Clipping on some presets-- how do I fix?

[twilson74]

Hey I'm really impressed with Amplitube 5 SE-- I got the upgrade from Amplitube 4 Max and everything--including all the Legacy presets-- sounds infinitely better in 5.

One issue I'm having-- the inconsistent input and output levels across presets-- when you look at the bottom far left, you see the input-- and the bottom far right is the output. I had thought these particular input/output faders were global but it turns out they're not-- they change based on each particular preset.

I can set the input on my interface leaving quite a decent amount of headroom before clipping the input, but as I browse through presets, the input and output stages in Amplitube 5 vary all over the place. There is clipping-- audibly and graphically. And often when I click the mixer icon at the end of the signal chain-- sometimes the clipping occurs on the master fader-- sometimes the clipping is occuring on one of the buses within Amplitube. Again these are all presets and I'm running it in Standalone mode.

Also the overall volumes tend to vary all over the place. I'm playing through one clean preset and it's too quiet--and then an overdriven preset comes on and I have to grab the master volume to my monitors and drag it down.

It's annoying to have pull up a preset and hear clipping and have to go into one part of the signal chain or another and pull down a fader here and there to avoid clipping. And then other presets are far too quiet. I end up having to tweak some output stage or another in about a third of presets and it becomes laborious. Am I missing something-- is there a global fix?

Thanks!

[livesforrap]

I'm not aware of anything you can do other than the annoying adjustments you have to make. It's pretty common in my experience to have really hot (clipping) presets and that was my experience with 4 as well.

Some factors that can help:

-Turn down the bass. This seems to be a biggie here.
-Turn down the master. It's now a slider instead of the knob we were used to. Not ideal but it works. If the amp has a master or something that isn't tied into the sound difference, you can do that too.
-Try different cabinets. Some are really woofy in the lower mids.

Sorry I can't be of more help but I've run into that myself. Remember, all those "presets" have now got major changes in the modeling of the speaker so depending on the frequencies it might be hotter.

[twilson74]

Hey thanks for the reply!

I was hoping there was a simple one-stop solution but I guess there isn't-- at least it's good to get an answer and know I'm not the only one.

I have similar issues also in SampleTank and Syntronik with presets that clip, but it doesn't bother me much there because of how I use them compared to Amplitube.

It would be nice if IK had evened out the levels in the presets before rollout, but I suppose they probably can't fix it in an update at this point because doing so would change things going forward and some might not like having levels changed. Perhaps the addition of some kind of global volume solution would work.

Sonically though, I can't get over the leap in quality from 5 over 4. Especially the clean sounds. I was never 100% happy with the Fenders in 4 (they were a bit grainy)-- but even the old presets sound unbelievable in 5.

[livesforrap]

Preset clipping issues are common on synths that I use also. Some are just like rip the earphones off loud.