Preparing the coming VST version of Vandal here currently (and perhaps Mac AU if we got resources), we’d like to gather more feedback and information from potential users on what they expect from a good amp-simulation product.

Help us to make Vandal the best native amp sim! Just answer a couple of questions (which popped up during development), send them in and – with a bit of luck – win 1 out of 3 copies of the new Samplitude 11 Pro (the current Vandal version already included )!

These links take you to the survey (choose your language):

English

German

Don’t hesitate. Even if luck isn’t on your side, there’s at least the chance to apply for beta testing through the survey, so that we perhaps get back to you sooner than you think

The VANDAL Guitar & Bass Software is currently bundled exclusively with Magix Samplitude 11 Pro & Sequoia 11, which were released in Germany a couple of days ago. International versions of these products will appear in late summer / early autumn (TBA).

A seperate/standalone product release is being evaluated at the moment. At this time, we can’t precisely say when or whether it’s VST, AU, or both, a boxed product or download-only. But we’ll let you know ASAP. As this blog is development-only, decisions are up to teams other than ours.

In the meantime, we continue developing the software further. We’ve recently refined the amp & cabinet parts, tweaked the stomps and fx, and we’ve also concentrated on gathering presets and templates (the latter serving as a starting point for new amp & cab endeavours on the users’ side).

Here’s how VANDAL sounds in its current state (courtesy of Dimi Nalbantov):

• Magnetic Storm
• BritCrunch
• CleanClean

• Unprocessed
• Small Cass-A Combo + 1×12 Vintage
• Small Brit Combo, Crunch Channel, 2×12 Vintage
• Small Brit Combo, Lead Channel, 2×12 Vintage
• Modern HighGain+4×12, stereo miking (real-time movement of the virtual mics)
• Modern HighGain+4×12, distance miking (turning the ‘distance’ knob on the CabSim in real-time)

• Clean Amp, no stomp
• La Crema Overdrive in front of Clean Amp
• Halvar Preamp/Overdrive + Amp
• Hellfire Distortion + Amp
• Fuzz + Amp
• Guitar Amp in ‘classic’ preamp mode + Chorus stomp
• Chorus more extreme
• PhaseShifter/Tremolo: Phaser 70%, Tremolo 0%
• PhaseShifter/Tremolo: Phaser 0%, Tremolo 70%
• PhaseShifter/Tremolo, both dialed-in

• Phaser
• Room Reverb
• Hall Reverb
• Hall Reverb, long + modulated

For those of you visiting the Musikmesse 2009 (April 1 – 4), there’ll be an opportunity to see & hear the coming Vandal software in action.

Come on over at hall 5.1, booth D41.
We’ll supply stuff (axe, 4 string, Midi pedalboard) so that you can test the plugin for yourself. While we won’t have everything up & running at that time, you can freely get your hands on the current development state and have a personal chat with us. We’ll be happy to explain in detail what else can be expected from the finished product and look forward to all kinds of feedback.

See ya

We’ve made some slight changes to Vandal’s bass amplifier recently.
It’s still an all-tube design, coming with 3 tube gain stages in the preamp section and delivering a fat tone through the push/pull pentode power amp stage.
Here’s the new pot layout:

So, we’ve changed the preamp a bit: Now, the signal first enters the first gain stage, then can be shaped via the ‘contour’ knob (kind of loudness / lower mid dip; an interactive / passive filter network), then gets some compression.
The compressor is a FET-based feed-back model, similar to some stomp designs or vintage studio rack gear. It’s ultra-transparent and musical; you can kick it hard and it still doesn’t do strange things.

The ‘drive’ control feeds an extra tube stage for extra harmonics and extra oomph

The EQ section is a split design: a passive low/high baxandall network followed by an active 2-band mid control. All filter slopes are 6dB/oct, which in our opinion is the best compromise between being versatile and retaining the character of your bass guitar.

Here are some audio clips:

basstest_dry (VANDAL completely disabled. A bit of silly & aimlessly fingered playing)

basstest_vandal (the amp setting from the picture above)

basstest_vandal_chorus (VANDAL’s stomp guitar chorus in front of the amp)

basstest_vandal_tubedrive

Here’s a clip by Dimi, certainly in a more sensible context:

vandalbass

This morning was the birth of Vandal’s 2nd amplifier. The bass amp is currently being added to the plugin’s main architecture. This is how it will look like:

Although it already pops up on the screen (upon choosing it from the ‘amps’ list), there’s currently not much coming out of it. It’s work in progress. Soldering lots of wires here…

The architecture we’ve set up the last couple of weeks allows for ‘amplifier mainframes’, which means a generalized architecture of amps that have to be specified in detail. That was quite a bunch of code lines, lots of coffee and headaches… but now we’re prepared for a new beast

The bass amp is designed to serve a broad range of players and music styles. It’s an all-tube design, btw., housing a highly-interactive passive filter circuitry. The amount of knobs might appear limited at first sight, but we’re certain this baby becomes at least as versatile as the guitar amp.

We’ll see within the next couple of days. Stay tuned.

We haven’t had much going on here for a month. During that time, the main architecture of the Vandal software has been developed futher. That’s a lot of stuff under the hood that might be of minor importance for users, but it’s very important for all coming features that we equip this thing with.

One of these features is the ability to deal with user-defined stomps setups. Currently, our arsenal is planned to offer between 18-20 different stomp boxes, of various type and origins. Here are some that are already working:

The LaCrema Overdrive manages to recreate the famous mild crunch tones associated with famous blues/rock-type pedals, like for instance the TS9.

HALVAR was inspired by the DOD250/308 Distortion/Preamp Booster stomp, which allows to tighten up the signal when doing shred and heavy riff-working, cleaning up the bass & such.

Hellfire is a no-compromise attempt at high-gain sounds, features a classic (passive) tone stack and multiple gain stages. Max gain is ~70dB

Fuzz has that certain sound: ‘muff’, Jimi, Satisfaction, you name it. A love/hate thing, as usual.

CHORUS is, well, a chorus. A typical stomp pedal unit, rich, colorful, distinctive, analog.

The phase shifter is pretty unique. Actually a phaser and a tremolo (can be both simultaneously). Allows for subtle washy phasing, wah-type resonating as well as sounding completely ill-psycho-something.

The CheWahWah is pretty traditional; characterful, rich, screaming. A wah like one would expect but is rarely offered in the digital realm.

All stomps incorporating distortion/overdrive are oversampled (4x at 44/48k). We want them to not behave like digital zombies just because you’re doing a bending in the 24th fret…

To do: adding Midi CC to all controls. As with all Vandal knobs/buttons, Midi messages (from pedal boards and such) can be used to drive various units and their parameters. We will explain the concept in detail as soon as the time is right.

Here are some audio snippets of the OD/distortion stomps, courtesy of Dimi Nalbantov:

vandalcrunch

vandalhalvarcrunch

vandalhellfirecrunch (featuring Vandal’s internal delay + reverb)

Since a few days, we’ve been tweaking Vandal’s guitar amp tube stages for the ability to deal much better with slight overdrive. That’s a tough one, but I think we’re close to getting that nailed. We’re aware of the fact that delicate, responsive crunch is what divides a good amp from a bad one.

Here’s the current status, a video by Dimi Nalbantov:

What we did is basically fine-tuning the biasing of all affected preamp tubes (2 in ‘classic’ mode, 3 in ‘british hybrid’, 4 in ‘modern high gain’) as well as changing the tube character in particular.
We now have different models of tubes stuffed into the virtual circuits. In some stages we got more or less 12au7 behaviour and 12ax7 tubes when more gain is needed. Apart from ‘mu’ (amplification factor) and characteristics, each tube got implanted its own tonal response. We now got even more degrees of freedom than before, yabbadabbadoo…

It should be audible that we progressed somehow. The whole amp is now more responsive to volume change on the input and reacts a lot nicer on slight overdrive settings. It ‘breathes’ more, hopefully.

We still got stuff to do soundwise… so check back often

Our tester Dimi has published a few videos where he’s getting serious with our software. Have a look:

Here’s a nice mp3 as well:

“I’m getting some great power rhythm sounds with the new beta… “

vand_pwr_rtm

Now, this might sound strange…:
Even when you’re developing a software guitar amplifier, you still have to get to know the beast yourself! Our model has gotten pretty complex and so close to the real deal that we have to play with it for longer than initially thought. Otherwise you’re tempted to stick to first-sight impressions and perhaps go on into false directions.

So we’ve done even more intensive listening tests at the beginning of January, after an ear-recalibrating Christmas break. This immediately led to some changes under the hood of VANDAL’s guitar amp:

"Okay, this thing is the bomb for shred and such... but listen, the lead channel must be more up-front, you know..."

First change was to filter out more of the low end, at least on the ‘classic’ and ‘british’ preamp models. This was done by enlarging the virtual inter-stage decoupling capacitors successively, so that the crunch & lead channels sound less muddy now.
While the cathode bypass cap values were changed too, re-adjusting the bias with each of the tube stages was also necessary. So the overall distortion timbre has changed slightly as well. I’d definitely say things improved (although we’re still testing here to find out).

With previous versions of the guitar amp, pressing the ‘lead’ switch fired up an extra tube stage on either preamp model. This is still the case. However, we now also engage a 2nd/spare set of virtual caps in the tone stack circuit: the lead channel switch performs a shift of the eq’s cutoff frequencies to different values. As a result, the tone becomes more mid-oriented and cuts through more easily, which is obviously important when you’re playing solos.

As usual with passive tone stacks, the thing still remains highly interactive and dependent on the underlying preamp model. In a nutshell: we got more variety now, you can freely switch between channels or preamps and find out what suits a particular situation best.

Furthermore, a couple of internal tweaks on the power amp were made as well. This includes changing the virtual output transformer. We now got a slightly different tone in the high-mid / treble region, which – in conjunction with a change in negative feedback (class AB mode) – leads to a slight boost around 4k and sounds a bit more ‘focussed’ on the attacks than previously.

Of course we do continue listening…

Of course, development went on in December. We almost had daily builds of the VANDAL plugin that went out to the test team. I’ve got a feeling the sound of the whole software is getting more mature recently… hopefully.

Here are a more audio snippets of VANDAL, once more played by Dimitar Nalbantov (http://www.nalbantov.com):

“Here is something that I just recorded with Vandal for fun
I hope the next Vandal will be out soon…”

dimi_vandal_tune

Hehe… sounds cute

“I have tested the new Vandal and I love it! Here are a few quick jingles-samples.
I’m waiting for the new version “

modernhigain_crunch4×12

britcrunch

Huh, I’m glad you’ve made the brit pop test … building a rock/metal amp is one thing, but traditional crunch tones is another challenge…