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Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 3:46 pm
by donreynolds
Has anybody been using the AT3 new models of amps, cabinets and mics? Man, I have been blown away. I am using the stompIO with my MacBook Pro. It is absolutely rocking. I can run it mono or stereo through my dual 2x12 cabinets. The tone is absolutely on the money and the amount of options is really overwhelming at times.

The custom shop is awesome and very easy to try and buy. They have come a long way from the original Amplitube and AT2, X-gear series.

I really think this will be like the SSD drum samples in the future. Every studio will be using these sims, or at least layering the original guitar audio in with them on every song.

The ease in which you can expiriment is so cool. Change amps, cabs, effects in seconds. you can layer amp upon amp, track on track, etc

I am very happy. Using my set up live right now and getting many compliments on my guitar tones. I know there is always a risk of a crash when using computers, so I still have my GT-8 pedal board hooked in with a splitter and ready to go just in case.
But AT3 is not even coming close to taxing my processor, even on 64 buffer setting.

Anybody using this also?

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:30 pm
by mhschmieder
Wow, and here I was almost going to post a HATE thread on the Custom Shop a few weeks back!

I was already annoyed enough at how visiting the IK webpage blasts 0dBFS audio/video at you when you probably have your monitoring level up high for tracking with sufficient headroom, waking the neighbours and almost inducing a heart attack.

Custom Shop was hard to figure out, and it is convoluted. You have to first figure out how much everything you want is going to cost, then find out how many credits you have and how many JamPoints etc., then buy the credits, then one-by-one traverse up and down the product tree to add items that you want to buy,

How much simpler it would be to have checkboxes for what you want, a checkout page, then an option to buy and/or apply Credits, simultaneously showing you how many points you have available so you know which Credit amounts apply (since you can't apply points for more than half the value of anything).

Partly due to how convoluted the process is, I just buy stuff at the Custom Shop without trying first. Time is money, after all, and I couldn't bear to go through that process twice for each add-on.

At least it now orders them according to release date and whether you've bought them or not -- at first, it wasn't even easy to see which ones were redundant; especially since they occasionally release a "single" that is already part of an historical collection.

Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 3:12 pm
by kgdrum
+1 lol
I have points & have tried to figure how to to complete the process & purchase some more variations 2 or 3 times and quit because it was so frustrating!
Yes this part of IK's site is as convoluted as it gets.
I figured how good can these be if you have to endure this very strange painful process just to buy!!!
At the end of the day already having Amp 3 and most of the associated plugs,they sound OK but are these new models really going to sound any more real?I am a bit leery of spending $ on products that any guitarist I know will not even take seriously. I have them, I use them but the more I do the less enamored w/ them I have become.
Are these new choices going beyond what Amp3 does or are they simply rebadged/ re- marketed presets?

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 5:21 pm
by mhschmieder
Although one good thing came out of the new models. :-)

I had never heard of Jet City Amps, until IK added them as options. So I looked them up, and much to my surprise they are WONDERFUL!!!

In fact, I ordered one! I now have a 30 watt "Vox AC30 stand-in" sitting in my apartment. EL84 heaven!

Mike Soldano designed the Jet City amps.

The company is only about a year old, so probably not many here have heard of them yet. They are an affordable alternative to higher-end stuff, made well and designed well. Sort of like the theory behind those Squier Classic Vibe and Vintage Modified models. :-)

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:51 am
by donreynolds
I agree with you on that point,bro. Could have been made much simpler. It was not bad in my case as I already had a lot of them and usually it showed right at the top which ones that i did not have.
Getting credits is pretty easy and the purchase and download is quick. It is also very easy to update another computer(laptop) carrying the same program.

Yeah I was also surprised by the Jet City amp. My favourites are the Jet City, German, Vox and the Marshall knock offs. The Fenders sound very nice but I don't use Fenders that much. I really like the Mic sims and Cabinets. Oh yeah, I forgot about the Orange series amps. They are great also.

I could never afford to have all these amps and even if there is any difference, I am telling you with a little work on tweaking to settings it would be hard pressed for anyone to ever notice that it is a sim and not the real thing.

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 1:27 pm
by mhschmieder
If only. :-)

I have yet to meet a guitarist who, in a blindfold test, cannot tell the difference between:

1. Original miked cabinets
2. Re-amped DI tracks miked through cabinets
3. Amp simulation processed DI tracks

Case #2 is deemed listenable by my pro guitarist friends; Case #3 is not.

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 2:43 pm
by donreynolds
I see your point, but it may depend on how well the sims are tweaked. Using a blend of amp and mic sims, and convoluted IR's for room and speaker/cab it gets pretty close, and when in a mix, i would say it would be very difficulty for MOST people.. But I am sure there are many who probably could pick the sim from the actual. I don't know if I could if it was set up correctly.

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 2:50 pm
by mhschmieder
Good point, and I may pick up some of those mic sims in AmpliTube soon.

Sometimes I use DP's guitar room emulation (I forget what it's called), but lately I've moved more towards adding Ambience reverbs from Altiverb.

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:54 pm
by SixStringGeek
mhschmieder wrote:If only. :-)

I have yet to meet a guitarist who, in a blindfold test, cannot tell the difference between:

1. Original miked cabinets
2. Re-amped DI tracks miked through cabinets
3. Amp simulation processed DI tracks

Case #2 is deemed listenable by my pro guitarist friends; Case #3 is not.
Two things: I kind of hate the custom shop because having bought the Soldano amp (which is quite good and ballsy) I find many of its presets that it comes with rely on reverbs I haven't bought. I find this annoying. I would like to pay one annual fee and get all the new models every year. I hate feeling like I'm being nickel and dimed all the time and that's what this feels like.

Second, I cannot tell the difference between a mic'd guitar amp and an amp sim. Notice I didn't say real guitar amp and DI'd sim. Mic'd. This is key. I have owned some truly fabulous gear in my time. Getting that gear into the DAW, OTOH, I never quite achieved. Somewhere along the line the signal I got on tape or disk ended up thinner and weaker than what I had coming out of the cabs. There is so much variability in tone among amps these days anyhow that this argument is just pointless.

Personally, I'm done with guitar amp and effects hardware and I have yet to have someone listen to one of my tracks and say "that's some lame software amp sim, isn't it". It just never happens.

Re: Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:44 pm
by donreynolds
Same here bro'

Loving Amplitube 3 custom shop

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:56 pm
by daveyboy
SixStringGeek wrote: Personally, I'm done with guitar amp and effects hardware and I have yet to have someone listen to one of my tracks and say "that's some lame software amp sim, isn't it". It just never happens.
I always use a sim now and it's usually Amp3. Sometimes I have the intention that I'll reamp it later with one of my real amps (which usually I do) but, for the most part the sim sounds great and makes the final mix. One "secret" is to just get a great performance down. The real amps cam be more inspiring there for lead work.



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