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Originally Posted by feck  Hey Agreed. If I am not mistaken, what you are saying here is that you constantly hit the sim with the loudest signal you can, which makes sense. Which is exactly what I am saying - when attenuating with the guitar volume knob, the quality suffers dramatically. I understand that sims do calculations based on the quality of the input signal, so the lower it is, the less "well" it is able to do its job. But the AxeFX is a sim, and it actually responds more drastically to guitar volume attenuation than a real amp does, which is one of the things that I love about it. So, it certainly can be done on a sliding scale within the software. I suppose that is one of the strengths of the Axe, and of course Amplitube has its own set of strengths. With Amplitube, when I back off of the guitar volume, the sim just sounds like a quieter version of the louder signal - velocity scaling, in other words. I am a huge advocate of ITB sims and make almost all of my records with them, so I am fine to do the workarounds. But when I hear guitarists saying that sims aren't "as good" as real amps, well, when I think about this issue, I have to agree with them. With all things, the technology will certainly improve. And that isn't to say that there aren't some great improvements with this new software. The mic movement/adjustment is awesome, and I look forward to making some killer recordings with it. |
The AxeFX actually has a pretty impressive input section that does a nice job of basically giving the DSP portion of the unit a very amplike response to begin with. If you happen to have a StompIO, its 12V class-A input section has similarly amplike qualities, the best sounds I've ever got with any of my modelers (and god, that's way too many by now, they sort of add up when you review this stuff) was with a StompIO up front. If you haven't given that a try but it's within your reach (I know, it's difficult to audition things like that) it might be worth a shot.
Really, though, I didn't quite mean what you took me as saying - my fault for being unclear, I apologize. What I mean is that I've found that using the hottest signal possible with my volume knob turned up, turning down the volume knob of course cuts the signal into the modeler, too, and allows me to take dynamic control over the grit. I've got a real THD Univalve sitting right here, the first thing I did was compare how it responds to the THD Bivalve in AT3, and I was impressed with the control I got over the crunch. Same with the high gainers, the Mesa Boogie Dual Rec model can get some great bluesy crunch tones if you dial the gain down past the half-way point and then roll back the guitar's volume a bit.
Of course your mileage may vary but that's what I do and it works well for me
