How is it Possible that...

[andrushkiwt]

...18 year old technology sounds more realistic than today's amp sims?

I bought a GNX3000 recently, made by DIGITECH. It not only contains effects and crazy sounds (the main reason I wanted these things when I was younger), but, astonishingly, it contains amp and cab emulations. Yes - you can bypass the effects and crazy wah-wah/strings/underwater/Santana tones and go right to what everyone is talking about in today's guitar universe: amp sims. No different than Amplitube or Voxengo or any of the other countless attempts to recreate classic amps and cabs.

But what I find fascinating is that this 18 year old tech (gnx3000 made in 2000) does it BETTER than any of those amp sims I've used - of course, this is a personal opinion. But I've spent a lot of time on those sims, got to know them pretty well, and often had many compliments on my guitar tones with them. Straight away, the outboard pedal sounds much more realistic, to me.

Can anyone conclude why that might be? Is it a bias? Is it the science/tech inside the board itself that grants a pathway to realism?

Here's the item in question, if interested: https://homerecording.com/bbs/speci...test-purchase-341041/post4490340/#post4490340

 

[ashcat_lt]

I think because it's not actually that hard and those folks at DigiTech had budgets and bright designers and decent ears.

The Tech21 SansAmp is older AND all analog, but within the relatively limited range that it covers, will stand up pretty well next to any of the more modern options.

 

[RFR]

While it has digital components, etc.. it is a piece of hardware dedicated to one thing and thing only. Producing guitar sounds.
Digitech has been doing this for a long time.
Any plugin oe amp sim is basically just someone writing code.

 

[Steenamaroo]

While it has digital components, etc.. it is a piece of hardware dedicated to one thing and thing only. Producing guitar sounds.
Digitech has been doing this for a long time.
Any plugin oe amp sim is basically just someone writing code.

I'm not sure that works.
Any digital modeller is a computer running code.

If Andrush's GNX does something special in the analog realm, that'd make it different.

Edit: Thinking I misunderstood you?

 

[miroslav]

Then again...it might be just a perception thing.
I've done it with amps...one day this one sounds "best"...then a couple of weeks later, not so great, and another one sounds "best".
Sometimes it's even the weather... dry/wet, hot/cold...it changes the guitar tone a bit, affects how the sound moves in air a bit.
Heck...sometimes it's last night's dinner, or just the day of the week. Saturday everything always sounds better than it does on Monday.

 

[RFR]

I'm not sure that works.
Any digital modeller is a computer running code.

If Andrush's GNX does something special in the analog realm, that'd make it different.

Edit: Thinking I misunderstood you?

I'm just saying there's other components in there. I dont understand all the electrical components in there, or the processing, or the coding, but........it's gotta be something, right? Lol.

I mean my Elevenrack for example, which sounds good to me, has a shitload of stuff in that box.
All that stuff wouldn't ever fit into my laptop.

The laptop is designed to do a million things and the 11rack is designed to do basically one thing.

 

[RFR]

Then again...it might be just a perception thing.
I've done it with amps...one day this one sounds "best"...then a couple of weeks later, not so great, and another one sounds "best".
Sometimes it's even the weather... dry/wet, hot/cold...it changes the guitar tone a bit, affects how the sound moves in air a bit.
Heck...sometimes it's last night's dinner, or just the day of the week. Saturday everything always sounds better than it does on Monday.

Maybe you're right. It could possibly be that, and Andrushkiwt is just starting another thread to go on forever.
Maybe in a few months there will be a thread how this thing is shit, and then he'll finally go to real amps.

By the way, my showman sounded glorious last night turned up to 7 with a Strat and an old boss overdrive.
No sim or hardware amp 'replicator' fakery will ever get that sound.

 

[miroslav]

I'm just saying there's other components in there. I dont understand all the electrical components in there, or the processing, or the coding, but........it's gotta be something, right? Lol.

I mean my Elevenrack for example, which sounds good to me, has a shitload of stuff in that box.
All that stuff wouldn't ever fit into my laptop.

The laptop is designed to do a million things and the 11rack is designed to do basically one thing.

WRT to soft VS hard... ...I have tons of reverb plugins, many which sound great, but I recently added another external reverb hardware box, the TC Reverb 4000, as my main studio reverb...partly because I still track/mix with a hybrid setup, but also because this is a high-end reverb unit that will outshine most of the reverb plugins in certain situations, and it will most likely always be used as my main reverb, with the plugins as my secondary ones...though each mix is different.
I also have three other hardware reverb boxes, and they also have some patches that simply aren't matched by plugs...but the plug reverbs have their shine too.

A purpose built hardware unit can often outshine a plugin because of it's supporting electronics...at least that's what I've heard other people say when I was researching the hardware reverb purchase...and so far, I have to admit it does sound fabulous, plus it's got all the digital connections, so I can use it like a plug too.

Then again...maybe I'm just perceiving it that way...

 

[andrushkiwt]

Then again...it might be just a perception thing.

Sure, could be. I did write "in my opinion" up top.

I was wondering if anyone here knew if the outboard nature of these things make them more suitable for recreating amps, or what their thoughts on the subject were. The only thing that's a fact is that I perceive them to sound better, and perhaps my perception will change. Absolutely.

I, too, thought it might have something to do with DIGI being in the guitar-realm for quite awhile. Without a doubt, though, there's much less fizzy top end or harsh stuff going on. Response, overall, is a lot better. More dynamic. Lots of power in the palm mutes - things that aren't so much taste or preference, but measurable stuff. Never got a good palm mute going with Amplitube, Voxengo, LePou, etc... Took 5 seconds of playing this thing to sway me - as opposed to months on end with various sims, tweaking and EQ'ing, changing this and that to get it sounding more realistic.

 

[Steenamaroo]

I mean my Elevenrack for example, which sounds good to me, has a shitload of stuff in that box.
All that stuff wouldn't ever fit into my laptop.

You might be surprised!
Looks like the audio circuitry is minimal, mains transformer is inside, and the rest is pretty spaced out on a circuit board.

I don't know much about them so I'm prepared to be corrected but, unless a hardware modeller has shit hot analog circuitry and ad/da, I don't think it's any different to a software sim.

 

[Farview]

Since great guitar tone is subjective, you may have just found the thing that makes the tone you like, or at least the thing that has what you think of as 'real tone'.

Some people think Les Pauls through Marshalls sound great, some people like Teles through fender twins...

 

[gecko zzed]

The laptop is designed to do a million things and the 11rack is designed to do basically one thing.

A laptop is designed to do a million things. Being an amp sim is not one of them. But an amp sim itself is designed to be only one thing, i.e. an amp sim. If it doesn't do that job well, it is not the laptop's fault. It is a design problem.

 

[andrushkiwt]

A laptop is designed to do a million things. Being an amp sim is not one of them. But an amp sim itself is designed to be only one thing, i.e. an amp sim. If it doesn't do that job well, it is not the laptop's fault. It is a design problem.

Good points.

Have you any experience with the multitude of outboard amp/cab modules?

 

[andrushkiwt]

I don't know much about them so I'm prepared to be corrected but, unless a hardware modeller has shit hot analog circuitry and ad/da, I don't think it's any different to a software sim.

Fair enough.

Let's look at it this way, then. The software sims from 2008 are inferior, most would agree, to the sims of 2018. Yet, the hardware sims from nearly a decade before the first software sims are comparable, at the least, to today's software sims. That's what I find astonishing.

If they were using the same process, circuitry-wise and cpu-wise, wouldn't they be much less realistic compared to today's sims? I understand it's subjective, for the most part, so I hope to put up some A/B's are let everyone decide for themselves. I could do the Marshall 900, no effects or processing, side by side...

 

[Steenamaroo]

Getting confusing here.
I wasn't meaning that as a counter to your claim, so much as a counter to the idea that there's lots of mysterious tech in the box; That must be it.

Unless someone can tell you better, I'd be guessing they just have much better algorithms in your hardware.

Would be interesting if someone can shed more light, though; You're not the first person to prefer hardware modellers to plugins.

Thinking about it, can't the same conversation be had with reverbs and delays?
Was it [MENTION=94267]miroslav[/MENTION] (apologies if not) who had some prized rack reverb unit to which nothing compared?

 

[RFR]

You might be surprised!
Looks like the audio circuitry is minimal, mains transformer is inside, and the rest is pretty spaced out on a circuit board.

I don't know much about them so I'm prepared to be corrected but, unless a hardware modeller has shit hot analog circuitry and ad/da, I don't think it's any different to a software sim.

Well, any hardware modeler does have it's own analog circuitry and converters, whereas the downloadable amp sims rely on the other components to do it .

I'd imagine that just the fact of some electricity flowing through the hardware unit is going to have some effect.

But hell, I dunno, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how juice flowing through a glass bottle works.

Digital coding, algorithms, etc, might as well be astrophysics to me anyway.

Just the concept that you can buy something on your phone with money that isn't real, and then over the airwaves some stuff travels, ends up on your computer, then is unboxed, installed, and the next thing you got a marshall amp picture on your computer screen is mind-boggling to me.

And to boot, that little virtual Marshall makes reasonably realistic tones.

Thats some serious 'Beam me up Scotty' shit!

 

[miroslav]

Thinking about it, can't the same conversation be had with reverbs and delays?
Was it [MENTION=94267]miroslav[/MENTION] (apologies if not) who had some prized rack reverb unit to which nothing compared?

I didn't say nothing compared to it...rather that it's now my main studio reverb unit...and its reverb quality speaks for itself.
The thing it does better than many software reverbs is staying transparent...the reverbs are very clean, so it's a truer representation of how the dry signal would sound in the natural space the reverb is simulating. I would still like a Lexicon hardware unit or something else that can do the not so clean-n-natural, but yet very lush reverb flavors. I also have a good amount in software reverbs that can cover a lot of ground...the bx_rooMS from Plugin Alliance can cover a lot of ground, along with a couple of others I have.

There are more higher-end hardware reverb units than the TC Electronics Reverb 4000 I have...units like the Bricasti M7, the Sony DRE-S777, TC 6000 from which most of the Reverb 4000 algorithms come from, so it's really like the 6000 but a single engine version...and let's not forget the Lexicon units.
What many of these hardware units do well is recreate natural reverb spaces...whereas a lot of the plugs, while certainly good sounding, tend to have more of that synthetic reverb flavor. I know it sounds weird, since both hardware and plugs are using digital algorithms, but they just don't sound the same.

Many of these units and/or some of their favorite reverb patches have been modeled into plugs...but these very expensive hardware units continue to be staples in most studios as their main reverbs.
You also have some very expensive reverb plugs from companies like Exponential Audio that has $300-$400 reverb plugs...even Lexicon has modeled most of its line...yet you still see their hardware units from like 15-20 years ago as top sellers on the used market.

Reverb quality is not easy to judge, and you need to do a lot of hands on comparing and really focus on what you are listening to in order for their differences in quality to become obvious...and it may often be tied to the given mix you are using them on...and the type of reverb...Room, Plate, Hall, etc.
Sometimes they can all sound very much the same in quality...but then on some tracks/mixes, you really can hear where one outshines the others.

Anyway...wasn't meaning to sidetrack this thread into a reverb discussion when I mentioned the Reverb 4000 I recently picked up...rather just wanting to point out that plugs don't necessarily cover everything the same way as their hardware counterparts...and this is even before we get into the analog hardware VS its digital simulation...but then, we'd be back into that analog VS digital thing.

 

[Robus]

That's cool man, glad the Digitech units is working for you. I don't know why it would sound better to you than VST amp sims. Maybe as some suggested its hardware is somehow optimized for this specific use. Dunno. But if you like the sound and it works in your music, that's that.

 

[Steenamaroo]

I didn't say nothing compared to it...rather that it's now my main studio reverb unit...and its reverb quality speaks for itself.

LOL. I'm not misquoting you from today; I'm misquoting you from months ago.
Didn't realise you mentioned it on the first page!

 

[Gtoboy]

I have an old Digitech Legend DSP 21 8 bit effects box that still sounds great when used properly. It sounds terrible going into a guitar amp but great DI'd into an interface/DAW. I think the difference between it and modern amp sim boxes may have to do with the fact that due to the technological limitations that the "amp simulations" were little more than eq curves so they weren't changing the signal a bunch. As for the difference from Plugin type sims I might guess that the filters in the input and output circuitry were designed less for fidelity and more to make the timbre complement the popular guitar tones of the time. Just my guesses. I will say that the pre-sets are a little over the top and were IMHO back when it came out. But tweaking can get great "real" guitar tones that work well even in less dense mixes.