AxlBrutality Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 (edited) https://audioassault.mx Have been wanting to experiment with some different amp sims after getting a little tired of Peavey Revalver. Love the sound of JST's Toneforges, but have been having issues getting them to play well in Cakewalk. In the meantime, I keep coming across this "Audio Assault" company and everyone seems to love them. But I haven't seen much in the way of CbB, specifically, usage/compatibility confirmation from the field...and my Toneforge experience has made me wary of dropping cash on amp sims for CbB right now. Additionally, considering AA is a very small company and their sims are dirt cheap (some are constantly on sale for only like $5, and I've found in general you often "get what you pay for" with amp sims), I was kinda looking for some peace of mind. Any metalheads out there have any sims (or plugins in general) from these guys? (Or, is anyone willing to spend $5 and be a guinea pig? Lmao.) Edited December 5, 2019 by AxlBrutality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 I dunno about Audio Assault's amp sims specifically, but if you're in the mood to try amp sims, I recently tried Blue Cat's Free Amp and was pleasantly surprised. I haven't tried to get a djent tone with it, but one of the models is a "Modern Drive" that I think is supposed to be "rectifier-esque." Might be fun to play with. Certainly worth the money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Tim Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 I've used Grindmachine in the past with some pretty great results - it may need a bit of EQing to have it sit in the mix but it's very usable, and great for modern styles of metal especially. The Djentbox pedal does a great job at tightening things up for percussive playing. I haven't tried anything since then, and I know Grindmachine II is out, along with a bunch of other new products, so I can only assume that things have gotten better since then. I've also had a lot of good results with freeware sims and IRs too, so don't discount those. Stuff from Ignite Amps, Poulin, and even CbB's stock plugins when chained together can sound IMMENSE. (Tip: You can make a Preset Chain with assignable knobs so you can design your own interface to control each individual plugin in the chain easily). The real key to making things sound great is your IRs. Again, some great freeware collections of metal-oriented IRs out there that you can load into something like NadIR from Poulin that can really make things heavy fast. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxlBrutality Posted December 5, 2019 Author Share Posted December 5, 2019 (edited) @Lord Tim Thanks; yea, I've heard lots of good shit about AA...just kinda wanted some confirmation their stuff works well in CbB. I'm actually taking a pretty hard look at the Dominator and the Hellbeast. 9 hours ago, Lord Tim said: The real key to making things sound great is your IRs. For sure. I actually own a whole bunch of Ownhammer IRs, which are absolutely stellar IMO. I usually run their Mesa and Deizel cabs opposite of each other for rhythms and get a pretty heavy tone, and their Mesa and EDVH cabs work great for leads. They've worked great with the 6505 in Peavey Revalver, but Revalver hasn't had much support for a few years, is more difficult to dial in, it's older and can be quite noisy, and...outside of the 6505...it doesn't have a whole lot of options for modern extreme metal. I also just got an email last night stating Revalver actually just got sold, so who knows what's gonna happen with it or what changes will be made. I feel like it's just time to maybe move on to something newer and better geared towards what I do. That was my plan with Toneforge, which I actually love, but like I said Toneforge isn't playing very well with CbB right now and we haven't been able to debug it yet. 9 hours ago, Lord Tim said: it may need a bit of EQing to have it sit in the mix but it's very usable Yea, Toneforge is the same way. It's a common complaint, but I think people (particularly musicians, as opposed to engineers) expect these things to be more "plug and play" than they are, can be, or should be. Appreciate the input! EDIT: Oh man, shoulda bought it last night; missed my chance at the $5 sale. Lol. Edited December 5, 2019 by AxlBrutality 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcL Posted December 5, 2019 Share Posted December 5, 2019 I have used Dominator and HellBeast a little bit, and I like them (also their interface) although I am more a vintage guitar player! Once when I had tested and compared overdrive and distortion stomps (real boxes and plugin stuff), I was positively surprised of the stomps included in Dominator, one of the best overdrives (everything from gentle warmth up till real distortion is usable). But some months ago I bought a Boss Katana 50 for recording guitar (and even bass), IMO the real stuff sounds better and is easier to set up. ? But this does not mean that I will never use my plugins again! ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxlBrutality Posted December 7, 2019 Author Share Posted December 7, 2019 (edited) So just as an update, I caught the Hellbeast on sale for $9 today and have been playing around with it. It's pretty decent. Not sure I'd pay full price for it ($70), but for $9 it was definitely a steal. It's got a little bit of that cheap Line 6 metal tone that I don't really like, but it's average to good if you use some Ownhammer Mesa or Deizel IRs and do some cab blending (it's got a dual IR loader) and a bit of EQ work. Edit: Emperor and Dominator were on sale again too, for $5....so I couldn't help myself. I actually like them even more sound-wise, although the IR loader is kinda buggy. Edited December 7, 2019 by AxlBrutality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mánibranðr Studios Posted December 8, 2019 Share Posted December 8, 2019 Grind Machine II is really good for getting that rough dirty tone from old metal bands, I also found that Bulldozer is quite nice, since it's also worked on by the guys that made Cabal 8. (They also have a much smaller memory and CPU footprint compared to Amplitube 4) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxlBrutality Posted December 8, 2019 Author Share Posted December 8, 2019 9 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said: (They also have a much smaller memory and CPU footprint compared to Amplitube 4) They all seem to be less of a resource hog than Revalver as well, in my limited experience. So far I'm fairly impressed, especially for the price point (always being on sale for less than $10 each). I think I'll stop at Dominator, Emperor, and Hellbeast for now though, lol. Plenty to play with there for a while. I've actually got a pretty massive tone going on right now with Dominator (with Mesa Ownhammer IRs) on one rhythm, Emperor (with Deizel OH IRs) on the other side...and Hellbeast (with EDVH OH IRs) powering the leads. Pretty impressive, tbh. Emperor is a little noisier than I'd like for start/stop chugging; gonna have to play around with the gate and gain settings a bit. Other than that...this might actually be what goes on my next record. We'll see. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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