Best Acoustic Guitar Plugin

[Cristy Borovetz]

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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I agree about Sampletank. However, the issue lies in the fact that IAA is being deprecated, and Sampletank (as far as I know) hasn't gone AU yet. (I've given up hope of that ages ago, lol.) Gestrument is also IAA-only (which is why I haven't purchased it yet), but I assume you can export what you create and import it into other apps, correct?

Regarding AUs, I'd recommend against Roli Noise due to the fact not all of their packs you find in the stand-alone are available in the plugin. At least this was the case the last time I tried to play with it back in 2018 in Cubasis. Perhaps that's changed?

Beathawk's guitars are about the best guitars available in AU format. They also have a decent Guitar Loops pack as well as well as really great acoustic instrument packs in general. The packs are reasonably priced as well, although if you're able to wait, UVI often have 50% off sales on said packs.

@jwmmakerofmusic Don't quote me but I think Gestrument allows for midi out. The bigger issue is if you are using Gestrument, or any type of controller app for that matter (I use Guitarism a lot), if this functionality would go away with IAA deprecated/ abandoned. I know for example that iSymphonic uses two types of midi, I think it's core midi and IAA midi. You can select both, and that is the only one that ever worked for me when I was using it with Beatmaker 2. Now, I'm not worried about iSymphonic as it is AUv3. But I am thinking of other controllers etc and how they are implementing their midi, and more importantly, if that would be "deprecated" as well.

No, sadly the SWAM packs still don't work in AU; it's a different engine to the Equator engine that the other packs use, and I think ROLI's licensing arrangement with Audio Modelling doesn't currently allow for AU. But for what it's worth, the SWAM packs just cover wind and strings; the guitars are other packs are Equator patches and will play in AU, though they're none of them straight acoustic patches. (But they are MPE, as are the acoustic guitars in ThumbJam and iFretless, but not the others that have been mentioned in this thread so far.)

While I don't like Sampletank, as a guitar player have to say that American Acoustic sounds best on iOS so far - like Ravenscroft but as a guitar. I didn't find Puresynth all that convincing ... add Bassalicious acoustic basses to that and you can fake a band. :-)

I always thought that the point of an acoustic guitar amp was not to sound like an amp, to be as transparent as possible.... If you think so too, then the best acoustic amp (or simulation) is nothing at all.

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.

Thanks, didn't know about this, they also have a finger picking pattern player for $79.00 US but they don't show it's features as a sample player which is what I'm primarily looking for. I've dropped them an email to clarify this.

Thanks, had a look at this, small download (78mb). Acoustic modelling. I think it fails a little as a dedicated traditional acoustic guitar from what I've heard but it has many possibilities for both electric and acoustic and the sound quality, although different, is excellent. This would be a great way to incorporate unusual guitar sounds into a modern production. They also have a sale on at the moment, 50% off, so I've bounced it over to the deals section. I am enticed to get it because although it won't fill the gap for a traditional acoustic for me, the high quality sounds and plentiful variations it has could really have an application in music.

Another free, modeled guitar VST2 is Spicy Guitar. The Spicy Guitar website appears to be down but a good description of the VST along with a video link is available here: instruments/spicy guitar.html

Thanks for the reply's guy's, this has helped me out a lot. At the moment the Indiginus Renegade Acoustic is at the top of my list. They are also offering good support as I contacted them and they respond quickly whereas a couple of others I contacted haven't bothered to get back to me.

I think the strumming engine in this is good as well because it's not a pattern player based on chord samples but rather plays midi files for it's patterns, in other words it's playing the individual samples from midi files. It sounds very authentic which leads me to believe that my midi based strum patterns will also sound good. It's also easy to set up your own patterns with your own chords which you can change via the fretboard, so any voicing you can conceive can be played and also incorporated into the pattern player. There are ten slots so basically, you can take your song with whatever chord voicings you want and program those into the slots and then use either the pattern player or trigger your own up/down strums etc through midi. You can also program your own patterns into the pattern player if you want. All this means I should be able to program my acoustic guitar rhythm tracks exactly the same as my real acoustic strummed tracks (which can be odd timings, voicings etc).

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