Guitar Rig 3 feedback - post your impressions here!

Right.
Being able to select by what AMP I want to use has made using GR3 10x better for workflow!

I HATED having to scroll through premade genre specific tones.
It didn't help me, having a certain tone in mind, and then having that idea coloured by the name of the preset. Maybe I'm the only one, but seeing "NYC hardcore" makes me think of Bad Brains, and therefore makes my sweet soft indie rock song turn into another thrash tune for the library.

 

I am a first time user and I am very impressed. Got a FCB1010 yesterday. Plugged it in to my TASCAM US-122 and played. No problem. Tried to add GR3 as an effect in Adobe Audition using VST which kind of worked but need to play with it some more!

 

So far it seems great to me, there don't seem to be quite the range of patches as there were in GR2 but having updated I can simply import those to play with - joy!

 

Kitchenman: using GuitarRig as a VSTi plugin in Audition is not possible until v3 of it is released - which is any day now!

 

I'm sorry to say I am unconvinced. I will say this though, Guitar Rig is probably one of the most inovative pieces of software around and the options on it are amazing but unfortunatly the tones fall flat on their faces.

I'm speaking purely from a metal producer point of view which are the style of bands I record and from the user patch section, that and classic rock seem to be what most people buy Guitar rig for. It's probably a wonderfull piece of gear for other styles but for metal the tones are bland, very weak and extremely fuzzy. I've tried all different knds of combiantions with mics, cabs, pedals, eq, gain control as I would in a real studio but it just ends up the same mess of fuzz and nothing like what I'm trying to achive. I doubt I'd ever let a band record with GR3.

I've tried the POD 2.0, Behringer V-amp and Guitar rig 2 and all of them suffer from the same problem in metal tones and it seems that Guitar rig 3 is the same.

The only one that got it right in my opinion is the PODxt (Early xt, not the newer ones with the new logo and updated patches!) and I'll have to stick with that for direct recording for now, but I shall be keeping a close eye on the Guitar Rig family because when the day comes that the tones are right it'll be a glorious day in just about every studio I think!

Thanks!

 

Post some metal sounds that you like and see if someone here can match them. Sound is always subjective but you've got admit that to have all those sounds to you avaiable on a notebook for less than $500 is a steal.

 

Oh absolutly, sound is all down to taste and like I said the options in it are fantastic but the distortion tones just don't cut it for me. I've recently been speaking to a few collegues who also are producers in the metal/hardcore field and they agree with me.

I'll try and put up some examples of what I thnk is a good tone, if it works then fantastic, I'll quite happily eat my hat, becase I would LOVE it if GR3 could give me a tone I need, it would save myself and the bands I record SO much time!

 

Going back to impressions of GR 3 I can tell you why I've just bought it over Amplitube 2 and Waves GTR 3. It's not due to the quality of the amps. While I find them good they do feel a bit like a good copy of a tube amp & fx rather than flawless imitations. Then again I could say the same of Amplitube and GTR; a lot of it's down to taste and subjective impressions. That argument will take a long, long time to die away, if ever.

What convinced me to buy this was how I could mangle the sound. The LFOs, sequencers & envelopes take this off in ways that were unthinkable even a short while ago. It's so nice to find amp software that doesn't spend all it's time trying to copy amp sounds. Use the new technology for something new as well as something old. Given it's NI with their huge range of synths I look forward to (eg) a module or two from Absynth or Massive. How about defining your own vowell sounds on the talk wah? How about those huge, evolving sequence envelopes from Massive? This is (imo) NI's huge advantage over other amp sim software; not just trying to gain acceptance from amp purists, but leaving them slack jawed at what they could never do with the 'good old ways'.

Mr. Hendrix wouldn't be asking how he could recreate his old sounds. He'd be in amongst the stepped LFOs making new classics.

 

Agreed 101%

 

+1 if I wanted pure tube tone I'd play my Budda at gigs not my laptop. I wanna make new sounds and GR is great for that.

 

+2 The problem with Amplifier simulation software, as I see it, is that really depends on what you are playing back through. It might sound like a Marshall to the person who programmed it originally - thru his headphones or monitors, but once you play it back through something different, the authenticity starts to fall off. I mean, it can sound great no matter what you play it back through - it's just not going to be the same as the real thing. However, the s/w solutions really allow you to explore sonic realms that would be very difficult to do with a hardware based system....

All that being said, I still think that GR makes a great pre-amplifer/processor system.

Dave
www.ambientstickist.com

 

Agreed. The 'who has the best amp sim' argument reminds me of the one that's been going all over the net whenever you get 2 bits of software that do broadly similar things. Everyone has their own camp and says the software they use is the best because blah blah blah.... apart from those people actually using said software on a daily basis. They tend to use anything they need to get the result they want.

Being a new customer I have no particular loyalty to NI over anyone else. I just got GR3 because I see their advantage as being able to do new things with a guitar as well as old. Also, given that they have access to a large base of synthesizer code they are best placed to really exploit that advantage, and I look forward to seeing what new things can be done with each release of Guitar Rig. 'Guitar Reaktor' anyone?

 

Hey Darc, Have you had a chance to try out the MIDI automation?

 

Guitar old timer/software newbie....

Hi everybody. I'm new to GR/NI,and this is my 2nd post...

I LOVE GR3,the Citrus and Ultrasonic sound great,though some of the other amps (Pexi/Lead 800)don't sound very convincing to my ears.Haven't had time to really check out the others
The dynamics in GR are a little wierd (tho' it may just be my inexperience)-there doesn't seem to be much vol.headroom between clean and distorted when using single amp-with-stomp box setup.
The Live view is cool,though cooler would be a zoom/full screen option with selectable components.As noted by others,the synth/other wordly
sound design possibilities are amazing-love to see more dev. in this area.Over all,GREAT bang for the buck-very happy with the investment,been playing my head off ever since. Thank you NI !

F**kwitPro 2.4Ghz,2Gb, RK3, Logic Studio, Reason,Strats,'Paul

 

I haven't actually had any need for it recently. Is there something in particular you'd like me to test or advise on? Also, what host or DAW are you using? I'm almost exclusively on Ableton Live now. I remember Sonar had some issues, and although they have alledgedly been addressed in recent versions (6 and later) I have had any reason to go back and test.

 

Hi, I'm posting for the first time og guitar rig too, although I have owned most of the NI stuff for a long time...
I'm very, very pleased with guitar rig 3! For me, High White and Citrus is the highlight, so much that I don't use the other amps much any more. And thats my point. I don't know the originals so the simulation is no issue, it just sound soooo much better that the other amps. There must be some clever programming in these models that the other models could benefit from? What I want most in guitarig 4 then is to have the old models updated so that they sound as alive as Citrus and high white. I'm sure the Ultrasonic is very good to, but it isn't quite my cup of tee.
And by the way, I understand that making the rig contol 2 available in the display is some extra work, but it is a bit anoing to look at rig control 3 all the time.... And it won't make me buy it just because I have to look at it all the time...

Well, as I said, I'm very pleased with the new version, as I am with all your stuff. Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks. I don't use automation on GR much, but wondered what I could expect when I do. If I upgraded. Does recording automation into the host work alright?

I mostly use SONAR 7. It seemed that recording with automation was a struggle earlier. Can't remember if it was only with SONAR though.

 

Yes, Automation is working just fine in GR3.

 

"I mostly use SONAR 7. It seemed that recording with automation was a struggle earlier. Can't remember if it was only with SONAR though."

At this point I don't even have Sonar installed, but if I think of it, I'll take a look at the owner's manual and post the page numbers and a few details. Basically, you need to arm automation for the desired VST parameters before you begin recording. There are controls for this in the mixer view, and I believe in a pop up menu in the effects bin of the track view.

(Also, if I recall correctly, the Guitar Rig 2 manual included an example of recording automation to a host, and at that time they actually had a Sonar 5 example. It's definitely worth looking at that. I was pretty miffed at the time that their example didn't actually *work*, but as best as I could tell, this was due to a Sonar 5 bug.)

A recurring problem is that all of these hosts will only see a limited number (I believe 255) of a VST's parameters, whereas GR3 exposes a great deal more than that. So it's always likely you won't be able to find the parameter you want to automate. I wish the index of automatable parameters were updated dynamically, so as to only include those pertaining to GR modules your current preset actually uses.

When I have time, I'll actually install Sonar 6 again. I've been meaning to get back to working with that app, and this way I'll be able to talk about this in further detail.

 

gr3

The ultrasonic finally gives me the metal tones Ive been searching for. With the new interface, I can finally see the bottom of the rack in plug-in mode. I wish they would have left the old presets in there(I copied and pasted them from gr2 anyhow). I wish there was a setting for the RK2 to make it visible in live mode instead of the RK3. I am still having a burst of noise every once in a while. I don't think that there are enough improvements over GR2 for a release. This is just a tactic for NI to make more sales. GR2 was the latest and greatest last year and it is already outdated. NI: Please dont go the way of apple's ipods(new versions every six months).