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Comments
So far I'm not feeling this one like I do with the Nembrini amps. I'm not too surprised as my taste in amps is more often than not misaligned with most peoples. I need to give it some more time though. One sitting is almost never enough to really get a feel for amp sims ... except for Nembrini Faceman. That one was my main amp from the first riff.
Can someone enlighten me about one-knob compressors? In this context of a guitar amp sim, would they have optimised it with the right kind of attack speed to capture enough transient for bite, and thus preserve "guitar musicality", and the typical kind of treshold that works for certain situations? There are a lot of assumptions of what that might mean, but I do think that opinionated simplicity is often a great thing with products.
I will say that I've not really played with the compressor on this thing, but I do use my interface/mixer's compressor, because I have a hardware effects loop but no compressor pedal, and it also just has one control. I use it without much thought, often just leaving it on by default, and it generally sounds nice — it turns my guitar into a nice "rope" when I'm playing leadish stuff and riffs. Primo definitely plays well with "ropiness".
You can tell I don't know much about compression, can't you? But I'm curious — what goes on with one knob?
Thank you for the explanation, @espiegel123 . I contacted the dev about the midi learn bug and also about the scaling issue of the UI. Hopefully they will fix this.
I like the IR called “British”, also loaded my OwnHammers to tighten things up.
In the higher gain settings I’m noticing a bassy wobble under the sound. Moving the bass slider down doesn’t help at all. Changing IRs helps a little. @jebni I wonder if that’s what you’re hearing is boomy. Not sure how to dial out.
I like the stock IRs, particularly the Modern American and and the Tweed. Yeah they're gritty but they have character. I'm only using one custom IR, the AC30with SM57 I got from here.
I actively avoid the IR rabbit hole, life is too short!
No problems here with boominess or resonance - I find these easy to dial out using the output shelving filters.
Spent some time on the dynamics section and with subtle settings it really shines. Excellent bluesy overdrive tones all day, very easy to dial-in. And while I'm not generally a high-gain player, I've been getting some awesome doomy sounds with a downtuned guitar. I'm totally enamored with this amp.
Only one problem so far - when using stage mode I got a nasty crash when I tried switching on the phaser via MIDI. Haven't been able to replicate it though.
After playing more (with humbuckers) maybe a couple things worth mentioning. Where the amp shines is in each channel’s gain knob. Amazing range in cranking the gain knob on each channel to get a rowdy clean or natural sounding distortion. The gain knobs add sparkle and girth and a healthy boost but all sounds like part of the amp. Not sure which “Italian boutique” amp was the inspiration for this, but I get el34 vibes. I just started in “default” preset and cranked both gain knobs, and picked a brighter IR. The time and modulation effects all seem tastefully done. The amp in a room spacial sound is really good, dry thud of the amp but not too dry.
There’s a separate “overdrive” module you can activate on top of each channel’s gain stage. For some reason it doesn’t sound good to me, and amp sounds better with that module bypassed. The gain knobs on each channel do a much better job of goosing the amp in a pleasing way. Somehow the separate od module cuts too much bass and makes it sound honky and somehow smaller. In the higher gain presets there’s a real boomy wobble in the low end. Cutting the bass slider or changing IRs doesn’t really help. Manual says there’s a lo-cut filter bottom right of screen, will have to try. There’s also a mode that adapts the amp to your playing, that’s a new one.
I just recieved this message from APFX about Primo:
Currently, MIDI messages are only supported in the standalone version, it is normal that MIDI is unresponsive in AUv3.
Thank you for your feedback on the UI scaling, we'll fix those issues as soon as possible.
It's strange that they don't mention the fact that you can use midi to control the Primo's AUv3 parameters; maybe too obvious...
AUv3 parameters don’t really have anything to do with midi. The host is receiving the midi. The AU not knows that the host is adjusting parameters. It has no idea that the host is doing that in response to midi.
This looks impressive, and for free!
Has anyone played around with the “Dynamic Control”?. Very interesting concept. But the fact it’s paired “rhythm/bass” vs “lead/treble” has me a little confused. I thought it would react to input “strength”, how hard you’re playing, using some sort of transient detection… But in that case the fact it’s treble or bass makes no difference. Or is it a combination of both?.
The low cut works pretty well in conjunction with the plugin’s EQ to get it to where I want, plus I have an EQ on my interface. Just surprised that I have to max it all out to ‘no bass’ to get there 😀 — I’ll try some alternative IRs. I want clean Fenderish stuff, so haven’t even tried anything but the American on the clean channel. I’m also using flats, so my bottom strings are naturally much darker than most. Agree that the gain knob works better than the overdrive.
Primo people, I need your help confirming something. I placed about 25 OwnHammer impulse responses into the Primo folder and restarted the app per the user manual. I can see and choose them in app’s pulldown menu but I can’t hear any difference between them. Only the “factory” IRs are audibly unique.
Is it me or the app? Thanks.
@Schmotown just tested and it works for me. But a little gotcha is that the scrolling on the menu is rather dodgy, the up/down scroll arrows overlap with the menu items so you end up selecting something you didn’t intend to,,,
Yes, I’d like to see a bit more attention paid to improving the menu and picker performance. The targets are a bit too small and finicky.
I think the idea is that you can have a different tone when playing low in the neck for rhythm and high on the neck. Let’s > @NeuM said:
Report it to the developer. There is a contact form on their site and they seem to be pretty good about responding to messages so far.
Incidentally, the link to their web site in the app itself doesn’t work. Here’s where to report issues:
https://apfxaudio.com/pages/support
I suspect that what we have here is something similar to the GuitarML captures: a neural net trained with one parameter (Gain) swept over its range. That's why the channel gain knobs are more effective. Everything else, including the tone controls, is applied either pre- or post-amp, like conventional effects. Either way, it's definitely an interesting implementation.
Maybe they can add some additional captures as an IAP, so they can earn some profit for their efforts.
Tried more things with different pickups. Still finding I have to turn down the bass and mid sliders considerably, raise the treble slider a bit, pick a brighter IR, turn off the lower right frequency module completely, turn off the reverb. It helps but there is still a wobbly low rumble underneath the sound. The reverb module accentuates low too as it’s one knob and probably doesn’t have lo-cut nor pre-delay. If there’s reverb and a bassy IR like the “modern”, forget about it. I went back to Nembrini and TH-U to compare, and I still prefer them to Primo. The difference is the low is tighter and more defined. Also the signal and pick attack seem closer or more immediate, I hear more guitar wood. Nembrini also has a lot more analog character in the saturation as you push the amp. Th-u just sounds and feels right. It’s really splitting hairs at this point, and all of these apps benefit from third party IRs.
What I like about Primo is how useable and enjoyable it is. Both channels have a good base tone and gain range. Interface is really great and quick to use. “American Classic” IR and “British” IR are very nice. The one knob reverb and compressor are ok, but the delay and chorus are amazing. The delay is versatile and you can crank the volume and feedback for infinite repeats and oscillation without ruining your signal. There must be a secret limiter on the delay module or somewhere else. I think the Chorus alone is worth the price of admission. With the depth maxed and rate fully ccw, it’s not a chorus at all but an amazing doubler or stereo image enhancer. Whatever that is, amazing. Paired with the delay, hours of fun. In this way Primo is geared towards traditional analog sounding rock guitar, tastefully done.
Is GuitarML any good? Only on desktop right?
GuitarML is a technology. You can run some guitarml captures in BYOD. There are some nice captures there.
There is a thread detailing where to get the captures and how to load them into BYOD
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/57723/high-end-hardware-emulations-for-byod-ios/p1
Hi jwmmakerofmusic, PRIMO is available also for macOS (Intel/Mx) and Windows PC!
Hi jebni,
Our single knob compressor adapts several different internal parameters depending on the single knob value. We set attack, release, threshold, ratio and loudness compensation. The idea is to provide musicians with a very easy to use compressor that simply does the job, without the need of hours of fine tuning!
Hi tahiche,
Dynamic control is related to the pitch of your playing, so if you are playing at the start of the neck/lower strings the parameter will be set to the "rhythm" value, and then if you switch to a lead phrase up the neck, the parameter will be shifted to the "lead" value. "Smooth" sets how smooth is the transition between the two values, while "balance" sets the point where the shift is triggered. We are working on a video tutorial/demo to better explain how it works!
Hi JoyceRoadStudios,
Yes, the chorus can works as a doubler, but also can be placed before or after the amplifier, to have different flavors of chorus! Regarding the sound being dark, I'll write a post after this comment with an explanation!
Hi everybody!
I'm Alessandro, main, and only actually
, developer of APFX! We are just two young guys passionate about music, technology and of course guitars. We are really really happy to read all your positive comments! For any question or feedback feel free to drop us an email!
I've read that some of you have found the sound a bit too dark, sometimes this happens if your input level is too low. The input meter in the bottom left corner can help: strum a couple of chords and see if it is green or blue, if it is blue turn up the gain of your audio interface or the input gain of the plugin, again in the bottom left corner.
We are aware of some resize issues in some DAWs, we are working on it, at the moment we have official support only for Garageband for iPad. The same goes for MIDI input for stage mode in AUv3. We plan to release an update in march/april with all the additions/fixes.
I have some questions for you:
Thank you again guys!
@apfx_audio : i like the non-skeumorphic design.
@apfx_audio I prefer a skeuomorphic UI, but if it prevents you from being able to easily scale the app for other sizes of devices, then it would be more practical to change it. I only ask that you keep any explanatory type or symbols large enough that they can still be read by those of us without perfect eyesight and that there remains enough contrast so all visual elements can quickly be found for adjustments in a live situation. Also (on my iPad Pro, 12.9” screen) the touch targets themselves could be a bit bigger on the top control bar and patch picker and I usually have to tap at least twice to get a patch to select from the list of patches.
As for the consistent volume level I think that should become a feature on every amp and synth app. Ingenious.
Thanks for making this awesome app.
@apfx_audio thank you for being on the forum and for releasing this great app! Very surprised that it’s free, could easily be $10-$20 instabuy even in a saturated market.
What do you mean about “constant loudness” of the amplifier section? As in both channels are volume matched or something else?
It would be great for the manual to describe what the one knob compressor and reverb do as you move the knob. Just as you described above but in the manual. For the reverb, is there any pre-delay or lo-cut adjustment as you make it more wet? It would also be great if the frequency filtering module lower right could be better described. Is it a hi-cut lo-cut or lpf/hpf, basically just instructions on how to use it. I love the UI and everything about it. App is easy to use and dial in, hassle free. Most important thing is to keep all promised features working and stable, and people will keep coming back! The rest becomes kind of subjective…
I want to make a clarification about the “dark” sound. It’s not that the amp sounds dark, not at all. It’s that there seems to be a low end rumble or wobble underneath the sound or along with the sound. I usually associate this rumble with a 4x12 closed back cab like a Bogner or Mesa, just too much puffiness underneath the sound. Or it’s like when the reverb is too wet and there’s no hpf or lo-cut, so things become exponentially woofy. Adjusting the eq and the filters and turning off reverb does help, but the sub rumble is still there, I guess I may be looking for an actual lo-cut or high pass filter on the amp’s input. And this is why I say it may be subjective or particular to my ears or gear. Perhaps I just prefer attenuated lows… or perhaps you guys could fine tune the low and get it out of the way… funny enough when the effects like chorus and delay are on I don’t notice this low, almost as if it’s filtered out by something else in the chain.
Primo is a really great addition to iOS, congratulations!
I’m dying to know, is it based on an el34 amp from Mezzabarba or Brunetti? That’s my guess!
Right, but not iPhone, which is where I produce my music on. I would definitely pay money to have an iPhone version.
Also welcome to the forum.
Great to meet you.
Thanks for the feedback! We are working on usability and accessibility, to make sure that everyone can use use our software effortlessly. We will focus on colors, symbols and contrast.
For a live scenario I recommend to use the "Stage Mode", some of our beta testers have already use it on stage with success!