Combining Amp Sims for better tone?

[GalacticDeath]

Has anyone tried combining different amp sims to get a better, fuller tone? Like duplicating a guitar track and trying a different amp sim for each one. Are there any potential phase issues when doing this? I'm aware that rhythm guitars Left and Right should be different takes, but what about duplicating the Left and Right tracks and trying different amp sims?

I've been recording on and off for a few years now and like the idea of recording DI for the versatility of re-amping and ease of editing. However, I've never been able to get a tone I was 100% happy with using amp sims, and I've tried a few (Bias, GTR, ToneForge, Amplitube). For whatever reason I seem to get better tones with my PodXT and PodHD500, however I sometimes wish I could edit the tone slightly plus it makes editing harder when the guitars are already distorted from the Pod.

I would still really like to eventually get a good tone using amp sims and I'm wondering if anybody has experience combining amp sims. And what would be the best way to go about it.

 

[GunpointMetal]

I think its pretty common. I like to use two or three, usually a 5150-type, a Marshall-type, and a Boogie-type, or run one amp sim through multiple IRs. I haven't had any major phase issues that I could hear. I'm getting some good sounds out of my Helix just using different IRs on the same amp.

 

[akinari]

Honestly, there's no "best way" to do it. Just try messing around stacking say, a Mesa and a Marshall amp sim together with different IRs, or any combination of lower and high gain tones that you generally like. @soundbase posted this video using STL ToneHub and I thought it was one of the best sounding amp sims I've ever heard.

 

[tender_insanity]

So having the same di track with different amp sims instead of two separate recordings? It will sound like a dual set up, nothing else. If you want to sound like two guitars, there's no short cuts.

 

[bostjan]

Of course it's done a lot, especially in metal. You record a track live, through a DI box, capturing the sound of the guitarist's amp and the DI signal, then reamp/sim the DI signal later through various other amps to get more textures that you can mix in at your discretion. I'd 100% recommend it.

Or, if you are a bedroom player with a lot of digital "gear," just plug the guitar directly into the interface, record, and then copy and paste the track with different amp sims and then submix those into a single bus to get the tone you want.

As other users have stated, it doesn't replace a second guitar take, but you can get massive tones from doing 3 or more different takes and using multiple amp sims/reamps on each take.

One thing I'd recommend when doing this, though, is to back off the gain. Too much gain on too many tracks makes things sound fizzy really fast. If you back off the gain on each track, the end result will sound more textured, thicker, fuller, and also clearer. The extra textures from various amps will make up for the lack of gain in individual tracks, IMO. YMMV/justhavefunwithit/getausedprestige/etc.

 

[GalacticDeath]

I think its pretty common. I like to use two or three, usually a 5150-type, a Marshall-type, and a Boogie-type, or run one amp sim through multiple IRs. I haven't had any major phase issues that I could hear. I'm getting some good sounds out of my Helix just using different IRs on the same amp.

Cool yeah that's what I'm hoping to do as well. Although I've heard before that people have had phase issues from using different amp sims and cab IR combinations. So I'm wondering if the issue is in the amp sims or the IR's. I guess the only way to find out is to just try it, which I'll do later today. That is an interesting idea too to use the same amp but different cab IR's. I've always assumed that there was a correct way to mix amp sims to prevent phasing, so I was trying to figure out what other people are doing first before I try. Thanks for the response!

Honestly, there's no "best way" to do it. Just try messing around stacking say, a Mesa and a Marshall amp sim together with different IRs, or any combination of lower and high gain tones that you generally like. @soundbase posted this video using STL ToneHub and I thought it was one of the best sounding amp sims I've ever heard.

That's cool, I haven't tried STL yet but I've definitely heard pretty good things about it. I always thought there were phase issues when combining different amp sims with a duplicated guitar track. That video gave me a couple ideas to try. It's pretty similar to what I'm trying to do except I'm just double tracking the rhythm guitars.

So having the same di track with different amp sims instead of two separate recordings? It will sound like a dual set up, nothing else. If you want to sound like two guitars, there's no short cuts.

Yeah I'm still tracking 2 rhythm guitar tracks. But I want to thicken the sound by combining different amp sims. I'm not sure quad tracking is the sound I'm going for.

 

[GunpointMetal]

Cool yeah that's what I'm hoping to do as well. Although I've heard before that people have had phase issues from using different amp sims and cab IR combinations. So I'm wondering if the issue is in the amp sims or the IR's. I guess the only way to find out is to just try it, which I'll do later today. That is an interesting idea too to use the same amp but different cab IR's. I've always assumed that there was a correct way to mix amp sims to prevent phasing, so I was trying to figure out what other people are doing first before I try. Thanks for the response!

When you're combining real amps you'd move the mic's around if there were phase problems, with IRs you'd probably end up moving a whole track slightly if there's an issue. The IRs I've been using are from ML Sound Lab and are marked as "minimum phase transfer (MPT)" to avoid this issues when combining cabs.

Yeah I'm still tracking 2 rhythm guitar tracks. But I want to thicken the sound by combining different amp sims. I'm not sure quad tracking is the sound I'm going for.

Quad tracking is cool for looser music styles, or if you plan on doing heavy DI editing before reamping. For tigher, faster music styles quad tracking with often make things sound looser than needed/wanted unless you are an insanely tight player.

 

[GalacticDeath]

Of course it's done a lot, especially in metal. You record a track live, through a DI box, capturing the sound of the guitarist's amp and the DI signal, then reamp/sim the DI signal later through various other amps to get more textures that you can mix in at your discretion. I'd 100% recommend it.

Or, if you are a bedroom player with a lot of digital "gear," just plug the guitar directly into the interface, record, and then copy and paste the track with different amp sims and then submix those into a single bus to get the tone you want.

As other users have stated, it doesn't replace a second guitar take, but you can get massive tones from doing 3 or more different takes and using multiple amp sims/reamps on each take.

One thing I'd recommend when doing this, though, is to back off the gain. Too much gain on too many tracks makes things sound fizzy really fast. If you back off the gain on each track, the end result will sound more textured, thicker, fuller, and also clearer. The extra textures from various amps will make up for the lack of gain in individual tracks, IMO. YMMV/justhavefunwithit/getausedprestige/etc.

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely make sure to roll off the gain a bit. The main reason why I want to combine amp sims is because one of the amp sims I'm using now, Toneforge Ben Bruce, has really good sounding mids but I feel it's missing some low end that I usually like in a guitar tone so I'm gonna try to pair it with Bias to see if I can get the tone I want. I just always thought that it would give me phase issues, so I wanted to see what other people are doing. But I guess I'll just try different combinations and see what happens. \m/

 

[akinari]

The IRs I've been using are from ML Sound Lab and are marked as "minimum phase transfer (MPT)" to avoid this issues when combining cabs.

ML Sound Lab! Those are the ones! Yeah OP, those sound awesome. Try those.

For tigher, faster music styles quad tracking with often make things sound looser than needed/wanted unless you are an insanely tight player.

* James Hetfield has entered the chat

 

[GalacticDeath]

When you're combining real amps you'd move the mic's around if there were phase problems, with IRs you'd probably end up moving a whole track slightly if there's an issue. The IRs I've been using are from ML Sound Lab and are marked as "minimum phase transfer (MPT)" to avoid this issues when combining cabs.

Quad tracking is cool for looser music styles, or if you plan on doing heavy DI editing before reamping. For tigher, faster music styles quad tracking with often make things sound looser than needed/wanted unless you are an insanely tight player.

That's pretty cool, I'll look into those IRs, I'm not familiar with ML Sound Lab.

Yeah I agree on the quad tracking, it wouldn't really fit what I'm doing. I mainly write progressive and technical death metal and it would be a nightmare to quad track.

ML Sound Lab! Those are the ones! Yeah OP, those sound awesome. Try those.

I'll have to check those out!

 

[drgamble]

The only thing that I would say about the phase is, that once you find some tones you like, bounce down those individual tracks. You can then compare the phase of the different parts. You may have to move some stuff around to get it right. I use an Axe Fx and on one patch I have a Mesa for one amp and a Diezel for the other. They both went through the same cabs, but they were slightly off phase wise. I'm not sure if it is a bug or a feature, but is something that was easily fixed.

 

[Sylim]

what i do is i just dual track, no quad tracking or anything, and i stay with the two tracks panned hard left and right, so i don´t duplicate anything. i dial in different tones for the two tracks with different amp sims and ir´s. i try to keep the general character and balance the same, but there are so many different nuances that the two different tones enrich each other. in the big picture it ends up sounding way more massive than using just one tone for both guitars.

 

[tender_insanity]

My favorite rhythm higain sound is Amplitube 4's Soldano at the moment. I just double track them and pan hard L/R. The amp itself has same settings on both tracks but the other has an Engl cab and the other has a Mesa cab.

This is how it sounds like with a seven string abuse

 

[GalacticDeath]

The only thing that I would say about the phase is, that once you find some tones you like, bounce down those individual tracks. You can then compare the phase of the different parts. You may have to move some stuff around to get it right. I use an Axe Fx and on one patch I have a Mesa for one amp and a Diezel for the other. They both went through the same cabs, but they were slightly off phase wise. I'm not sure if it is a bug or a feature, but is something that was easily fixed.

Cool thanks for the tip, I'll definitely try bouncing them out to fix any phase issues that I might encounter.

what i do is i just dual track, no quad tracking or anything, and i stay with the two tracks panned hard left and right, so i don´t duplicate anything. i dial in different tones for the two tracks with different amp sims and ir´s. i try to keep the general character and balance the same, but there are so many different nuances that the two different tones enrich each other. in the big picture it ends up sounding way more massive than using just one tone for both guitars.

Yeah I'll have to try that out as well. The only thing is that I just haven't really been able to get an amp sim tone that was full enough in my opinion to try that with just 2 rhythm tracks. They always seem to lack either bottom end or sometimes high frequencies. I'll definitely keep trying tho.

 

[GalacticDeath]

My favorite rhythm higain sound is Amplitube 4's Soldano at the moment. I just double track them and pan hard L/R. The amp itself has same settings on both tracks but the other has an Engl cab and the other has a Mesa cab.

This is how it sounds like with a seven string abuse

Yeah Amplitube is one of the amp sims I have and I'm actually trying to pair it with a Bias tone. They sound pretty good together. I can't remember which amp model I'm using might be Soldano but I'm kinda surprised how reactive the Amplitube is to palm muting. It sounds almost like a completely different amp when palm muting, I don't think I've gotten that much of a different tone when using other amp sims.

 

[GunpointMetal]

It sounds almost like a completely different amp when palm muting, I don't think I've gotten that much of a different tone when using other amp sims.

This is my real-life experience with Mesa Rectifier-series amps. If I get the palm mutes dialed in, the open string tone is awful, if I get the open string tone dialed in the palm mutes are farty and gross. I think it has more to do with cabinet choice for me, though. Even with the Helix I can scroll through IRs with a loop playing and some cab/mic combinations just have more "movement" in the bottom end than others.

 

[GalacticDeath]

This is my real-life experience with Mesa Rectifier-series amps. If I get the palm mutes dialed in, the open string tone is awful, if I get the open string tone dialed in the palm mutes are farty and gross. I think it has more to do with cabinet choice for me, though. Even with the Helix I can scroll through IRs with a loop playing and some cab/mic combinations just have more "movement" in the bottom end than others.

Yeah honestly it's kinda crazy how different the tone is between palm muted riffs and open string riffs using this Amplitube tone. I dialed it in with a palm muted riff and it sounds full with plenty of bottom end. Then when the song switches to open string riffs, all of a sudden it sounds thin and all the bottom end seems to disappear. I obviously did expect to hear a difference between open string and palm muting, but don't think I've ever heard it to this extreme before.

 

[soundbase]

Honestly, there's no "best way" to do it. Just try messing around stacking say, a Mesa and a Marshall amp sim together with different IRs, or any combination of lower and high gain tones that you generally like. @soundbase posted this video using STL ToneHub and I thought it was one of the best sounding amp sims I've ever heard.

Thanks for the mention. And yeah Tonehub is definitely one of the better Amp Sims I have tried it. When you tweak the knobs it seems to react like a real amp. And tones you can get form it are amazing. I personally like the John Deiley presets and Brian Hood presets. But there's a nice selection to choose from. And they keep expanding their catalog. So try out the demo and demo some of the artists presets and see how it suits your rig.