Comparing The BEST Amp Sims With The SAME Cab 

Bravo making this video, love the honesty and not just a video saying ours is better than theirs. Actually making fair comparisons and how another company's product may work for you and why one didn't but may work for someone else. I'd recommend checking out Bogren Digital's new AmpKnob, as a single knob amp sim.

i feel like assuming we have a consistent amount of gain through the different amps, the ir dictates how the guitars sit in the mix, while the amp mainly determines the character of the distortion. As a guitarsist i also want to say that i've had times when changing the amp (and keeping the cab) wouldnt make any difference in the mix, but one of the two felt so much better while tracking, that actually improved my ability to perform.

I’m gonna paraphrase Glenn Fricker. The amp does change the sound but high gain amps are just variations of the same flavor. If you really want to change your tone, change your speaker/microphone.

Ignite Emissary showing it's age for sure but still hanging in there with the newer ones really well.

I use and love stuff from Neural DSP, STL and JST. My go-to at the moment seems to be the STL Amphub. I just love how it's set up and how each sounds. It's one of the only subscriptions I do, they release a new amp model and/or pedal every month! And I love the JST Anvil IR pack, I use that all the time and I'm STOKED to try this secret stash. Thanks for that, JST! :)

Getting the right IR's was the biggest part of me being happy with my tones. I think these sims all sounded really good, but I'm really impressed with the good 'ol Emissary, which is free, still hanging with the big boys! Still use that one from time to time. Great video!

With the same impulse response, you can dial similar enough sounds on any of the amps for usable tones. Slight variations are due to eq and gain setting differences.

If more evidence was needed... 90% if the tone is the IR, expecially with high gain. Good stuff!

Bravo Miami. It took me awhile to realize that I didn’t need 800 amp sims to find the flavor I want. I just need to keep a good arsenal of IR’s to go to with a select few amp sims. For your examples here there were some obvious differences in solo. But you’re never going to hear any of the solo tracks in a song. So it doesn’t really matter. When it came to sitting in the mix they all sound relatively the same, with the exception of the mercurial. What’s really fun to experiment with, is not only changing IR’s but changing pedals as well. Like load up Jeff Loomis but only use the head. Then load up gojira before it and only use the boost pedal. Then throw on your IR. Or use something like Libra or Cali Cabs and start blending IRs. Then you’re really getting deep.

I've noticed with properly recorded DI's you can throw on just about any amp Sim and have it sound good. Meanwhile if you have some DIY stuff to work with you can spend ages looking for the right thing. So I'd probably put DI quality up there as well in overall impact of tone with the IR/cab. Something like a "what to look (listen for) when recording DI" video would probably help a lot of people. Thanks for your vids, always a good watch.

Your segway into "subs" is getting more refined... LOL ... Good stuff Miami... As one who owns most contemporary Amp sims, The Loomis is in 95% of the sessions i work in. I never use the same amp for left and right guitars, but that Loomis is usually on my left guitar channel proudly.... and i dont even think about bass tones without HellRaiser. Hands down the most versatile bass rig ive played with..

Interesting to see how you dial in the sims. Particularly the treble and presence so high. This was cool. Not sure it it was level matched though.

Made a similar video couple of months ago and found the cab has the biggest affect. The amps' distortion character is very Important too.

Its always like everything in life... The combonation of evreything With this combuter music, YES the i.r Really make a diffrents!!!

It's actually a really helpful video. The guitar tone affects the overall sound firsthand. I got more satisfactory results when I put different cabinets on both sides while panning right and left. It makes me feel closer to the natural.🤘🏻

I've always tried to stress to my younger Genoa guitar player friends and clients that speakers and cabs represent most of your tone. Great video!

yes! The cab is the most important. But the mercury did sound a lot different than the ones before it, and threw me off for the rest of the comparison :)

Not a shocker at all. Excited to try out these IR’s from you guys, as I haven’t swapped IR’s since I grabbed Kohle’s DV-77 from Eminence. Incredible sounding IR’s, my V30 killer I’ve been searching a long time for, at least for ERG related stuff.

I was recently in a facebook group debating the amps vs cabs thing. Dude thought cabs make no difference and that tone is 100% in the amp. I tried to say otherwise but eventually just had to facepalm and leave the conversation because I remembered that other facebook-forum-goers are always right under all circumstances lol. This is yet another example of how tone is only marginally different when changing amps but using the same cab. Especially in the mix, I couldn't tell a difference at all. Maybe that's because the guitars were buried under the drums and synths, but I think the point still stands.

Thanks for sharing this video! It took me many years to realize that (in my opinion at least) the cabinet makes up the larger percentage of your tone. Ever since then, I've told people; "Run 1 amp through 6 different cabs and you'll get 6 different tones. Run 6 amps through 1 cab and you'll get 6 very similar tones". When questioning what kind of impact the cabinet has on your overall tone; run a high gain distortion pedal into a clean poweramp and out of a quality cab and see what kind of results you get. That said, I believe our biggest improvement as far as overall "good tone" goes in regards to modeling has been the cabinet emulation.

This is awesome and very interesting! Obviously there will be some diferences between the heads, but here they all sound very very similar to each other (except the mercurial, thats the most different one) but the main thing always is de cab, very cool video! Makes you think about trying out different cab combinations to make new tones and stuff, I looooove doing that kinda thing!

Excellent video sir! I must say, literally every single one of your videos I have watched has been awesome! Pretty sure i have seen them all too.

i remember demoing the Jeff Loomis toneforge thinking it was just another metal sim. I was surprised at how diverse it could get.

That's why every manufacturer tries to sew the cabinets in so that they can't be pulled out, each amp head still has many advantages over others because the settings are very different, but yes, the final sound forms the cabinet. It is interesting to hear what you can wind up in the new plugin from TSL Tonality: Josh Middleton, because there are some of the exact emulations of the famous amp simulators. I use Torpedo Wall of Sound - Two notes, in addition to standard cabinets, wave files, that's where miracles happen with cabinet tincture.

I’m just tryna know what song this example was made from 😭

Hands down, the speaker and mic choice make the most difference. However, the gain structure and texture is slightly different between each amp sim. I thought that Gojira sounded more smooth and polished compared to the Jeff Loomis, which sounded more buzzy and harsh. In the mix, it's even harder to discern the differences. Unfortunately, the Jeff Loomis seemed to get lost in the mix. Just for reference, I'm listening on studio monitors in a treated room running Sonarworks Reference 4 Systemwide.

Irs are king, But I do notice a feel difference when playing through a good amp sim vs a lesser one. Mercurial is also a fav of mine. Great vid.

Loomis > than Gojira Neural DSP. it just cut through better. As far as one that sit the best in the mix i thought the TSE X50 sounded the best in that particular mix. All of them sound good i guess it depends on what you are going for.

Others have basically said it, the feel can be an important aspect. That said, tracking DIs is one thing, and having a sim that you like the feel of for that purpose may also mean that it isn't the one that you go for during initial edits and bounce down before mixing.

What is the name of the song? I like it very much.

Wish Audiority, ML Sound Lab and Nembrini was in this. Vog fan of both and they're smaller companies with better prices.

Awesome stuff - I'm an old school metal fan - Priest, Maiden, RIP Randy Rhoads - but I am also part of the digital age - did a gig in the 90s using the Zoom 9001 (the blue one) plugged direct into the board and even got feedback out of the monitors....so I love using IRs and amp sims when recording. I just don't enjoy the sound of a downtuned guitar - tuning the entire thing to C just makes the whole thing sound like it's underwater for me - maybe I sound old... shit happens - so I honestly could barely tell the difference with what I was hearing. What I DID hear is how well you dial in an amp - definitely a skill well developed. Any chance you could make a video for us old school players still kicking the can (cab?)?

The gojira sim sounds so mix ready its crazy

Not disputing the results (because you can't), but here are some things to consider: 1. People just use their go to irs with any damn amp instead of finding combinations that are interesting or really play to the strengths/uniqueness of the amp 2. Most high gain amps aren't more than two degrees of separation from a jcm 800 anyway, so similarities abound 3. Damn near any sim is good enough these days. If you know what you're doing (big if) and have some decent irs on hand, you'll be fine with just about anything, regardless of marketing, hype or price. It's all about workflow, GUI and features. Love you, buddy 👍

Maybe just me... but the TriAxis sim has the least amount of mid dialled in, but sounds the most mid-heavy. All in all, the IR is pretty great.

Slight EQ variations between all of amps. They all sound good in the mix.... hence.... idk why make any fuss about it.

The cold hard reality to me is that... i could use any of them to great effect, with eq in the mix and so on.... i'd use any of them. I could work with any. i'd get great results. I mean, they're all going to get me there. Man, we'v have come a long way from the pod 2.0. It all sounds great. i mean, let's get real. If you can't get good results with one of the other... it,s not the plugin it's you mix abilities. I apreciate your transparency here instead of blatantly trying to pump up your own product. It's transparent and ethically sound. I mean it!

Cool tune.

The IR made most of the sound, but the massive difference the Mercuriall had, I guess is attributed to the very different gain structure of a Mesa Mark type amp. All the other sims used some sort of 5150 variant/clone, as far as I can see. Someone once tried this with the Neural DSP Gojira and Nolly plugins, using the same IRs on the Red Gojira model and the 5150 model in Nolly. It sounded identical. So I guess, the gain structure or tone stack of a sim matters, but the IR matters more.

There one thing I would say about the amps, there were some amps where I felt the bass sounded better in the mix, Emissary being my fav. I guess the texture of the guitar amp was more similar or at least matched better with the texture on the bass and together pushed everything forward.

I feel like the Jeff Loomis amp sounded perfect for that particular track. That could be the complete opposite for another track. As always, It'll depend. Cheers buddy! Great video!

Cab really. This is actually what made Guitar Rig 6 sound sooo good was that all their old amp models are the same as GR5 but the cabs they got for GR6 are from ownhammer and MAN it sounds like new

How loud is the DI signal?

STL sounded the best because of the 8x oversampling

nice information, thanks man!

In a mix, it doesn't seem to matter almost at all. The only one with a large difference that the average listener would hear would be the PRS because the Archon has a tighter style of gain. However, soloed out you can tell that all of these amps saturate the signal a bit differently even through the cab. The cab is 95% of the sound, and the Amp makes up the type of saturation and mid-range flavor.

in the mix all these tones are very similar i think the cab is the most important

Yes, I LOVE Mercuriall, great amp sims great value. In this particular demo, I liked Gojira, Waves and JST the most tho. There's no doubt about who has the best RU-vid channel, that's for sure 😁

As long as the sound is realistic enough, it doesn't make much of a difference, and all of them can be dialled to sound nice in the mix. JST, Neural DSP, and Mercurial all sounded good to me.

This is a very interesting video! Also... was there ever a winner announced for the community drum library giveaway?

I’m sure the guys can agree that head is very important.

Amp = saturation Cab = tone

what cab ir did u use

what cab did you use

Personally, I don't think comparing amp sims (that come with cab sims) is useful because in most cases, they're designed around their own cabs. You can see it real well in Archetype Gojira. The high gain one is obviously based on EVH5150III. It sounds nothing like the NDSP version of the EVH5150III from Quad Cortex. For all it's worth: people overestimate how much of a difference the amp modeling makes. Y'all be like: wow, this sounds so great when I play through it. Does it matter in a mix? Nope. Recently had a Death Metal song mixed by an engineer. I was blown away by how good and fast the mix turned out (he said it was like 5h of work, including editing). Know what he used? Good, old Ben Bruce.

I haven't completely finished the video as I'm commenting this but from what I see so far it seems like the cab is causing the guitars to have the same tone however the amp choice determines how fizzy the guitar is end up being and how much they punched through. The tone characteristic is still practically the same.

i think that you can fit any of those amps in the mix. they all do the mixing job. but there's so much more that that. the real difference is in how vst amps behave in terms of responsiveness and how close they are to the real amps. unfortunately if you put the question like that you'll be left with almost no options but the neuraldsps. the rest of the vst amps just don't feel real and responsive enough when you play through them.

No matter the amp sim, always keep in mind of the 4K.

Let’s Go 🔥🔥🔥

Just like in the real world the cab makes the biggest difference. You have some basic flavors when it comes to heads but the cab and mic placement make the biggest difference in tone. But of course we all know it’s the type of wood your guitar is made of that makes the biggest difference. 😂 🤭🃏

Amp Sims

Yes.

With real amps the speakers matter the most with how they sound since they are the filter. However, IRs are more of how they sit in the mix, so I think it’s less of how they sound.

Amp is the feel, Cab is the tone imo

IR/cab makes the biggest difference.

The cab is more important dad!

Nice green screen…

take one amp sim & try with different cabs . lets hear that difference too .

Its always like everything in life... The combonation of evreything With this combuter music, YES the i.r Really make a diffrents!!!

Its always like everything in life... The combonation of evreything With this combuter music, YES the i.r Really make a diffrents!!!