soundog

To brick or not to brick. That is the question. Or .... "are you feeling lucky, punk? Well .... are ya?"

That's funny, after reading that Sweetwater blurb I realized I'm not really all that excited about the list of new stuff, but I enjoy reading this forum thread because its so TWISTED.

Everyody's hating and yelling at each other. The Trump Effect is spreading.

I'm using UA with the latest version of S-Gear. The manual states that the plugin formats are AU, AAX, and VST3 for Mac, and VST2.4, AAX for Windows. The manual implies that all those versions of the plug-ins and the standalone version support program changes. Hmmmm .... no VST3 for Windows, so maybe PC support is a factor? Dunno.

Or go direct, then try an extreme distortion plug-in, something like iZotope Trash 2. Totally mangle the tone.

Cerberus is my second favorite bass emulation, behind the UAD. Its also very affordable, and will take 3rd party IRs.

That Beetronics thing was like bees in my brain ... I'm still trying to get them out. I've tried a lot of plug-in amp/cab sw emulations. My faves to date are the newer amps from Kazrog and S-Gear. Maybe Mecuriall if heavier stuff is your thing. I love the clean, crunch and lead tones in S-Gear, and their included effects (reverb, chorus, flanger, etc). Try demos. I think Scuffham will be coming out with an update this summer, and its free if you bought S-Gear within 1-year of the release. S-Gears on sale now for $99. I can find dial in usable tones on S-Gear quicker than Native because their are fewer options, which is often a very good thing indeed. when you're working on tracks. Another bonus is that the presets are excellent as starting points. Re bass guitar, I've also looked far and wide and the best amp/cab emulations for bass I've found (which surprised me) are the UAD plug-ins. I settled on the B15-N.

"If you have to explain why its funny, maybe its not." ~ Pete Dukovitch

OSX CoreAudio must be multiclient, so multiple CoreAudio hosts can communicate with HW at the same time. In this case, the S-Gear app and the Logic app buffers can be set independently. There is no buffer setting in the Apollo driver to my knowledge (at least in my Thunderbolt rig); it uses dynamic buffering. So maybe my method mentioned here is only good for Mac users?

Where was the funny part?

The method I'm using is beneficial because the buffer (and, hence, latency) is set independently in the standalone app (S-Gear) and the DAW. To further explain: I'm currently recording a large project in Logic Pro that requires a lot of horsepower, so I have my buffer set high (1028) to accomodate virtual instruments and plugs. Of course, if I try to record a HXN guitar track with software monitoring on, the latency is unacceptable. So, I'm using the S-Gear (git modeling) standalone app concurrently, with its buffer low (32), so getting minimal latency while playing. I monitor the guitar through S-Gear, while recording the raw track in Logic (using the S-Gear plug-in later, while mixing). This is all achieved via Apollo Twin console I/O routing.

Haven't tried VST (I'm using AU), but Helix Native simply doesn't have the chops to respond to PC#s. My S-Gear plug-in (and standalone app) does. Also, the S-Gear docs say the VST plug-in also responds to PC#s.

Okee dokee, did that. There are 4 separate suggestions for Native standalone. So vote for all. If you total 'em there are over 60 votes, so not too shabby. https://line6.ideascale.com/a/ideas/search?templateId=0&query=standalone+native

Good catch on the Native instructions. Native always seems to be an afterthought. Even on the Native forum, the Line 6 Sticky at the top says "Helix Native 1.50 Available Now". That post is almost 2 years old!