Digi 002 rack & fractal / kemper / helix - modelling amps for studio?

[yogi snaps]

Hi there, i have my trusty Digi002 Rack running on my Mac Pro 3,1 running Snow Leopard (10.6.8) running PT 8.


I also have the Eleven Rack.


1 - I wanted to know where i could go to get more guitar sounds / amp modellers etc for the Eleven Rack. Is there any links / sites available for downloading any available sounds / samples for the Eleven Rack?


Due to the limitations of the Eleven Rack, i was considering FRACTAL / KEMPER / HELIX - MODELLING AMPS for my home studio, to give me more varied amps / tones etc.



2 - Would any of the above newer modelling amps / racks be compatible with my Digi002 rack?


3 - Would i still be able to record a clean track and the dirty track for the purposes of "Re-Amping" with these newer modelling amps on my Digi002? (similar to what i can currently do with my Eleven Rack)



Respectfully, this system is a wonderful scratch pad for me, and i've recorded several albums on it. So kindly refrain from telling or suggesting to upgrade to newer PT VERSIONS, or newer computer, or newer anything please.



If it isn't broke, don't fix it.


Cheers.

[Darryl Ramm]

You don't descibe what type of guitar work you are doing, what types of amps or effects you want to model and what you want to be able to do better/different than you are now with the Eleven Rack. Sounds like you are reamping with it... but with amp sim plugins (which ones?) or back through the Eleven Rack?

Nothing here directly matters about your 002, any decent amp sim/modeler/profiler box will support analog and hopefully digital (S/PDIF or AES/EBU) connections to an interface. Presumably you have suitable connections on your 002. If you want to run multiple of these at once then many interfaces will run out of those digital connections, one reasons I use RME hardware with separate 8x AES/EBU I/O to connect multiple simulator boxes.

What will indirectly cause problems is operating systems compatibility with any management software for current gen simulator/profiling boxes and the 002 drivers, Pro Tools and the Eleven Rack editor if you are using that. You need to work out OS and software compatibility yourself for anything you are looking at. Snow Leopard is an obvious non-starter there, you might as well budget for a modern computer here, if you want to buy into these modern boxes, but then you will need to replace the 002 and upgrade Pro Toolsif you want to run that on the same computer. You might use a separate computer just to configure/manage these boxes and leave your DAW system as it is. I suspect it's not too practical for many users to assume modern amp sim/profilers won't be used with a companion/management computer.

What firmware is your Eleven Rack? The Eleven Rack is a basic very nice effects/amp simulator, it does not create/load profiles like a Kempler profiler. You can save and load rig presets, and there was a website created for sharing profiles: https://www.elevenrackpresets.com It seems pretty much abandoned. Personally I'm not a huge fan of relying on profiles from others, but then my needs are simple.

It has no ongoing support like the fantastic support that Fractal provide with frequent software updates. The Eleven Rack does not even have user loadable impulse reposes. But lots of it's appeal to me is how quick you can get good tones, and how I don't end up spending forever messing with it.

The only significant update for the Eleven Rack was the Eleven Rack version 2 firmware (which introduced equivalent amp models as in the Eleven Mk. II plugins). Effectively no longer available as an upgrade. If you want this buy a used Eleven Rack with v2 firmware. v1 Eleven Racks IMNSHO are nearly worthless.

The Fractal FX products do a lot more, have more effects and especially more high-gain amps and more flexible customization capabilities and more features for playing live than the Eleven Rack. They are also much more complex if you want to dig into using them. They have glorious support and an active community. I'm a big fan.

Kempler products are amp profilers not amp modeller like the Eleven Rack or Fractal products but they are also impressive. It all depends on what you want to do.

There are lots of demos on YouTube showing off these products, documentation is all online so RTFM, I would never have brought into the potentially complex to use Fractal products without reading the documentation first.

All decent amp simulators will have some way of you recording dry and wet tracks, but again you need to RTFM each product. Or maybe you might end up using a DI box in front of the amp sim/profiler to record the dry signal, especially if there are electrical noise issues.

If using digital connections to the interface pay attention to what sample rates the boxes support vs. what you want to/can run sessions at. IIRC the 002 does not support sample rate conversion on it's digital inputs but you can get other interfaces that does digital sample rate conversion. Fractal boxes only run at 48kHz. Others... you can RTFM.

And then there is a whole world of amp sim plugins, and especially reamping though those after you track initially using the Eleven Rack (or other hardware). I hope you have access to the Eleven Mk II plugins, I'm also a fan of Softube Marshal amp sim plugins but there are *so* many amp sim plugins out there. Again you are likely to get a lot more useful help here if you describe what you are trying to aim for in terms of emulated hardware, what type of guitar playing/music, and what limitations you have now that you want to remove/reduce.

And you can always do cabinet impulse responses via plugins.