[noodles]

This Godless Endeavor AND Doomsday Machine were two tracks of Dual Recto and 2 tracks of Krank.
The Krank would have sounded like garbage on it's own, but the whole point is the the two tones blend together to create something unique

Considering that Andy Sneap is a Krank endorser, as was Michael Amott and Jeff Loomis at the time, I seriously doubt a word they have to say on the subject. :lol:

 

[Silverwulf]

This Godless Endeavor AND Doomsday Machine were two tracks of Dual Recto and 2 tracks of Krank...

...and DHIADW was 100% Recto and sounds better than both of them...

 

[Variant]

Keep the gain down? Nah not all the time.
For some styles yeah, but there have been plenty of times where I've used about 70 per cent gain on the amp sims and then used Boost+EQ set to 100 per cent drive and it sounded great. And there are heaps of tones all over the internet that quite gainy, done with POD Farm, that sound crazy good.
For a while I really bought into the "less gain" thing that gets thrown around SS.org seemingly all the time, but I realized that suddenly my palm mutes didn't have enough chunk and sustain. The less gain thing really fits the Meshuggah/Sybreed stuff, but for a lot of the death and groove metal stuff I like doing (think guitar tones in the style of Arch Enemy's Doomsday Machine, Chimaira's last two records, most of Killswitch Engage's stuff, Between the Buried and Me and some of the 90s Carcass stuff, just all that saturated to fuck kinda guitar tones), more gain just sounds better. Yes you lose out on a little clarity, but I'll ALWAYS trade clarity for more chunk on palm mutes and for more sustain and also slightly more compression for being able to do quick legato licks in between chunking away on the lower strings

That's what I mean by "keeping it down"... 70% is standard for my rhythms (with "stomp" section booting), leads get externally boosted even more. I find many of the hotter amp models to start to wash about a bit around 85%+, though. I'd rather grit it up more with a boost, than let it get too fizzy and compressed. There's all sorts of variables going on there and everyone's gonna find a different answer. That's just one of the things I've found to work for me, along with positive effects of layering.

Yeah, that is completely not for me at all. It is not even an ethics thing as much as "4-5 guys with 3 amps and a drumkit" ALWAYS sound bigger and badder than the guys dragging SkyLab up on stage with them. I've just yet to see a band that does all sorts of complicated stuff sound as good live as a solid backline will provide.

:shrug: Its just the bands you've seen then, as the P.A. plays what you feed into it, I'm pretty sure. I don't believe anyone has done what I'm working on right now, so there's really no point to contextualize in any case.

It's all piece-parts really, dude: I can take the best kick I've ever heard live (Hypocrisy), and tell you with 100% certainty that it was a triggered layered set of samples, the best amp sounds were probably a mic'd 4x12, some of the worst was a huge wall of fuckin' stacks (Joe Holmes, w/ Ozzy :ugh... Meshuggah's Vetta II's straight-to-board sounded 100x better. Some of THE best bass parts, were undoubtedly computer fed, and there's not many keyboard players that aren't pulling their sound from circuits, themselves being told what to do by MIDI messages. There's great and crap of everything.

On a side note, I think we'll name our server rack SkyLab.

I'm not 100% sure, but I THINK he was joking.

No, I'm absolutely not.

 

[noodles]

Just because you own a tube amp, doesn't immediately mean you have awesome tone. I've seen plenty of live bands with shitty tone from nice amps. Hell, Dave Mustaine's live tone has sucked for years. Actually, so has his recorded tone. :lol:

I've seen a couple of bands around here where the guys are jumping onstage with MacBooks and doing all sorts of complicated stuff. While they obviously had it figured out, and it allowed them to layer all sorts of stuff to get this really complex sound, it still didn't sound as good as a quality tube amp moving a bunch of air. There is something special that happens when you put a microphone in front of speakers driven by glass bottles, and until technology gets you 100% of the way there, I won't ever make the switch. 99% just doesn't cut it.

I saw Nevermore's Kranks blow Evergrey's PodXT Lives completely out of the water. Fundamentally, they were actually getting better tones out of the Line6 stuff, since Kranks just sound god-awful. However, they still sounded artificial. There is this indescribable "plasticness" to the sound of a modeler that I simply cannot un-hear.

Actually, some of the best bass parts I have ever heard are direct to board. Something about bass works better than running through an amp, or even running through modeling.