My take on the demo Guitar Rig
Thought I'd weigh in here.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I was an early adopter of the digital modeling amp concept via Line 6. For decades before, amp makers kept telling musicians that they could get "tube" sounds out of a solid state amp. Lies. All lies. Until Line 6 came along.
As far as hardware solutions are concerned, I think it's safe to say that the current genereation of Line 6 gear (Vetta II amps and Pod XT Pro rack modules) are the top of the line. But in the software-only world, I think NI's Guitar Rig may be the new champ, especially for Mac users (Line 6 STILL has not ported Amp Farm over to Mac yet or they would have been a big contender for NI).
I have demoed Guitar Rig using my MOTU 896HD as an interface, which in and of itself was very interesting, seeing that the interface can sample at 192k/24bit resolution. Guitar Rig can actually process at that speed as well, but it puts a crush on your processers like you wouldn't believe! I have since played with Guitar Rig at more reasonable resolutions, and have been very impressed.
I am a huge Brian May/Queen fan, and the first thing I tried was copping his sound. The demo has a "ACBox" amp model that is supposed to be a Vox AC30 Top Boost amp. More importantly, they also have a corresponding treble booster pedal model. Using them in exactly the same way Brian sets his up (Normal channel up full, Brilliant up full, all other knobs at 0, and the treble booster set on the "Hot but Mellow" preset) then miking it similarly (edge miked with a Neumann 87 with a 3db boost on bass & treble, distanced miked with another 87 flat eq with lots of air, with the distance miking signal quieted to -15db) I nailed it. Now keep in mind that my guitar has three vintage-wound kent Armstrong reissue Burns TriSonic pick-ups, which makes up a big part of the sound. Still, the tone I got sounds remarkably better than any set up I have ever tried.
Another weird thing about this--the model is noisy, but with exactly the same operation noise the REAL gear would create in a studio. I have the Brian May instructional video, and in it you occasionally hear the hiss from his amp when he isn't playing. The noise from the ACBox + Treble Booster set-up in Guitar Rig sounds EXACTLY the same.
There is an American stereotype about Germans--that they are precision detail freaks--which is why we Yanks love Posches, BMW's, Audis, Mercedes, and VWs so much. Well, it would seem that German audio software engineers have the same uncompromising commitment to perfection that their automotive engineer counterparts possess. I was blown away by the realism of this product at high resolution. Ahh, the benefits of Teutonic pride...
The product was pretty user friendly, too. Some of the effect parameters didn't make perfect sense at first glance, but the basic amp and distortion pedals were very intuitive, and setting up your "rig" by pulling options over from a list on the left to a "rack" on the right was also very simple.
I can't wait to use this product on our next album project. The idea of being able to switch amps and/or tweak inline effects AT MIXDOWN (and not be committed to anything beforehand) without retracking any parts--well, that's a DREAM...!
