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James... « Another letdown »
Published on 08/11/11 at 19:51Let me start by saying I have tried literally every guitar amp sim out there. I have a lot of tube amps and being a studio engineer I really wish I could sell some of them. So my search for the perfect amp sim has gone on for a while. I have been using Guitar Rig since version 3 and with every version I have hoped that it would get better. So far it's definitely been in the good but not great camp.
Install is quick. Sometimes it can have issues with audio compatibility and crashing. All I can say about that is...it happens. It's not a deal breaker or anything. But NI needs to work on this particular program's stability. It's only gotten worse over the years unfortunately. GR5 crashed ALL the time.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
I use it with a variety of instrument preamps going through firewire. Usually I bring it up in Cubase. It doesn't get used very often because frankly I don't think it sounds quite good enough for my tracks. Well sometimes it does, but rarely. It performs with a reasonably low amount of hiccups. My CPU runs it easily.
OVERALL OPINION
Here's the deal with GR5. It gets a few things right. The interface is by far my favorite of any soft based amp sim. Everything is very interactive and visual. The audio and control layout is made up so that you can navigate everything very quickly and get things done a lot quicker than most other amp sims where a lot of simple tasks end up taking a while. Guitar rig has always done a good job of making you feel like all the gear was right in front of you. So that's great.
The sound quality is another story. The effects are generally pretty good. Some of the more analog ones fall a bit short but the overdrives/reverbs/mods effects are mostly spot on. I would know because I have used most of the "real life" gear. Most of the effects are at least usable and some of them get even higher marks. Only a handful are just utterly bad. But there's so many...it's a non issue.
The cab sims are great too. They tend to be pretty accurate most of the time. Mic placement options are good. Just like in real life, you have to play with placement and stuff. So it's fair.
Now the amps...this is where Guitar Rig has fallen short for me. SOME of them are pretty spot on. The AC30, Fenders, and the rectifier are pretty darn close. The rest are garbage. The Uberschall sounds nothing like my uberschall. The marshalls are a gritty mess. They sound flubby and harsh all at the same time. The Orange and Hiwatt sims sound vaguely like their counterparts but are mostly just bad. It's very difficult to get good sounds out of any of them and I have spent 30 minutes on amp settings just fighting to get a tone that isn't awful.
If only the amps were good, this would be a pretty solid soft sim. Unfortunately the most important element at work is a miss. So I can't give a good rating. To be fair, almost all the soft synths I've tried have been pretty bad. The only good amp sim I've played is the axe-fx which of course isn't software. Sorry guys. Maybe next time.
Install is quick. Sometimes it can have issues with audio compatibility and crashing. All I can say about that is...it happens. It's not a deal breaker or anything. But NI needs to work on this particular program's stability. It's only gotten worse over the years unfortunately. GR5 crashed ALL the time.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
I use it with a variety of instrument preamps going through firewire. Usually I bring it up in Cubase. It doesn't get used very often because frankly I don't think it sounds quite good enough for my tracks. Well sometimes it does, but rarely. It performs with a reasonably low amount of hiccups. My CPU runs it easily.
OVERALL OPINION
Here's the deal with GR5. It gets a few things right. The interface is by far my favorite of any soft based amp sim. Everything is very interactive and visual. The audio and control layout is made up so that you can navigate everything very quickly and get things done a lot quicker than most other amp sims where a lot of simple tasks end up taking a while. Guitar rig has always done a good job of making you feel like all the gear was right in front of you. So that's great.
The sound quality is another story. The effects are generally pretty good. Some of the more analog ones fall a bit short but the overdrives/reverbs/mods effects are mostly spot on. I would know because I have used most of the "real life" gear. Most of the effects are at least usable and some of them get even higher marks. Only a handful are just utterly bad. But there's so many...it's a non issue.
The cab sims are great too. They tend to be pretty accurate most of the time. Mic placement options are good. Just like in real life, you have to play with placement and stuff. So it's fair.
Now the amps...this is where Guitar Rig has fallen short for me. SOME of them are pretty spot on. The AC30, Fenders, and the rectifier are pretty darn close. The rest are garbage. The Uberschall sounds nothing like my uberschall. The marshalls are a gritty mess. They sound flubby and harsh all at the same time. The Orange and Hiwatt sims sound vaguely like their counterparts but are mostly just bad. It's very difficult to get good sounds out of any of them and I have spent 30 minutes on amp settings just fighting to get a tone that isn't awful.
If only the amps were good, this would be a pretty solid soft sim. Unfortunately the most important element at work is a miss. So I can't give a good rating. To be fair, almost all the soft synths I've tried have been pretty bad. The only good amp sim I've played is the axe-fx which of course isn't software. Sorry guys. Maybe next time.