Guitar Rig 4 Pro - the next step for amp modelling

Yesterday I downloaded the demo version of Guitar Rig 4 Pro from the Native Instruments website (http://www.native-instruments.com) ... I tested it for about 90 minutes and I really liked it. I've been using Line 6 technology for several years (I have POD Farm and all the model packs), and while you can always argue about whether you prefer this amp model or that one, there's one feature of Guitar Rig 4 that's IMO nothing short of amazing and a truly unique feature:

Control Room

It's a simulation of different guitar cabinets and microphones which allows you to combine up to eight totally different microphones simultaneously. Of course you'll usually only use one or two, but the sound quality is really amazing. The NI engineers created control room based on an actual guitar recording room ... and they didn't just cram 8 microphones in there. These microphones were carefully positioned so that there are no phase discrepancies, and each microphone is in a "sweet spot" sound wise. If you've ever tried to record a real guitar amp & cabinet with a microphone, you know how difficult it can be ... position the microphone just a millimeter to the left, and it sounds completely different.

So ... if you have a computer and a decent sound card, you can try it for yourself ... the demo is free and runs for 30 minutes, then you'll have to restart the application and lose all the settings - other than that there are no limitiations and no distracting noises.

Of course the amp models are great too ... I managed to get a really nice thrashy tone without much tweaking (using the "Gratifier" model), and the effects are quite nice, too. AFAIK the cabinet simulations use convolution algorithms based on recorded impulses of the real cabinets - and since it's all totally tweakable, you might also combine this software with Line 6 software, e.g. to use Line 6 distortion/amp models with the Guitar Rig 4 Control Room 4 

^ I did post it in the other thread, too ... but that one seems more like a general thread about the pros and cons of amp/guitar modelling.

BTW: The X3 Live works perfectly fine for recording dry tracks.

^ on which page? And what's the difference between a dry track and a DI track?

"First off the DI capabilities of the POD are honestly just not as good as having a real DI box. Whenever I try to reamp with any other amp sim than POD Farm (I've tried 8505, 7170, SoloC and a few others) they just end up revealing the weakness of the POD's DI. I'm under the impression POD Farm is designed somewhat to compensate for the fact the POD's DI is not the best. Hopefully by the time the next POD comes out they improve the DI, but I wont be holding my breathe, since by that time I'll most likely have moved onto miking up real amps and using a more expensive interface.
If you want to use other amp sims, get a real DI Box, or would like to reamp with real amps..........well, buy a reamping box."

Well, if you mean this ... sorry, but this is not an explanation. You're just criticizing the audio interface without saying exactly what's wrong with it. Line 6 may be behind in the game when it comes to amp & cabinet simulation, but their audio interfaces themselves have rarely been criticized in any review that I can remember. The only problem that I see is that they seem to revert back to 16bit when you use them with Asio4All ... right now I'm thinking about getting a PCI-E based internal interface, because USB seems to be causing some inherent latency, but more importantly a bigger dependence on CPU load. You know that I'm always eager to reduce latency ...


Edited by Mr ProgFreak - October 06 2009 at 02:05

^ "And anyway, I was getting 24 bit using ASIO4Alll anyway :P but I don't use it anymore."

How do you know? The Asio4All panel will always show 24 bit while the Line 6 hardware still works with 16 bit (you can see it in the Line 6 driver console - while you're using Asio4All it will always say "44.1khz, 16 bit").

So - you're not using the X3 Live anymore - or are you using POD-Farm with ToneDirect Monitoring?


Edited by Mr ProgFreak - October 07 2009 at 02:30

There is no Tone Direct monitoring with the POD anyway, POD's don't support the standalone POD Farm plug in.

So I tried out the demo.
Ultrasonic was pretty good, and Gratifier was not bad. Really those were the only two models I was interested in hearing, although I might try some clean tones. Not really interested in classic rock tones, so I can't make a judgement on the old school amps being simulated.

To be totally honest, while Gratifier was not bad, it just wasn't totally doing it for me, especially when it came to playing riffs on the low B string, it didn't seem to work as well as either POD Farm for low end tightness or the outright overall amazing tone and feel of Revalver.
The EQ section of the amp felt  weird playing around with it, just felt kinda unnatural like an amp sim from a few years ago, something I would have expected more from in this day and age of 2009 amp modeling.

The Control Room of course, is quite amazing and having all those EQ modules, the option of both the noise gate and noise reducer really made for an impressive amount of tweakability.

Major thumbs up for the versatility and great tweakability (easily superior to POD Farm in that regard), as well as having an intuitive GUI, which made it so easy to learn how to use and navigate around.

There isn't really enough it that would make metal players like myself who are happy with Revalver and POD Farm willing to jump ship to GR4.
Revalver's 6505, 6505+, XXX, JSX and Dual Recto vs only 2 high gain amp sims on GR4.
A lot of people are ultimately going to be using impulses and given how instantly you can get a good sound out of it, many people like myself from the Sneap forum who are into using impulses would find the time spent tweaking on Control Room questionable when I can spend about 2 minutes loading up Voxengo Boogex and just finding an impulse response (IR) file that works.
However, to be fair the IR files I use are geared towards metal tones as they come from Rectifier/ENGL etc cabinets, so I imagine Control Room is quite useful for the lower gain player.

So it's safe to say I wont be parting with  500 AUD for GR4, but nonetheless it's a great program that I could recommend to others.

I think it's a step in another direction rather than the next step perhaps.


Edited by Petrovsk Mizinski - October 26 2009 at 01:10