QL strat or Vintaudio's clean electric?

**Yves** · 08-19-2003, 12:53 AM

Hello everyone!

Any thoughts on these guitar libraries for giga??
I\'m looking for something with good tone but also fairly easy to work with in acheiving decently realistic electric guitar emulation .
Obvioulsly , using guitar amp simulators would be an important isuue , especially with Franky\'s guitars..what about QL strat??

thanks for your input on this!

Yves

**keytar** · 08-19-2003, 04:26 PM

I don\'t think anyone uses QL Strat (can\'t find a review anywhere...), but Franky\'s stuff has good reviews. I have Vintaudio\'s guitars and they are quite nice. Work well post-processing with amp plugins.

**Yves** · 08-19-2003, 07:33 PM

Thanks Keytar !

I also , haven\'t read any reviews regarding QL 56 stratocaster..i would have thought there would be a large user group since the high quality of QL products..
I\'ll look into Franky\'s guitar then !

many thanks!

Yves

**kbaccki** · 08-19-2003, 09:01 PM

Originally posted by Yves:

I\'m looking for something with good tone but also fairly easy to work with in acheiving decently realistic electric guitar emulation .

<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Well, \"realism\" depends on what type of guitar sound you\'re trying to emulate. I know that\'s a lame answer, but your requirements as stated are tough to pin down.

I own the Vintaudio guitars, and I like them for certain types of guitar sounds. They are definately \"clean\" as the CD title implies -- you won\'t get any extraneous noises, FX, or special articulations.

I also own the \"QL Guitar & Bass\" CD which has a good selection of more genre-oriented guitar instruments -- genre-specific articulations and tones embedded in the samples and zone mappings. This is not bad per se, as there are some really nice patches including a blues guitar complete with pops, trills, and tremolos; a basic Rock&Roll grungy bar chord patch; an intense overdriven, compressed, distorted Mesa/Rectifier patch; and about a dozen others -- lots to choose from.

I also own Sonic Implants guitars (www.sonicimplants.com), albeit in soundfont format -- currently [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] . I have their Fender Strat stuff, the \"Creamy Fuzz\" guitars, Paul Reed Smith, Les Paul, and others. All very good quality and easy to play, IMO, even the chord mappings -- up/down strums, chunks, etc. They also just came out with a Tele and a Rickenbacker, that I haven\'t played with.

I also own some guitars from www.vrsound.com that I like -- those again are more genre-oriented, rather than generic.

Now, with all that in hand, I can say that what you\'re not going to do (at least very easily) with any of those aforementioned libraries is emulate a Joe Satriani solo. Which brings me back to my original question: what type of guitar realism are you expecting? And which also brings me to my comments on the QL Strat...

My understanding of the QL Strat product only from talking to others and reading reviews is a.) it is very high quality, and b.) it is a complete treatment, if you will, insofar as it may be the one library out there that COULD allow you to lay down (reasonably) believable Joe Satriani lines IF you can get a grasp on the complexity of the library. Of course, actually laying down a Joe Satriana solo using only a MIDI sequencer and gigabytes of guitar articulations is left as an exercise for the reader... I\'m not trying to be cheeky, this CD has been on my wish list for a while.

The other product on my current wish list is \"Hans Zimmer Guitars vol. 1\" (http://www.spectrasonics.net/hzguitar1.html). Sounds good, but I haven\'t read anything about it. Maybe someone here has used it. Also, it\'s AKAI, Roland, and audio only, so you\'d have to either trust the Akai import or roll your own.

From my perspective, you can get the most realism but limit yourself to one guitar (QL Strat), or you can get more guitars with less realism. Depends on you threshold for realism. Mine is pretty high, so I plan on owning them all, damn it!

- Keith

**Nick Phoenix** · 08-20-2003, 12:40 AM

To tell the truth, I am kind of baffled by the response to 56 Strat. It sells pretty well and consistently, but is intended to be used with plug-ins to get more variety in tone. Gigastudio is pretty horrible with plug-in implementation and so I never should have released it in giga format. Also, giga is not a big rock format. I haven\'t bother to push for a review and so there is an eerie silence about it on this forum. I really like it. I own a pod-pro. I have never gotten any feedback or emails about it,good or bad, except one happy guy. Wierd.

**Magnus N** · 08-20-2003, 04:18 AM

Originally posted by Nick Phoenix:
... I never should have released it in giga format. ...

<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Perhaps next time, Halion 2 format? Please...

There is a real lack of support/interest in porting giga instruments to Halion2, which I personally think is a great shame for me, and a missed opportunity for developers.

All the best,

Magnus

**Franky** · 08-20-2003, 04:23 AM

I have to agree with Nick here, the lack of third party plug ins for Giga that were supposed to be implemented and never were makes our library in Giga less attractive than in the other formats our library comes in, although I have had good success rerouting the output of Giga to another input in my Layla 24 and putting effects on the input in Cubase or using a pod and even some real amps [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] , but basically I use the other formats our library comes in (Kontakt or Halion 2) and do my guitar work from within either of those samplers and use VST effects like Amplitube.

Yves, if you want any more info, please do not hesitate to contact me, I\'ll be glad to answer any questions you might have. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Kindly,
Franky
Vintaudio

**sporter** · 08-20-2003, 07:39 AM

I use the QL Strat a lot. Generally, I do a midi track, port it over to Cubase, and let Nigel (UAD\'s guitar effects plug-in) take over. Very good guitar sounds! I think the 56 Strat is probably the most realistic of the two.

The Power Chords are alos quite good, albiet somewhat limited in their usefullness.

I have Vinaudio\'s clean electric as well. It is a bit more subtle, but seems to fit in a lot of places the 56 Strat does not. Seems to be a bit more laid back. And I\'d say it\'s more versatile.

The hardest part about using either one is getting the techique right. Used with Jammer of BIAB you can get some very realistic guitar tracks.

I\'d highly recommend both of them.

**kbaccki** · 08-20-2003, 08:33 AM

Originally posted by Franky:
I have to agree with Nick here, the lack of third party plug ins for Giga that were supposed to be implemented and never were makes our library in Giga less attractive than in the other formats our library comes in

<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Well, I\'m almost glad that the GS plugin story has turned out the way it has -- VST and DX dominated, and NFX or whatever it is was DOA. For me, the average Joe hobbiest, this means I can pick up decent plugins for all non-GS apps for relatively cheap, and I\'m forced to come up with a cheap workaround due to the lack of NFX versions. I could just imagine a single amp sim or compressor in NFX format costing hundreds of dollars due to the relatively \"pro nature\" of the platform, and correspondingly low overall demand for such things (as opposed to, say, a Sonar-compatible reverb or something).

Unfortunately Tascam has taken a long time to acknowledge and/or address the VST/DX thing. Their position via-a-vis careful control over the DSP pipeline is understandable, but I think something could have been done by now. We\'ll see what happens over the next few months.

I\'m also impatiently awaiting the production release of VSampler 3.0 -- it can be used as VSTi/DXi and can use VST/DX, plus it has a very solid GIG support (with streaming, keyswitches, crossfades, etc.). I was hoping that would have been released by now, entirely obviating the need to worry about GS-sans-VST/DX problems, resolutions, and timeframes. Sigh.

although I have had good success rerouting the output of Giga to another input in my Layla 24 and putting effects on the input in Cubase or using a pod and even some real amps [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Exactly. I own two multi-in/-out cards at this point almost entirely for this purpose -- for flexible GSIF routing together with live input processing via ASIO/WDM apps. I like GS myself (performance is awesome), but I sure wish things weren\'t so cumbersome on the effects routing side.
I thought the days of physical patch cables were no more... [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

- Keith

**kbaccki** · 08-20-2003, 08:43 AM

By the way, Franky, have you ever considered doing a follow-up CD to Clean Guitars, one with scrapes, harmonics, chords, etc.? Maybe downloadable GIGs to augment the CD?

- Keith