A few thoughts for those that are into Amp sims

jonmoore

@richardyot said:
The Virsyn reverb is a combination of convolution reverb for the early reflections and algorithmic for the late ones. It's my second favourite iOS reverb after Pro-R. One great thing about the Virsyn reverb is that it can do insanely long reverbs, which is great for ambient guitar tones.

Love the VirSyn reverb myself. It's especially good value in their spring sale (around $5 if I remember rightly).

reasOne

All this reverb chat makes me wanna yell in a small room 🤣
Just got kleverb a few weeks ago and really think it can fit in almost anywhere.
My other go to iOS reverb if adverb , make it very subtle to start, then add decay and time etc to it as you go,..
With many reverbs I work subtractivly but adverb is additive
Eoswas all I had for a long time lol so I'm kinda burnt out on it but it's still great at the right time

McD

For Guitar Amp Sim's I like a really clean tones. So, the new Stark Amp Sim in AU form is great for me. I do not like it's reverb and I'm finding the "ADverb 2" preset "Guitar Plate" to be a perfect match for my tastes with AudioReverb a close 2nd favorite.

Using ReAmp for the AU Amp Sim was my go to before Start shipped.

I expect the Yonac and Bias folks to show up sometime in the next 6 months to offer solutions for more "High Power" and Metal tones. I wouldn't recognize quality in that tone space because I've never had a good guitar Amp or been able to play that style.

Are there any other products that could be classified as IOS AU Amp Sim solutions?

gusgranite

@McD said:
Are there any other products that could be classified as IOS AU Amp Sim solutions?

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/tonebridge-guitar-effects/id1117291846?mt=8

McD

@gusgranite said:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/tonebridge-guitar-effects/id1117291846?mt=8

Thanks. I never gave the free ToneBridge a serious workout due to the "favorite song" approach. I should look a little deeper and compare it as a general purpose modeling AU to the tools I'm using now.

StudioES

Tonebridge is worth a look since it was completely revamped last year.
In the standalone, they replaced Presets with Workshop, where you can build your own rig choosing your head, cab, pedals. There's a lot of options in each. No need to start with a song.
Once you save the preset, it's available in the AU, but you cannot edit it. Have to do that in standalone. It's free too.

McD

@ocelot said:
Tonebridge is worth a look since it was completely revamped last year.
In the standalone, they replaced Presets with Workshop, where you can build your own rig choosing your head, cab, pedals. There's a lot of options in each. No need to start with a song.
Once you save the preset, it's available in the AU, but you cannot edit it. Have to do that in standalone. It's free too.

This is encouraging. The folks at "Ultimate Guitar" bought out the original developer to pull in more users to subscribe to the "Ultimate Guitar Tab" service. I'm glad to see the funded and update and stopped forcing the "Pick a song" to get a rig for that tone.

I like what you're describing: Assembling a rig is great in a standalone, That probably improves the GUI and then you select a preset while running as an AU and pass on a lot of selecting and knob twiddling. Clever.

StudioES

You can still pick a song as an 'easy starting point' or to learn the tab, but the Workshop is where you can build your own rig. No annoying pop-up ads.

Tonebridge Workshop (Standalone):
30 heads, including acoustic, bass, and electric. And they aren't generic - they're sims of real Marshall, Fender, Mesa, Ampeg, Bogner, Budda, Soldano, etc. amps with slick graphics.
27 cabs in acoustic, bass, and electric. Lots of classic cabs.
30 pedals, pre and post amp, Boss, MXR, Ibanez, Rocktron, SansAmp, etc.

Pretty dang slick. If only we could edit them in the AU.

StudioES

EOS is well worth it's price and useful in IOS, but compared to a later work by the same developer (Valhalla Plate), it's a rather humble plate reverb.
For IOS-only users that may be hard to understand (without hands on experience on hardware or other 'software' reverbs), but that's just how it is.

Reverb is the big white spot on the IOS map, most implementations seem to be based on Apple's (really good) 'clean' reverb prototype.
Aside from EOS the AD480 is the only one I'm certain that it uses own algorithms.
FDN Reverb (Amazing Noises) seems to borrough from Apple, with FabFilter's Pro-R I'm not shure because I don't have it myself.
(btw I'm not into high-end reverbs at all. As suggested I choose the reverb according to source and what the track is supposed to sound)
I fully understand that low revenues from apps make it hard to develope (or port) certain algorithms for/to the platform.

I asked Alessandro this a while back.
Reverb is based on Maurizio Giri’s algorithm which sounds very different from the classical Apple reverb. Is not convoluted but a Schroeder reverb.
Dry lit from Stanford: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/Schroeder_Reverberators.html
From Sean Costello: https://valhalladsp.com/2009/05/30/schroeder-reverbs-the-forgotten-algorithm/

I love it, can from from wild to mild. Not the best choice if you're looking for realistic spaces, and it takes more time to edit if you are, but for that Sci-Fi lost-in-space clear-cold-swirling-abyss sound, it's my favorite on any platform.

jonmoore

Much as I love Alessandro and Maurizio's work, I do find it to be CPU heavy. I've thought that this is maybe because it's developed in CSound and converted for iOS (this isn't certain as it isn't clear just how many of their apps use this approach on the apeSoft website).

Long before I picked up Amazing Noises or apeSoft apps up on iOS I was familiar with Maurizio's Max/MSP and Max for Live work - Density and Pulsaret came out on these platforms long before iOS. CSound is a major aspect with those too and it definitely adds to how thirsty they are for DSP resources.

But in the end, you judge them on their sound and put up with the fact that they're a little more thirsty.

apeMatrix I believe to a native iOS app (leaning on the usual leading 3rd party frameworks) as it's very efficient compared to some other iOS hosts.

Telefunky

@ocelot thanks for correcting me on the FDN Reverb.
According to my experience the CPU demands of Apesoft/Amazing Noises apps are reasonable and in accordance with their sonic quality.
I was quite 'amazed' myself when comparing Sparkle to Zynaptiq's Morph VST, which uses a similiar processing approach - on an iPad Mini-2 (or even the plain old iPad-2, memory is faint)

jonmoore

I'm reading Mark Vail's 'The Synthesizer' at the moment and one passage lept out at me with regard to our discussion on aliasing. The passage talks about the first ever sampling drum machine - Roger Linn's LM-1

Sampling was a little-known term back in 1978 when Roger began his quest. Besides developing his own drum-machine programming ideas such as quantizing and shuffle-play, Linn had to pave his own way into the sampling world. He took the advice of an engineering friend and incorporated a compounding digital-to-analog converter (ComDAC), which provided a better dynamic range than eight-bit linear sampling would have. He also disregarded the Nyquist theorem and used unfiltered samples that contained harmonic content higher than half his 27kHz sampling rate, resulting in a sizzling, sometimes distorted sound that proved more lively and natural than those produced by competing machines.

I think 'natural' is maybe the wrong description but it's definitely another example to go alongside the PPG Wave and DX-7 where aliasing was an important aspect of the sonic signature.

One of my favourite tricks with Audio Damage's Replicant 2, is to dial down the Bit Rate from 24 bits to 4 bits. When you do that you get all these wonderful quantisation error zipping noises that sound remarkably musical.

Sometimes digital distortion artefacts can be the life and soul of a timbre but with guitar amps, you need to be careful with regards to post amp EQ. If you're boosting too much +10k you'll often only be boosting brittle quatisation noise, so it's good to be aware that it's there.