IK Multimedia AmpliTube Guitar Amplifier Reviews

[brandondrury]

IK Multimedia AmpliTube Guitar Amplifier @ Musiciansfriend

IK Multimedia AmpliTube Guitar Amplifier Description
A kaleidoscope of brilliant effects models that you can mix and match to your heart's content!

IK Multimedia's AmpliTube puts 1,260 amp combinations and effects at your fingertips. It offers RTAS, HTDM, VST, DX, MAS, and Audio Unit guitar amp and effects modeling with separate amplifier, stompbox, and post-FX modules. Emulate all your favorite Fender, Marshall, Vox, and Mesa Boogie amps plus a lot more with 32-bit floating point processing. AmpliTube also gives you 200 fully editable presets. Using a low-latency card, AmpliTube can even be played live.

The Amp Module lets you mix and match preamps, power amps, EQs, cabs, and mic models to cook up your own special brew of vintage drive or modern grind. 32-bit floating-point signal processing ensures excellent sound quality. The 7 preamp models include Solid State Clean, Vintage Clean, Tube Clean, British Crunch, Modern Hi-Gain, Solid State Lead, and Fuzz. EQ section includes American Tube, American Tube 2, British Class A Tube, British Tube, and British Tube 2. Choose from 4 power amp sections including Solid State 30W, Solid State 100W, Tube 100W, and Tube 50W. Play through 9 cabinet models: Small Combo, Open-Back 1 x 12", Open-Back 1 x 12", Vintage Open 4 x 10", Modern Closed 4 x 10", Vintage Closed 4 x 12", Modern Closed 4 x 12", British 2 x 12", or No Speaker. Choose between a condenser or dynamic mic and tremolo or spring reverb.

The Stompbox Module features 5 effects including wah-wah, delay, chorus, flanger, and overdrive modeled on legendary analog and digital guitar effects.

The Post FX module includes 3 stereo post-effects with 3-band parametric EQ, stereo delay, and stereo reverb.

For Macs and PCs, the audio software requires Pentium II, Windows 95, with 20MB free or better; Power Mac G3 with MacOS 8.6, 64MB RAM or better. Compatible with all major music recording platforms.

Are you a registered user of Amplitube Live or LE? Check out our upgrade offer!

[RHCNYC]

Quality: 0
The amps themselves sound great. They seem to have a "fuller" body sound as compared to Guitar Rig. They also seem to eat up more CPU, but I haven't played with enough settings to be absolutely positive if this is the case across the board.
Though it might be somewhat cheesy, I do like the fact that the interface sort of emulates real rigs. It just makes it feel 'familiar', as opposed to dealing with detached abstract knobs representing some particular parameter or feature.

As with most of these kinds of applications, once you get through the initial goofing-around period where you plug in and bash away, after you decide to settle in and get serious, it can almost be overwhelming to deal with all those settings. But as any serious musician/producer knows, if you want good results, you gotta put in the initial effort.
I found it helpful to play alongside commercial recordings, and try to set up emulations of some of my favorite guitarists. While the intention is not to copy their sound, what happened (at least for me) was to almost unconsciously tinker with the settings to learn to focus the sound and how to manipulate the 'digital gear' in order to achieve preferred results.

Now, when it comes to effects, I prefer Guitar Rig. I feel they're much more versatile, and sound absolutely fantastic. Don't get me wrong, the amps in Guitar Rig are great, but it's my purely subjective opinion that the raw amps in Amplitube just have a bit more body.
(By body, I guess I mean 'thickness', or 'fuller'. Kind of the way a high end electric guitar has more resonance compared to a cheapy electric... at least in most cases).

**My rating is based on how sweet the sounds coming out of Amplitube sound to my ears. I don't have many of the amplifiers being simulated, so I can't make a genuine A/B comparison. So it's "success" is based on a subjective opinion of "it sounds good to me".

I gave it a '9', though I would have preferred to leave a 'No Rating' since I don't presume to have my subjective opinion based on... lack of scientific evidence... so to speak. Heh.

Reliability: 0
Initially, I had some crashes when changing the input from my soundcard into my Tascam Fireone. When it restarted, the settings would be updated, and it worked fine from then on.

Haven't dealt with support just yet.

** The initial bugginess dropped it's initial rating.
It doesn't reflect any personal experience with support.

Overall Rating: 0
I would highly recommend this software to anyone that wants access to some great sounding guitar amp emulations, without having to (or having access or the ability to) set up big rigs.
I'd be interested in seeing side by side comparisons, but otherwise, I'm quite happy with the results.

The only negative is the waaayyyyyy overpriced foot controller needed to manipulate the effects. It's around $800, and I'm simply not interested in spending that much for it. Hopefully they'll find a substitute foot controller (like the Behringher 1010) that will work with both Amplitube and Guitar Rig 3.

I'd certainly buy it again, as this fits perfectly with my current projects and intended goals with my home recordings.

** I highly recommend it, though the overpriced foot controller really turns me off, especially when speaking in the context of the budget of the typical Home Studio Artist.

[madvideos]

This is what I have used on the past 3 songs I posted on here. I like it, but, the rendered sound is not like the live sound. I still love it and will continue to use it because of the smooth work flow.

[Will Chen]

I'm totally loving AT2 and JH. We just posted an exclusive review of a prerelease beta version of Amplitube Fender over at FrugalGuitarist.com and I'm very excited about it as well.

[lapdog]

Hi guys!I have been using Amplitudes Fender plug in for a few months now.Having owned quite a few Fender amps in the last 30 years,I have a good idea as to how they sound.Amplitude have NAILED IT!!!!!!! with the Fnder plug in.Check it out!!!!