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Public Beta test link for Acoustic Guitar Sim audio unit effect plugin
Good day to you all,
Link:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/fe6w1MFI
This is a link to a public beta test of our upcoming Acoustic Guitar Sim plugin. It does the following things:
- Make acoustic guitars with cheap piezo pickups sound more like the real acoustic tone of the guitar
- Make electric guitars with magnetic pickups sound like acoustic guitars
- Add tasteful reverb and stereo mic simulation for acoustic guitars recorded in mono.
The main issue we would like to hear feedback about is "Are you able to get a usable acoustic tone from the plugin?" The main challenge when using this plugin is that it has a list of about 15 different EQ profiles designed to work with different types of pickups. Selecting the right EQ profile for the pickup you have is the most crucial step to getting a good sound out of the plugin. We created profiles for a variety of different types of guitars and pickups but we don't have a very large guitar collection here so we certainly haven't covered every type of pickup.
If you try the plugin and you can't find a profile that works for your guitar, we would like you to send us a recording of your guitar played straight into the iPad with no effects of any kind. We will do our best to make a profile that fits your guitar if you send us such a recording. HOWEVER, there are some limitations we want you to know about before you send us any recordings...
RULES FOR MAKING RECORDINGS TO SEND US FOR MAKING A CUSTOM EQ PROFILE FOR YOUR GUITAR
1. Custom EQ profiles are powerful; they can do a pretty good job even on solid body electric guitars, but not every guitar will work. In order to get an acoustic like tone, the original signal needs to have some clarity in the high end. If you are playing the neck pickup humbucker of an archtop electric with flatwound strings and the tone knob turned all the way down, we probably can't make it sound like a martin acoustic with bronze roundwound strings because there just isn't enough treble volume. In short, please choose a guitar that you would actually want to use for playing acoustic through this plugin.
2. If you are playing an electric guitar, choose a pickup with bright, clear sound and turn the tone all the way up to 10. Single-coil pickups usually work better than Humbuckers because they sound brighter but a bright-sounding bridge position humbucker can also work.
3. If you are playing an electric guitar, use only one pickup. (don't use the in-between positions on the pickup selector switch)
4. No preamps please - we need to keep the list of EQ profiles short; it won't work if each person who sends us a recording has different settings on their acoustic preamp because we can not make a profile for every possible setting and every preamp. Bypass the preamp and send us a recording of the raw unprocessed pickup sound. If you have a built-in preamp that can't be bypassed, set the eq and all the controls to the default, flat setting.
5. No combined mic + piezo inputs - many high-end acoustic guitars combine mic and piezo sound using a mixer. It would be impossible for us to make profiles for all possible combinations of built in mic and piezo pickups. Chose either the mic or the piezo (whichever sounds better) and send us the raw, unmixed, un-processed recording of just that one input source.
6. Strum basic open chords like you're sitting around a campfire. (C, E, G) It's easier for us to make a balanced profile if we hear all the strings ringing together at the same time, so don't show off your guitar skills when you make the recording; just strum the basic chords like a beginner. No finger-picking, no soloing, just strum the full chord with a pick.
Comments
Cool, thanks! GS Vintage Clean has been super useful and I bet this will be too.
Will give it a try with my ukulele later
Wow, you’re a brave person to attempt this one. Not saying you can’t do it, Vintage Clean is awesome, but an acoustic simulator always feels so bizarre.
I think we will need to manage expectations a bit. I have been playing it with my strat quite a lot. it isn't indistinguishable from a professionally recorded acoustic guitar but it certainly gets close enough that I have a lot of fun with it.
Hm... I didn't test it with a uke. If it doesn't work for you, I would really like to have a recording of you strumming open chords recorded dry straight from the piezo pickup so we can make a custom profile for that.
Ok no problem, glad to try it. Will try and dig out a pick to make it brighter sounding.
I have a peculiar case too. A CGB guitar with a single coil pickup. The only profile that seems to work is the “electric piezo” one. ¿Should I send a recording?.
I love vintage clean so I’m excited about this.
@Blue_Mangoo: Any plans for your company to work on a guitar simulator to compete with the Steel Guitar app, or possibly add a strumming UI to your iFretless Guitar app? Right now, if a person wants to combine strumming and picking on their production (and they don’t have or don’t want to use a real guitar) they have to jump between 2-3 apps to get the job done.
Please don’t use a pick if that’s not how you normally play it. The lack of brightness is an issue for electric guitars with humbucking pickups. Acoustic instruments with piezo pickups have the opposite problem: too much brightness. But the point of asking for recordings is so we can make it sound good when you can play like you normally do, not when you do something unusual to make it sound weird. If you have a piezo pickup, just plug straight in. No eq. No preamp No effects.
We don’t have any plans for it yet. Sorry.
Understood.
Awesome can’t wait to try. I really like gain stage vintage clean, this seems to be in the same ballpark.
The UI design is similar.
This thing sounds sweet, i'm getting really warm clean tones.
How does it sound running a piano or synth through it?
Dope. About to try it out. What did you use? Samples, guitar, SoundFonts, synths, etc… just curious?
I will try this.Really curious about it.
Thanks for your work.
Flo
Sounds quite convincing to me! Very effective on electric guitar.
Also it would be nice to have a few presets for bass guitars. Any chance to see that coming?
Just my Ibanez RG570. and a bit of Bleass Reverb after Gain Stage. But, without any extra reverb, setting the room size to L, sounds gorgeous as well!
Good to know. Cheers.
Excited for this @Blue_Mangoo !
Love all the different pickup presets. Only used a classical guitar soundfont so far but I really like the amp warmth it added to the sound.
I've given my honest opinion before but it is not often appreciated (not related to BM). All I can say is I've tried many plugins and a Variax through a Fractal. Nothing yet has enticed me to keep using it. I suppose that is a good thing for BM. The Variax Fractal combo was the best and this plugin is no better or worse generally speaking than anything else.
Sounds quite interesting with my soprano uke fed through in the piezo settings then adding Drambo to shift the signal down an octave. Mix the two via wet and dry and add some saturation for taste. This is never going to sound exactly like a real acoustic guitar because the notes are much shorter and have a much different timbre but it still provides interesting instrument sounds.
When used with Acoustic Guitar, the purpose of this plugin is to make the piezo pickup or built in mic sound more natural.
I was thinking that when you plug your uke in, your purpose was to make the piezo pickup on the uke sound like the natural acoustic uke. Is that not what you are going for? Or are you saying you want the plugin to make your uke sound like an acoustic guitar?
With the cgb it seems like every preset makes it sound darker and more muffled. Granted the cgb is not bright to start with. I’m curious if this is a general approach to make the acoustic simulation… since an electric is brighter or has more high end than an acoustic, a general approach might be to reduce high end… Which doesn’t work well with a cgb (tuned low GDG) which is not bright sounding.
Have you tried mixing a bit of the untreated signal back in? Get the balance right and it should retain some brightness.
What is a cgb guitar? (CiGar Box?)
You are right in how you understand what the input type selection part of the plugin is doing: it’s just compensating the EQ, boosting where the input is weak and cutting where it is too strong. It’s not complicated, but we spent days tweaking each of the profiles to make them sound as good as they can. If your guitar sounds too dark when you use this plugin, it’s because your guitar is darker than the ones we have here. Please send us a recording of you strumming open chords like a beginner-style guitarist; no effects, just clean and straight into the iPad. We will try to come up with a better profile for your guitar.
I'm just exploring what it sounds like and what it can add to my methods. It does give a more natural sound to the uke when I don't do any further prrocessing, although it tends to "boom" a bit in the mid-range when I don't change the EQ. But further to that I was curious whether it could provide a passable imitation of an acoustic guitar when pitch shifted etc.. It can but the pitch, tone and volume envelopes are different to an acoustic guitar, as you know, so it sounds quite different to a guitar at the same time as occupying a similar space.
Ok I see. Thank you. I will work on making an input preset appropriate for making the piezo sound like an acoustic uke.