Back in the 1980s I played guitar. Yes, I’m that old. I learned from books and by playing along with CDs, and I jacked my Charvel guitar (awesome) into a Session guitar amp (terrible), and I never really got any better.
Now, 30-odd years later, I’m at it again. And like most things, except mobile phones, everything is better than it was in the 80s. Mid-range and even low-end guitars are better-made and cheaper. Amps are cheap and no longer terrible. And we have iOS devices and apps which can replace whole suitcases full of effects pedals.
That’s what we’re looking at today – iPad (and iPhone) guitar amp simulations, along with virtual effects pedals. And along the way, we’ll look at hardware to connect up your guitar to the iPad, and at some speaker options so you can actually hear yourself play.
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When you plug an electric guitar into a guitar amplifier, it doesn’t just make things loud: It adds its own character to the sound. The vibrating strings slice through a magnetic field created by magnets in the guitar’s pickups, and create a current. This travels through the guitar’s output jack, down the cable and into the amplifier.
If you crank that amp up loud, then things start to get dirty. The broken-up, distorted sound you get when you overpower the tube/valves in an old-time amp are what makes the electric guitar sound like an electric guitar. These days, amps have a “gain” knob, which controls a “pre-amp.” This is a smaller amplifier circuit that pumps up the signal up before feeding it to the main amp section, letting you overdrive the main amp easily. This gives more control over the crunchy distorted sound, and lets you get those filthy tones without winding the volume of the main amp up to 11.
That’s real-life tube amps, the kind that have been around since guitars went electric. Now there’s another option – simulation. Computers like the iPad and iPhone run software that models the actual circuits of classic amps. Apps like Positive Grid’s Bias (Universal) allow you to design the amp from the inside, but most of these apps give you a selection of software amps based on real-life boxes. And the results are incredible.
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Why use an app instead of a real amp? Two reasons. Price, and space. These apps run from around $5 up to $20 and include a whole studio full of amp models, whereas a single real-life amplifier costs hundreds or thousands of dollars. And almost all of the apps will sell you more models of amps and effects via IAP, although this can get expensive fast.
Wait, effects? Yes. Almost all of these apps come with a flight case full of virtual effects pedals. In real life, guitarists modify their sound (“tone” in guitar language) by chaining effects pedals together, between the guitar and the amplifier[1]. The apps let you do the same thing, only instead of paying $100 a pop for pedals, they come in bundles for around $5, or seperately for few dollars each.
. Latency refers to the delay introduced by the computer processing as the signal travels through the iPad, through the various apps, and back out to the speaker. In my experience, it’s more annoying in some circumstances than in others:
Amplitube Irig (photos)
If your app seems to be running slow (and it will happen from time to time), try toggling the various latency settings (usually easy to find, although some – like ToneStack – have them in the Settings app). You can also try restarting your device, or force-quitting other apps, but I don’t find that helps very often.
What does help, is toggling the app’s latency settings. If it’s set to, say, “ultra low, ” then just switch it to something else then back again. Then restart that app only. This works 90% of the time for me. If it doesn’t, I use another app instead, and try again the next day. One word of warning. Lower latency settings (shorter delays) are good, but require lots of computing power to pull off. Recent iOS hardware is fine, but if you’re using an older device, it might struggle to keep up. In this case the sound may break up, or you’ll get pops and crackles.
These apps mostly work in the same way. They show you almost photo-realistic versions of real-world gear on screen, and let you chain them together in the order you like. I laughed at this approach to begin with, and I still don’t like twiddling virtual knobs, but these representations of real gear make it quick and easy to find your way around without having to decipher lots of tiny text labels.
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Some, like JamUp, let you drag the icons around to re-order virtual boxes. Others force you to delete an effect from its slot before selecting another, even if all you want is to swap its position in the chain.
All can save presets (and most let you share and download presets made by others), and some even let you switch off the amp and just use the effects. This is handy if you’re running the output into an actual guitar amp. And Bias has a special trick that makes using it with real amps better than the rest (more on that below).
This is my favorite app, and the one I use the most, so I’ll use it to explain how these apps work in general. JamUp also has one unique advantage over the competition, because it works with the developer’s other app, BIAS. BIAS (see below) is an app for designing amps, and once you’ve made one, you can import it into JamUp to use, just like any other. That adds a lot of flexibility.
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The top part shows your effects and your amp. Tap on one and you’ll see a close-up view in the bottom half of the screen. Double-tapping an effect or amp lets you browse for another unit (dimmed items become available to use after an In-App Purchase), and dragging the units changes their order. Finally, you can switch an effect on or off either with its power switch, or by flicking it up and down off the yellow line (this line represents the signal chain).
This is pretty much how all the apps work, although JamUp might be the most intuitive. The drag-and-drop of effects makes experimenting easy, unlike some other apps which won’t let you do this. Jack White says that “you have to put the Whammy after the Big Muff in the signal chain, ” and who can argue with that?
Another feature shared by almost all of these apps is IAA (inter-app audio) and AudioBus support. The former is Apple’s native but limited version of the latter, and AudioBus itself is a neat app that runs in the background and acts like virtual cables, letting various music apps pipe their sound to each other. Thus, JamUp can not only send its own audio to GarageBand, but it can be used by GarageBand as an effect. That is, your JamUp effects can be used by GarageBand to apply to any other sound input. Neat, right?
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Pros: JamUp’s effects are great, and it’s one of the easiest-to-use apps here. Universal (and amazing on iPhone 6), free version available. Works with BIAS, for infinite amp models.
Extras: Tuner, metronome, 8-track recorder, MIDI, sampler (like a loop pedal for repeating parts of your playing), option to use with Bluetooth AirTurn pedal, and a huge library of user-shared setups. Works with IAA and AudioBus. Also, backup and sharing of your presets via Dropbox. There’s also a music player which grabs tracks from your library so you can play along. Speaker on/off toggle (via BIAS).
BIAS is in its own class here. Instead of plugging in and jamming, the app is really meant for designing amps, which are then opened in JamUp for use. You can totally play through the amps in BIAS (it would be pretty hard to use if you couldn’t), but you don’t get any effects, and – because the app is modeling every part of the signal chain in real time – you get extra latency (even on an iPad Air).
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I won’t go into every feature here, but let’s just say you can go deep. You can swap out the tubes in a tube amp, choose and adjust the “tone stack” (the part which houses the tone knobs), you can tweak the transformers in the amp (!) and even design the front panel (like I did for the screenshot at the top of this post).
Not impressed? What about choosing a speaker? Not only that, you can choose which virtual microphone is put in front of that speaker to capture its sound, and you can place the mic in 3D space to affect the sound and to capture room reverb (you can also adjust the shape of the room).
Which brings me to a neat trick. If you’re planning on running your setup through a real guitar amp, then that amp’s speaker will add its own color to the sound.
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