Do you think modelers will get there in the next 10 years?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tone Monster
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just to back up what I said earlier about basically all of the modellers being there already.

Here’s my real BE100, Fractal FM-3, Neural DSP and Line 6 Helix. All close enough that the biggest variable is by far human error in dialling them in. I genuinely couldn’t say one sounds objectively better or worse than another:

 
I think if more people tried a modeler into actual cabs, you’d hear a lot less speculation about them. I run my FM9 into two different 2x12’s, an old Boogie with Black Shadows and another cab with WGS Retro 30’s, using a Duncan PS170 and a TC BAM200 for power, all that thump and wallop I got with my previous tube amps is there, especially when I can crank them up. The dynamic range of something sparkly clean like a Twin is there. Hell, I’ve barely been playing metal since I put my Gilmour Strat together, I’ve just been diggin’ on JTM45/Superlead tones on the edge of breakup and it’s been a blast.

There’s ample tweakability in the Fractal stuff so I don’t really care about the lack of IR’s being tied to specific amps. I do all the normal chugga chugga metal stuff and EJ-cleans with the same cabs, I just make some EQ cuts when necessary to get the end result. And even then, I can still send a tap off the amp block, recreate the post-effects after an IR and send FOH a DI while I have all my stereo fun onstage. It’s not as portable as just going direct and using IEMs, but I don’t care, this rig is a blast to play through.

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A lot of guitar players only play in their basement and dont play actual gigs. They really have no use for a 100w Half stack. Modelers are great for that type of "bedroom" application.

Also, there is no reason for this to be an either/or proposition, I use a Helix in 4cm with a tube half stack. Best of both worlds. It makes a great control center and fx unit with my tube rig. And if I need to add a channel to my setup, it's there.
 
Jugghaid said:
A lot of guitar players only play in their basement and dont play actual gigs. They really have no use for a 100w Half stack. Modelers are great for that type of "bedroom" application.

Also, there is no reason for this to be an either/or proposition, I use a Helix in 4cm with a tube half stack. Best of both worlds. It makes a great control center and fx unit with my tube rig. And if I need to add a channel to my setup, it's there.
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I would wager the percentage of gigging musicians who actually have a use for a 100w half stack beyond enraging the soundguy is very small. What size venue do you need to be playing where you *need* 100w? I cannot even imagine, as no matter the size of the room I played, the amp always got switched down to 50w (yeah, it's only 3Db, but it's something). The only time I have ever needed it is during practice/rehearsal with a loud drummer...and even then, I used to play in a garage with a band with a way too loud drummer, one night I kept getting onto him because every time he hit the snare, I though I was going to vomit...it was loud. I used a .44 magnum pedal sized 44 watt poweramp for that project, and the volume knobs on the .44 Mag and the Kemper stayed around 9:00-10:00 or under. I have seen people state that that poweramp couldn't keep up with a drummer...that is a loud drummer, I must say. It was not a great sounding poweramp, but it would get very loud before breakup.

I do not really believe there is a size of venue where 100w would benefit anyone over a modeler, given that you have your monitoring set up correctly, and trust the soundguy to give you good FOH sound (combating that with a larger amp would not help anyone anyway except the (un)lucky few to be in the lazer beam soundwave pattern of the cab). If so, what is the benefit? I have seen more than enough live rigs filled with Kempers and Fractal to know many many bands feel the same.

For me, the answer is there; are modelers good enough that great bands that can use whatever they want prefer them? And is this common. If the answer is yes for even a few, we are almost there, and if it is common...well, we are kind of there already, no?

That goes for recording too. I spoke with Chris Crummett a couple years ago about this, and for him, it is style and tuning dependent. Anything more mainstream, or tuned to/near standard, he would usually prefer his tube amps. But with anything tuned very low with a lot of distortion (think Issues) he generally prefers modelers. The first Issues album was Fractal straight to track, no treatment. His answer why, is that, whether on purpose or not, modelers tend to lack a lot of junk in the low end that he would have to cut out on a very low-tuned album, and give him less trouble in that range when he does need to clean up a track. And generally this is the case, live or recorded, a high-pass can avoid a lot of issues with the bassist, and most recorded tones are not at all what you think when isolated (live should be no different), so if (and I found this to be the case with both my Kemper and VST amp sims) this amp gets me closer to my finished tone than that amp, I will pick this amp.

I haven't seen a lot of blind amp/modeler/VST comparison lately where the listener/player gets it all that right. I think digital is just getting too close. But I know I do not have the ear to pick out in a mix whether an amp or a digital one was used, so I guess it just does not bug me. Hell, I did not have the ear to pick a Vox Ac15 from Kemper profiles of the amp, or of a H&K Triamp MKII (the only amps I had when I got the Kemper). Sounds good here, sounds good to an audience, keeps the soundguy and my back happy...

But, I did sell the kemper and mostly play a Suhr pt-15 ir now. I found that the IR was the most interesting part of the tone to play around with, I liked the idea of having one amp I recorded with, and really getting to know that amp, but still having the tonal flexibility that comes with IRs (of course there are other ways to do this, I thought about a two-notes, and several different amps...but I cannot afford that like I used to), and with pedals, I don't think there is a sound I couldn't get out of this amp.
 
For anything less than great rooms and mic setups (and skill), modellers are the way to go IMHO.

No room modes, unwanted reflections, boxiness and general gunk to filter out. For me this is the biggest plus.
 
Monkey Man said:
For anything less than great rooms and mic setups (and skill), modellers are the way to go IMHO.

No room modes, unwanted reflections, boxiness and general gunk to filter out. For me this is the biggest plus.
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I didn't really even think about a couple of those points. Are you here to tell me that a SM57 hanging by its cable down to roughly the speaker area might not be the best way to live mic an amp? Now, that is something that anyone could fix by bring their own mic stand, but that blows. That has been the greatest gift that modelers have given me. Not having to have a perfect room and perfect micing and EQ to have a great tone. Or rather, having those things in the signal chain because of a modeler.
 
Exactamundo mate.

Same thing applies to live gigs. The venues' acoustics vary heaps, as do stage levels and extraneous noise, so mic'ing needs to be able to adapt too.
 
Steinmetzify said:
Been thru all the main ones and they’re pretty great, but I’d still rather use a tube amp that I love the sound and feel of into a load box.
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That is where I am right now, and I am happy with it. I like it better than a straight sim. But I don't know if it *is* better. I will say, my favorite tones have been captured with a real amp into an IR/load box...but I am also getting slowly better at recording, and that is how I have been recording lately. So it is hard to say.
 
italoop said:
No, I don't think they will ever "get there"... if you have good ears, experience in using the real thing and a sensitivity for touch!
People... there is ONE thing that won't change and that is the voltage, power! The way a power section creates tone and feel in a real amp can't be perfectly reproduced as there are billions of variables that you can't calculate in a logic way as they are not linear.
World isn't a 5 volts reality... that's what a DSP needs to run.
I'm not sure how many of you have an ear and an eye to pro-audio gear... I mean mic/line/instr preamps, compressors, EQs, etc.... the stuff that MAKES tone, character, personality, joy of listening. No matter what technology has been used in the last 70 years, you ALWAYS find these things in the recording chain and often in playing situations too. To tell you the truth, since the beginning of digital recording and more and more recently w/plugins and modellers.... this pro-stuff (VOLTAGE!!!) has increased a lot in brands and number of products... proving how badly all non-analog technology requires VOLTAGE based monsters to get the right tone... now that's "getting there"!
Current efx are a tonal bloodbath.... 99% of them sound ugly, shrill, even nasty to ear drums.... as DSPs have gotten enough powerful to do the work of traditional inputs stages (preamp/filters/compander/etc,) which were what truly created the legendary tone of your classic units.
Take two legends, Lexicon 480 and H3000. These are still very expensive and sought after... open them up and find those Murata filters which have a mild tone and a way to react to input levels that makes tone just beautiful, wide and spread, warm and natural. Open up a Lex 300 or 480 and you'll fins a power section (transformer + analog input signal stages) that is MUCH larger than any whole current product. That tells you how much care was put in engineering the things. You can't model all behaviours of such sections and render them in the proper way.
So to my ears... digital is a great way to freeze audio events that have been processed thru tonal shaping ANALOG processes, where the natural essence of power and reactance work in a way that is the closest to respect human performance touch and dynamics, yet giving beautiful tone to what you play.

The same is true for guitar amps.... until the legacy treasure of tru amps will be alive, nothing can touch how a Fender Twin clean sounds like and classic Marshalls, Soldanos, Mesa Boogies....................... nothing.

Just to give you an idea about how your guitar (and everything else) gets recorded and plugs can't do what real outboard does, here are some examples that should make you hear how amazing these analog processes sound and how great their tone is at ANY setting. Never boomy nor shrill... but more importantly neven fake, never an "attempt to..."
The real thing is always better than its copy. That's now nature works. Respect for that is what keeps us human.

Listen,,,, even under YouTube bad audio processing...





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While everything you said it's probably true, there's one important aspect you're missing.

We don't hear music like microphones do.

What you hear in a room, especially at low volume, it's night and day to what a microphone would hear. A lot of people is really underwhelmed by the experience of playing a tube amp, realising it doesn't sound like their favourite records until you hear the recording of what the microphone heard. That's when digital modelers, ir's and the like com really in handy, because then you can have a recorded tone in your bedroom and enjoy a tone that for a lot of people, it's actually better than hearing a real amp with real speakers giving a really raw tone.
 
Locrain said:
I would wager the percentage of gigging musicians who actually have a use for a 100w half stack beyond enraging the soundguy is very small. What size venue do you need to be playing where you *need* 100w? I cannot even imagine, as no matter the size of the room I played, the amp always got switched down to 50w (yeah, it's only 3Db, but it's something). The only time I have ever needed it is during practice/rehearsal with a loud drummer...and even then, I used to play in a garage with a band with a way too loud drummer, one night I kept getting onto him because every time he hit the snare, I though I was going to vomit...it was loud. I used a .44 magnum pedal sized 44 watt poweramp for that project, and the volume knobs on the .44 Mag and the Kemper stayed around 9:00-10:00 or under. I have seen people state that that poweramp couldn't keep up with a drummer...that is a loud drummer, I must say. It was not a great sounding poweramp, but it would get very loud before breakup.

I do not really believe there is a size of venue where 100w would benefit anyone over a modeler, given that you have your monitoring set up correctly, and trust the soundguy to give you good FOH sound (combating that with a larger amp would not help anyone anyway except the (un)lucky few to be in the lazer beam soundwave pattern of the cab). If so, what is the benefit? I have seen more than enough live rigs filled with Kempers and Fractal to know many many bands feel the same.

For me, the answer is there; are modelers good enough that great bands that can use whatever they want prefer them? And is this common. If the answer is yes for even a few, we are almost there, and if it is common...well, we are kind of there already, no?

That goes for recording too. I spoke with Chris Crummett a couple years ago about this, and for him, it is style and tuning dependent. Anything more mainstream, or tuned to/near standard, he would usually prefer his tube amps. But with anything tuned very low with a lot of distortion (think Issues) he generally prefers modelers. The first Issues album was Fractal straight to track, no treatment. His answer why, is that, whether on purpose or not, modelers tend to lack a lot of junk in the low end that he would have to cut out on a very low-tuned album, and give him less trouble in that range when he does need to clean up a track. And generally this is the case, live or recorded, a high-pass can avoid a lot of issues with the bassist, and most recorded tones are not at all what you think when isolated (live should be no different), so if (and I found this to be the case with both my Kemper and VST amp sims) this amp gets me closer to my finished tone than that amp, I will pick this amp.

I haven't seen a lot of blind amp/modeler/VST comparison lately where the listener/player gets it all that right. I think digital is just getting too close. But I know I do not have the ear to pick out in a mix whether an amp or a digital one was used, so I guess it just does not bug me. Hell, I did not have the ear to pick a Vox Ac15 from Kemper profiles of the amp, or of a H&K Triamp MKII (the only amps I had when I got the Kemper). Sounds good here, sounds good to an audience, keeps the soundguy and my back happy...

But, I did sell the kemper and mostly play a Suhr pt-15 ir now. I found that the IR was the most interesting part of the tone to play around with, I liked the idea of having one amp I recorded with, and really getting to know that amp, but still having the tonal flexibility that comes with IRs (of course there are other ways to do this, I thought about a two-notes, and several different amps...but I cannot afford that like I used to), and with pedals, I don't think there is a sound I couldn't get out of this amp.
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All good points.

I use an HK Triamp MKIII as well and/or an Engl Inferno depending on my mood for gigs in a 1/2 stack. Most places we play (or played since I'm back on bass now) had professional sound guys that actually do their job. We would get the occasional idiot, but for the most part, not an issue. Most gigs when I was on guitar were the theater type gigs, so decent sized room as well...... Also, we know how to use a master volume. I don't know why that is a problem for most. Even a half stack is a stage monitor and we usually side loaded. Sometimes not though. Put it at the right volume and let the mains do their work in the FOH system. There is no need to ever have a dimed half stack on stage. I don't care if you are playing a stadium. It's dumb.

I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna go with just my helix for bass going forward. I have really nice tube bass rigs (Trace V6/Berg NV610, etc) and I love how they sound, but for 90% of gigs, there is no need to drag that shit around. Maybe if I play Red Rocks or something. :)
 
Jugghaid said:
All good points.

I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna go with just my helix for bass going forward. I have really nice tube bass rigs (Trace V6/Berg NV610, etc) and I love how they sound, but for 90% of gigs, there is no need to drag that shit around. Maybe if I play Red Rocks or something. :)
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And I bet FOH would still talk shit about you. :D 150 watts? Obscene. :p The sound system at RR is truly obscene, I guess it has to be, outside.
Never got to play the MKIII, but I have played 99% of my gigs with a Triamp MKII, which I still have, and currently have a Tubemiester deluxe 40, which is apparently shares much of the preamp circuit with the MKIII as I understand it. Fantastic amps, and the lack of profiles was a (small) part of why I went back to them from the Kemper, there just were not a lot of good Triamp Profiles when I had mine.
 
Locrain said:
And I bet FOH would still talk shit about you. :D 150 watts? Obscene. :p The sound system at RR is truly obscene, I guess it has to be, outside.
Never got to play the MKIII, but I have played 99% of my gigs with a Triamp MKII, which I still have, and currently have a Tubemiester deluxe 40, which is apparently shares much of the preamp circuit with the MKIII as I understand it. Fantastic amps, and the lack of profiles was a (small) part of why I went back to them from the Kemper, there just were not a lot of good Triamp Profiles when I had mine.
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I had a grandmeister 36 before the triamp and always wanted the big boy.

I usually only run 50w at a time honestly. I have it loaded with 6L6, EL34. and KT88 pairs and switch depending on the channel I'm playing. I also incorporate a synergy syn1 and a couple more channels just for fun. That's why I love the Helix. It's an awesome control center.
 
How about a modeler that doesn't need anything else like the Fractals etc.. People like and want simple they don't want to spend extra on things and there should be no need to spend extra on things .

If the Katana and other amps of it's kind sound as good as the modelers with all the extra's than the answer is modelers are there . If the Katana's do not sound as good than clearly modelers are not there .
 
I’ve had the Fractal setup, it’s good just not for me. I prefer my 100W+ half stacks in my room and I don’t gig out. Just my preference.
 
Figured I'd chime in with my experience. I've been playing electric for about 20 years now, and tube amps for just as long (started with a used Peavey Ultra 212 I got for like $300 on eBay around 2002 -- what a beast!). I've had most of the modelers starting with the Line 6 POD, which was cool for what it was, but compared to the stuff available for the same price today, is pretty awful. Also owned various POD iterations through the years, Vox's modeler, and the el-cheapo Behringer POD knockoff that actually sounded better than the POD if my ears remember correctly.

I currently run an Axe FX 3, primarily for silent / studio monitor recording since I moved to an apartment. Before I moved, though, I had a whole basement to myself, and ran it through my Fryette PS2 for a tube power section, with the power-amp modeling turned on.

When the Axe 3 first came out I would say it wasn't quite "there" as far as making me feel like I was playing a tube amp. It was great, and sounded great, but the feel came into the equation with the many firmware updates Cliff released up until today. Now, I swap between my tube heads and the Axe depending on my mood (the heads I own are amps not modeled in the Axe), and I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you the difference. The amps in the Axe sound and feel like tube amps. And they have the wonderful advantage of not being prone to noise like tube amps are, which makes recording so much friendlier.

What one needs to realize is that every tube guitar amp, even with the same circuit and components, will be a little different sounding at the same settings. Just like guitars. Even the mains electricity can make an impact. I just today did some troubleshooting with my Friedman BE-50 that was sounding a little off and lower gain than expected. It prompted me to unpack my Furman voltage regulator and pop it into my rack, and what do you know, it sounds much more like the amp that I remember now that it's getting a regulated 120V. It's still a little lower gain than the BE-100 models in the Axe, but from all the YT clips I've listened too, I'm starting to think that is normal (Dave Friedman, of course, being the awesome guy he is, offered to dial my amp in if I sent it to him).

What the Axe gives me is utter consistency. I can always count on the amp models all sounding the same from day to day, whereas with tube amps, they can be finicky depending on the circuit (especially Marshall style circuits, in my experience). And when I was able to run it through my Friedman 4x12, it was glorious. I certainly couldn't tell the difference. The key with that kind of setup is knowing the parameters in the Axe and how to set them to not overhype the bass and treble frequencies, as a tube power amp will recreate that naturally, whereas the Axe seeks to model that kind of amp <-> speaker interaction by simulating the different impedance loads different cabs will place on a tube amp.

My patches these days are set up with an input for my loaded amps, like my BE-50, KSR Gemini, and Landry LS100G3, as well as an input to the Axe itself. That way I can keep the patch the same for FX, like the cab IR and reverb, delay, etc, while switching pretty seamlessly between my tube heads and the Axe itself. It's a great setup. That said, if I didn't have such a problem with GAS and had to choose one thing, I would choose the Axe since it gives me the most versatility and bang for my buck.

And with all that said, I still do recording with a miced cab since my rack setup is a PITA to move given its weight. I currently have a Mesa Fillmore 25 miced up at my office that I use for video recordings. At this point, it's the tool for the job. Use what works for you, etc etc etc :)
 
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