Bias fx professional review
Remember that listeners want to hear great sounds, and aren’t judging whether that JCM 800 is exactly accurate to the original. If you’re going for pure authenticity, you might not like that, but if you’re trying to get good sounding, instantly usable amp tones, you will. They had a more raw quality, whereas the Bias models had a more “finished” tone to them. I compared a number of them to similar models in AmpliTube 3 and Guitar Rig, which sounded a tad more authentic - not in terms of how closely they captured the tone of the original amps, but in how much they sounded like unprocessed amps recorded through a mic. Overall, the EQ section is handy for additional tone shaping, although I didn't find it necessary on most of the amp tones, which sound good without additional equalization.Īs a whole, I found the amp models sounded excellent. The latter is not explained in the Bias FX online documentation, (which are quite underwhelming in terms of depth), but it appears to add some sort of high-end boost when turned up to the upper half of its setting. It offers Bass, Middle, High and Resonate. You also get a four-band EQ section called Output Setting, which gives you an additional EQ stage at the output. A noise gate, also essential on a amp modeler, can be switched in and out, and features Threshold and Decay knobs. These include Input and Output level knobs, which are important on an amp modeling plug-in to avoid clipping and to maintain good gain staging. Going globalĪll the way at the bottom of Bias FX is a thin strip with some key global controls on it. If you want to expand an effect in Pedalboard View, you can doubletap it.
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The effects are shown as larger than in the standard view, however, and can be edited directly, rather than having to select and expand them first. The amp (or amps, if you choose a Dual configuration with the Splitter and Mixer modules), are smaller than when expanded for editing in the standard view, and they don’t expand in this view. It shows you all the same components you had in the other view, but on a virtual pedalboard. I noticed more change moving it side to side than front to back, but the sonic changes were much more subtle than they'd be if you were moving a real mic on a real amp.Īn alternate view, Pedalboard View can be selected from a button at the top. I was disappointed in the lack of change in the sound when moving Bias FX’s virtual mic back and forth from the cabinet. IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube 3 lets you put two mics on at a time,position them where you want, and it gives you 16 different mic choices. Contrast this with Native Instrument Guitar Rig, which, when using its Control Room module allows for seven different simultaneous mic types, although you can’t individually position them. You can move the mics side to side and front to back. You get only two mic models: an SM57 (dynamic) and a condenser (C414). The amps all have matching cabinets, which can be interchanged with the Cabinet Model drop down menu. You can also select the “Cab” option, in which you’ll see a graphic of a cabinet with a mic in front of it. The latter lets you delay either side up to 30 ms, allowing you to get greater stereo width, and it works great. The two signals are then combined before the output in a Mixer module that offers Level, Pan, and Delay. Dual configurations use a splitter to divide your signal to two separate paths, featuring whatever amps and effects you want. You can choose between a single amp configuration and a dual one by clicking on the appropriate button in the Signal Path. On at least one of the acoustic amp models, the Gain control is not active. On the other hand, it’s consistent from amp to amp, which is useful for settings comparisons. All the models feature this identical control set, which means in many cases, you’re not getting parameters that exactly match those on the modeled amp.
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The amp defaults to the “Head” view, which features parameters Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence, and Master controls. For the amps, you get a front or top view, depending on where the controls are on the modeled amp. When you click on a component, it becomes selected, and a much larger version of its controls appears in the lower half of the GUI, known as the Control Panel, and that’s where you make adjustments. The user interface for all three versions features a graphically depicted signal path across the top half, in which you can add and remove amps and effects, and move them around in the signal chain order.