it comes to dynamics but this was more than 15 years ago ?

Essentially. A lot of people played a Spider 1 in a shop about 15 years ago and are now desperate to justify the boutique box of bottles that gets turned up to 0.001% of its wattage every Sunday arvo whilst the wife/mother/carer is out buying their favourite Angel Delight again. 

A lot of people with a toaster they control with their phone getting cross at people expressing a preference for a thing they prefer the feel of when they play. Guys, you don't have to justify your purchase or your feelings to anyone. Enjoy what you have. If you don't miss the things that people are saying they miss then that is brilliant for you. 

Not everyone can hear properly. No shame in it