Best Plugins For Acoustic Guitar

[Breogan Heflin]

AcousticGuitar VSTs are becoming extremely realistic as of the last few years. I would argue, to the point where you can actually make certain plugins sound better on a recording than an actual acoustic guitar.

This acoustic guitar plugin is no different in the fact that it has some great sounds. There are over 200 preset guitars to choose from and it comes with a 3 different play modes. You have keyboard mode, where you can play it like a keyboard, guitar mode, which is like a guitar, and loop mode.

Orange Tree samples create some state of the art plugins. I included the Evolution Songwriter plugin as this is great for those aspiring songwriters who are looking to go for the Iron & Wine type of guitar sound.

Type Of Plugin: Some plugins can be played whereas others are strictly just samples. I believe that the best types of acoustic guitar plugins are actual virtual instruments, meaning you can play them with a keyboard.

Realism: Some plugins are able to capture the realism of a real acoustic guitar, where others just simply fall flat. Over the years, this has definitely approved and most of our selections sound very realistic.

Articulations: The articulations that the plugin can do prove to be very important in most songwriting sessions. The more strumming patterns and bends, the better when it comes to capturing the dynamics.

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Based on creative techniques developed by studio engineers and producers, the Acoustic Voice preamp plugin combines guitar simulation, studio preamps and microphones, modulation, delay and reverb to create state-of-the-art acoustic soundscapes.

With the Acoustic Voice preamp plugin is possible to choose between 3 selected microphones emulations, Audix* Adx51, Beyer dynamic* M201, Shure* SM57, moving the virtual mic along with the guitar from neck to bridge and distance from the instrument.

Very impressed with Nembrini's Acoustic Voice. I have two electric guitars with under-saddle piezos and they both became acoustic guitars when running them through this plugin! Good tone control to iron out any wayward lumps in the tone, but it's the character of the guitar sound that has blown me away - it really has made my solid body piezo guitars sound like nicely mic'd acoustic guitars. Did I mention that I'm really impressed by this?!

Much like vocals, in modern music productions, the snare is usually balanced in a place of prominence amongst the rest of the arrangement. Sometimes, in order to get a snare drum to cut through, whether the drum is acoustic or synthesized, drastic measures need to be taken in terms of processing.

Guitars, both acoustic and electric, are designed to emanate a sound that cuts through dense arrangements, and because of that, it can introduce unwanted harshness if not recorded and then mixed properly. A cheap acoustic guitar recorded in an unforgiving room can really cause unfixable headaches when it comes to the mix.

The Pro-MB is a top-of-the-line multiband compressor and is incredibly useful for treating sources that have mostly good things happening, frequency-wise, but need some attenuation in a specific range. It gets regular use on individual tracks, sub-groups, and occasionally on the mix bus.

Perhaps no type of processing is more effective at removing harshness in audio than the trusty equalizer. For years, I used the stock Pro Tools EQ3 7-band for most subtractive equalization duties, and have very few complaints about its functionality and sound. When I produce music in Ableton Live, I have no qualms about using the stock equalizer on the fly. Logic comes with many great equalization plugins right out of the box, including ones that emulate renowned hardware and do it well.

Is there a good quality acoustic guitar sample library or modelling available on iOS? Tried a couple free libraries on Decent Sampler but would be willing to pay for quality. The acoustic guitar sounds on Logic Pro are OK, but not exactly convincing.

@BillS said:

Is there a good quality acoustic guitar sample library or modelling available on iOS? Tried a couple free libraries on Decent Sampler but would be willing to pay for quality. The acoustic guitar sounds on Logic Pro are OK, but not exactly convincing.

To my ears, the best current retail IOS acoustic guitar is the American Acoustic IAP in Sampletank for IOS.

Appears to have genuine round robin samples, and sounds just as good as the well regarded Kontakt instruments from companies like Orange Tree and Indiginus.

Sampletank isn't an AUv3 though - still only IAA.

Also, it always (every time) eventually ends up freezing on my iPad when I use it in Auria Pro or AUM.

Turning off WiFi or Cellular for me seems to help it stay stable in standalone mode.

Why don't you like Sculpture? It should be a really good modeling engine. It works fine with the Logic internal keyboard when you select Polyphonic Pichbend and Y-Mapping. I know it's a bad UI port, but the sound and features are the same as on the desktop.

It does, even though so far I seem to still get better results with the soundfont I'm using which is a shame because it's really great to have those articulations with pianoteq ? I hope they're secretly working on an electric guitar too, but it's probably unlikely hehe

Lately, I've been transcribing my acoustic guitar bits to midi and playing them back through jazz guitar in kontakt with guitar rig. The sound is ok but of course electric. This is not so bad since my acoustic guitar style is mainly grabbed chords and finger picking jazz style, with the occasional strummed chord. I don't have an acoustic guitar in my collection.

I was wondering if anyone else has any ideas about what might be a good option. I don't want a strumming guitar sound or thin sounding picking and would like to keep the price down if possible. If anyone has any other ideas or can point me in the right direction it would be most appreciated.

Hadn't seen this, very interesting, the controls are phenomenal, the way they implement the articulations and keyswitches etc are excellent, more options for control over sound than I've seen anywhere else, 12 string, power chords etc good strumming engine as well. Sound quality is really good as well. Price is excellent. On the short list. Requires full version of Kontakt but that's ok I have that. Possibly a little brighter than I was seeking but the sound quality between all of these paid products seems to be more around personal preference than sampling quality, they all sound really good to me.

I have NI's Session Guitarist Strummed Acoustic 2. I've just messed with it on the surface, but there are a lot of granular controls to customize the strumming patterns and humanize it the way you want. NI sells the picked version too, though I don't have that one. There are demos! ?

Here are some free downloads from Indiginus as well as their $59 US nylon string acoustic , $45 US jangly steel string acoustic and another $59 US steel string acoustic . Each guitar sounds different and the user interface differs from plain to great.

I've got Komplete ultimate 10 and attempted to upgrade to 12 using the hard drive option but it didn't work for me because it still needed a huge download (whats the point of offering the hard drive option?). Native Access has destroyed any hope of me using NI products again unfortunately otherwise, this problem would have been done and dusted long ago. I need to be able to go into town and use their blistering speed internet connection to download the product in full and then transfer it to my offline DAW as I don't have a good internet connection where I live, I can't do this with Native Non-Access as you have to download it to your DAW directly. I'm also after a specific type of finger picking sound.

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