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Eleven's interface mimics that of a hardware amp.

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Eleven offers emulations of ten classic vintage guitar amps and two that are entirely of Digi’s own design. Each amp has its own head controls and Digidesign has been very faithful in their reproduction. The AC30 model, for example, has both Normal and Brilliant channels and, like the original, the Treble and Bass tone controls only work on the latter, while the Cut (presence) and tremolo module work on both.

Where amp channels can be ganged – or ‘jumped’ – in real life using a patch cable (to yield series or parallel use of two channels at once), they’re generally modelled in a way that can reproduce these tones. However, you won’t find any spring reverbs.

As well as amps, there are seven cabs to choose from. These include those that were intrinsically attached to the amps, such as that of the Fender Deluxe combo, or those that were classically associated, such as a 4x12 Marshall loaded with Celestions.

Toggling through the cabs, the impact and variety of their sound comes as quite a surprise – in fact, the raw sound of the amps with the cab switched to bypass is wholly unappealing!

A great guitar sound can be as much about imperfection as everything working in harmony, and to this end, Digi have added a control to dial in speaker break-up. This is how the speaker responds and vibrates as the amp’s power is increased, and introducing some of this into the sound brings an appealing thickness and fullness.

At the end of the virtual signal chain you have the choice of eight mics, from expensive favourites like the Neumann Valve U67 through to cheaper dynamics like the Shure SM57. You’ll no doubt find your favourite mic and stick with it; the U67 is particularly rich.

The mics can be either on- or off-axis, which is fine, but a variable slider with a choice of points in between would be better. Likewise, double miking and a distance setting introducing air and room sound would also be great.

Of course, you can use multiple instances of Eleven to imitate a multi-mic setup, but the plug-in’s hyper-realism doesn’t come cheap and easy, as it absolutely devours CPU cycles. With just three instances of Eleven and no other plug-ins running, our test machine started to show the strain.

A noise gate rounds things off, quickly and efficiently getting rid of amp noise, making the sound tighter and punchier. A dedicated gate might be a more precise bet for the final mix, though.

The sound

There’s a clear American rock influence on the sound that becomes increasingly evident the more you use Eleven. You can effortlessly achieve big-bottomed and bright, fizzy, distorted tones of the classic rock variety.