One of them, the Gx CreamMachine, is coded by @brummer and is the first commercial plugin to come from an Open Source project. Hermann deserves all possible kudos for his work. The plugins sounds amazing and adds to the guitar stack that much missed “punch” from real amps that we miss so much when using simulators.
The other two, MOD Modern Cabinets and MOD Vintage Cabinets are here due to the fact that we were really craving for some cabinets that were not included in any OS plugins or, if included, did not have the quality we expected. Both cabinet simulators are IR based and most of the magic comes from the quality of the IR files. We selected IR files with standards that are really high.
Not only focusing on audio, but also, interfaces, we’ve added some extra effort by designing icons that are more descriptive and also eye catching. Together with them some changes to the mod-ui are coming to properly accommodate the new UI features (eg: that perspective from the Modern Cabinet).
I believe that the MOD guitar stack has just gained so much and I am having so much fun playing with them.
I hope you guys really enjoy as I do.
And again, I’d like to thank Hermann for the outstanding work.
I’ve been using GxCreamMachine for a few months and bought it as soon as I saw it in the store. It’s one of my favorite plugins - sounds great, produces great tones and uses very little CPU.
That is great news about the new cab sims! I’ll be trying those out tonight…
we’d love some feedback on these two, not only on the quality of the cabs but also in the lack of some model that should be included
Because I’ve been testing these plugins for weeks, I already have two favourite models in one of the simulators, but I’ll wait for some feedback before disclosing them.
Hey people,
I really appreciate these new plugins. When I heard about the GxCreamMachine, I saw so much potential regarding those sounds that weren’t available before, but the story goes on with these two cabinet simulations…
I surely have to meet with my band’s guitarist to let him experience these new plugins.
I have been using the new cabs a little for fun, mostly the Mod cab so far. A few observations:
The overall sounds and potential are very exciting, yet the noise levels on the Duo become increasingly problematic.
I’ve probably become a lot more sensitive to noise and tone quality as I gain experience. I was testing recently with the Duo running to mixer which output to a PA speaker. With GxCreamMachine on, even at very low levels, the background noise was untenable. The GxCreamMachine does it’s job so well that when you flip it on it starts to sound like a military helicopter invasion. I could make some slight quality improvements by fiddling with gain staging. I tried using a TAP noise gate, and it does cut the noise pretty well when at rest, but the tone is still heavily colored with the noise whenever the gate is open. I could tell quickly that it would be difficult to work with the gate with the playing dynamics I’m using. Regrettably these factors do remove a lot of the fun of the Duo experience. If I head out to my garage for a jam and then 30 minutes later I’m still fiddling with gains and comparing noise output between different plugins, the creative spark gets extinguished.
I have found that running my Duo into a Roland Street Cube seems to attenuate a lot of the noise. I also have some battery packs now and getting away from wall power seems to help a little as well. But running sound through my PA is important for me and right now I fear running GxCreamMachine in this setup won’t be able to work.
@unbracketed The noise annoys me too. What do you think about the Overtone DT-1 in his regard? It seems to have a much lower noise floor than the other plugins and I wonder whether this is just me or not.
I have tried the DT-1 a few times and I did pull it in to a board recently to compare the noise level. In my memory it did attenuate the noise. I want to like (and use) the DT-1, but something about the tone doesn’t sit right with me. Whenever the DT-1 is active, the tone sounds like it is in a box (yes, great technical description). I guess maybe I prefer brighter tones. There is something off putting to me about how the tone sounds compared to every other plugin I usually use. It is really noticeable when switching to another route without the DT, like a clean channel.
Thanks for the feedback @unbracketed! I guess it comes down to preference then because I personally like it quite a lot. Good to hear that you also think it attenuates the noise because that means there is some hope for algorithmic improvements as touched on by @Azza.
You could remove the noise nearly complete with the TAP Equaliser. Put it on the input and set band 2 to -24.5 band 3 to -24.5 and band 5 to -18.5. This works as well when you’ve set the input stage at “High”.
regards
hermann
when you’ve set the input gain stage to low, you only need to touch band 5, -15db will remove the noise there. This shows us that the most affected band is around 3000Hz.
I’m working now on a denoiser plugin for the MOD, have it running here locally and be able to suppress most of the noise from the input, while using some fuzz plugs to the cream machine. It works well, without alter the frequency range like the solution with the EQ.
Basically it is a cascaded moving average filter.
Unfortunately I ain’t get my mod-sdk to work proper (screenshot and thumbnail generation fails quietly), otherwise the plug is ready.
Will give it a shot tomorrow, else I’ll publish the code and maybe someone with a running mod-sdk could generate the needed thumbnails.
Absolutely loving the Cream Machine. It’s as rich and detailed as my Darkglass VMT. Also really enjoying the new cab sim options. Have deployed them on a number of boards.
Great work, guys! The Duo goes from strength to strength
