AmpliTube Joe Satriani®

From IK Multimedia, a new Amplitube® 4 collection – Joe Satirani
"A Time Machine of Tone."





From IK Multimedia, a new Amplitube® 4 collection – Joe Satirani. "A Time Machine of Tone." Tested reviewed by Howard Worf, for us here at Guitarist Guild.

I stress that the opinions following are mine alone and based upon my personal experiences in a home studio set up. Testing has been done exclusively within either the stand alone PC version or through a DAW as a plugin. All brand names are the copyright property of the brand owners.

Conclusion: and absolutely excellent suite of classic rock presets with three brilliant amplifier emulations, classic stomps and a variety of cabs to play with. If you loved the 80s/90s rock sounds then this is definitely for you.

The collection comprises a suite of gear:

Amplifiers:
Satch VM - customised Marshall® 4 channel
SJ50 - customised Peavey® 5150®
Boston 100 - model of Tom Scholz X100

Cabs:
Satch Green - 69 Marshall® with 4x12 20w Greenback Celestions®
Satch 60 - 60 Marshall® with 4x12 GT12T-75 Celestions®
Boston Sym - Model of the cabinet simulation from the Boston 100

Stomps:
Satch Wah - Vox® Big Bad Wah
Satch Distortion - Boss® DS-1
Satch Overdrive - Boss® OD-1*
Tube Overdrive - Model of JS's modified Chandler® OD with 12AX7 valve
Satch Octave - Model of Ultimate Octave pedal
. . . and dozens of presets based on these, 20 in the discography section and 29 in the general
section.

Here is a shot (from stand alone interface) of the list of general presets:
start

Here is a shot (from stand alone interface) of the list of discography presets:
start

I feel I need to mention is sample rates. The minimum for the stand alone app is 256 samples and I could not get either of my USB interfaces to work without breaking up at anything less than 512 samples, and even that was not particularly stable. Luckily within a DAW (I've tested with Cubase Pro 10.5 and Studio One 4.5) the lower sample rate of 256 works without issue, but, of course those of you who do not have an 8 year old PC, or have a lightning or firewire interface might find that higher sample rate latency is not an issue in the stand alone version. Unfortunately my firewire interface has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Rather than add a lot of images to this review, please visit IK Multimedia for their gallery of gear pictures:
https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/satriani/index.php?p=images
It's an automatic slide show that will take you through everything that is available in the collection.

As my main live rock band playing times were the late 80s and 90s, albeit as a bass guitarist, you would expect me to be very happy with the suite of sounds offered as presets, and perhaps even more so by the inclusion of two hot amps and one legendary one. And you would be correct. The presets are (for the most part) fat and sonically full, thick even, with a marked emphasis on multiple delays – just the way I like it. Perfect for melody and solos as well as punching rhythms. The clean sounds are equally impressive. My current absolute favourite preset is Smooth Soul from the discography collection. Lovely sound, especially with the Schecter.

Playing just with the amps has been the highlight of this review process for me, especially the hot Marshall® and 5150®. Quite literally hours of fun.

A few additional and very important things to mention. The collection comes wrapped in the latest
version of Amplitube®. This gives the user some rather splendid features in the stand alone version.
These include:
• Perfect integration with IK's range of audio interfaces and floor controllers allows for
instant recording and performing in the studio or on stage with full programming**
• 2 track recorder
• Import of audio files
• SpeedTrainer - speed up or slow down imported tracks without affecting the pitch – the perfect tool for practicing or learning your favorite riffs and solos. 
And in the DAW version there is automation and BPM synchronisation.

I have not been able to ascertain what is packaged with the Amplitube® 4 wrapper as I am a long time owner of an Amplitube® 4 licence, but I can imagine that you would need at least the Amplitube® Custom Shop installed – this is free – otherwise the price of the collection at €99.99 (+ sales tax or VAT wherever you are) would undercut Amplitube® 4 at €149.99 (+ sales tax or VAT wherever you are).

Conclusion: and absolutely excellent suite of classic rock presets with three brilliant amplifier emulations, classic stomps and a variety of cabs to play with. If you loved the 80s/90s rock sounds then this is definitely for you.

Things used in this review:
Guitars – Schecter Diamond Extreme, Harley Benton Fusion Pro ll HH. Well, it would have been rude to test without Floyd Rose® equipped guitars!"

DAWs – Studio One 4.5 Pro, Cubase 10.5 Pro
Monitoring – Behringer Truth B2031A near field, AKG K240 headphones
ASIO Interface – Behringer UMC404HD, Steinberg UR22
MIDI controllers – None
OS – Windows 10 Home

* I used to own one of these 'legendary' pedals. Mine never sounded as good as this emulation.
** Alas, I do not have access to any of these wondrous devices.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/satriani/

System Requirements
AmpliTube is a 64-bit application and requires a 64 bit CPU and Operating System.

Mac® (64-bits)
Minimal: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM (4 GB suggested), macOS 10.7 or later.
Supported Plug-in formats (64-bit): Audio Units, VST 2, VST 3, AAX.

Windows® (64-bits)
Minimal: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2, 2GB of RAM (4 GB suggested), Windows® 7, Windows® 8 or Windows® 10. Requires an ASIO compatible sound card.
Supported Plug-in formats (64-bit): VST 2, VST 3, AAX.

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