Thanks for that, I’ll take a look.
Another question. Should I be using automation or midi commands to control the plugin from GP? I started using automation as I thought that was the best way but I can only see 16 parameters presented from Amplitube. Automation seems two way but Midi seems to be one way, but of course has lots more options to control.
Always host automation, due to several reasons.
Click here for more info: Gig Performer | Use host automation rather than MIDI to control plugin parameters
As for Amplitube, you most probably need to select what parameters you want to automate in Amplitube itself.
ok so using automations is good to know, and is what I’ve been doing, but Amplitube seems to only allow 16 parameters, which doesn’t see to allow much control once you have an amp and a couple pedals. Adding parameters from the left panel you showed just replaces them in the right panel against a certain number, not add additional ones
Placing them in the right panel is assigning them to Parameter numbers. Then you are able to assign your widgets to the particular Parameter number within the Edit Mapping of GP.
Yes, you’re right. I’ve just checked.
That’s hillarious. I see that people were beating the support up for this more than 7 years, to no avail.
A possible workaround… use two instances of Amplitube in order of your signal chain.
For instance, use one for pedals and another downstream of that one for your cabinet, etc…
You are not pulling much load on your processor so I think you could chain a few together.
Also watch out for the possiblity that if you recall presets within Amplitube vs. build everyting from scratch that the parameters will change or become dissisociated based on the type of Amp you are using. I don’t know if that is true or not but with IK Leslie, if you change the Amp type and had a widget mapped to gain for a 147 amp and you switch the plugin to a 122 amp, that gain knob no longer controls the active amps gain.
yes you’re right, and that works fine, the problem is that Amplitube only offers 16 automation parameter “slots” so I can only get 2 way control of 16 values. I could use MIDI, and MIDI control works, but in my case, as I kind of mentioned above, each time my racks load, I want it to pull the settings of the Amplitube preset into GP so the racks are basically "reset"m and with automations, it does that, but only for 16 values. Some of my Amplitube presets could have up to 100 values I need to pull in, and I don’t think I could build a rack for each preset, and then program each control with the correct value to default to, that would just be insane, especially due to the different scalings and so on for different types of controls. This is of course an Amplitube problem, not GP, but I wish there was a workaround.
That’s definitely one workaround, I guess it could work, but as I mentioned in my reply above which I wrote at the same time as you did, I could have up to 100 values, so that could mean 6 or 7 instances of the plugin, which I don’t think would be good practice
But how many of those values do you need to change in real time?
If you have no values mapped to widgets and you leave a rackspace, the state of that amp is the same when you return.
So you might need to create base-states with parameters you don’t change but have 16 (per instance) available widgets that recall different aspects which you can dynamically change in performance.
edit:
and those widgets can be set to recall specific values on rackspace activation, creating the ‘reset’ you are looking for.
Yes you’re right, actually the automation aspect is really to get the state of the controls into GP the first time I build the racks for each one, then I could set the values to be recalled on rack load as I have done with the existing 16 that I can do that with. The problem is that for those presets with 100 controls, setting 100 controls when building the racks will still take a long time and also won’t be precise, for example the knob widget goes 0-10 in GP but 1-10 on certain amps in Amplitube, so it’s not a like for like mapping, but when automation pulls the value across, it maps the correct equivalent value in GP (e.g. a “5” in Amplitube might be 5.8 in GP). That’s why it would be difficult to do for 100 controls, multiplied by however many presets I want to bring across.
Not saying it’s impossible, just difficult
For a lot of my presets, I don’t map any parameters to any widgets. I dial up my sounds within the plugin’s editor, close it and move on. If I don’t reopen the plugin editor, that sound never changes for that rackspace.
If I duplicate that rackspace and then I want to change that sound, specific to that rackspace, I open the plugin editor (I map a widget buton to quickly open the editor) and change the sound, close the editor and then if I switch between the two rackspaces my two sounds are recalled from one to the next.
I only map widgets for things I need performative access too or for things that I repeatedly use to control sound design elements more easily. Knowing what this ‘short list’ is comes from logging the hours with that plugin.
Some examples:
Not a comprehensive list but those are some of my go to widget mapped parameters. For everything else, I click the plugin edit button I’ve made and go under the hood.
I just think it’s un-realistic to create a control system that covers off on every single possible parameter adjustment of a complicated plugin. I’ve been there with this approach and I end up simplifying, a lot.
The best thing about GP is nothing really needs to be difficult and it’s well taylored to live performance… but I think some approaches to mastering what GP can do for you might seem ‘ideal’ at first… our imaginations are endless with a tool like GP, but we end up having dimishing returns on the effort required to build that ‘100 widget functionaliy’ and in the end, we might find that what we’ve created are over-built anyway for how we use them.
Everyone’s needs are different though. Just wanted to pass along some personal perespective.
I’m not sure if I’m missing something — why can’t you use GP User Presets to save your basic Amplitube setups that you want so that you can quickly have starting points?
It’s valuable information, and I can see the point for many of my presets. E.g. I have a preset for a clean sound for a particular song. I don’t need to change much, if anything in that one, except maybe a stomp pedal on or off, or adjusting some reverb, so what I get with 16 parameters is fine.
However for practice, rehearsals and so on, and in some cases, live use, I want to replicate my preset that I have create for my pedal board. A lot of time in the practice studio is spent tweaking sounds, and having access to those in GP would be perfect, and therefore that’s more than just an on/off. For example, one of my pedals is a 10 band EQ, that in itself would take 10 parameters. And all these pedals have an “ideal” starting point that I have created in the preset, and would like to replicate in GP. And that’s just the pedal board preset with one type of amp.
I understand my use case is probably unique, and in most cases, once we’re done tweaking, I can boil down those sounds to 3-4 pedals, an amp and so on, and create a new, more simple preset for live use, but I definitely do a lot of the former, so that’s why having the automation would be great.
I can, and I have done that, but in brief, some of those GP User Presets are based on my Amplitube presets which are extensive, and I want to load all those controls into GP after building a Rackspace to match, which could be many controls which I want to automatically bring across the correct values for, rather than having to program each control manually in GP to the correct value, which as I mentioned, is not always a 1:1 mapping of the value in the Amplitube preset
Oh, I think I see – is the issue that the position of widgets is overriding your initial amplitube parameters?
Yes, basically, except when I use an automation, and reload the GP user preset in the plugin, all the widget positions magically put themselves into the correct place, which means I don’t have to program them to match (and have the mismatch in numbers as I mentioned above). And the problem is that I can only do this with 16 widgets, due to Amplitubes limitations, so for the other 84 ish widgets, I’d have to look at the correct value in Amplitube, work out if it’s a 1-1 value in GP, set it correctly, then make sure the value is saved as a default in GP, and do that over and over.
So basically, this isn’t a problem that’s fixable it seems, unless Amplitube is made better, so I don’t think there is a solution here apart from me changing my workflow
I suppose you don’t want to consider switching to an alternative effects plugin that doesn’t have that 16 parameter limitation.
I have thought about it, just need to do some research into what is comparable
My personal favorite is TH-U from Overloud - but obviously there are many awesome multi-effects plugins.
One problem with some plugins is that the focus is much more on use in recording rather than live performance - the needs are quite different
This is a list of every community-built rackspace that has a guitar VST in it → LINK
What is interesting, there is no Amplitube there (yet). It seems that other plugins such as TH-U, S-Gear, Neural DSP, ML Sound Lab, Audio Assault, … are more popular.
