I’ve never really been happy with my In-The-Box bass tones, I’ve yet to find anything that sounds better than plugging into an amp. For the longest time there’s been very few options for plugins designed for bass. Softube is one of those cool small companies that make great plugins that look and sound great. Softube has a fairly recent entry into that tiny Bass amp modeling market with Bass Amp Room. I finally got some time to play with it today and here is my review.
Softube Bass Amp Room
Features
- Authentic amp and cabinet modeling
- Three versatile and good-sounding cabinets
- Designed for excellent results and fast work flow
- Built-in one-knob limiter in D.I. panel
- Easy to use mix and D.I. panel
- Flexible & continuous click-and-drag mic positioning
- Fully automatable parameters
- 3-D rendered photo-realistic user interface
- Compatible with all effects that work with real amps
- Amp/Cab Bypass possiblities let you use cabinets from other Amp Room products
Installation
An iLok is required to run Softube software.
The trial license was sent to my iLok account, and downloaded. Took about 2 minutes.
The plugin installer found my custom VST folder immediately. Installed in about 10 seconds.
The Amp
The amplifier part of Bass Amp Room is modeled on a 70′s 100W guitar amp that was popular with bass players. Softube doesn’t say specifically which brand or model, I have no clue. It could be a Kustom, Ampeg, or Fender, or perhaps a brand that doesn’t exist anymore.
A plugin with just 1 amp model seems pretty limiting. To an extent yes, it is. However if you are looking for a vintage bass amp sound with a nice crunchy but not harsh breakup, IMO this nails it. For really distorted tones or modern pop/rock tones you’ll have to look elsewhere.
The amp has a few simple controls
High/Low level High gives you a boosted signal into the preamp
Normal Volume – This is the Preamp of the amp, push it for an overdriven sound
3 band EQ – Bass, Middle, Treble
Master Volume – The level that gets sent into the cabinet. Push it up for a saturated power tube sound.
The Cabinets
Bass Amp Room has 3 cabinet models, a 8×10” cab (aka classic Ampeg SVT), a 4×12” cab (a Marshall perhaps? At the back of the manual they say there was no markings on the cab), and an open back 1×12” (who knows!? The manual says it’s a half-open 1×12” cabinet with a Celestion 20W/15ohm driver). They all sound quite good, but may be too dark to work on everything. You change cabinet models by a simple click and drag to the left or right.
Mic positions
One of the great things about the Softube software is the click & drag mic positioning. Most other amp modeling software gives you a couple of preset positions and maybe close or far. In Bass Amp Room you can pull the mic up to about 3 feet away and push it right up to the grill. If you push it past the grill it changes the angle from the center of the cone all the way to the edge off axis. Unfortunately there’s only one mic model, the dynamic Sennheiser 421 model. A Fet47, RE20, D112 and other classic bass amp mics would have been nice, but surely would have driven the cost up.
The DI
The DI section is probably my favorite part. There’s High and low cut adjustment, a tone knob which gives you a scoop or a mid boost and the effect changes along with the filters. There’s also a simple 1 knob limiter that works great for getting a fat solid low end.
Balance and other controls
There’s a slider to adjust the balance of DI signal with the Amp signal. Super simple to use. There’s solo buttons just below that for the DI or Amp signals and even a phase invert should you need it.
There’s an output level knob at the bottom right for proper gain staging in your DAW.
There’s a “hidden” control for bypassing the amp or cabinet modeling. Click on either “Custom Softube 100” or on the wall plate of the room. The cursor will change to a !. This is useful if you want to use the cab with a different amp, or this amp and different cabs.
The hidden controls
First Impressions and sound
At first it didn’t blow me away. Visually it looks great, I keep forgetting that it’s a plugin and not a picture! The one thing missing is a cable on the mic. It’s simple to use and it does sound great, but it just does not do the tones I am looking for. I like the more modern punchy and bright bass tones with hi-mid growl for fast rock or punk. It does sound very good, very real and never harsh.
What it sounds like
Here’s some examples of my bass through a few presets.
The clips start out bypassed then got into one of the included presets.
All clips are finger-picked with a 4 string Ibanez SR 500 bass with active pickups (EQ flat, middle position) into Hi-Z input of Profire 2626 interface.
Worth buying?
I still have 9 days left to try it out. I think if I owned it, it would likely get quite a bit of use, but because it does not immediately give me the type of tones I like to get as a bass player. As a mixing engineer I think it sounds great for the tones it does do. I don’t want this to seem like a negative review at all, it does sound great, it’s just not one-stop-shopping for all your bass amp modeling needs.
It’s great, just not for me. Try it out for 10 days and decide for yourself.
Softube Bass Amp Room is $199 direct from Softube and may be cheaper at your local retailer.
http://www.softube.se/bass_amp_room.php
