The future of amps & cabs - stage props only?

[Wombat]

Yes, yes and yes. But it’s all horses for courses.

 

I used to hate seeing a band and getting stuck in front of (insert whoever you like except the bass player here) and not being able to hear anything else except their amp. But the ‘sterility’ of getting stuck in front of a PA speaker with everything in it and wondering why I can hear the bass player when they are ‘over there’ is weird.

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, Tech21NYC said:

An IEM is not a musical instrument amplifier. The idea is that it takes the place of wedges for monitoring. FRFR speakers are designed for sound "reproduction" vs sound production.

 

Well, yes they are, which is why i have something acting like a preamp, or basically an imperfect amplifier.

 

2 hours ago, Tech21NYC said:

 

The electric guitar and bass were designed to be used with a musical instrument amplifier not an IEM. It works and if you like it or prefer it that's cool but know it for what it is. When I'm at home and play guitar or bass I don't look for my IEM's to play through. 

 

I don't either, I generally play through my big headphones, or sometimes with an amp, but when I am playing at home I am not competing with any other musicians.

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, SimonK said:

 but rather whether amps have a specific aura, or at least look, that contributes to live music in a bigger way than just sound...

 

It does in some things. If you went to a Rock or metal gig, you would expect to see a whole load of marshals along the back, even if they weren't being used. Otherwise it just looked wrong. In other groups, it is probably less important, or you don't even notice. 

[Harryburke14]

For us the decision to go "ampless" was more out of convenience than anything. Getting a consistent sound through a modeller for the guitarists without thinking of mic placement, pedalboard set up, how warm the amps were, etc, is incredibly useful.

 

That's not even mentioning it the task of setting up physical amps and mics and pedalboards (often in a space that's half as big as you'd need to do all that comfortably) when you're on the clock at some local pub and just want to get in, get on, get done, get paid and get gone.

 

Does it sound worse than amps? I don't think so. Different maybe. But more consistent and a whole lot easier to mix properly in a shorter space of time.The quality of more affordable modellers and profilers is increasing seemingly every year, to the point where you're not longer saying "your average punter wouldn't be able to tell a difference" but instead a lot of musicians wouldn't be able to tell a difference on a recording or through a PA speaker what's a real amp and what's a model/profile.

 

The only big loss imo is the "feel" of real amps, but if you're running IEMs or have a good monitoring setup through wedges/foldbacks/sidefills/whatever, then a lot of the time you'd be hearing that instead of the amp itself anyway.

[gjones]

On 09/05/2025 at 23:06, Stub Mandrel said:

 

 

 

Either your drummer and guitarist are huge giants, or that drumkit is teeny tiny?

[Stub Mandrel]

25 minutes ago, gjones said:

 

Either your drummer and guitarist are huge giants, or that drumkit is teeny tiny?

 

It's not a huge kit but I think there's some wide angle distortion!

Here's a more proportionate pic:

 

[mazdah]

21 hours ago, SimonK said:

 

That's a bold claim that probably hasn't been the case for most technology like this produced in the last twenty years. While I do prefer amps, it is very definitely not for this reason.

 

 

With the bass the situation IMO is easier - we mostly have volume pot full open, we like compression most of the time.

With the electric guitar I tend to use one channel and get clean - rhythm - and solo tones mostly by using volume controls (and rarely booster). I found it very hard to get achieve this kind of reactions on Cortex even with some quite pro third-party amp captures compared to the same real amps standing next to FRFR cab connected to Cortex.

 

With Tonex (well maybe IK Multimedia, because I haven't used their hardware, only plugins):

Amplitube 4 is plain terrible, Amplitude 5 is much better, but still for bass Ampegs and Fender TBP-1 (which I own in my rack) are just plain awful compared to real ones.

For guitar - same as Cortex, but worse. Maybe my problem is that I tend to compare them in a very straightforward way: I know this amp "in real life" and I know how it would react, and when the digital version of the same amp doesn't do that - I get upset  It's strictly for playing - I haven't compared recorded tracks yet. 

 

The digital technology came a very long way and is fantastic and very convenient. But still this convenience degrades sound quality. 

 

[chris_b]

1 hour ago, mazdah said:

 

The digital technology came a very long way and is fantastic and very convenient. But still this convenience degrades sound quality. 

 

 

If that was the case FOH and recording studios wouldn't have converted to digital many years ago.