Digital Modelers vs Tube Amps

VonBonfire said:
I'll be honest with you. If I paid good money and went to a metal show and realized the band I went to see was using triggers and other gay accessories I would throw shit at them and boo loudly. If you use samples and stuff like that for live work, your band sucks and you are a fat loser with body odor.Just my opinion but live means live.
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Welp, I can pretty much assure you 100 percent, that you’ve paid for such a metal show.


It’s not about being “fake”, it’s about fucking sounding good. Triggers don’t miraculously make you play better, they give CONSISTENCY to your mix and clarity in a live setting. This is just sonic facts. It gives one less thing for these guys to bitch about why the band they heard sounded like shit live, even though apparently it’s gonna get blamed on a modeler anyway. Everything is triggered nowadays, especially once again, the kick. Every band uses samples, again many times that they themselves recorded with their own drums, played by them, during an actual recording session. I’m not sure why this is groundbreaking news to people, I also seriously doubt people’s actual understanding of what triggers are and how they are used.
 
VESmedic said:
Welp, I can pretty much assure you 100 percent, that you’ve paid for such a metal show.
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Last metal show I went to was 1991 or 92 in the basement of a VFW with a few local acts. It was five bucks and I am certain there were no triggers or modelers either, LOL. Concerts are for rich people who work weekdays, not broke musicians. The only shows I can afford to attend these days are my own. I saw Buddy Guy and DLR band about fifteen years ago. Brian Young got me in for free and even got us backstage. He was using Marshall power amps and a Suhr I think. Had really good tone.

VESmedic said:
It’s not about being “fake”, it’s about fucking sounding good. Triggers don’t miraculously make you play better, they give CONSISTENCY to your mix and clarity in a live setting. This is just sonic facts. It gives one less thing for these guys to bitch about why the band they heard sounded like shit live, even though apparently it’s gonna get blamed on a modeler anyway. Everything is triggered nowadays, especially once again, the kick. Every band uses samples, again many times that they themselves recorded with their own drums, played by them, during an actual recording session. I’m not sure why this is groundbreaking news to people, I also seriously doubt people’s actual understanding of what triggers are and how they are used.
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Had no idea this was the case. I remember the old days when dudes sounded good just mic'ed up into the mains without all that stuff. I am old school so I have to be against triggers. Pick a side and defend it into the ground, right or wrong. If this means we can't be friends anymore, I totally understand.
 
midnightlaundry said:
When did people get so soft and lazy.. How about this:
SUCK
LESS
PLAY
MORE
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I like modelers because it’s
SET UP
LESS
PLAY
MORE

I can find the perfect sound I want for any genre imaginable in like 5 minutes without even unplugging or touching a dial. For someone with little time to play I find that to be invaluable
 
Bram576 said:
This kind of shit is exactly why nobody new comes here lol.
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RT, the land that time forgot

The Land That Time Forgot | Rotten Tomatoes
 
Say whatever you want about modeling, but one angle I don't see discussed all that often about great modelers is how much they can teach you about guitar tone in general.

Diving into Fractal's ecosystem has taught me 10x more about guitar tone than all the forums reading and music store jamming I've ever done combined. Most people will never have anything close to a decked out studio full of the best gear money can buy, all cabled up and integrated into a completely functional switching system so you can truly compare apples to apples and learn how guitar tone is actually created and what part of the chain is doing what to your sound, ON TOP OF being able to basically put any of those pieces of gear into the hands of a virtual tech who can work in real time and do things a real tech and amp couldn't even hope to achieve.

You can easily and just about instantly answer questions like "How does input filtering impact the sound." "What exactly do transformers do to the sound and what is the difference between larger and smaller ones." "How does negative feedback impact the sound and what does more or less of it sound like." "What if I could add another gain stage or clipping diodes into that amp's preamp, is it better to have more gain stages and set the gain lower or fewer gain stages and set the gain higher." "What if I could add/remove/put a new resistor in the bright cap." "What if I could put amp X's tonestack into amp Y." "Do 'hotter' biased amps actually sound more aggressive and better like every wive's tale says or will a colder bias actually get me where I want to go." "Do I actually like amp X over amp Y or is it just that when I played amp X, I was using a different cab and was in a different room, and turns out those were the things I liked more." and a million other things. How about I find all this stuff out in in 5 seconds each while I turn the knob and listen.

I feel like Fractal alone has given me a University degree's worth of info I wouldn't otherwise have, that I can also apply to analog gear when I use that as well. In that sense, Fractal gear is immeasurably valuable to me.

The other thing about modeling is that it encourages you to think like an engineer. Modelers encourage you to think of your tone as everything between your fingers and the PA speakers or studio monitors, where most analog-rig guys (though not most forums guys, admittedly) only think of "their tone" as existing between their fingers and the speaker out jack of their amps, with most players thinking cabs are only necessary to make the amp loud, but are otherwise unimportant to tone in general. This sentiment is changing now, but I believe it's primarily changing because modeling has shown all of us how vitally important and influential cabs are to the tone shaping process.

Anyway, when the die hard analog guys try modelers, they're suddenly forced to deal with picking from a ton of cabs and mics, and then hearing a mix-ready version of their tone as opposed to an amp-in-the-room version and it throws them hard. Modelers usually make you deal with a multitude of cabs, mics, and post processing, which can be intimidating, but it's no different than what any player would already have to deal with if they wanted to make their tone sound good through any PA or mix. It's just that most analog guys never need to think that far into the chain.

Modeling does require a bit of a different approach than tube rigs, for sure. With most analog rigs, what you have is all there is, so you tend to work "outward" with them, which means seeing what you can do with them, finding everything possible, tweaking like crazy, etc. Most modeling rigs can do pretty much everything though, so if you take that approach, you'll tweak forever, which is basically the #1 complaint I read about modelers, tonal opinions aside. Instead you kind of have to work "inward" and narrow down what you want from infinite possibilities. You can ultimately arrive at the same place, but you kind of have to get there from a different direction.

Moral of the story: use both. They both have different sets of strengths and weaknesses, but both can get you exactly where you want to go if you learn how to approach them, and both can teach you things the other can't.
 
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TheGreatGreen said:
Say whatever you want about modeling, but one angle I don't see discussed all that often about great modelers is how much they can teach you about guitar tone in general.

Diving into Fractal's ecosystem has taught me 10x more about guitar tone than all the forums reading and music store jamming I've ever done combined. Most people will never have anything close to a decked out studio full of the best gear money can buy, all cabled up and integrated into a completely functional switching system so you can truly compare apples to apples and learn how guitar tone is actually created and what part of the chain is doing what to your sound, ON TOP OF being able to basically put any of those pieces of gear into the hands of a virtual tech who can work in real time and do things a real tech and amp couldn't even hope to achieve.

You can easily and just about instantly answer questions like "What if this amp had different filtering at the input." "What if the transformer was bigger or smaller." "What if that amp had more or less negative feedback." "What if I could add another gain stage or clipping diodes into that amp's preamp." "What if I could add/remove/put a new resistor in the bright cap." "What if I could put amp X's tonestack into amp Y." "Do 'hotter' biased amps actually sound more aggressive and better like every wive's tale says or will a colder bias actually get me where I want to go. Hey I'll just adjust this amp model's bias and listen in real time as I turn the knob and find out in 5 seconds." "Do I actually like amp X over amp Y or is it just that when I played amp X, I was using a different cab and was in a different room, and turns out those were the things I liked more." and a million other things.

I feel like Fractal alone has given me a University degree's worth of info I wouldn't otherwise have, that I went on to apply to analog gear. In that sense, Fractal gear is immeasurably valuable to me.

The other thing about modeling is that it encourages you to think like an engineer. Modelers encourage you to think of your tone as everything between your fingers and the PA speakers or studio monitors, where most analog-rig guys (though not most forums guys, admittedly) only think of "their tone" as existing between their fingers and the speaker out jack of their amps, with most players thinking cabs are only necessary to make the amp loud, unimportant to tone in general. This is changing now, but I believe it's primarily changing because modeling has shown all of us how vitally important and influential cabs are to the tone shaping process. Anyway, when the die hard analog guys try modelers, they're suddenly forced to deal with picking from a ton of cabs and mics, and then hearing a mix-ready version of their tone as opposed to an amp-in-the-room version and it throws them hard. Modelers usually make you deal with a multitude of cabs, mics, and post processing, which can be intimidating, but it's no different than what any player would have to deal with if they wanted to make their tone sound good through any PA or mix.

Modeling does require a bit of a different approach than tube rigs, for sure. With most analog rigs, what you have is all there is, so you tend to work "outward" with them, which means seeing what you can do with them, finding everything possible, tweaking like crazy, etc. Most modeling rigs can do pretty much everything though, so if you take that approach, you'll tweak forever, which is basically the #1 complaint I read about modelers besides opinion about tone. Instead you kind of have to work "inward" and narrow down what you want from infinite possibilities. You can ultimately arrive at the same place, but you kind of have to get there from a different direction.

Moral of the story: use both. They both have different sets of strengths and weaknesses, but both can get you exactly where you want to go if you learn how to approach them.
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This post is exactly why I would never get into modeling stuff. More controls than a Hughes and Kettner. YUCK!!!!

I don't think some of you dudes realize yet that all this modeling bullshit will result in the death of actual human guitar players and you are funding your own destruction by purchasing them. They are the tools of satan. They must be destroyed like the Luddites destroyed industrial textile equipment.
 
VonBonfire said:
This post is exactly why I would never get into modeling stuff. More controls than a Hughes and Kettner. YUCK!!!!

I don't think some of you dudes realize yet that all this modeling bullshit will result in the death of actual human guitar players and you are funding your own destruction by purchasing them. They are the tools of satan. They must be destroyed like the Luddites destroyed industrial textile equipment.
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Well, you never have to touch any controls you don't care about. If you know what you want, you can dial up a sound as fast as you can with an analog rig. And if you run it through a good solid state amp and real cab, there's not much difference in the in-the-room tone either, and you don't have to deal with anything in the chain after the amp.

Also if you have no use for the tools of satan then why are you on a high gain guitar forum in the first place? :D
 
PDC said:
My buddies who use Fractals have Such GOOD Live Tone - Period. Over time, they have mastered the deep-dive menus to really reproduce the bite and the sizzle and the ‘thump’ of a truly great tube amp. I honestly do not know how the ‘feel’ of playing through their properly dialed in Fractals would compare to the ‘feel’ of the comparable box of glass and 4x12. But from my own admittedly limited time playing all sorts of live venues with ‘real’ amps, I can say that in many places, our stage volume had to be dialed back as not to overwhelm the PA - and by the time my guitar sound was routed through the monitor board into the main board and out the PA, I wasn’t really playing in direct reaction to the ‘feel’ of the amp anymore. I was just playing - and at different spots on the stage, I was either hearing (predominantly) my 4x12, or one of the monitors, or catching a bit of the PA. I am betting that if I had someone who knew the menus to dial in a Fractal for me, I would be hard pressed to tell you the difference in the middle of a live performance between the Fractal or the tube amp it was modeling for me.
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PA as in power aplifier?
 
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