Do you think modelers will get there in the next 10 years?

Tone Monster

Well-known member
They’ve come along way and are oh so close but they just aren’t there. Do you think they will ever get there and if yes when?
 
CD overtook tape and vinyl.

They likely will, but there will be those that prefer the real to the digital sample.
 
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For me there are two possible definitions for "there" to separate here:

Capture at certain amp settings
Kemper's pretty-much there IMHO. Those who take the time to use the refining feature properly if necessary achieve sensational results.

Overall knob behaviour - all sections
Nobody's there yet. The interactions causing setting-dependant behaviour complicate things greatly.

All IMHO, of course.
 
I think they will be 'there' but I highly doubt that I would be my preference.

Although I do like the IR's with my Suhr RLIR.
 
I think the saving grace of the Kemper, or at least the one purpose I had for it, was to capture amps running power tubes so ridiculously hot that they melt down in a half an hour, to get THAT TONE CONSISTENTLY.
 
They are there. Were there 10 years ago. Kemper hasn't updated it's hardware much.

Golden ears are being deceived in blind tests. No one's hearing is good enough to distinguish them when done right.

All people can do is complain one wasn't done right. Claim the tube example wasn't setup right. It's nonsense. Frequencies are frequencies. No magic.
 
No, I don't think they will ever "get there"... if you have good ears, experience in using the real thing and a sensitivity for touch!
People... there is ONE thing that won't change and that is the voltage, power! The way a power section creates tone and feel in a real amp can't be perfectly reproduced as there are billions of variables that you can't calculate in a logic way as they are not linear.
World isn't a 5 volts reality... that's what a DSP needs to run.
I'm not sure how many of you have an ear and an eye to pro-audio gear... I mean mic/line/instr preamps, compressors, EQs, etc.... the stuff that MAKES tone, character, personality, joy of listening. No matter what technology has been used in the last 70 years, you ALWAYS find these things in the recording chain and often in playing situations too. To tell you the truth, since the beginning of digital recording and more and more recently w/plugins and modellers.... this pro-stuff (VOLTAGE!!!) has increased a lot in brands and number of products... proving how badly all non-analog technology requires VOLTAGE based monsters to get the right tone... now that's "getting there"!
Current efx are a tonal bloodbath.... 99% of them sound ugly, shrill, even nasty to ear drums.... as DSPs have gotten enough powerful to do the work of traditional inputs stages (preamp/filters/compander/etc,) which were what truly created the legendary tone of your classic units.
Take two legends, Lexicon 480 and H3000. These are still very expensive and sought after... open them up and find those Murata filters which have a mild tone and a way to react to input levels that makes tone just beautiful, wide and spread, warm and natural. Open up a Lex 300 or 480 and you'll fins a power section (transformer + analog input signal stages) that is MUCH larger than any whole current product. That tells you how much care was put in engineering the things. You can't model all behaviours of such sections and render them in the proper way.
So to my ears... digital is a great way to freeze audio events that have been processed thru tonal shaping ANALOG processes, where the natural essence of power and reactance work in a way that is the closest to respect human performance touch and dynamics, yet giving beautiful tone to what you play.

The same is true for guitar amps.... until the legacy treasure of tru amps will be alive, nothing can touch how a Fender Twin clean sounds like and classic Marshalls, Soldanos, Mesa Boogies....................... nothing.

Just to give you an idea about how your guitar (and everything else) gets recorded and plugs can't do what real outboard does, here are some examples that should make you hear how amazing these analog processes sound and how great their tone is at ANY setting. Never boomy nor shrill... but more importantly neven fake, never an "attempt to..."
The real thing is always better than its copy. That's now nature works. Respect for that is what keeps us human.

Listen,,,, even under YouTube bad audio processing...





 
For me it's no so much the replication of the amp tones as it is amp in the room feel. I used a Line 6 HD500 through a DT25 for a long time and felt the amp did a great job with the feel aspect but in the end I realized that I don't enjoy tweaking or option paralysis so I went back to an amp or pedals. I am looking into a new setup when I redo my little music room and have looked into modeling again but everything I read is that eventually people want to go back to an actual amp because of the lack of feel. :dunno:
 
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