Virtual guitar amps/analog guitar amps

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ianopie said:
I can't stand hearing music with programmed drums, or played thru EZDrummer, Superior or Addictive , I mean, I can hear it but I can't respect that music in the same way, as if a drummer would have played it in a real drum without any triggers. Even so, I know the power of those tools.
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Yeah....poorley programmed drums sound fake, and a lot of newbs that use drum apps, tend to do it poorl.....but there's a difference between drum apps and guitar sims.
Drum apps use real audio samples, played by real drummers, recorded with real mics, in real studios....
...guitar sims are just mathematical approximations of what the real thing would/should sound like.
 
ianopie said:
Starting again, I'm not pro-real amp or pro-simulator, and fortunate in my recording place I have many valve amps (although they are really not mine), but also I can't deny the power of the GR5, although I pretty much understand your point of view. Like you said, when recording it's best to see every situation and use what is best. In live situations, for guitarists of 6 or 7 strings, I prefer a real amp, but the for example with 8 (where many amps struggles to deliver a clean F#, and In many cases if forms a snow ball on the 200 Hz range), the thing is different. The only band with a decent 8 string sound from a real amp, I've heard so far is Deftones (all the rest use digital stuff live).

Lke I said before, I understand your point of view, and in a another way, it happens the same thing to me, but with drums: I can't stand hearing music with programmed drums, or played thru EZDrummer, Superior or Addictive , I mean, I can hear it but I can't respect that music in the same way, as if a drummer would have played it in a real drum without any triggers. Even so, I know the power of those tools.
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I never really understood 8 strings. Especially in drop tuned music. You're playing a 42 Hz E at that point.
Let the bass be a bass and a guitar be a guitar in my opinion
 
Just adding this to my argument: The rare times I pick up a guitar these days, playing style something like this is much more interesting:



That people have such sentiments for reduced fidelity, clipping amps, I do not understand. There is nothing magic there, only the ghosts in your head. If you train your ear for hi-fidelity you will never want that. And btw, this playing style doesn´t sound good on those kinds of amps either. :) I was never the powerchords type person, but some people seem to make it work, in some styles of pop, etc, though. And if I ever should play in a band again, it would have to be a prog-synth band. :)

PBWY.
 
miroslav said:
Yeah, there's bands that put everything through the PA. This one guy on another forum use to talk about how when he was doing gigs, no one was allowed to have any amps on stage or any kind of stage amplifictaion....everything was DI/sim/electronic and fed through the PA and controlled by the soundguy.

I guess you can make that work and sound fine....but at that point, why not just give the soundguy one of your CDs to play if it's THAT critical that every tone, every lick, every move, every night be 100% controlled and identical.
For me, that would take most of the "live" performance out of it, even if everyone is still there playing.
At that point you might as well be doing a Broadway show....
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I don't follow this AT ALL. It's like a purist classical musician suggesting any amplified music is BS. Your standards are arbitrary, at best. Live music performed by live musicians is... LIVE. Period. How they deliver that music to your ears doesn't change whether it's live or not.

To further illustrate my point - vocalists rarely sing into an mic'd amp. Have all these vocalists over the years been faking it all this time? What about drummers and acoustic guitar players? They nearly never mic an amp, then send that to the PA.

[I now return you to kicking the thoroughly dead horse]
 
Pinky said:
Live music performed by live musicians is... LIVE. Period.
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You missed the point.

It was about giving up all the control to the soundguy....so that everything always sounded the same, every time, like it was some Broadway show. That may be "LIVE"...but it's also very "programmed".

From a guitar player's (or any player's) perspective....that's pretty lame......

....YMMMV.
 
miroslav said:
You missed the point.

It was about giving up all the control to the soundguy....so that everything always sounded the same, every time, like it was some Broadway show. That may be "LIVE"...but it's also very "programmed".

From a guitar player's (or any player's) perspective....that's pretty lame......

....YMMMV.
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What do you think the guitar techs for professional artist do? They have every knob on every piece of gear cataloged so their sound is the same every show (sometimes adjusting on stage volume as needed for the venue). That's not lame, that's called... consistency.

No, I think I very much get the point. It's a bad point, and not one I agree with. At all. Have fun defending it.
 
Bands have been playing out for ever, and they don't all mark ever knob position and program every sound so that it's the same exact thing night after night after night. When it it gets to that stage, it's lame....and you might as well put on a CD.
Sure, you can do that, and some bands do that, the one that are just "putting on a show"...I'm sure if you go see a KISS performance, they do it...but I've seen concerts where it's not like that. For any major act, there's going to be a certain level of repetition/consistency, but there's also lots of true "live" performance.
You're mistaken if you think that it must be "programmed" down to every knob, and that you have no other performance options when playing live.
Plus....there's a difference with having your guitar tech set up your amps/guitars/FX for you at the start of every show....than having nothing on stage to set up, and just letting the soundman control all your tones/FX.
 
miroslav said:
You're mistaken if you think that it must be "programmed" down to every knob, and that you have no other performance options when playing live.
.
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that's often also the bands that think you have to play everything the exact same way night after night. If it's broadway then you must but for rock and roll I want to be able to go where the flow takes me.

But once again ..... it's a matter of what's correct for the type show you're doing.
 
Ove Karlsen said:
That people have such sentiments for reduced fidelity, clipping amps, I do not understand. There is nothing magic there, only the ghosts in your head. If you train your ear for hi-fidelity you will never want that.
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WTF are you talking about...?

You admit you don't understand why people enjoy the sound of a driven amp with its wonderful tube distortion....
...but then you put up some crappy sounding digital clipper and you think it sounds better, just 'cuz you wrote the DSP for it.
Then you go and talk about how Hi-Fidelity requires "ear training" in order to be appreciated over a good Rock amp sound?

:facepalm:
You really got your head all twisted up.

This is the part that really annoys my about the digital purists who seem to think that digital precision and transparancy....is always more Hi-Fi and therefore "better" than anything else, than anything analog or tube or non-digital. :rolleyes:

The only thing you said that has any relevance is.... "I do not understand."
 
I still agree with Tom Scholz(Boston, MIT grad, and inventor of the Rockman) that digital just doesn't sound as good as analog. Period! Does it have it's uses? Most assuredly. But all digital is attempting to do is emulate analog. Let's just all agree to that fact and then use either analog or digital as the situation(and mood) dictates.
 
Lt. Bob said:
But once again ..... it's a matter of what's correct for the type show you're doing.
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Exactly, sloppy stoner rock you could sound different every night. A band like, say Dream Theater, has everything dialed in precisely for each show. But miroslav was painting a generalization using the widest brush available, suggesting anyone who ever pre-plans their on stage sound is akin to musical sinners. I give a fuck how people deliver their sound to my ears so long as it's pleasing. It astounds me that anyone can make such a sweeping judgment on such superficial and arbitrary criteria.

I like how this point was conveniently 'skipped'... ;)

Pinky said:
To further illustrate my point - vocalists rarely sing into an mic'd amp. Have all these vocalists over the years been faking it all this time? What about drummers and acoustic guitar players? They nearly never mic an amp, then send that to the PA.
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Have we been doing it wrong this entire time? Should we be sending all vocal, acoustic, and drum tracks through amps so miroslav can play with his knobs and feel terminally unique?
 
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Greg_L said:
I keep all of my my amp knobs the same way for every show. On 11!
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Fixed. ;)

SPINAL_TAP.jpg
 
I was wondering what happened to it. It seemed to be getting a little "gay" LOL!
 
Pinky said:
Exactly, sloppy stoner rock you could sound different every night. ............................. It astounds me that anyone can make such a sweeping judgment on such superficial and arbitrary criteria.
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excuse me but isn't that what you've also just done here?

As an improvisational player who earns a living and gets paid for the specific reason of my improvisational skills, I'm not sure why you disparage what I do by declaring it "sloppy stoner rock" when you don't know that much about what I do.

ONE of the things I do is high level jazz where the thrust of the entire thing is improvisation.
Playing Miles Davis or Coltrane or Parker is hardly 'sloppy' music and for that matter, when I play rock it's not sloppy either nor do I do what could be called stoner rock.

I can improvise on virtually any kind of music and it never sounds anything but good.

Once again ...... I'm not disagreeing with your premise that some music has to be the same night after night but since I didn't insult that type of music I'm not at all understanding why you would use a negative description of people that change things from night to night.
Both are valid musical approaches.
 
I guess I kind of thought the whole appeal of hearing bands play live was the variation. The fact that you weren't sure exactly how they'd play the tunes, the set list, etc.

If it's really choreographed and scripted and laid out in advance, I guess I don't really see the point...not that it couldn't sound good that way, just that it seems pointless to experience it live...

I remember seeing Little Feat open for the Dead in 1988 for a two-show run here in Maine. The first day they sounded good, but a little stiff. Various band members made the compulsary comments to the audience, "how're you all doing out there!", "everyone havin' a good time?", "Let's hear it from the ladies this time!"...shit like that. It felt forced.

Sure enough, the 2nd day was like freakin' Groundhog's Day. They played the exact same set list and each song was performed exactly the same. The same band members even made the exact same comments to the audience at the exact same times. It was creepy and unpleasant.

Anyway...whether you use virtual amps or real amps, I think it's more important that the perfomance be live, and in-the-moment...audiences can sense when it's too scripted and it feels wrong (depending on genre I guess?).
 
Lt. Bob said:
As an improvisational player who earns a living and gets paid for the specific reason of my improvisational skills, I'm not sure why you disparage what I do by declaring it "sloppy stoner rock" when you don't know that much about what I do.
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Um... my comment had zero (zilch, notta) to do with you (I realize looking back that I used "you" but thought it obvious it was a general "yous" as in "You kids these days", not "you play like shit"). I have zero (zilch, notta) knowledge about you, what you play, etc. [Didn't realize you had the level notoriety I would/should know your music] Needless to say, from this chair, you come off a tad defensive (?).

I was using contrasting examples to support the whole one-size-does-not-fit-all argument. If you play sloppy, then maybe tighten it up. Otherwise, it wasn't intended/obviously doesn't apply to you (?).
 
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