...still looking for a really convincing guitar amp tone for your ITB productions?

Tired of lifeless digital emulations of clean/light crunch guitar sounds that haunt your lovingly crafted mixes?




Based on a wonderful vintage ‘Custom 50’ amp paired with a 4x12” cabinet, both built in the early ‘70s, the SURREY suite of Acqua libraries for N4 by SoundDrops is bound to surprise you with its lifelike depth, its warm yet snappy tone. The bundle includes also a plug-in specifically dedicated to the recreation of the ambience around your guitar tone, be it a classic spring reverb or the real, special room in which this amplifier has been working its magic for many years.



Details

The SURREY GUITAR AMP SUITE includes 4 different plug-ins:

SURREY

This is the complete head+cabinet chain. Here you have all the customary controls for the amp section, plus a choice of 3 different microphone settings for the cabinet. You may mix and pan each microphone independently.

SURREY-AMP

Just the head. You may pair it with the cabinet of your choice, or use it by itself for any creative sound design application.

SURREY-CAB

This is how the 4x12” cabinet sounds. This plug-in offers an extra 4th microphone setting compared to SURREY. Again, you may mix and pan each microphone independently.

SURREY-SPACE

An extremely useful addition to the suite, SURREY-SPACE gives you the option to place your guitar (or whatever else you care to throw into it) in two different virtual spaces: a classic spring reverb (actually sampled from a stand-alone tube model from the early 60’s) or the natural room sound of the studio where this amplifier used to be placed. It won’t take long before you appreciate this special room also on other sources, first and foremost drums.



By popular demand, there's a new addition to SURREY GUITAR AMP SUITE, the library for N4/N4 Player recently released by SoundDrops...


The new kid on the block is SURREY LE, the 5th plug-in included in the bundle at no extra cost.

It's a lighter version of SURREY and it's meant for real time tracking and processing.

Differently from the main plug-in, SURREY LE offers only two fixed microphone settings and a slightly simplified internal structure. In return, its CPU load is on average less than a half of SURREY’s.

Its warm and true-to-life sonic traits are left untouched all the same.

Latest news: the updated SURREY trial version is now available on Aquarius. It also includes the trial version of low-CPU version SURREY LE.

The intro priced is prolonged for a week from today, as promised, so it's still 52€ instead of 80€!... HURRY!

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Here are a couple of quick video demos introducing SURREY...





More to come...

is this the bloody Hiwatt Custom 50? now we're talking.

you have DR103 100 watt by any chance?

what I like about Hiwatts is enormous amounts of headroom and dynamics

cleans are heavenly and leads are super massive.

Unfortunately not... And even that great Custom 50 wasn't actually in my possession, I don't even know where it is right now.

Everything is explained in detail in the manual (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

However I fully agree with you: cleans are simply heavenly.

These sound great! Thanks for the plugins!!

oh well, thank you for making it available for a free N4 Player. I wouldn't get this otherwise.

Looks very well done Stedal. I love all the options you provided.

I'll test it against the usual suspects.

Cheers.

Sounds really great in these demo videos. I expected it to sound really good but what I wasn't really prepared for was how well it works with the bass in the second video here. It totally brings it to life. I'll be spending some time with this over the next few days.

I moved away from amp sims a couple years ago, but with releases like this and Virgo/PowerCabs, I feel like we have taken a new step forward when it comes to ITB amplifiers here.

How is latency on Acqua amp sims? Are you able to track through it in real-time?

Daaamn I almost went for Neural DSP on the Black Friday, glad I stalled. Anything guitar in Nebula is a win and Stedal is a master, buying this now

Yeah, this is my question too..Is it useable in real time?..

I've been using The Scream or the ChowDSP Klon emulator into Virgo and loving the results, adding this will give me different flavours.
Do you think Neural does the distortion the best? I've demo'd Nolly and yeah it is good but not sure if doing better than my existing combo. Will demo further though

Well, I'll be frank: of course it depends on your system, but it must be said that Surrey is quite CPU intensive.

ATM, with a SURREYZL instance at 44.1K I can't get any lower than 512 samples with my buffer size, but I must say that my system here at home is a Win10 PC based on a i7 5820K CPU, which is a bit long in the tooth by today's standards...

All in all, I believe that as far as real HQ digital emulations of an amp+cabinet combo, response- and soundwise we're almost there. But if we want to use them in real time and get exactly that 'real thing' feeling, I'm afraid we must wait a few more years, at least until the next CPU forward jump.

Just my opinion, of course...

Think about this though... for a very reasonable amount of money (maybe even less that Neural software - I haven't looked), you could purchase the Behringer Tube Screamer and/or Proco Rat pedals and have hardware distortion going into either Virgo or Surrey. Killer. I have the Behringer Tube Screamer (TO800) and it is every ounce as good as an Ibby TS (don't let any cork sniffers tell you any different).

The Scream is an excellent reproduction of the popular pedal and it works really well going into Surrey, but I'd suggest to try also DiBiQuadro's SaturnLO and MercuryRec fine amp emulations.

in other words, Intel needs to cut the crap and release a real CPU.

Thanks Stedal, I love the Scream.
Saturn and Mercury just didn't work for me on Win 10 unfortunately, crashes all the time. I tried to get help from DibiQuadro, sent them a bunch of files they asked for but no reply, I dont think they were interested unfortunately

Ah, I was forgetting this, of course...

As it always goes, the best emulation is no emulation!

So, if not a real complete vintage amp from the '70s, why not a real overdrive pedal?
IMHO, analog is still well ahead of digital as far as non-linearities and controlled chaos...

Actually you're totally right and I have a bunch of great pedals but I get so lazy hehe. Actually, I should just record my vintage Champ but the kids sleep next door so I get used to doing everything ITB

Congrats on the release Stedal! I'm not a guitar player but checking this out on Kontakt Library Rhodes etc and sounding really good!

I have noticed a few glitches in the gui though. The CAB switch on the main Surrey plugin is temperamental, sometimes the light comes on when you click it, sometimes it doesn't. Also the switch for the Spring/Room in the Space plugin, when you click it, it doesn't always do what it should. So sometimes i'm hearing the spring but it is showing on the room and vice versa.

I'm using the trial verson, on a 2013 imac, OS Mojave, Logic Pro X 10.5.1.

The sound of Surrey seems to be promising. Is the plugin suitable for a Telecaster single coil warm pickup?

I definitely think so.

BTW, the neck pickup of a fine Tele is one of my favourite electric guitar sounds. Just think of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah...

Thanks! I have got a pretty old Tele and haven't found a decent soft amp yet to reproduce that warm and creamy vintage sound.

This amp is something special, love the tone of cab number 3 at the moment. Bought Powercabs too which is amazing but Surrey has the special tone. Buying next month when I have funds replenished (oh, how long does intro price last?)

This sounds great but I'm super bummed that I can't play live through it. My computer can't handle it at all. Stutterfest 2020 happening here.

SteDal, I am wondering if there is a way you can do a 'lite' (reduced kernels maybe) version that people can use to riff out with but then switch back to HQ mode for reamping and mixing duties?

@ kindafishy:

I've tried to cut corners somewhere while designing Surrey, but it's quite difficult to strike the right balance between sound quality and CPU load.


I'm still experimenting, though... but I'm not making any promises, mind you.

Well, at least the usual 30 days.

I´ve already bough it and installed (VST3 version), there are several switches locked in a position (far left) and don´t take any effect (each time I try to move them, they return back to far left). Mic 1, Mic 4, spring, presence....

Windows version, using (still) Windows 7 in Samplitude Pro X3 and Reaper. Installed from Acquarius.

Thanks

Sorry to hear about your troubles, prosodio.
It looks to me like an authorization problem...

I'd suggest to uninstall Surrey, and then install it over again. If that doesn't solve it, then you should send a ticket to AA, stating the problem.

A very important note, though: if you check the manual, Windows 10 is clearly indicated as a minimum requirement for N4/N4Player, as per AA's guide rules.
Usually, as far as Windows systems, retro-compatibility is quite less of a problem compared to what regularly happens with MacOS, but I can't be absolutely sure about that.

Apple recently did it, x86 is an outdated design, ARM is the future.