[linux-audio-dev] Linux Audio Experiences

[Tim Goetze]

[Dave Robillard]
>> being the author of plugins intended to fill the gap, i'd love to
>> hear some constructive criticism. so would you care to elaborate
>> on what you find lacking in our efforts, please?
>>
>> tim
>
>Oh, well I didn't mean your plugins are inadequate in any way, but that
>it's a very complicated problem.  Plus, even if you create one good
>sounding 'amp'.. that's just one.  One amp is never enough for anybody.
>:)
>
>Anyway, I own a Behringer V-Amp so I havn't really tested your plugins
>much, but I will if you like.  I've been a serious guitarist for over
>half my life, so I like to think I have an ear for these sorts of
>things.
>
>Give me a few days, I'll put some comparison tracks down in audio (if
>necessary)

writing down your impressions will do just fine, thank you.

if you'd like to help out with recordings, here's something that we
will all benefit from:

you may know that the 'tone' of an amplifier is mostly created by its
imperfect frequency response. recreating this feature is quite easy
to do: obtain an impulse response from the system in question and
convolve a signal we want 'tone-coloured' with the impulse response.

so, in order to have more choice of 'virtual amps', first and foremost
we need some impulse responses to model.

this is where you can help. set your (virtual) amp gear to:

 * 'clean channel' if there is one
 * no compression
 * neutral tone controls
 * no 'speaker emulation' (connect preamp-out on a real amp)
 * no effects of any kind (reverb, chorus etc)

and record an impulse response from its different 'amp electronics'
settings. this is fairly easy: feed the unit a one-sample impulse of
full amplitude, followed by silence, and record the output of the
unit. among other methods, you can create the impulse with steve's
impulse_1885 plugin.

after that, turn the virtual 'amp electronics' off, if possible, and
record impulse responses from the unit's various cabinet/speaker
emulations in the same fashion.

-

if you want to be a real hero of amp modelling, turn off all 'amp
electronics' and 'speaker' emulations, turn up the gain knob all
the way and feed the unit a sine wave fading in from -oo to 0 dB.
i can create this fade in a file if needed, or you can use the Sin
plugin that is part of caps. from this recording, we can deduce its
clipping characteristics (best is to have a two-channel file with
both input and output of the unit, but it's not a strict requirement).

-

these recordings will be of great help to anyone who is working on amp
emulation, so even if i should fail miserably, the next one to work on
it has valuable data available.

cheers,

tim