I just bought this:
http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/g71ut/

And it comes with Cubase LE. I have a pirated version of Cubase SX, and i was wondering if i should ditch it and go with LE? I hear all the "extra" features in SX is crap like surround recording and stuff, which i really do not need. Also, having something legal is cool.

Also, this thing has 32-bit sampling and works as a sound card, i guess sound wuality will be very good. Have you guys tried plugging your speaker out from your soundcard into microphone in, and playing back and recording the same track? Sound quality really fades when you do that, at least on my card.

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SX is way superior, the extra features it has are absolutely not "crap" by any means. It's just more resource-intensive than LE, but it has way more stuff to adjust and the interface is much better. Plus you're not limited to encoding/exporting your project as an mp3 only 20 times like in LE. I would get SX3 but I'm happy with LE as it is right now though.

Oh god don't tell me you bought one of those Zoom multifx, I used to have a G2.1 from the same series and it totally SUCKED.

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You thought it sucked? o.O

I can sell it for quite a profit, so no worries..

Anyway, can you only make a total of 20 mp3's? What a ripoff..

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It's not a ripoff at all, it's free software. It's totally fully functional but the export feature is limited to finalizing as mp3 only 20 times, you can still export to half a dozen other formats, like lossless wav, then convert it to mp3 with something else in whatever kbps you want...

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Haha that sucks. Understandable though as they probably licensed it from Frauenhofer which are mostly jews.

So i should stick with SX? I have no problems with performance. AFAIK the pirated version runs faster because the dongle is slow..

Anyway, what do you consider good multifx? I can coach a usable tone out of almost anything, I've been playing with guitar rig and my fav. rig right now is a recto on modern boosted with two screamers (sounds stupid i know). Tight and has harmonics, but it's noisy :P There should be an option to turn off the noise / feedback emulation.

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The pirated version still requires a dongle(a cracked dongle basically) which needs to run in the background, kinda lame. :/

I hate multiFX, never gotten a sound I like out of any I've tried/owned. Most of them value quantity of stuff over quality, when really all I want is 1 decent distorted sound and that's it. I own an ancient Digitech RP-1 and for some time I coaxed some sounds out of it when I had no cab, but otherwise I never use it, trying to sell it with my dunlop wah(also never gets used).

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Yeah if it's too bad I'll sell it for a $100 profit I got it on an hour limited sale, at about half price, so I win either way.

I heard the emulated "dongle" is faster because the original dongle was very slow on USB calls.. if you read the NFO that comes with the H2O release they mention it.

Anyway the thing is i need something to use with headphones's at my GF's house when I'm bored. Her laptopæs soundcard is craptastic with latency so guitar rig or similar is useless. I'm used to 2ms latency at home and 200ms latency at my GF's will not cut it. My main concern with this unit isn't really fantastic distortion and stuff like that, just something that'll spare my wrists (i pick too hard unplugged so i can hear myself, and i have CTS so this is a concern for me). With my Fireball I'll be playing around with some of the FX though, mainly just some delay, a little reverb and maybe some chorus to warm up the clean channel, and the graphic EQ.

I'm in no way an FX whore i just want some knobs to turn around and play with that won't break the bank. Today most reverbs and delays are digital anyway unless you're up in the $500 range (Memory Lane?) which i feel is way over budget and i hear this unit actually has good sound quality, i hear it's up there with the GNX3000 / Vox Tonelab. But, whenever i try something in person the usual outcome is that i think the exact opposite of what the interwebz think. I've always been like that though, if you play me a new album of some sort I'll like all the songs other people think are boring and I'll think the "popular" songs are nothing special

I sold my modded dunlop wah for $200. Wah sucks ass. My modded one sounded pretty much amazing though, but i never bothered using it.

That said my previous experience with Zoom has been:

#1 It sounds like a leprosy ridden hippo raped by hip-hoppers underwater.
#2 When you attempt to turn knobs or push buttons, they break.

But that was the old plastic amp combos with a "RECTUMFRIED" model.

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This unit is not that bad. It feels pretty real compared to a "real" amp. I A/B'd it side by side with my Fireball and at "people-sleeping-in-the-same-room" volumes the Zoom with headphones was pretty decent, at least as good as the Fireball. I have not touched much stuff though, i just turned the gain down a bit (First preset was teh br00t000lz!!! Very fizzy). The tube is pretty cool if you turn the "boost" dial to 4 or so, it makes the unit less "compact" sounding and breathes a little life into the tone overall. The "tube" dial is for making the sound less tight and more muddy, so i leave this at 0 for now.

I'm gonna have to play a little more with it but my first impression is that it is a decent unit. The feel is superior to Guitar Rig 2 at least, and it reacts well to pickup changes (neck/bridge) and volume / tone changes. Harmonics seem a little artificial though, they're kinda all over the place, often unwanted. I have to tell the Fireball very precisely when i want an harmonic and i need to pull it off pretty well to make it sound really cool, but with this thing you can pull off assmonics anywhere and they scream real well. The distortion as far as i have tweaked it does have something "digital" to it but nothing can touch the gorgeous liquid wetness of the Fireball in that dept. anyway. There's some digital "fizz" going on in it that I've heard in other digital units as well. The 5150 model is the worst,they're trying to emulate fizz and there's this digital artifact fizz being layered on top of it. Not a great idea honestly..

It can probably sound crushing with some studio magic and a good tweaker handling the knobs. I think it's a great practice tool, except that your mistakes really do not show up at all if you're a sloppy player like me. A real amp will be very mean in comparison.

I'll update tomorrow.

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post clips

Good idea, but i had a disc slip in my lower back and it hurts like hell so i need a break..

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When you learn how to tweak them the choruses sound AWESOME. These are world-class, seriously. Better than my Intellifex and G-major i had earlier. There's three of them, there's the subtle mono chorus, then the deeper stereo chorus type, then the all-out drowning chorus ensemble. Not many parameters to tweak but that's the way i prefer things. Rate, depth and mix.

Oh and if you want to get really nauseous try mix at 100%, rate at 50% and depth at 21 or so with the ensemble model.. You'll get pretty dizzy after a few minutes of this, it's like being seasick.

Oh and the pitch shifter is utter shit, it sounds like they added some sort of reverb effect to it and it sucks all the tone out. Not good.. Maybe it'll work if you try to emulate a bass guitar. Not good for down/up-tuning.

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Well today i've been running it a lot more and..

It can have a tendency to that "cocked wah" sound some digital units have if you don't tweak the mids properly. Kinda like an Andy Sneap produced thrash album (Later Kreator for instance), which can be very, very cool, but if you don't tweak carefully it'll be too much of it and for stuff other than tight thrash it's not so cool.

If you do not run a compressor or boost before the preamp module the distortions are pretty muddy and not so fun to play. If you do run a compressor with level run high it's awesome though, and if you use the boost effect it also tightens it up some which can be nice (depends on how you dial it in). I still have not decided yet which of the two i like best before the preamp section but the compressor is a stand alone unit which gives it some points and the low end is a little fuller and its not as wah-ish as the booster. The wah/envelope effects is grouped with the booster so if you run compressor you can have these effects at the same time. Then again my fav amp model needs some tightening up to do..

Man, I'm gonna spend hours tweaking this. I should've bought something with less dials :P I hate turning knobs and flipping switches.

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