… Atlantian guitar track tests …

Today, I played around with various guitar tracking methods. I recently upgraded my audio recording application to Sonar 8PE. It came with a limited edition (read stripped down) version of Guitar Rig 3. I decided to test it out and see where the current state of guitar amp emulation was at.

Guitar Rig 3
[audio:guitarrig3.mp3]

It was pretty cool. Sounded kind of real. A little fizzy maybe. It only came with two amp models so it was quite limited. You can unlock the full version for a mere $300. No thanks.

Nothing really screamed “awesome” or “horrible” so I cloned the track and compared it to the limited edition version of Revalver that came with previous versions of Sonar. The amp models weren’t as full sounding to me, but Revalver produced some blocky midrange that I couldn’t achieve with the amp models from Guitar Rig 3.

Revalver
[audio:revalver.mp3]

Revalver doesn’t sound bad, but it sure doesn’t sound good. Especially on its own. It does sit in a mix pretty well due to its midrange presence.

I ended up just plugging my modded Blackheart 5 watt tube amp into my Grendel Dead Room isolation cab. I put a 57 and a Blue Ball in there and it sounded good. I think I’ll stick with my real amp.

Bitmo/Blackheart/Dead Room
[audio:realamp.mp3]

The “real” guitar tracks could use a little better mic placement and some preamp tweaking, but it doesn’t have the low end murk of Guitar Rig 3 and it definitely has more life than Revalver. I might try throwing my 414 in there with a Cardiod pattern to get a little low end prximity effect and beef it up a bit.

Viva la Reality!