[3.0] [XRDP] Ultimate Guitar

Tips & Tricks
1

My goal is to make the ultimate guitar doofer and here is my first try: Ultimate Guitar V1.0

-It’s got several cabinet combinations in a macro achieved with the convolver and some free direct cabinet impulse responses.
-It has obviously got a distortion macro as well as a gate, tone, reverb, chorus, gain and saturation.

I must say i’m very impressed what can be achieved with only native effects, as i remember it this sounds just as good as Guitar Rig (haven’t used it in a long while). Of course not as versatile as Guitar Rig, but it’s only a doofer.
I’m planning to improve this one and/or make some new ones in the future, so if anyone has got any suggestion or knows about some nice cabinet impulse responses please tell me.
Or if you want to modify it yourself then go ahead. It would be cool if you posted your result here. Or share any other chain/doofer that might add to this.

It would be cool to have different doofers for different styles. V1.0 is probably most suited for heavy metal with the gate and heavy distortion, but sounds pretty good with less distortion/clean too, not so nice when it clips though.

2

Holy shit I need to get home from work to try this

edit: BTW I can point you towards some nice impulses. There’s these:

http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2631

And plenty more linked in that area of the forum.

And once I find the link, there are some nice ones called “catharsis” or something like that, that are really nice.

edit: here it is:

http://catharsis.supremepixels.com/impulses/

3

I have only one thing to say. Poor neighbours. :guitar:

Thanks for the links Carbonthief, i’ll check those out tomorrow. :)

4

0_0 That’s pretty amazing that you got this without using the cab sim. I don’t see the cab sim, am I seeing that right?

To me the high end sounds a bit abrasive and hissy, and overall sounds a bit thin. It’s ok for a lead, but I don’t know that I’d use it for rhythm. I’m going to post some comparisons, and throw out an idea. I recorded a shitty riff and ran it through a few things.

Ultimate Guitar Doofer (with whatever cab is at 46.8%):

Simple VST Chain (distortion>amp sim> cab IR):

XRNI idea (will explain below):

Link to XRNI:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sukeu3cnrltiphp/Metal%20Guitar%20Idea.xrni

Now then, even though it may be harder/more work to do so, I still think a good solid metal tone may be achieved natively, and I think the answer is to layer. The XRNI I posted is an idea I’ve been wanting to try for a while, and I just threw that together in a single minute, and already the results weren’t so bad.

My basic idea is that, different cabinets in renoise all sound “right” but only in one certain way, and terrible in every other. But what if you pieced different cabs together, and eq’d out the difference?

I did absolutely no EQing in my example, so that experiment is yet to come, this is just a mock up idea. Rather than a Doofer I think the best approach is to create an XRNI to house guitar recordings and macros to tweak, because 3.0 XRNI’s allow you to use sends, which unlike previous versions of Renoise gives you an easy way to save an advanced audio routing for future use and sharing.

More specific ideas:
I was quite shocked to not see a cab sim dsp in your doofer chain, compared with how it sounded, however you might consider using one even though you’re using impulses. I don’t know if “Amp Direct” is truly direct or not but it sounds the least “modeled” to me, and it seems to fare the best when you put an impulse after it. I dropped an “amp direct” cab sim just after the distortions, and it made a huge difference. Some of the abrasiveness went away, it sounds smoother. But it also sounded a little over-distorted so it could use tweaking to accommodate that change.

And of course this is all just my opinion, I’ll see what you think.

5

First i think i need to do something to the distortion bit. It kinda lacks some character i think.
I kinda like the scream filter, it can be useful for some nice guitar fuzz, but i really hate that it doesn’t have a wet/dry parameter. :o
I’ll see what i’ll do when i get back from work.

Lots of work to make this perfect, but it’s a start.

6

No cabinet simulator, i tried using it, but i couldn’t make it sound the way i wanted together with the convolving. After all i want to make an alternative to the cab sim, something that sounds different, but still good.

I agree that the tone needs some adjustments, especially the high end.
The distortion is not that good either, think i’ll need to use the scream filter even though i can’t bypass it smoothly, guess i’ll have to give the enable/bypass a curve in the macro so that it will turn itself off at less distortion/clean, because it sounds awful with the scream filter at no distortion.

I’ll update with a new version soon, not shure yet if i’ll just make a new version from scratch and work some more on the selection of impulse responses. I’m considering to make V1.x a more flexible doofer and make V2.x,3.x and so on for specific sounds/genres.

A question: wouldn’t it be possible to simulate different preamps with the convolver too? Already found the answer. In simple words it’s a no.

I like the sound you made in the example there, not bad at all. maYbe i’ll have to reconsider and use the cabinet simulator anyway.

I’m trying to figure out how to simulate a nice preamp, i would think the signal follower could help me achieve some of it, but i wonder if i come to short without a frequency follower.

7

I just came to think of the fact that i’m using an analog preamp i have built into the cable, that supposedly sounds like the first stage of a Fender tube preamp. So i guess it colors the sound in my setup. Probably not so smart to try to build a preamp simulator with a preamp already in the chain… :rolleyes:
My Ibanez Blazer also has 10 different pickup combinations, 5 with humbuckers and 5 single coil, so the resulting sound gets confusing when i switch around too much. Something can sound good in humbucker mode, then extremely thin in single coil.

8

I think i’ll be working on this thing forever, i’m trying to solve the code to how the tubes adds “warmth”, to make a simulation of this with native effects(without the cab sim). I don’t really know how it colors the sound and i don’t really know if this is possible, so i don’t have much to go on, but to experiment.

So far i have experimented with the signal follower to control several properties of equalizers, convolvers and distortion. I also experimented a bit with other devices. I have achieved some nice sounds, but not really anything that can resemble the tube warmth yet, so it’s back to the drawing board.

What i don’t like about the cab sim is that i think it lacks a bit of “clarity”, it adds warmth, but i also feel it muddies up the sound a bit. I’m really not an audio tech and i’m terrible at mixing, so might be that i just do everything wrong. :lol:

9

Try messing with the 103hz band on an EQ

10

Hmm, i’ll try that, thanks for the tip! :)

Edit: Already sounding better, this definately gives some warmth!