Amplifiers

Table of Contents

Introduction

In the beginning (2007) was Vintage Amp Room, Softube's first plug-in, originally released exclusively for Pro Tools TDM and PowerCore platforms. We had spent years on researching tube amplifier modeling, written lots of academic works, worked closely together with Marshall on their JMD:1 platform, and wanted to make a "just an amp" type of product. Vintage Amp Room was just that. Three amps, three cabinets and a moveable SM57. No clutter, just tone.

The years passed, we added more titles to our guitar line: Bass Amp Room, Metal Amp Room, and later the Marshall Legends with faithful recreations of Marshall's reference units. With all these amazing amps, we just had to combine all of these into a single platform, and Amp Room was born. A super-flexible "Eurorack" for guitar sounds, with tons of effects and amps. A real power-house for detailed tone sculpting.

But "I just need a guitar amp sound with minimal tweaking!" was something we heard more and more. We'd lost something between the overly simple Vintage Amp Room and Amp Room's possibilities. That's where Amplifiers come in. It is our new "just an amp" product. The fast and playful companion you use when you just need some tone. It's ligher on resources, faster to load, simple to use, but supports all Amp Room amplifiers you own and lets you focus on your playing and the song you're recording.

Create Default Setting

To always get a great starting point, make a default preset for your standard use-case

  1. Dial in your preferred tone
  2. Save a preset by clicking "Add Preset..." in the preset menu at the top
  3. In the same menu, click "Set Current Preset As Default"

You will now have a good starting point everytime you load up Amplifers!

User Interface

At the top you will find the amplifier and cabinet selector with all available amps and cabs. In the middle are the main controls for the amp or the cab. In the middle of the bottom row you select to view to amp or cab, and on the sides you find a drive, a gate and a reverb. If you need additional input/output volume controls, you will find those by opening the left and right hand side panels using the buttons next to the Softube logo in the menu bar.

Top Row

The top row consists of the amplifier and cabinet selectors and bypass for the amp and cab.

Amplifier Bypass
Bypasses the amplifier.
Amplifier Selector
Select which amplifier to use.

As long as the session is open the current amp's settings are saved, even when you select another amplifier. That makes it easy to dial in different settings on different amps and compare those. For more control, use the A/B/C/D function in the Extended Features section to the right.

Cabinet Bypass
Bypasses the cabinet
Cabinet Selector
Select which guitar cabinet to use.

It's also possible to right-click on the amp and cabinet icon in the bottom row to bypass the section.

Main Area

The main area will either show the current amplifier, or the current speaker cabinet with its controls. The amplifier controls vary between each amplifier, and are described in respective manual, but the cabinet controls are common for all cabinets.

Clicking on the either the amplifier or the cabinet icon at the bottom will take you to the controls.

Cabinet Controls

There are seven different moveable microphones for each cabinet. Click on a microphone to select it. Grab the microphone icon to move it around the speaker field. Pushing the microphone icon up against the speaker will increasingly angle the microphone up to a maximum of 55 degrees.

The cabinet section with mic placement, mic selection and additional tone controls.

Position
Sets the sideways position of the microphone. You can either use the Position slider or simply drag the mic around in the graphics above.
Distance
Sets the distance and angle of the microphone. When the microphone is close to the speaker, it will change the angle of the mic instead of the microphone. You can either use the Distance slider or simply drag the mic around in the graphics above.
Mic
Selects microphone type, choose between these models:
  • Dynamic 57
  • Dynamic 7b
  • Dynamic 421
  • Condenser 47
  • Condenser 414
  • Ribbon 121
  • Dynamic 112

The tone section is a powerful tool to tone shape a cabinet.

Resonance
Move the slider to the right to add more “thump”/low end and brightness to the sound. Moving it to the left does the opposite.
Punch Gain, Punch Freq
Pinpoint the frequency that you wish to address with Punch Freq. In-/decrease the affected frequency amount with Punch Gain.
Low Cut
A low cut filter ranging from (left to right) 20Hz (off) to 250Hz.
Tone
Move the slider to the right to tilt the frequency curve towards less low-end and more-high end.Moving the slider to the right does the opposite.

Bottom Row

Gate
Engage the noise gate and increase the amount of gating.
Drive
Engage the Tube Screamer drive pedal and increase the amount of distortion and level from the drive pedal.
Reverb
Engage the reverb (post cabinet) and increase the amount of reverb.

The pre and post effects (Gate, Drive and Reverb) are completely bypassed when set to its minimum position (0.0).

Amplifier and Cabinet icon
Press to show the amplifier or cabinet controls respectively
Right-click to bypass the amplifier or cabinet section.

How Do I Get More Amps?

All amplifiers that are loadable in Amp Room can also be used in Amplifers. If you for example own the Amp Room Marshall Suite you can use all those amps and cabs directly in Amplifiers.

Credits

Pelle Serander - product design, framework programming
Niklas Odelholm - product design, UI design
Kim Larsson - amplifier modeling
Thomas Andersson - DSP programming