I'm using Amplitube 4. I was demoing it a while back and didn't really think much about it. The other day I was chilling while listening to a lot of my old and new guitar recordings trying to figured out where I was going musically LOL. It was obvious that a few of the Amplitube 4 pre-sets that I recorded had great clarity and really brought out the palm muting in a way I had not been able to achieve before. In the past few weeks I have gone back and forth between, Lepou, Guitar Rig, brainworx rockrack, BIAS, Emissary, etc. etc. etc. Amplitube 4 wins in my opinion.
Amplitube 4 itself doesn't sound GREAT or anything, but it's perfect for just jamming out on your own. It's perfect for jamming and practicing just using pre-sets. Basically all I did is record 4 tracks. On 2 of the tracks panned left and right I use the amp pre-set that I noticed brought nice articulation and good palm muting. On it's own in a mix it's not great sounding. So, I picked 2 other amps in Amplitube for the other 2 tracks both panned left and right as well to give it more range in tones. That got it pretty good on it's own.
First thing in my signal chain is a plugin called clean sweep that I use on every track. Look it up
After Amplitube 4 I did a little bit of post processing. I used a basic multiband dynamics compressor that came with my daw, studio one 3. I bypassed everything accept the low mid range. I also used an EQ to bump up some highs a little in the 500 hz and 300k range. Removed some resonance around 150 Hz. Very tight in the "Q"? Not sure what the Q is called, but it's to close or widen the frequency range in the EQ. Then last I put a -1db limiter that also came with my daw. And that's just to tone down some stuff the ear can't hear anyway. Same as with clean sweep
All of those things I mentioned helped a little. The most important thing though has nothing to do with what I said so far. The most important thing is to be able to hear the way your guitar sounds as you're playing. Don't use headphones. Let the vibrations of your speaks vibrate and rattle the pickups of your guitar a little the same way an amp would. It doesn't have to be too loud, but really pay attention to your playing. If it's not clear and articulate to begin with it's going to sound like shit no matter what you do. I will play until I fuck up and then solo the guitar track listening for any noisy or sloppy playing. If it's too sloppy and not great playing I'll record again and again until each track is almost perfect even if I have to record in sections. You can let some noises like finger squeaks stay in, but the main noises I'm talking about come from poor technique and sloppy playing. I'm finding by taking my time and really hearing my playing it's helping more than anything else. Everything helps a little, but playing perfect is half the job. Makes it so much easier. What happens is if you pile up 4 tracks with noisy/sloppy playing you end up with a wall of noise instead of a wall epic guitar sounds.
I know this is a lot to read, but I hope it'll help some of you guys like me who are stuck using amp sims. Also make sure your guitar is set up and the intonation is good LOL. Decent pickups help a lot and new strings too lool...
