So I made a great capture of my personal amp (5150 III 50watt 6L6) and I use the Green channel for clean sounds. I can’t seem to find anything I like as much as that amp for clean. For my dirty channel I use the 5150 IIIS blue channel sim in the QC. It takes more computing power than a capture and sounds very much like the capture of the blue channel on my amp.
My question is are the Amp Sims basically more complicated captures? Is the quality of a capture any less than the Amp Sims? Is this really just about opinion rather than anything else?
Thank you!
I think it’s mostly opinion, and you will hear all sorts.
For me, the captures of my own gear are really satisfying, maybe because that’s a curated tone we develop for ourselves over years in some cases. It just feels right.
Some vendors’ full captures give me the same feeling/response- playing thru a cohesive rig and not a compilation of digital parts.
However, then I go experiment with some models and have just as much fun. I think it just varies according to what tones you really like and look for.
Supposedly the Models are a collection of captures contained in a block that morphs between them to emulate how the captured device responds, much like the Cab blocks on the QC. If that’s the case then it’s even harder to say which is better; they’re basically the same.
4 Likes
My 2 cents
Captures are really good and fun
But at the end i tend to use 90% models, they are stellar and i can tune them perfectly on my guitars
4 Likes
+1
if i want to replicate a specific sound i tend to use a capture of the exact amp + settings. But if i dial in something for live / rehearsal use, i use 100% Models as i can tweak them on the fly etc.
But thats totally subjective. Others only use capture of their stuff which is great
1 Like
Thanks for the replies. I get what everyone is saying and I’m not new to any of this, I have owned many Line6 products including Helix. I guess I am really wondering if the Amp sim is technically “more accurate” almost like higher resolution or something? The amp sims use more DSP than the captures but they also have to take into account the tone stack of the amp.
Are the amp sims just more complicated versions of a capture or are they something completely diifferent? Like IRs are static and completely different than cab simulation.
Think of a Sim/ modeler as a video. Fluid, moving, dynamic. You have more control over it (if that’s what you want or need).
A capture is like a snapshot/photo. You’re capturing a moment of a sound.
Everyone always talks about finding their sweet spot on their old class A amps - and that’s different for everyone (as it should be).
A good capture of the sweet spot of an amp can be as good or better than the amp (depending on use case) and as good or better than a sim/model of that amp (again, depending on use case).
I personally use captures of amps as I never really found myself going back to the amp to adjust tone in a live setting (once I’ve found its sweet spot). I’ll reach down and tweak an overdrive pedal or something to refine my “tone” if I need to. YMMV
2 Likes
I was experimenting the other day with A/Bing between sims and captures with/without cab. Namely with the a bunch of SLO100 captures from the Cortex Cloud, ie the Tone Junkie SOLD SLO OD one, the Solo 100 Lead sim and the Soldano SLO (huge) capture from JoeBent (again, taken from the Cortex Cloud).
I ended up being able to get the Solo 100 sim to be undistinguishable from the TJ one, when paired with a Celestion G12M IR I own (the one that mixes several mics). Then Swapped it for the JoeBent one, that again I can easily get to match the sim dead on.
The reason why I ended up using the captures on the patch I use live is, I tend to use pretty convoluted presets with several paths (stereo to Outs 1-2 with IRs/cabs on, mono to Out 3 without the cab) and at least 2 amps so I can do a whole set just switching between scenes, and captures/IRs are less CPU-intensive than sims, so I can cram more stuff into the preset before running out of CPU.
But tone-wise, (good) captures and sims are just as good. I’ve very curious to compare the aforementioned sims and captures to the plugin version of the SLO once it’s available.
And for the record, it’s the first time I hear and play a SLO sim that sounds and feels remotely like the real thing, they usually are a compressed nasal mess.
2 Likes
I prefer the Sims.
I like the idea of the captures, but it’s more… Let’s say boring, for me.
I had a Kemper Stage, and l don’t use a lot of different sounds, so once I had it set it was fine, but I prefer to tweak the amp instead of being checking a lot of captures.
I’m not new to guitar, so most of my life I’ve been working with real amps, so I think that somehow it conditions they way I like to do the things.