Showdown at the Clubhouse | Amp Software Vs. Amps

Feb 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

AMP-MODELING SOFTWARE AND VINTAGE AMPS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD

BONUS MATERIAL
Take the Listening Test

AC30, example 2 (see Web Clip 4), was another crunchy rhythm-guitar track — this one played on the Les Paul. This time, nobody could tell the real amp from the modelers. Moshay thought that the Waves GTR version was the amp, saying it sounded nice and crunchy. Tozzoli and Orofino guessed it was the Guitar Rig version, while Goodwin thought it was the Eleven version. Interestingly, when voting for which one they liked best (as opposed to which one was the real amp), three panelists chose No. 5, which was the real amp. Tozzoli also liked the ReValver version a lot.

This round of listening sparked an interesting discussion. Moshay noted that overall, some of the modeler versions lacked a bit of dimension. “With simulators, a lot of time what happens is that all the time all the tone just comes right to the front; there's no push to the low end,” he said. “An amp will have a little push when you're pushing air. It's almost like a multiband [compressor] — we'll just take all the frequencies and flatten them. And they're all like high, mid, low, balanced flat, as if you brickwalled it. Whereas on an amplifier, the bottom end of an amp will push on certain notes and not on other ones; you get a little thrusting going on.”

“On the amps, I've noticed consistently that you hear more of the guitar,” said Goodwin. “You hear more of the character of the guitar, whereas the modelers seem to homogenize the character slightly more,” he added. Orofino noted that on some of the modeled tracks, there was a compressed sound that was a giveaway.

Amp: 1980 Marshall JCM 800 through a Marshall 4 × 12 cabinet

Modelers: Amp Farm 3.0, AmpliTube 2, Eleven, and Guitar Rig 3

Marshall, example 1 (see Web Clip 5), was a heavy passage played on the Les Paul, with both chords and lead, and was intended for a high-gain sound. Two of the four panelists, Moshay and Goodwin, were able to discern the real amp, but notably, none of them chose it as their favorite. Moshay said, “If I were mixing, I'd choose No. 1,” which was the Eleven version. Tozzoli liked that one best, too; he thought it was warm sounding. Goodwin and Orofino liked the Guitar Rig rendition best.

On Marshall, example 2 (see Web Clip 6), which was played on the Strat, only Tozzoli guessed the real amp. Moshay and Orofino thought it was the Eleven version. Goodwin guessed it was the AmpliTube.

As for favorite sounds, Orofino picked the one played through Eleven, which Goodwin thought was a little more open sounding than the others. Moshay also chose that as his favorite. Tozzoli and Goodwin liked the AmpliTube version best. Thus ended the testing session.

Lessons Learned

In total, the panelists were able to tell the real amp from the modelers only 38.5 percent of the time. Although this wasn't a huge sample, I think it's fairly safe to conclude that given the right conditions, modelers can sound as good as the amps they emulate. The fact that these panelists, who work with amped guitar sounds virtually every day, couldn't distinguish the amps from the modelers in so many instances presents a very strong case in favor of amp modelers.

There were times when the simulated amp sounds were more obvious, especially with the clean-sounding Twin examples. That jibed with my own observations over the years that modelers have a much tougher time getting realistic clean sounds (in the Twin examples, the panelists picked the real amp 60 percent of the time). But on the crunchy and distorted sounds, the modelers were able to fool the experts 75 percent of the time.

If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have done as much advanced tweaking to the modeled sounds in an attempt to make them sound similar. In some ways, I may have detracted from their sound by doing so. This was especially true for Eleven on the AC30 examples, which I had to program rather hastily on the day of the testing. In retrospect, a better approach might have been to use the modelers' own presets for the various amps being tested, which might have shown off the software's abilities better.

It should be noted that these tests were set up to compare the sound of the amps against that of the modelers, so I have stayed away from drawing any conclusions about which of the modelers sounded best. That would have required a whole different approach to the testing. In fact, all of the modelers in the tests elicited positive responses from the panelists at one time or another during the day. (See Web Clip 7 for a wrap-up discussion by the panelists about the testing.)

Overall, I was very satisfied with the results of this experiment. Although vintage-amp aficionados might disagree, my take-away from the day was that modelers are not the second-class substitutes for actual amps that they're often portrayed as being. Rather, they're an excellent alternative that can often sound just as good as the amps they emulate. And, of course, modelers give you a choice of many different amp tones and cabinet configurations, are much cheaper (not to mention lighter) than real amps, come with tons of built-in effects, allow you total recall, and often have automatable parameters. Sure, there are times when nothing beats a vintage amp. But according to what I observed in the testing session, that's certainly not a hard-and-fast rule.

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Mike Levine is the executive editor and senior media producer of EM. He wishes to thank Paul Antonell from the Clubhouse, the panelists, and the software manufacturers. To listen to the same files that the panelists did, and to see if you can guess which sounds are the real amps, see Web Clips 1 through 6.

Manufacturer and Studio Contacts

The Clubhouse	clubhouseinc.com
Digidesign	digidesign.com
Fender	fender.com
IK Multimedia	ikmultimedia.com
Line 6	line6.com
Marshall Amps	marshallamps.com
Native Instruments	native-instruments.com
Peavey	peavey.com
Vox Amplification	voxamps.com
Waves	waves.com