Behringer V-Amp or Digitech Genesis 3 GeNetX

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That's the first time I've EVER heard someone say they think the "fake" is better than real..........

Let me guess, you prefer samples to a live piano too? Drum machine to a drummer???

Yikes......... :rolleyes:
 
I'll Agree with bruce and say Tech 21 trademark 10, in a homemade Isolatoin cabnet, with studio foam and set up to put the whole amp inside with 3/4" partical board and sealed with silicon, actually allows me to track rythem guitar, drums and Bass(direct in). all at the same time to get that live vibe with no bleed.


I dont have a closet like yours even near the recording area, Bruce:D
 
darrin_h2000 said:
I dont have a closet like yours even near the recording area, Bruce:D
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Ha! Me either...!!!

My comment was based on my early recording experiences back in the early-80's!
 
Polaris20 said:
I find that the harshness of tubes isn't as good as the artificial smoother tone of modeling.
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The harshness of tubes? What kind of tube amp were you using; a Crate? Ideally modelers should sound exactely like the amps they model and none of them would deliberately introduce anything that differs from the amps they are trying to reproduce.

You are right, of course, it's all subjective and a matter of taste. If you prefer the modelers then that is what you should use. But modelers tend to have that processed type of sound regarless of how you set them. Once again, if you prefer it, fine. But regardless of what kind of music you like, I guaruntee that most of your favorite guitarists use real amps.
 
Lt. Bob said:

The harshness of tubes? What kind of tube amp were you using; a Crate? Ideally modelers should sound exactely like the amps they model and none of them would deliberately introduce anything that differs from the amps they are trying to reproduce.

You are right, of course, it's all subjective and a matter of taste. If you prefer the modelers then that is what you should use. But modelers tend to have that processed type of sound regarless of how you set them. Once again, if you prefer it, fine. But regardless of what kind of music you like, I guaruntee that most of your favorite guitarists use real amps.
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No, Crates bite. I don't like Marshalls either. The only tube amps I like I can't afford (Mesa, Dumble, Soldano).

Current (not old) Marshalls are the buzziest crap I've heard, in my opinion.

My favorite guitarist, John Petrucci, uses a Mesa. I can't afford it, so I model it and get close enough.

I'm not going to spend the money on a cheaper tube amp like a Crate or Marshall, just because it's tube.
 
a logical conclusion

ok... if modelling is sooooooo bad, then I guess that you guys who are so anti-modeling don't use fake reverb or compression or chorus or distortion or anything else to screw with the purity of your signal. It's the perfect guitar into the perfect amp into the perfect mic into the perfect board into the perfect reel to reel or nothing?!?! Wow, I wish my budget would allow for me to have a huge place with so many different sized rooms for various reverbs... and the perfect singer so compression wouldn't be needed... and I guess synths don't exist on this planet, since only real strings, pianos, cellos, etc count.

Me, I have nothing against fake reverb. Or fake drums. Or fake anything. Hell, if I'm multi-tracking I'm faking everything from the get go.... unless it's a completely live performance you are faking something... and the bottom line is a great song can have the entire thing artificially created and still be awesome. I believe that. Trent Reznor believes that. Daniel Lanios believes that.

But then again, I don't have that huge collection of amps to go with my hundreds of guitars and my 40 room house for reverb.
 
Well now I never said modelers were bad, much less sooooooooo bad. After all, I said that I own all three of the main modelers and that I like them. And I agree with Polaris that just 'cause an amp is a tube amp doesn't automatically make it good. What I said was that a good real amp sounds better and it does. And also I never said that it's perfect or nothing. That's just stupid and I wonder where you got that from, 'cause I said nothing even remotely like that.

Yes, of course, I use fake reverb and drums and also my modelers. But when the real thing can be used I prefer it. And if I had a true reverb chamber like big studios have I would use that but I don't have one so I use digital stuff. The same with modelers. If my wife is asleep, i can't crank my amps up so I use a modeler. And if I don't feel like messing with getting an amp to sound just so........I'll take the easy way out and use one of my modelers. And some sounds for special effects can be gotten easier with modelers. All tools have their place but that doesn't mean I have to turn my ears off and refuse to believe I hear a difference.
 
I have three modeling amps--a Boss Gt3, a V-AmpII and a J-Station. i can get sounds out of my tube amp that I can't get out of any of these--and, believe me, i have tweaked myself silly looking for certain sounds that don't seem to exist in the modeling amps.

Now, for certain things, the virtual stuff is the ticket--and I think it has some sounds of its own that are employable. If I have any beef with modeled stuff, its not that its fake, its that it just doesn't sound as good to me--especially the clean sounds. One of these days I may find my personal killer tone in one of these boxes, but so far I haven't. That doesn't mean its not in there!
 
In a few years, you won't be able to tell the difference. Technology will get so advanced, the software will perfectly model tube amps, and you won't want to deal with the hassle or the weight of a tube amp.

I know I sure don't now.

It's funny how people said the exact same thing about digital cameras, myself included. I work in the camera industry, and time and time again I heard "digital cameras will never replace 35mm".

Well, it is replacing 35mm at an amazing rate. 35mm will be obsolete in no more than 5 years.
 
I'm with DarkCide... Genesis 3 RULES.
Now, the deeper part:
I HAVEN'T used the V-amp II YET, but I have tested the Genesis 3 thoroughly vs. J-Station and POD 2.0

My quick findings (and believe me, I tweaked a lot. I had manuals ready for all the deep-editing on J-Station and POD):
Line6 POD2.0 :
way too dirty/muddy. No decent clean tones. Soldano (Modern Hi Gain) is however decent sounding, as is the Fender Blackface model.

Johnson J-Station :
Much better than the POD, better effects, but with speaker-sim. engaged it becomes bassheavy...not muddy. JCM900 model sounds exactly as crappy as the real mutherf...lover... ;) Some clean models are very good.

Digitech Genesis 3 :
The best of the bunch. Reacts very realistic to lowering your guitar's volume, has best dynamics and response. Clean sounds can get crystal clean. Blackface model and Clean Tube amp are UNBELIEVABLE accurate and good sounding. Basically it shares the models with the J-Station, but is less bassheavy, has EVEN better effects, looks great and has digital out (which the POD doesn't. Also there's no need for deep editing quirkyness, almost everything is direct available without the use of a PC-based editor. Warp-function really works, it's not a crossfade, but a real morph. I played around with a Marshall '78 master volume-model, but I wanted more bite and gain, so I warped it with a Dual Rectifier (70% Marshall, 30% Mesa=great heavy metal tone).

I really looked out for how each unit responded to lowering your guitar's volume, and how different guitars sounded through them. The POD (to my ears) made a lot of guitars sound alike... only Strat vs. Les Paul gave noticable differences.
The Genesis 3 shines again here, and leaves your guitar's own tone intact. I think the 24bit AD/DA converters and the 44.1kHz sampling rate help alot here (the POD has 20bit converters and 31.250Hz sampling rate).
Still, If I had to choose between POD and V-amp II, I'd go for the V-Amp II, because of user interface (LED-rings), price and ENGL-model ('Savage beast' modelled after Savage Spec. Edt. ((my favourite allround tube amp, in case you didn't know yet ;) ))
From the info I've gathered so far, the V-AmpII really is a cheaper and better POD-copy, while the J-Station and Genesis are based on another engine and less but better models.
But between a $300 POD, a $150 J-Station and a $300 Genesis 3, the Genesis wins hands down, no questions asked. I'll have one in october...
 
Sounds like you've done some deep testing, at least with the Genesis 3. Would you be willing to post samples of your tests? We'd love to hear them.
 
1) I don't have it yet
2) I wouldn't know HOW to post them and WHERE to post them (AFAIK I don't have like 20Mb free space somewhere)

at the digitech site (www.digitech.com) you can go to GNX patch library, and there are some pretty good sound samples of the Genesis 3. (I liked the Judas Priest, Rhythm and Lead tones...)
 
I have a few samples for the Genesis 3, but please keep in mind that I recorded those samples quickly without messing around with the knobs, I recorded them using a bad sound card and playing infront of my monitor which makes the guitar noisy because of my Evolution pickups. the unit actually sounds much better if you spend some time on it.



 
DarkCide

Thanks for the samples. The first one is everything I hate about modeling, the 2nd is closer to reality. The reason I dislike the first one is it sounds so "battery buzzed", if you will. The buzziness sounds cheap.

Good playing by the way.
 
DarkCide; I'm with Middleman on this one too..
The 1st one has too much gain/fuzz. The 2nd one is way better, especially when the solo kicks in.
BTW, What did you use for the drumsounds? Although they sound a tad fake, the snare is pretty convincing... The ride should be tamed a bit though....
 
I did very little to setup the sound when I recorded those samples, I used fruityloops for the drums, as you can tell, I'm not a good beat programmer. The sound changes quite a bit when you convert a wave file into mp3, thats why the distortion sounds buzzy, it sounded completely fine when it was a wave file.
 
Ok, so I am on vacation this week and thought I would drop into the local GC to check out the Line 6 vs Behringer vs Digitech (Pod 2.0 vs V-amp vs. Genesis 3). This thread kinda got me going.

Tried a strat and a les paul on all three units. Here's my 2 cents:

I agree with Speeddemon on the Genesis 3 being the most versatile sounding. However, if I was playing crunch music to knock down the walls and send my neighbors running I would opt for the POD. None of them covers the gamut of sounds you would use in an evening of playing live though.

Ideally the POD and the Genesis 3 cover about everything I would want. The Genesis 3 has so many clean sounds with great delay and chorus. It can take you up to the sound of a small fender driven to a blues warming tone for leads. That however is where it starts to drop off from reality and where the POD picks up. It goes from clean Steve Vai to pure Angus to Eric Johnson and back and would be my choice for rock, blues, metal etc.

I would lean on the Genesis 3 for country, blues, jazz and that screaming Beck or Eric Johnson clean sound.

What about the Behringer? After hearing the Genesis I had found the device I was seeking.
 
I cant belive the DGstomp not being the favorite here. Its certainly got the others beat in sounds, and build quality.
 
Most of the samples I have heard from the Yamaha DGStomp had that battery buzz sound in the distortion samples. Another reason I like the Genesis is look at the spec shootout on this site: http://www.dthraco.com/competition.htm

The feature set is much higher on the Genesis over all the rest. Now that does not equate to a great sound so listen to the samples at this same site. To my ears the Genesis is all around the most versatile sounding.

IMHO
 
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