So DP7 finally arrived (on the 25th, I'm on the left coast), and so I decided to give the new guitar stuff a whirl with a project I've been dabbling with, and see how they compared with sounds from GuitarRig3 and my original recordings. Thought I'd share my experience, although please keep in mind that these comments do _not_ comprise a "review" or "shootout". I was not looking at the products in general, and comparing them apples-to-apples, but just looking at them in the context of this _one song_, a song which highlights the guitar part and I thought would be particularly challenging for amp+cab sim products.
The song is a minor, bluesey tune (my interpretation of Wayfarin' Stranger), and calls for a gently-crunchy tubey sound. I originally recorded it both direct (Radial DI into my 828mk3), and also through effects and amps for a reference sound.
First some details on the reference sound... This consisted on the front end of a Boss GT8 (actually, a Roland VG-99, but with guitar input rather than 13-pin, so it is effectively just a GT8) and thence (stereo out) into a pair of amps. The VG-99 was setup for just a very mild distortion emulation of a tube screamer, and then into a tremolo, that's it. For the amps, I used an Egnater Rebel into an open-back 1x12 with Emminence Cannibas Rex speaker (gotta love the hemp cones), and a Blackheart 5H into a Blackheart 1x12 closed back cab (cool little amp, not a great cab though). Each amp was then recorded the same way: via a Sennheiser e609 hanging off the mic cable draped from the top of the amp, hovering just over the grill cloth, near the edge of the speaker with a very slight (say 10-degree) angle inwards (towards the cone). While this probably sounds like a cheesy way to mic an amp, I picked it up from a friend a long time ago, and I really like the way it ends up sounding, and it is dead simple to do, with no mic stands extending into the room (which is cramped as it is), and with the e609, it works very well, since it is side-address. I leave these two amps setup this way, and also have another e609 on my '59 reissue Bassman. In this way, I'm always ready to record, and get a consistent sound (at least from the mics and cabs) each time. I use the preamps on the 828mk3 for the two smaller amps, and one of my Aphex 207 preamps for the Bassman (not used on this project).
Since I like the reference sound, and I also recorded DI, this seemed a perfect opportunity to try to get similar sounds with both GR3 and DP7's guitar stuff, and see what I could come up with. I was not trying to go for an identical sound in each; this is not intended to be a shoot-out, rather looking for just a pleasing sound. That said, I did use similar components in each, to try for some level of similarity in the comparison.
First with DP7, I setup an instance of Tube Wailer, with Silicon diodes, drive at 2.2, level at 7.7 and tone straight up. I followed this up with the DP Tremolo plugin, the only tremolo they offer, at 5.4 Hz, 61% wet, triangle waveform. This I followed with the Custom '59, armed with 12AX7 preamp tubes (natch), the '65 breaker circuit and the '81 brit tone stack, using 1/I input, and vol 1 at 7.2, tones straight up, other than a slight mid boost (6.1), and master at noon (5.0). I followed this with Live Room G, using a 4x10 combo, driven quite hard (about 3 o'clock), with some output gain (about 1:30, or 2 o'clock). Chan1 I setup "on-axis", with 2dB of mid boost, Chan2 "near" with 2 dB of mid cut, and 3 dB of bass boost, and Chan3-4 with "ORTF" (I wanted a wide sound, but not as wide as the "wide omni"), with 3dB of high boost, and 3dB of mid cut; centre panned Chan1 and Chan2, and all faders at unity.
Now with GR3, I started with a Skreamer (also a TS emulation), set with a volume of 7.7, drive of 1.2 and tone straight up. After this, I added a Tremolo, with a rate of 5.39 Hz (try as I might, I could not get 5.40...), and an intensity of 3.87. I then added on a Tweedman with Matched Cabinet; the tweedman was set with Vol. Bright set to 8.74, Vol. Normal set to 0, bass at 4.7, middle at 7.25, treble at 8.26 and presence at 7.4 (all knobs go to 12), and the cab was set with mic A full on, and 8.5 in the Air direction, and volume at noon. The resulting GR3 soiund was far to bassy, so I added a Shelving EQ at the end with a Low shelf at 125 Hz, with 12 dB of attenuation (pretty severe, but the slope is gentle, so it does not actually get down there anywhere near 125 Hz). In the end, I was still not satisfied, so I added a Split component after the amp, and put the "Matched Cabinet" in a A split, and a "Cabinets and Mics" in the B, with a 4x10 Alnico Tweed cabinet, at 113% size, Tube Condenser mic at "Far", tone, volume and pan all at noon, and Air cranked to 74%, and then set the Split Mix to 40%/60% A/B.
Now for my overall subjective impressions. I found both DP7 and GR3 sounded good and usable, but they were very different, each having a character of their own. I would hesitate to call one "better" sounding than the other, because they did not sound close enough to each other to call that. The DP7 sounded significantly more airy, but at the same time more boxy (EQ-wise) and mid-rangey. The GR3 sounded a bit richer, but also sounded a bit boxy (erm, different sized box?), and noticeably drier and more distorted; I ended up adding some Spring Reverb to give it a bit more space, but even still it sounded very immediate. I think if I had to choose, I'd choose my original reference sound...
But if I did not have that, I'd likely choose the DP7 sound, for this song. But I know for sure that this is not an absolute verdict, and there are places and other songs where I would definitely choose GR3 over what I've heard of DP7 so far. Also, in this song I tried mixing the reference track with the emulated tracks, and found that DP7's track mixed better with the reference track. Again, this is not a shootout verdict, and GR3 has shone on many a project for me, so I know there are cases where I would choose GR3 over the DP7 stuff.Now to get into specifics of each component of the chain...
The Tube Screamer: I'm a big fan of Tube Screamers, and own a couple, and I have to say the DP7 Tube Wailer sounded quite nice. Not sure how faithful it is; in my experience, each TS sounds slightly different, so I am not sure I'm qualified to call it authentic, but it sounded quite nice, regardless. GR3's Skreamer was notably harsher sounding, even at low drive settings, which is why I used a calmer drive setting with the GR Skreamer.
Tremolo: The DP Tremolo is remarkably characterless... This is not a good thing. If they are going after amp and cab and effect sim, they really should offer a decent tremolo. There are tons of really good ones out there to emulate. The GR3 tremolo was quite usable, and really pretty good, but my VG-99 was able to get a much better tremolo.
Amp: Custom '59 sounds good, although I was surprised at the lack of guts to the '59 Tweed preamp and tone stack settings, since my '59 Bassman has a lot more punch than those sounds. Still, I quite liked the sound I came up with. The GR3 Tweedman sounds decent as well, but was not as tweakable as the Custom '59, and the results were slightly more aggressive. Ironically, GR3 Tweedman lets you tube bias, power supply, sag, response and power supply at 50Hz or 60Hz! but very little of this has a significant impact on the sound... Neither sounded the equivalent of my real Bassman (natch), but each had a cool sound, and quite usable in its own right, as long as you were not expecting it to sound exactly the same as the "real" thing (for their respective definitions of "real")...
Cabs: this is where it got really interesting. I really dig "Live Room G"'s tweakability! Very cool to be able to dial in three different mic channels. I would have liked more choices in mics, and I also would have liked a bit more "air", and also a bit more stereo spread (without resorting to the "wide omnis", which were way too wide and distant sounding). But it's an excellent effect, and it is easy to get a good sound with it. With GR3's matched cab, it sounded good as a close-miced amp, but even cranking the Air, did not provide enough. GR3 also offers a lot of tweakability, and the ability to easily split the signal path with a Split and cross-fade between two different cabs provided a good work-around to the fact that the cabinet itself was not as tweakable directly.
Overall: I really liked the ability to tweak the GR3 rack inside of GR3, whereas I found cross-effect tweaking clumsy in DP7. I basically had to have all the effect windows separately open, and then move between them. On a 15" MBP, this was a concern, as screen real estate is at a premium (erm, kinda like all real estate...), and I really found this to be a pain. However, I like the tweakability of the pieces in DP7, especially the amp, and the cab and mics. On the other hand, I also found the flexibility of Splits in GR3 very useful, as I usually do. In all fairness to DP, you can achieve this in DP using sends and Aux tracks, but that's rather a PITA for this specific usage.
Disclaimers: I do _not_ work for any of the companies involved. I have been a DP user since 2.42, and it is my primary DAW, and a GuitarRig user since version 1. I have used many pedal+amp+cab sim products, including Roland (I'm a big-time 13-pin VG guy), Line6 and various others, including Audioease's Cabinet and Speakerphone apps. I do not own Amplitube, nor have I tried any of their stuff. I do not have any hidden agendas or vested interests in preparing this. Hope that helps clarify where I am coming from.