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Our first album was my Laney VH100R and Amplitube 2 - because the other guitarists DSL broke two days before our recording schedule.
Our second album was Laney VH100R and Fryette Sig X. The recorded tones are okay, but they needed a lot of work to sit in the mix. I did some overdubs with Amplitube again, and no-one has ever noticed.
Our third album was the same combo. But some of the cleans were again Amplitube 2 - no one has ever noticed.
The upcoming album I went tits-to-the-walls. Other guitarist had his Diezel Hagen and my Diezel VH4 for some tones. Plugged into his Mesa 4x12. I had my VH4 and SigX plugged into his Mesa 4x12 and my Egnater 4x12 - both with V30's. We profiled the shit out of the setups too; to go with the other 100+ profiles we made of all of my other amps.
Something happened in one of the projects where I lost all of the cleans for one song - DI's too - I think hard disk failure, but really not sure. So I re-recorded the DI's and sent them to my production mate who reamped them through the Kemper. They sound fantastic. You'd never know which song uses Kemper for cleans and which ones didn't.
For studio work - after endless A/Bing and too-ing and fro-ing - I'm completely over the distinction. As long as it sounds good.
I'm not quite there for live yet. I do still think real amps sound better. But the best I've heard so far was a Kemper running my own "amp only" profiles into a Seymour Duncan Powerstage 700. It was definitely usable. But that combo would make a formidable live touring setup. Use the backline cabs for stage monitoring, send a cab'd up signal to FOH for the mains.
I am very interested in going that way for live.
Modelers are just trying to recreate the real thing. If you can use the real thing, why wouldn't you?
A modeler will never be as "real" as the real thing. Doesn't mean they don't sound good though. But then again, is good tone about sounding good, or is it sounding familiar with what we're used to?
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
It reminds me of the move to CD's and then back to vinyl. Why, when we're told there is no audible difference... humans don't hear those frequencies, etc? CD's are 16bit, as is a Helix, but vinyl is full frequency. Are we sure there is no audible difference or is it that we've got use to hearing lower quality sound, since digital music was introduced?
Not saying digital is not great and we all know it's very convenient and cheap, but how can it be as real as a real amp?
My point wasn't for either or, just why wouldn't you us the real thing, if you can?
The perceived difference is because the functional difference between CDs and vinyl is not in the resolution, it's mainly in the way the recorded media is processed to turn it back into sound. Digital has a hard ceiling at 0dB by definition, beyond which everything sounds positively awful. When recorded vinyl media hits its amplitude ceiling, it kinda distorts nicely.
At least, that's my understanding of it.
Digital audio, once it comes out the converter and is analogue again, is as smooth and continuous as any other natural or analogue sound. The limitation is digital audio is how quiet the signal can be before it can't be recreated by the sample depth, and how high the frequency can be before it hits half the sample rate and can't be re-produced. The stair steps... are the wrong way of understanding digital.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
The crucial point is the accuracy, or playability, of the digital simulation, which is technology-dependent, but clearly getting better all the time. Something like the Helix can be upgraded constantly as the algorithms develop, so it's going to slowly but surely improve as time goes by. The convenience of having a wide palette of guitar sounds in a £400 box is simply stunning. Having said that, quite why you would bother with modelling if you have a nice room full of classic amps and mics is beyond me, however. Surely the question is in the end moot - use what you have and make the best sound you can with it.
I do a lot of my own demos, from ideas without even using an amp in the chain, I play my electric acoustically, with a Line 6 backtrack connected. If I come up with an interesting idea, it has been captured as a Wav on the backtrack and I can begin to work with it in a DAW. I usually start with a plexi type sound and can build up an idea from it.
This is not the same experience as playing through a hot amp.
Can you imagine what a DI of Jimi Hendrix star spangled banner would have sounded like, that is an example of a performance where the amp IS the instrument, so that kind of thing could not be done with my method. It would be interesting to hear a DI of something like that though, and it is probably something that is done routinely these days, plugins make it possible.
Analogue recording has become a niche market these days, there is a good documentary on Jack White using a studio in a very old school way-recording with a single mic, direct to acetate disc. If you have the equipment, and the setup, it is probably a very lucrative business model, but most of us otherwise have easy access to tools that can digitally emulate the sound of that process, Waves have a large selection of plugins that make it simple, tape, vinyl and even Abbey Rd recording studio are all just a mouse click away.
It's nice to stand in front of a Marshall stack for a little while, and these days we can get some of that excitement without ever being in the room with one.
Whats not to like?
That's not to say one is better or worse, and of course you should always serve the music and use what sounds best to your ears, but I like sounds created by pushing things in ways they weren't intended to be pushed. At the extreme end of it, Sylvia Massy's youtube channel has her recording guitars through pickles and drums through home cassette recorders and all sorts, for example... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQV1RLrqmHDICg5HK4okuWA
I personally care more about the performance rather than if the amp is real or not. That is the foundation of the tone either way. Beyond that the tone still has to suit the production and using analogue gear is no guarantee of that.
I’d happily use amps but I’m also happy using digital and have done so for several years at this point. I feel I get better tones now because I’ve got better at playing and production in general, that’s been a bigger factor than the fact I used to own valve amps for recording with