I have been playing and recording almost exclusively through some form of amp simulator for most of my career. A few years back I finally committed to getting rid of most of my hardware in order to simplify (and lighten) both my live and recording rigs. So far, I'm to the point where the entire band (two or three guitars and a bass) plays through amp sims in Reaper. I've also got Superior Drummer doing some strange things and sometimes run a VSTi synth or two also.
My machines have plenty of power to do this with acceptable latency, but I do eventually want to replace all of our pedals with plugins and DIY MIDI controllers, and we are going to start to run low on ticks eventually. I had been running PodFarm - just the amp/cab sim single plugin, not the whole suite - but noticed that these plugs each used more CPU than any other plug in the project by quite a bit. I tried GuitarRig and it used just a little bit more than PodFarm even. So I found myself a much more efficient solution using ReaEQ and a really simple distortion plug I made a while ago.
What I did was to pull up PodFarm, run white noise through it, and use SPAN to see the spectrum. I then really just messed around with ReaEQ until the curves matched as closely as I could get them. There's nothing real scientific about it. I tried to use as few bands as I could, but some of the curves are pretty complex. In most real amps, the knobs in the tone stack are all pretty heavily interactive. Turning one knob often changes the cutoff frequency of all of the filters in the thing. In some the Volume pot is also a bass cut. So anyway, I didn't make any attempt at making these things adjustable in any realistic or authentic way. They are snapshots of settings I dialed in that one time.
I have a small collection of the amps and cabs that I use most often, and uploaded them to the stash in case anybody wanted to try them.
There are two preset libraries:
Guitar and Bass Amplifiers ReaEQ preset library is the "heads" and Guitar and Bass Cabinets ReaEQ preset library is the cabinets.
Then all you need is a non-linear element in between. There are a number of solutions, and you can really use about anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure that ReaComp will do it pretty well, and intend to try it eventually, but for now I'm using this JS plug that I wrote a while ago as a real quick and nasty "amp sim" - LT sin amp. It is actually pretty versatile on its own, but I usually set Depth to 0 and Width all the way up so that it isn't actually doing any filtering of its own. I like to dial in a little bit of asymmetry with the Bias control, but I can't promise it makes a huge difference.
For most of these, it works best to put an instance of ReaEQ with an amp preset, then the sin amp, and then another ReaEQ with a cabinet, but I've found that the Marshall-style amps work better when the amp EQ is after the distortion element which is why the preset for that one has "post" in its name.
Most of the "heads" are pretty seriously loud. The idea was to have that one plugin give all of the gain needed so that you could just leave sin amp's input gain alone, but I do find that I need to add some gain most of the time. This is not even close to an exact science, and I end up dialing it in by ear most of the time.
I have actually done comparisons where I split my guitar through PodFarm panned one way and this thing the other way and it comes really close. Like the difference could easily be accounted for by a difference in component tolerances or a slight change of mic placement. I'm not claiming it's exactly like any given amp, but it can be really convincing, and is definitely good enough for the kind of things I do live. I use these things for jam sessions and nobody ever complains about their tone. There was even a time when I was using my computer to run sound for a punk show, the guitarist's (Line 6 modeling) amp crapped out, I plugged him into the interface, pulled up my default amp chain, cranked the gain quite a bit beyond where I normally go, and he was actually really happy with his tone.
IDK if anybody else will find this useful or not. I do intend on working up a few more of the models that I have, but it's not a huge priority. I have what I need for my band ATM.
My machines have plenty of power to do this with acceptable latency, but I do eventually want to replace all of our pedals with plugins and DIY MIDI controllers, and we are going to start to run low on ticks eventually. I had been running PodFarm - just the amp/cab sim single plugin, not the whole suite - but noticed that these plugs each used more CPU than any other plug in the project by quite a bit. I tried GuitarRig and it used just a little bit more than PodFarm even. So I found myself a much more efficient solution using ReaEQ and a really simple distortion plug I made a while ago.
What I did was to pull up PodFarm, run white noise through it, and use SPAN to see the spectrum. I then really just messed around with ReaEQ until the curves matched as closely as I could get them. There's nothing real scientific about it. I tried to use as few bands as I could, but some of the curves are pretty complex. In most real amps, the knobs in the tone stack are all pretty heavily interactive. Turning one knob often changes the cutoff frequency of all of the filters in the thing. In some the Volume pot is also a bass cut. So anyway, I didn't make any attempt at making these things adjustable in any realistic or authentic way. They are snapshots of settings I dialed in that one time.
I have a small collection of the amps and cabs that I use most often, and uploaded them to the stash in case anybody wanted to try them.
There are two preset libraries:
Guitar and Bass Amplifiers ReaEQ preset library is the "heads" and Guitar and Bass Cabinets ReaEQ preset library is the cabinets.
Then all you need is a non-linear element in between. There are a number of solutions, and you can really use about anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure that ReaComp will do it pretty well, and intend to try it eventually, but for now I'm using this JS plug that I wrote a while ago as a real quick and nasty "amp sim" - LT sin amp. It is actually pretty versatile on its own, but I usually set Depth to 0 and Width all the way up so that it isn't actually doing any filtering of its own. I like to dial in a little bit of asymmetry with the Bias control, but I can't promise it makes a huge difference.
For most of these, it works best to put an instance of ReaEQ with an amp preset, then the sin amp, and then another ReaEQ with a cabinet, but I've found that the Marshall-style amps work better when the amp EQ is after the distortion element which is why the preset for that one has "post" in its name.
Most of the "heads" are pretty seriously loud. The idea was to have that one plugin give all of the gain needed so that you could just leave sin amp's input gain alone, but I do find that I need to add some gain most of the time. This is not even close to an exact science, and I end up dialing it in by ear most of the time.
I have actually done comparisons where I split my guitar through PodFarm panned one way and this thing the other way and it comes really close. Like the difference could easily be accounted for by a difference in component tolerances or a slight change of mic placement. I'm not claiming it's exactly like any given amp, but it can be really convincing, and is definitely good enough for the kind of things I do live. I use these things for jam sessions and nobody ever complains about their tone. There was even a time when I was using my computer to run sound for a punk show, the guitarist's (Line 6 modeling) amp crapped out, I plugged him into the interface, pulled up my default amp chain, cranked the gain quite a bit beyond where I normally go, and he was actually really happy with his tone.
IDK if anybody else will find this useful or not. I do intend on working up a few more of the models that I have, but it's not a huge priority. I have what I need for my band ATM.
ReaEQ presets librarys for guitar and bass amp and cabinet simulation
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