Questions about Ample Guitars and Telematic

[kinnylandrum]

I have been doing a very complicated and dense project involving the Ample Les Paul and Fender guitars and the Telematic Telecaster. I have noticed an number of problems, and wonder if anyone else has too.

1. I am reasonably sure that the Ample Guitars, when played back in DP at a buffer greater than 512, can actually play unevenly in time. I have especially noticed this at 2048 buffer with quantized guitar parts.

2. The Telematic guitar, at least when used in UVI Workstation, seems to be particularly drag on the CPU. I had a number of crashes in DP 8.o4, so I wondered if it for some reason it worked better in DP 7.24. Here, with this particularly dense project, I found it would consistently crash DP when loading anything more than about 2 gigs worth of samples, so I had to stop using it. In DP 8 it loaded without crashing, if very slowly, but it slowed down everything. Even saving involved the beachball for 5-10 seconds

Any insights or experiences anyone has with this would be welcome. I will say these guitar libraries sound very much, better generally than Real Strat, which I also used. But Real Strat always works fine with no problems, so I keep on using it.

[David Polich]

Before commenting, I'd like to ask if you've updated to the very latest
Ample Guitar versions.

Ok, onward - I've noticed that to reduce latency to acceptable when using
Amplesound VI's, I have to set my buffer to 128. 256 is fine for all other
VI's I use. That said, once I've finished recording my Amplesound guitar part
as MIDI, I always print the result to an audio track and then remove Amplesound. I do this with every VI I use. Result - no issues with playback
at higher buffers.

Can't comment about Telematic because I don't own Mach V.

[kinnylandrum]

Hi David,
Thanks for answering. Yes I have the latest versions, released in September I believe. I bought the Ample guitars partly based on your recommendation on this forum, and the sound is great. However, I'm not really happy with having to print the VI before I mix. It means every little change asked for by a client has to be reprinted.

I generally like to simply bounce everything to disk all at once for a final mix. This means sometimes raising the buffer beyond 256, which is my usual for setting for playing and editing. I have noticed that when raising beyond 512, the Ample instruments, at least the Les Paul in particular, do not exactly stay in time.

I can't explain this, but it is reproduceable and can be heard, especially on any rhythmic guitar parts. and it doesn't only happen in a dense section, it can even be solo. Granted this project (a rock version of the Rite of Spring with 4 guitar parts, if you can believe it) uses almost 4 gigs of samples alone, and so that may be part of the problem. But it still is inexcusable for professional instruments.

Anyway, if you have a chance to test it on your rig sometime, I would really appreciate your findings. Perhaps I need more RAM, or perhaps there is something else I am missing.

Thanks,
Kinny Landrum

[David Polich]

Hi David,
Thanks for answering. Yes I have the latest versions, released in September I believe. I bought the Ample guitars partly based on your recommendation on this forum, and the sound is great. However, I'm not really happy with having to print the VI before I mix. It means every little change asked for by a client has to be reprinted.

I generally like to simply bounce everything to disk all at once for a final mix. This means sometimes raising the buffer beyond 256, which is my usual for setting for playing and editing. I have noticed that when raising beyond 512, the Ample instruments, at least the Les Paul in particular, do not exactly stay in time.

I can't explain this, but it is reproduceable and can be heard, especially on any rhythmic guitar parts. and it doesn't only happen in a dense section, it can even be solo. Granted this project (a rock version of the Rite of Spring with 4 guitar parts, if you can believe it) uses almost 4 gigs of samples alone, and so that may be part of the problem. But it still is inexcusable for professional instruments.

Anyway, if you have a chance to test it on your rig sometime, I would really appreciate your findings. Perhaps I need more RAM, or perhaps there is something else I am missing.

Thanks,
Kinny Landrum

I recommend sending a tech support email to Amplesound. They're very good
at responding. Email is support@amplesound.net.

[kinnylandrum]

Hi David,
I did leave an email for support at Ample Sound. After a quick reply asking me if I had the latest versions (I must admit to getting tired of being asked that) I got this one sentence reply:
Sorry, there are some difference between acoustic guitars and electric guitars. we will update electric guitars.

Not exactly what I call quality service, but we'll see. By the way, another thing that bothers me about the electric guitars is the screwy way they decide what chords or intervals are playable. You have to use this thing called "capoman" to change hand positions and it's completely trial and error. As an example, you can't even play "Brown Eyed Girl" in the original key of G and have it work. When you get a chance, I would appreciate it if you try it some time and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks,
Kinny Landrum

[David Polich]

Hi David,
I did leave an email for support at Ample Sound. After a quick reply asking me if I had the latest versions (I must admit to getting tired of being asked that) I got this one sentence reply:
Sorry, there are some difference between acoustic guitars and electric guitars. we will update electric guitars.

Not exactly what I call quality service, but we'll see. By the way, another thing that bothers me about the electric guitars is the screwy way they decide what chords or intervals are playable. You have to use this thing called "capoman" to change hand positions and it's completely trial and error. As an example, you can't even play "Brown Eyed Girl" in the original key of G and have it work. When you get a chance, I would appreciate it if you try it some time and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks,
Kinny Landrum

When Amplesound says they're updating something, that means they really
are, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an update to the electrics within
a month. Meanwhile, as much as you're loathe to, I'd just print the Amplesound guitar parts as audio...if you're client wants changes, make a note and do the changes and re-record. And charge the client for it. That
usually curbs their constant change requests.

Regarding the capo thing - I never figured that out, so I gave up on using
it. I just have Amplesound's Fender strat, and to tell you the truth I don't
use it much as I find Electri6ity's Strat (and all the Electri6ity electrics) to be far better, soundwise. Electri6ity's controls are way more difficult to grasp, but you can indeed get it to play proper inversions the way you want.

[kinnylandrum]

Thanks. I'll let you know what happens with Amplesound. The capoman thing is a hassle, but it works, sort of. I still think it's odd that you can't play "Brown Eyed Girl" out of the box.

[kinnylandrum]

I just downloaded the new Ample G and F updates 1.3.5 and they do NOT solve the problem. It is irrefutable in DP that any MIDI track for Ample G and F which will play back fine at a playback buffer of 256k will NOT playback fine at buffers of 1024k or 2048k. There will be a jerkiness to the rhythm. This is especially noticeable on anything quantized or repetitive. They have so far not answered my emails, other than to say their engineer will contact me, which he has not done.

[kinnylandrum]

Actually after leaving one more email for Ample Sound, I just got this reply from their chief engineer:

"We have noticed this sync and timing issue when the buffer size is larger, say 1024. And we have almost found the solution to this but the thing is the fix to this issue have brought about a side internal effect which interferes some other functions. So we did not include this fix in this update. We are still working on the fix on this and should be included in the next update.
Shaoduo"

So I guess they are working on it. Nice to know I'm not hearing things (or maybe I am...)

[cbergm7210]

+1 on these guys for fixes. When their acoustic M came out I emailed about some tuning problems and they told me they would have a tuning expert scheduled to fix any issues, and the update came within a few days. Because of my complaint? I don't know...but they fixed it quick.

[kinnylandrum]

Actually I have noticed some very out of tune notes in both Ample F and G (D below sixth string E and G below that, worse in the Fender than the Gibson) so maybe I should complain about that as well. I must admit, they didn't pay attention to me at first. I had to complain a few times to get them to notice,

[David Polich]

Amplesound is probably three dudes in a 15 x 20 room. I'm sure they'll
get around to fixing this problem.

Till then, the workaround obviously is to record the MIDI at 256 or under,
record that as an audio track, and remove the VI. Hey, once you get used to
that, it isn't that bad.

[kinnylandrum]

Well they posted a "fix" for the tuning of the electric guitars on the Ample Sound forum at KVR. Here's the info:

Just released AGF and AGG tune patch v1.25. please download them and simply replace the same name files in AGF\ins or AGG\ins folder.

http://www.amplesound.net/en/download.asp
AGG tune patch v1.25
AGF tune patch v1.25

Unfortunately this patch only MOSTLY fixes the problems with tuning on both AGF and AGG. I still find that the middle D is flat on the AGF guitar in the neck+bridge pickup, but the rest seem to be OK. I just wish the fix weren't so kludgey.

First of all it took a while to find the AGF/ins and AGG/ins folder and replace these files. It was not stated anywhere that you would find this folder not in the Ample Sound folder created in the Applications folder, but in the Users/Shared folder. Once I found this folder it was easy to replace the files, although since both AGF and AGG required individual unique files with the same name, you had to be sure they went to the right respective places.

But the "fix" for other tuning adjustments, described in the Read Me file in the downloaded folders for each instrument, is both poorly documented and unnecessarily complicated. I have no problem with reading instructions, and I still am reluctant to use the "solution" for fear that I will mess up the tuning somewhere and not realize it for a while. Is it too much to ask that these guitars be in tune BEFORE you buy them?

Anyway, now there's an incomplete "solution". At least it solved MOST of the problems. Now if they could just fix the problem with both guitars playing out of time at high buffers, as well as give us a keyboard mode, perhaps things would be as advertised.

[ashman]

Kinny,

I always thought it was easier to learn how to play guitar then program one of those VI's

Regards,

Philip Ashley

[kinnylandrum]

Well there's a new tuning file posted on Ample Sounds web site. They fixed the problems as described earlier with both guitars and both pickups. However, now in looking at other notes, it seems the low E and G on both instruments and both pickups are VERY sharp, like almost 20 cents on the Low G. The low F, F# and G# are also somewhat sharp, depending on the instrument, almost like the whole low string was sampled tuned sharp. Anyway, once again it's partially fixed. Here's hoping they can fix the low notes as well.

And Hi Phil, how are you doing. I play a little guitar, just enough to be lousy, but I gave my Telecaster to my son, who plays more. And besides I never really wanted to play anything but power chords and "Clean Up Woman". I can still get more out the VIs than I ever could out of playing guitar myself.