I have an UA Apollo Thunderbolt interface and UA threw in the Softube Amp Room plugin (among others) to sweeten the deal -- but in a world of sweet amp emulation plugins this Softube is a bitter pill. In particular, the free plugin from UA included only the White Marshall emulation but if this is their intro into Softube's modeling capability I'd never consider anything else from them.
I've been using modeled guitar tones since the early days of Line6 (remember the original AxSys from the 90s?) and I have a wide collection at my disposal but am always happy to have more. This offering from Softube is dull, grainy, congested, and noisy. It is quite literally the worst amp emulation I've ever heard. I thought maybe it was me but the reviews at UA were just as harsh. Glad to know my hearing and sense of musical taste is not totally shot. I demoed their 'Metal' amp plugin as well and you cannot get anything to stick out in a mix -- they're all really flat and characterless, which would be fine if you just want some generic 'heavy' guitar sound buried in the background. But for leads or articulate riffing these things are horrible. Even cranking up outboard EQ is insufficient.
I will say this, however, it is nice to have any old guitar amp plugin to place in the UA Console application because I can have an overdriven/distorted tone with 'zero' latency to monitor without committing any of it to my DAW. So, in that capacity, this plugin is a total win. I can play 'through' this Softube plugin while recording a dry, unaffected signal to reamp as I please.
Perhaps in the future I'll get around to buying the Friedman plugin to use in Console and have some tones that are worthy of committing to 'tape.'
I've been using modeled guitar tones since the early days of Line6 (remember the original AxSys from the 90s?) and I have a wide collection at my disposal but am always happy to have more. This offering from Softube is dull, grainy, congested, and noisy. It is quite literally the worst amp emulation I've ever heard. I thought maybe it was me but the reviews at UA were just as harsh. Glad to know my hearing and sense of musical taste is not totally shot. I demoed their 'Metal' amp plugin as well and you cannot get anything to stick out in a mix -- they're all really flat and characterless, which would be fine if you just want some generic 'heavy' guitar sound buried in the background. But for leads or articulate riffing these things are horrible. Even cranking up outboard EQ is insufficient.
I will say this, however, it is nice to have any old guitar amp plugin to place in the UA Console application because I can have an overdriven/distorted tone with 'zero' latency to monitor without committing any of it to my DAW. So, in that capacity, this plugin is a total win. I can play 'through' this Softube plugin while recording a dry, unaffected signal to reamp as I please.
Perhaps in the future I'll get around to buying the Friedman plugin to use in Console and have some tones that are worthy of committing to 'tape.'