amx05462 wrote:

 

  thanks  for the   mention to merlin

 

 

          first of all   you cant really go by computer speakers.    if anything  when  listening to your audio  off the computer   get a  real good set of  headphones. computer speakers  are   not  meant to duplicate   the sound  of ant  true amp.

 

                        secondly   if you want to get less of  a  digital sound  you need to get something with an actual tube in it  in my opinion.  what i use is an older  vox tonelab.  just my preferance then  you may want to experement  with  the  actual tube in the   unit. some tubes are warmer than others  you can go to there  web site  and  theres some info there about different tubes in there  pedals.  mines a desk top. t hey also have two   floor models.  they have  just recently come out with a  more compact model with a  volume peddle attatched   i dont  need that as i have  an old  vox  wah  which i  put a crossover  to  use it as a volume or  wah  depending  on what i need at the time   you can get the one i got off  ebay usually  around  100 bucks   .  all kinds of  amp emulations  and effects  built in. i also like it  because   it  does  what  my  vox  ad120  does  but i can carry  it in a small briefcase  when  go to my friends  to jam  . i just hook it up to  the pa

 

 

                                      i can also  emulate  my  twin reverb  with it .

 

                                                                                                                 bottom line is  you may be able to get close  but you really cant  get tube sound  without  a real tube inline somewhere.

 

 

  my personal   amp  emuation  preferences  are   fender  twin  reverb  and  vox  ac30  tb   in that order

 

 

 

     the  guys to get  some real good info   on here are  merlin crusty  and  chris blackwell.  there  all really up  on there stuff.

Hi AMX and you're very welcome as I respect your thought as well as the others you mentioned.

With that said - I respectfully have to disagree abit with some of the things you said.  Obviously I have NOT A SINGLE opposite thing to say about any of your advice about actually using tubes to get the true tube sound.  However, I think that to be fair - I have to say that My computer speaker system is as good as any Home stereo 5.1 system.  Those are what I Master all of my recordings with and it is not as cheesy as most cheap computer stereo speakers that ARE indeed horrible. So a little leeway needs to be given based on the speaker system connected to the computer.

The other bit is that I have found that at least regarding my Vetta and many MONTHS of constant tweaking and more tweaking I have most of my patches that sound very "tube-like".  What I've found is most significant is the overall volume players use to set up their patches.  I've seen first hand that most players set up their patches at home in a quiet environment at much lower volumes than they actually perform at.  This in turn causes them to usually put too much high end into a patch or perhaps too much low end because at low volumes all of these things sound differently than at reasonably loud performance volumes.  I've given master classes on just this topic with both solid state and tube amps.  It's always met with the exact same skepticism when I talk about the midrange.  Most usually have some stupid smiley face type of EQ settings and think that is a great sound.  Perhaps for thrash metal or hardcore punk, but after I explain to them that MOST of the guitars range of sound is IN the Midrange, they still look at me funny until I set up a patch at low volume that they all hate.  Then I turn it up to a performance volume and the tone balances out and NOW they are all impressed.

So the point to all of that is that the use of mids in the context of amp models CAN give a very warm "tube-like" sound without ever using real tubes.  If anyone ever wants some of my patches that match what I've said, please just ask and I'll be happy to share them.

Sorry if any of what I just typed is already known and understood well by any readers on here, but some are still unaware of this problem/solution.