We Need To Talk About Amp Plugins (theres a problem)

Came here for the chapter markers, stayed for the geeky gain stage talk

Great video! I’ll definitely try this next time I’m in the studio, just got an amp plugin and wasn’t sure how to set it up.

ah,...the problem is in bas players and ideas and narrowmindedness of producers and musicians who can't step out of the old analogue is better mentality

Wow, you record HOT.
I'm just a hobbyist. Been doing it for 10+ years. The entire recording community will tell you to record at -18db. You're at -6?

Boston

Great vid addressing something I’ve been wondering about for some time. This is the reason I’ve been struggling with clean and mid gain plugin tones all this time. Reached out to my artist guy at neural and sent him this video. Although I’m sure he has seen it by now. I hope that they issue a general recommendation.

Definitely gonna mess with this when I get home. It makes so much sense now, hearing It

What about the "flat" track that you have when you record in your DAW? Please help😢

Phoenix AZ!

I never thought this was a secret. They started telling us this years ago when these plugins first started getting widely used. Don’t mean to sound cocky but it is cool that somewhen went and found all the actually numbers and stats for each manufacture and Interfaces.

I guess I've been dodging this one since I always record via Helix -> USB Dry -> Helix Native. Still a good topic to be aware of.

Lowering the gain stage on the DI is a great idea, but I recommend recording with 48kb instead of 44.1 which will increase the sample rate dynamics that were present when gain was at full db.

Also, I recommend adding after the amp plugin with a newly invented technology to mimmick speaker dynamics of which all current amp sims as well as impulse responses lack and remain flat. It is Bogren Digital's IRDX Core which was designed to work with any amp sim and impulse response. They are metal producers which discovered how flat heavily distorted plugins lacked analog fidelity of the random movements of the actual speaker cab before it is recorded into the microphone, but this also works with clean guitars and bass as well.

Now someone needs to invent the randomizations of the electrical current itself that modifies the tone from preamp to the amp. Another aspect that might be lost if one turns the guitar volume itself to the low settings that may not simulate into plugins.

So for all these years, what were you thinking the input gain button was for ?

Been doing this out of necessity for years. I've always found that I have to keep the pre on the interface at its lowest setting when playing guitar straight in (and sometimes even have to trim down.) Even on interfaces "optimized" for hot hi-z inst signals my strat with lace sensors peaks up at about -3/-4 dbfs with the pre all the way down. Even a Mccarty 594 with notoriously low output pickups peaks up above -10.

Hey Rhett just to let you know if you are home Alone. the back door just closed on it's own lol But if there is someone there just Disregard what i said.

Not gonna lie, at first I was rolling my eyes about what I thought was nitpicking, but this is very helpful info.

This makes a lot of sense to me when I think about the fact that preamps on interfaces are designed to amplify a low input signal to line level where most gear is designed to operate. But guitar amps themselves need an instrument level input instead of line level. Love the nerdy stuff!

I record into a DI box and the output goes via an XLR to my interface.

Does this apply to thar scenario?

Digital and analog worlds are completely different... In your tube amplifier you can input with a strong overdrive or a boost, or an equalizer… and the amplifier will react with its analog circuit, its tubes, its speaker... And depending on the volume on the power amp or the preamp, it will sound a certain way...

Meanwhile, the digital amplifier will be created so that this input is simply that of the sound interface at certain levels to avoid distortion, so that if you insert an overdrive or a boost before the sound interface, the result will have nothing to do with it, among other things because you will have to lower the signal so that the interface does not become overloaded...

Moral: don't try to do things the same in the analog world as in the digital world... use your ears and get the best sound you can in each environment... For my part, I prefer analog... 😂

Can someone summrize what his tips are ?

Generational thing. Younger generations won't bother with "real amps", the way no one under the age of 50 buys a newspaper. You might not like it, but it's inevitable.

I was beginning to think I’d never get my plug-ins to sound right!!!
I just did exactly what you and JC suggested and whamo 🥰👍🏼 It’s sounds 200 times better.
I have Axe I/O. (Input level, min gain: 0 dBFS is obtained with a +14 dBu signal at the TS input ) I turned the instrument preamp down and backed off the Neural DSP input gain by -2.2

i was following along, checked my input gain and... it was on 0! so i did it right without even thinking/trying lol

I went back to real amps after 3 years of trying digital. There were many reasons, but the endless tweaking and all the technicalities were one of the main ones. I want to play my guitar. Just plug in and play, not spend hours researching and turning knobs...

Don't try to turn this issue into rocket science. No need to go OCD here.

Just use the amp plugin's input gain or put a gain plugin before the amp plugin and adjust to taste.

Its really that simple!

When I use amp sims I always gain up my pre for good sig/noise and then i just insert a trim before the amp sim, then I can starve the input really easy. I also almost always reamp my amp sims through a real speaker cab and power amp and record it back in with a mic. I use amp sims to track easilly and get tones from amps I don have, not as a sub for amps I have so it always works better to reamp it.

This is not new in any way. At all. I clicked on Cordy's video the other day, thinking there was some new and important information. Not even. This is absolutely DAW 101 stuff.
Am I to believe that both of these guys, who've been recording digitally for quite some time, just discovered that gain-staging is a thing? And that best practices for analog / 16 bit digital / 24+ bit digital recording are different? Either way, If they didn't know or they already knew and are pretending like they didn't, it's not a great look.

Watching from Detroit. Yeah I got the Soldano SLO one for my birthday last year. But I pretty much mic up amps for actual recording, I use plug in more for writing! But this is interesting info!

It's really difficult to listen for ourselves and make a determination, when the plugin is presented in mono (dynamic and ribbon panned dead center) and the real amp is presented with the mics panned hard left and right.

I figured this out a while ago when I couldn’t get a clean tone. In my opinion it’s better to reach for an amp sim suite like amplitude 5 instead of getting individual plugins for individual amp sounds. With something like amplitube you are more likely to get a consistent experience across multiple amps because theoretically amplitube calibrates all of their virtual amps with the same gain staging. Trying to use a lot of different plugins is going to be a bad time.

Watched from San Antonio. Great video. I am going to try this out on my headrush prime as the clean amps never sound right with input up.

loads of differences, they need to standardise.

So... Sweetwater is handing out Custom Shop Teles??? Must be nice.

Interesting topic. This is quite the timing. Last week I just did a fairly elaborate test micing set up with two guitar amps (in a sort of wet/dry set up) and I also split the signal to a direct input on my interface at the same time. I then tried to match the amp sim plug-ins to each amp just to see how big the difference is. For me, I was surprised that I actually got fairly close but the real amps just had a more 3D and dynamic sound that I could not replicate no matter what I did with the EQ and and different virtual mics or can sims. At first try, I was disappointed, but then I discovered the input level on the actual plug in. This helped tremendously as everything was far too gainy, actually ice picky (vs the real amps that I recorded clean and sound beautifully).

I am not done with my test micing (I want to try some off axis positions and move the secondary condensers a little closer) so I will redo this direct idea setting my peramp gain to zero and looking at where my amp sim input needs to be (ID22 and Softube amp room) according the Ed S. chart. I still have my doubts that this will sound like the real amps, but it may get me closer... I don't know why other than genuine curiosity. I'm recording my real amps when it's go time, but I will split to a direct signal as well just for the hell of it, maybe blend in some amp sim on the recording.

I have a question though! I have been following this ever since I saw John and Ed's videos. The solution does work great however, it leaves your recorded DI guitar with very small transients. Small transients are too hard to edit in the daw you can't line them up easily.

Wouldn't it make sense to set your input gain on the interface the same as a microphone and then turn down the amp sim input gain way down like -10 to -12 so you can keep full sized transients?

I don't understand why people constantly try to pit plugins against real amps. They're completely different products and are intended for different uses. Plugins are pure magic for recording at home or on the go, and to reamp or tweek.
Amps are intended for live use.
As someone who tried to make an Orange AD30 in an appartment i know the difference very well.

In retrospect this seems obvious because of the VU levels.... I started trimming back my levels super low because of the VU on the UA board. It always bothered me to set it so low but the the VU is the dead giveaway... but we use the lines for jams, bass & getting a strong transient for edits of the mike amp tracks... I still think my amps/mikes/pres sound way better and warmer... Nice descriptive video and pointers giving & credit to others. Great Job!!!

Great to see Doug Darkglass chimein

Cant understand how this just came up know.
Im a very ameteur musician and producer and ive known about this for years, ever since neural dsp blew unto the scene with amp sims.
I can appreciate that the "correct" gain staging varies between user interfaces, but it sounds obvious when the gain isnt set correctly.
Atleast i thought it was common knowledge to set the gain to 0 when using guitar plugins.

Is it possible that the difference in eq and gain you are hearing, after setting the input gain correctly, is based on the Mic positions/IR's in the plugin and the way your amp is Mic'd? Thanks for the video and for supporting John. he is a very hard working and talneted guy.

I don't use plugins and don't have experience with them but to me it seems that if you don't compare these plugins to real thing - they sound pretty damn good on their own and the moment you put them back to back with the real thing and you start to notice flaws in the "replica plugin"

I live in an apartment and can’t really use my amps on a regular basis. Especially not my rockerverb 😅 with that being said I’ve been pretty impressed with the neural dsp plug ins. I have a cheap focusrite interface and have tried the mesa, tone king, and just got the Morgan one the other day and think they’re pretty good! Obviously not the same as an amp but good enough to get the job done when you have to play with headphones or something like that!

Does this apply to modelers? Should I set my input gain to zero on my Neural QC? Probably a dumb question, sorry.

real amp would still sound better with a real cabinet instead of IRs.

Although useful most people who use these plugins don't have the reference amp in question to compare with. They just aim for a a tone that they need including more or less gain on their plugin or Modeller. So it's kind of use your ears. Does this make this whole issue moot? For a lot of people I believe it does.

Is this really a “problem”, though? I’ve always thought of an amp sim as really an amp sim with an “always-on” clean boost pedal in front of it (which is exactly my real amp setup anyway!)

I literally just dealt with this last night on the neural dsp rebellion. My 7 string in and it had a lot of distortion on the claim channel and it wasn't like that before and watching this video pop up today is really weird, but it made me realize why now so thank you. Had my input on my Beringer UMC1820 Not at zero and I also didn't have the instrument button pushed in. Thanks man just subbed to your channel.

What about amplitube?