Manual / Messages overhaul

[lobneroO]

I found the manual and messages of the tube amp designer a bit unintuitive. I hope I can help towards a more understandable manual and program by listing my problems. Still, thank your for this program :) It's hard to come by good amp sims on linux systems.

1. When running the test signal through my amp, I would like to do so without a cabinet + microphone / IR and thus give myself the possibility to exchange IRs after profiling. In the manual it does not state that you can do so, but the tube amp profiler suggests that you can load an IR of your choosing. Though does it get exported? If I do mic a cab and profile that sound, how would the subtraction of that work? I assume, that an IR is automatically added in the tubeAmp designer.
2. While there is some guidance on the gain settings, there is no information about the EQ settings, Presence and / or Resonance controls. Am I supposed to take my favourite EQ settings? All at max or noon?
3. When I chose my test signal response, the tubeAmp-designer automatically set the gain internally to max. I didn't have it on max in my amp. Moreover, when I used the max setting, I got a message that told me to reduce the gain by a specific dB amount. Therefore I assume that I cannot get the maximum gain settings from all amps to work with tubeAmp-designer?
4. The message to reduce gain by 10 or 4.85dB is not very helpful. First, I thought the volume (i.e. loudness) was meant, not the distortion. However, reducing that did not change the message, so obviously it was meant to be the distortion. But reducing the distortion by 4.85 dB (or any other arbitrary number) does not really make sense to me. Isn't the distortion unit less? Even if it had a unit, an amp's dial for it certainly is unitless. I wouldn't know how much to turn a knob to get the requested reduction.
5. The tubeAmp-designer has a PowerAmp Parameters section. I am not an electrical engineer, so I don't know the first thing about these values. While I don't want to remove them, the PowerAmp Parameters I expected where Resonance (/Depth) and / or Presence controls. Maybe those could be implicitly modelled by the given parameters, but if so, I have no clue how to do that.

Obviously this is not a bug, but I didn't know how else to best to give you input on this. Feel free to just mark it as "solved" when you feel like it.

[olegkapitonov]

Hi, @lobneroO!

Thank you very much, your response is very helpful! This project lacks testing and user experience, so responses like this are very valueble to me.

I will release next version soon with some bugfixes in profiling algorythm and changes in GUI based on the responses I received.

I would like to give some explanations for now.

1. This is big problem, I didn't expect that many users would make profiles without cabinet. Of course Designer allows you to load any cabinet IR you like, but there are some bugs that should be fixed, like bug that you reported in another issue here.

Profiling algorythm separates cabinet IR and other parts of the amplifier, so you can change cabinet IR in the profile to another IR from file.

If you want to add your IR to the existing cabinet IR in the profile (not change but create sum of them), you can select Tools->Convolver, select Input Signal:Cabinet Impulse Response radio button and any other IR (room reverberation or spring reverberation for example) from file, select Output Signal:Cabinet Impulse Response radio button.

If you make profile without cabinet IR it is expected that you add cabinet IR via Tools->Convolver, not via Cabinet section.

2. Yes, you supposed to take your favorite settings. The neutral positions of the tubeAmp knobs will match your desired "real" amp settings.

3. This is confusing thing. You should not set "real" amp gain to max, you should choose optimal gain level for profiling algoruthm, which corresponds to "classic hard rock" sound (like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath in 1970-s) or slightly more. Profiler sets gain to max because this is how profiler works for now. So max tubeAmp gain will match "real" amp gain level you choose. This is bad, I will change this in the next release. I will allow user to select any desired tubeAmp gain level and profiler will match this setting to "real" gain.

4. This part works very badly, causes great problems, I will completely rewrite this. I don't know how to tell user how much to turn a knob on any amp he may have, so I think it would be better to show messages like "increase gain" or "decrease gain" without numbers. Maybe you can suggest some better solution?

5. This values is tubeAmp model parameters. It is expected that user will change them if he creates profile by hand, not by Profiler. Profiler selects values automatically. You still may change them after profiling but there is no way to tell how this will influence the sound, it should be done by ear. You need to have empirical expirience to "feel" how each setting should be set.

If you want to change Resonance or Presence you may change PreAmp Filter equalizer on the corresponding frequencies, about 2.5 kHz for Presence and somwhere near 60-150 Hz for Resonance. tubeAmp model has no Presence and Resonance controls, so this is the only way by now.

I will add to the manuals all this, and I will create video guides and explanations to the next release. There are many nuances and it will be much easier to explain all this in the video.

P. S. Note that tubeAmp Designer is a tool for tubeAmp plugin and Open Hardware DSP processor (which is under active development now) and therefore it has some limitations.

[lobneroO]

Thanks for all the explanations. Regarding 4, the best solution I could come up with is a bit more complicated (though could be made somewhat easier, too, i guess): If you allow for the amp to be recorded in tubeAmp-designer, then tubeAmp-desigern could live send a signal and show some gain meter. When it is too much gain, this can be shown by surpassing a threshold, turning red, something like this. I can then set dial back the gain until the threshold is not surpassed anymore. Once I have found that setting, I can start the profiling.

This way would be fastest, but you'd need some live recording which is probably not all that easy to implement. Also, for amp sims you'd need to load VSTs (and some amp sims come without IR loaders, so as a user I'd need 2-3 slots for that).

The idea could still work with the test signal, but the user would have to back and forth between the DAW to record and tubeAmp-designer (like I did in my attempts, really). In theory this second method is not too far away from what you have now, but a visual feedback seems a bit more intuitive if I cannot tell how much 1dB of gain is.

I scetched it, I thought of something like a loudness meter before clipping. The dB numbers are more or less random, just to get the point across.

One more thing for that though, it seemed to work despite the message to turn down the gain. If it does, perhaps an info on what problems may occurr would help. I play mostly metal, so I need a shit ton of gain :) if it slightly clips, I'm okay with that - most high gain amp sims do without noticeable artifacts, as far as I know.