Positive Grid BIAS

Drew_TNBD

Sounds quite good to me. I'd like to give it a bash (turrrrr hurrrrr)

ICBM

Instant fail - the very first sound demo'd, "Dumble Clean" is heavily distorted.

And it sounds shit. Boxy, grating and artificial no matter which sound it's on. Or muffled. Or all of the above. I didn't hear one sound I actually would want to use in the whole thing.

But wow, you can change the tolex and the knobs on the amp models!

Drew_TNBD

I thought his Mark III configuration sounded very good.

ICBM

I did think that was one of the less dreadful sounds, but I don't like Marks so that isn't really any use .

Mostly it was just painfully bad.

I had been looking forward to the demo too, as I'm thinking of getting an iPad.

ddlooping

Another vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_H9NndThsg

@ICBM , I've deleted the other thread.

Phil_aka_Pip

ICBM said:

Instant fail - the very first sound demo'd, "Dumble Clean" is heavily distorted.

And it sounds shit. Boxy, grating and artificial no matter which sound it's on. Or muffled. Or all of the above. I didn't hear one sound I actually would want to use in the whole thing.

But wow, you can change the tolex and the knobs on the amp models!

Is that the sound clip over crappy PC speakers after being reconstituted from a megalossy compression algorithm, or first hand experience of the real thing?

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Is that the sound clip over crappy PC speakers after being reconstituted from a megalossy compression algorithm, or first hand experience of the real thing?

I don't listen over crappy PC speakers, everything goes through a proper hi-fi amp and speakers. I've heard plenty of digital stuff which doesn't sound anywhere near that bad even in a Youtube clip. You can get a reasonable idea of what things sound like.

There's no excuse for the amount of distortion in the "clean" sound no matter how it was recorded, either - it's not a recording problem.

Phil_aka_Pip

Fair enough, but it does surprise me the number of people who expect you to suss what something sounds like when reproduced with crappy equipment from a low bitrate horribly digitally compressed source. I should have sussed you'd know better.

dindude

ICBM said:

There's no excuse for the amount of distortion in the "clean" sound no matter how it was recorded, either - it's not a recording problem.

Don't follow this, the gain was cranked to 7+, so it's just range! I'm sure on 3 it's a lot cleaner, what would the point be of having a gain control that was as clean on 1 as it was on 10. 

I actually agree that it sounds a bit pants overall but I wouldn't mark it down for having a gain control.

stickyfiddle

The vids don't sound spectacular but I'm still keen as the regular Jamup app sounds very good. 

ICBM

dindude said:

ICBM said:

There's no excuse for the amount of distortion in the "clean" sound no matter how it was recorded, either - it's not a recording problem.

Don't follow this, the gain was cranked to 7+, so it's just range! I'm sure on 3 it's a lot cleaner, what would the point be of having a gain control that was as clean on 1 as it was on 10. 

I actually agree that it sounds a bit pants overall but I wouldn't mark it down for having a gain control.

The sound was called 'clean', so it should be *clean*. ie not distorted, or at least not clipped. A clean sound doesn't even need a gain control!

So many demos make this basic mistake - it just seems that there are a lot of guitarist who think that 'clean' means anything less than all-out fuzz. It's just something that really pisses me off since I like *clean* sounds - ie ones that are not clipped, even a little bit.

I don't have any problem with very lightly overdriven sounds, in fact I like them - but I would never call them clean. This one isn't even just lightly overdriven though.

thermionic

Too much tinkering with these things. I like my old Vox Tonelab (desktop) because I can dial in classic sounds very quickly - AC30, Fender Twin, Tweed Deluxe, Bassman, Plexi, JCM800... I don't want to be messing about swapping valves and transformers - or what someone thinks the valves and transformers sounded like.

Drew_TNBD

Tbh I went back, and I'm not in agreement with ICBM at all. I think many of the sounds were actually pretty decent.

stickyfiddle

thermionic;84263" said:

Too much tinkering with these things. I like my old Vox Tonelab (desktop) because I can dial in classic sounds very quickly - AC30, Fender Twin, Tweed Deluxe, Bassman, Plexi, JCM800... I don't want to be messing about swapping valves and transformers - or what someone thinks the valves and transformers sounded like.

To be fair Positive Grid already make Jamup which is exactly that. This is a companion app to that for deep patch editing

koss59

Clean channels should definitely have gain controls, not all of us like to play with anaemic boogie type clean tones. I like a small amount of hair on my cleans when I dig in hard, it also adds feel but you have to be the right type of player to appreciate it.

Cirrus

You hear that ICBM? You're the WRONG TYPE OF PLAYER!

Who the hell is this koss59 guy?

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! 

:x

koss59

I didn't mean him directly of coarse My amps don't actually have gain controls but I do think when using these types of modelling programs that they are very useful for adding feel and character.

I guess it depends if you like 80's type cleans or use them for country and jazz type solos where having some slight break up / sag can really aid your playing.

ICBM

koss59 said:

Clean channels should definitely have gain controls, not all of us like to play with anaemic boogie type clean tones. I like a small amount of hair on my cleans when I dig in hard, it also adds feel but you have to be the right type of player to appreciate it.

lol

You also have to be the right type of player to appreciate a clean sound, obviously .

Actually I don't disagree that clean *channels* should have gain controls, and I certainly like clean sounds with a bit of breakup, *when I want that*. But a sound which is labeled 'clean' should at least be clean, not heavily distorted. Not all of us only like distortion. And in fact you can often tell a lot more about the tone of an amp or modeller from the clean sound than the distortion, which is far more dependent on settings and what it's recorded through. I've never heard one that sounds good distorted that doesn't sound good clean.

(NB - by clean I mean not clipped, just for clarity!)

thermionic said:

Too much tinkering with these things. I like my old Vox Tonelab (desktop) because I can dial in classic sounds very quickly - AC30, Fender Twin, Tweed Deluxe, Bassman, Plexi, JCM800... I don't want to be messing about swapping valves and transformers - or what someone thinks the valves and transformers sounded like.

Completely agree - it's totally missing the wood for the trees to give you that level of apparent fine control over supposed elements in the modelled sound when the overall result sounds nothing like an amp.

Never mind. I probably only had high hopes for this because I wanted to justify buying an iPad .

Cirrus

It's still a handy little songwriting tool - multi track recorders, garageband, tascam im2 mic that can cleanly record loud band practice volumes then straight to soundcloud for bandmates to hear jams/ ideas etc, handly notepad for lyric writing etc.

Honestly I'd never use it as a serious guitar tone generator, but I have been very impressed by some of the soft synths you can buy, since they're all in the digital realm anyway. Ipad, external soundcard, midi keyboard and £30 worth of apps and you've got a serious soft synth rig.

Halikus

To those commenting on the sound quality with Bias take note that it is currently stuck in headphone out mode.  This means it is not sending a full range signal out for use over speakers, this is a major shame as jamup has these options so it also means the jamup integration dont work for many.  I have spoken to positve grids support guys and they say its right up the top of the development list and will likly be shoehorned into the next build as many many complaints have come their way regarding this.

Drew_TNBD