Amplitube 3

[HappyBlues]

I tried Amplitube 3 (11 day trial) and I have to say it really kicks ass. It sounded better than my try to mic my 2266c with an SM57. I liked it so much more than Guitar Rig 4 (sorry surf). I think it sounds awesome, try it if you have time. It's gonna be my practice amp.

[DeanM]

yeah i read that it was very good!! it was actually on the GR4 forum and alot of people there said guitar rig 4 got "owned!" so im interested to try it out too!! and guitar rig 4! just ordered a new PC today so will prob try the demo when i get that set up!

[surfnorthwest]

No need to be sorry, GTR4 is really touchy and if your hardware you use with it is not up to snuff you will have issues. My old PC would not run it right either, when I got this monster PC I have now I was able to take advantage of it. Glad Amplitude is working for you

[DeanM]

i installed sonar ages ago on my laptop but last week but it was only a demo version and had expired so i cudn use it. but it came with guitar rig 3 and that let me use it as a demo version. some settins didn run too well but most ran ok it was on my laptop so would obviously not be as good as a desktop in performance and certainly not as good as your monster PC! and GR3 sucked to be honest! GR4 must be a huge step up is it? in comparison to GR3?

reason i decided to get a new computer (well a few months old comp) is cos even tho the GR3 demo was runnin ok, in some cases CPU usage would be a bit high, say 70-80ish, so i reasoned that while runnin sonar at the same time it would prob just crash straight away!

[HappyBlues]

I got a i5-750, four-core 2,66GHz monster, I doubt Guitar Rig 4 can't run properly on such a computer. Maybe I didn't have something set up in GR4 properly... Did you adjust anything surf?

-- Thu Mar 25, 2010 7:38 am --

I've done a little musical intro with Amplitube 3. All guitars (six or seven of them) and bass. Will post when mixed properly.

[surfnorthwest]

That computer has plenty of ball. I run GTR4 as a plug in within SONAR so maybe that is the difference. I can get dead quite tones of anything I want, works well fir me but I still prefer to mic a cab.

[DeanM]

I got a i5-750, four-core 2,66GHz monster, I doubt Guitar Rig 4 can't run properly on such a computer. Maybe I didn't have something set up in GR4 properly... Did you adjust anything surf?

-- Thu Mar 25, 2010 7:38 am --

I've done a little musical intro with Amplitube 3. All guitars (six or seven of them) and bass. Will post when mixed properly.

When i was plannin on buildin a computer thats the exact CPU i was gonna get!!! i was lookin around for components and agreed to buy a Case, Graphics card and ram off of a guy. then he was like...you wouldn happen to be interested in a cpu and mobo would ya? i asked him what it was and he said an AMD Phenom IIx4 965BE. so i looked it up and found out it was pretty much the same performance as the core i5! the i5 beats it at some stuff by a fair bit. video editing etc but other than that theyre almost the same performance! passmark.com rated the i5 at 4211 points and the IIx4 965 as 4299! moral of the story is i was just about to buy a brand new i5 and i found that at a really good price! so was fairly lucky!
here is a link to the CPU performance grades. surf's isnt a whole lot higher at 4997points so we should be able to run it decently aswel on out cpu's man!
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

-- Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:55 pm --

might aswel post my PCs specs. i havent got it yet. my friend picked it up for me and will most likely be bringin it home at the week end. i bought it used, a few months old. was originally goin to build a PC but made deals on the parts in this comp and it eventually ended up i was takin most of his rig!

CASE: Thermaletake Element G. 4fans. 200mm front, 200mm top, 140mm rear, 230mm side
CPU: AMD Phenom IIx4 965 Black Edition, 3.4Ghz quadcore
CPU-HEATSINK: Scythe Ninja II heatsink and 120mm fan
MOBO: MSI 790FX-GD70, DDR3 ram, IEEE1394, loads of other stuff.
RAM: Patriot (Gamer Series) 4GB PC3 12800 1600 MHz DDR3
GPU: ATi Radeon HD 5770 1Gb ddr5
HDD: 2x samsung 500GB sataII 7200rpm 16mb cache
PSU: Thermaltake 750watt
MONITOR: 24" flatscreen, DVI, HDMI
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64biut

what ya's think? Got it all at a good price. €700! im hopin it'l perform pretty well and be able to cope with recordin etc!

[surfnorthwest]

With 64 bit windows 7 and that quad core you will have zero issues running even the most demanding software for recording, of course 8 gig of RAM is also a big help. The last thing you want when recording is computer issues. Also it is wise to always make syre before you buy any music hardware you plan to use with the computer that there are 64 bit drivers for Win7 already. Most manufactures are pretty good about this.

[DeanM]

Cool thanks surf thats great news!! Yeah the plan was to just start off with 4gig ram and then in the future if needed or wen i have the money i can always just buy another 4gig to make up 8gig! the ram i got tho is pretty fast stuff! its got low latency timings and is twice the speed of the fastest ddr2 ram! so it should be good for a while atleast!!

True about the drivers! i remem you sayin before on here that your hardware already had W7 drivers so i double checked my hardware too!! iv got an edirol FA-66 which is a decent firewire interface. not at the same level as RME stuff by any means but is supposed to be great for home or mobile firewire recording, and they're are supposed to have great drivers!! i tested it out last week with guitar plugged direct for GR3 as i mentioned above and it had 33ms latency. which was useable but then i realised that was cos i had it on the highest buffer settings! so can cut that down alot! but anyway yeah its got W7 64bit drivers!

thanks for the advice surf!

[surfnorthwest]

Make sure your motherboard will support 8gigs of RAM, not all will.

[HappyBlues]

I'm getting an Active dbx DI box next month. Will tell you if it makes any difference with recording software.

[DeanM]

Make sure your motherboard will support 8gigs of RAM, not all will.

Supports up to 16gig ram!! :dance

I'm getting an Active dbx DI box next month. Will tell you if it makes any difference with recording software.

That makes sense. I would say use a DI or an interface with a high-z input to plug guitar straight in when usin GR or Amplitube software and use an interface with a mic pre when mic'n a guitar amp. it doesnt make sense to mic a guitar amp and run that into software to simulate a mic'd amp!! the software also simulates speaker cabs and mic placement so if you already had the cab mic'd with an sm57 then the effect might not sound right! or so i would imagine!

[HappyBlues]

I wasn't runnig mike'd amp into amplitube... I ran straight into line input of my audio interface. Then I either re-amped or used amplitube. Sorry if didn't make it clear in the first place.