Hello everyone. I’m writing this post because I’m honestly pretty desperate, as I’m fairly sure I must be doing something wrong with how I’m using plugins. It seems like these tools can produce truly outstanding sounds, yet I can’t manage to get anything even remotely acceptable out of them.
I own two Neural DSP plugins, Plini X and Cory Wong X, and I’ve had them for several years now. Every so often I try to use them again, but the results are always extremely disappointing. Let me describe my setup: I’m using a 14" MacBook Pro (M4, 16 GB RAM), a UAD Arrow audio interface, and I monitor either through Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 80-ohm headphones or KRK GoAux 4 monitors. I’ve followed every configuration guide and recommendation I could find, but the sounds I get are distant, weak, thin, plasticky, artificial—nowhere near comparable to what you hear on YouTube tutorials and reviews.
It really feels like these plugins should be capable of producing beautiful, professional tones, but I swear that with the sounds I’m getting, it’s impossible to even do a basic practice session. To give you an idea, my guitar honestly sounds better unplugged. On top of that, the sound in headphones is completely different from what I hear through the monitors, which makes it extremely difficult to find a balance and understand what I’m actually recording.
There has to be something fundamentally wrong in what I’m doing or in my setup. I should add that over the years I’ve tried different audio interfaces, different headphones, and different monitors, but the situation never improved significantly. I’d also like to point out that I have no trouble at all getting decent sounds from traditional analog setups, even with very modest amplifiers.
I really hope someone can help me figure this out. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this and offer some advice.