Review: Audio Assault Emperor (with video sample)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are reviewing a brand new guitar amp simulator: Emperor, by Audio Assault!

Audio Assault is a Mexico based software house focused on music production, and they offer a wide array of plugins, ranging from equalizers and drum samples to virtual amplifiers.

Today we are going to check out the latest virtual amp of the company: Emperor.
Emperor is a suite focused on metal and rock tones, which includes a dual channel hi-gain head, a pedalboard with 5 slots (in which you can choose between 10 stompboxes, ranging from boosters to modulation effects, from a compressor to an auto-wah - the only pity is there's no tuner!) and a cab section with 4 cabs and 4 microphones (which can be moved freely on the grill, you can select also the distance).
Plus, there's also an IR loader included with 14 custom IRs.

As I have already said for other recent guitar amp simulators, technology today has gotten to a point in which it is possible to achieve a very credible guitar sound with plugins, also with the not expensive ones (and this Emperor has an extremely good quality to price ratio), after years in which we had to buy very expensive gear and suites in which it was very hard to achieve a decent tone, before dropping everything and switching back to a real amp.

I have followed guitar amp modeling since the beginning, since the '90s, and I must say only in the latest years technology has really gotten this close to reality to really let anyone plug a guitar into the audio interface and dial in a good tone.

Even more recently, I have noticed a beautiful trend in which guitar amp simulators have become really user friendly: now it's as easy to craft a good tone as using a real amp, which was unthinkable up to few years ago; back then the producers were focused in offering as many options as possible (as many amps, as many variables, as many tube types and bias settings possible), with the result of being dispersive, and this is the real revolution: today producers are focusing in offering an easy interface which sounds good since the beginning.

I had to tweak the amp literally for 5 minutes before coming up with the tone that can be heard in the video: I just added a Tube Screamer in front, played a bit with the eq, and chose the right microphone.

All I can say is that Emperor is a simple, very quick and effective guitar suite which will offer you a wide range of crunch tones, from a mild overdrive to the most extreme and modern Djent (no clean tones basically), and most important, all the tones are very realistic and usable, making it a smart and complete choice.

Thumbs up!


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