Amp Farm 3, Guitar Rig, or Amplitube?

[tlester]

Hi Guys -

Amp Farm 2 just flat out blows. For final tracks, I cut real amps. But when I'm mocking stuff up quickly I like to use modelers to do quick tracks. I have a PodXT, but I'm wanting something in the box. So... what's your favorite? Amp Farm 3, Guitar Rig 2, or Amplitube?

Thoughts?

-Tom

[MARVINBASS]

There's one that I would consider that you didn't list and that is the Waves G|T|R system. This was a joint venture between Paul Reed Smith and Waves. It comes with it's own DI to go directly into the interface. It sounds amazing and several guitarist that I've worked with was pretty impressed with the sounds that they were getting out of it.

[playwar187]

I use amplitube for heavier music and more spaced out stuff... Usually only for demos, but I have actually used it on some more major recordings as well for adding subtleties. It blows Amp Farm out of the water. Guitar Rig is pretty sweet too... the ability to choose your microphone along with whichever angle you want and the kind of cab mixed with the kind of head makes for some pretty sweet and versatile possibilities. Amplitube has the same selection possibilities, but guitar rig has a ton more mic selections and cab selections. I can't get the real heavy saturated thick guitar tone that I can get through Amplitube, but its great for just getting a nice big rock tone or a cleaner tone. Word.

[brianjanthony]

All are different. I use Amp Farm mostly during tracking, because it is TDM and it's more stable during 32 input sessions. A lot of times I'll actually use it with a mono gtr feed, then run a split multi mono plug Amp Farm, and run a Marshall in the left and a Mesa in the right. It cuts well for leeds in heavy stuff. And it doesn't crap out sessions. My faves are the bassman and the Marshall 800. I've used the bassman sound on everything from blues gtr to metal bass.

That being said, I like Amplitube the best. For most of the bands I deal with (hard rock and screaming metal), it seems to fit them perfectly. It was my first amp sim, and always seems to balance the "good sound" vs "ease of use" thing. The FX and EQs work like gtr players expect them to. And overall I think it just sounds the best. Most of my clients request we use Amplitube over the others. And I like the way the tones sit in the mix.

Guitar Rig is kinda cool for the gadgets. But I don't think the sound is a little "grainy" or harsh. It's great for "Gainy" sorts of hard rock sounds (which of course, can be stacked to make something "heavier"). But it is no Metallica type sludge machine or Satriani type distorted smooth. Granted, its got so many knobs that you can tweak it till forever. But in my world, I usually don't have the time (and clients just glaze over) when there's 50 million parameters. In my opinion, its just too much stuff to cut through when someone says "give me a great heavy JCM stack sound like band x". And the interface takes up so much real estate, it's kind of a pain.

A lot of times I will use them together (Amplitube for warmth and harmonics/Amp Farm or Gtr Rig for bite and sizzle).

In my experience, I'd rank them Amplitube, Amp Farm, then Guitar Rig.

No I haven't tried the Waves stuff. I'm afraid if I do, I'll like it then feel compelled to buy it. And I don't want to give them any more money right now.

my 2.3 cents
Brian

[Ted Spencer]

Just the other day I set up a little rehearsal FX direct path for the guitartist in my band and attempted to do a two-amp simulation (which is how he plays live). After starting with AmpFarm3 and working with it for a good while, trying several amp/cab/mic combinations as well as various settings on them, (playing my vintage '58 Strat through it for heaven's sake) I was unable to make myself *at all* happy with anything I was getting. It all sounded like thin artificial cheese (which for whatever reason wasn't how I remembered it being the last time I tried, which was with AmpFarm2). I then tried Amplitube, which seemed like it was going to be better, but the latency was immense and the path had to be at least useable in real time, which AmpFarm was. Then I tried SansAmp, and after much tweakage was *way* happier with the sound, and latency was not a significant problem. I ended up using three SansAmps- one as an optional overdrive on the mono path before the "amps", and one on each stereo side as the amp simulation itself (with different settings to make the stereo aspect more convincing - he also uses different delays, reverbs etc. on each side which I emulated). It was pretty surprising how much more real-amp-like SansAmp sounded than the seemingly much more trendy (theses days anyway) AmpFarm3. YMMV...

[Lee Blaske]

Amp Farm 2 just flat out blows. For final tracks, I cut real amps. But when I'm mocking stuff up quickly I like to use modelers to do quick tracks. I have a PodXT, but I'm wanting something in the box. So... what's your favorite? Amp Farm 3, Guitar Rig 2, or Amplitube?

The only way you're going to find out is by trying them. There are undoubtedly as many opinions on what constitutes the perfect guitar sound as there are people signed up to the DUC. (BTW, if you buy all the additional model packs, the Pod XT Pro most likely has more [and a greater variety] of models than anything else on the market by far.)

Lee Blaske