Real-Time Emulation of a Marshall JCM 800 Guitar Tube Amplifier, Audio FX Pedals, in a Virtual Pedal Board

Abstract

The ANR project WASABI will last 42 months and consists in developing a 2 million songs database with interactive WebAudio enhanced client applications. Client applications target composers, music schools, sound engineering schools, musicologists, music streaming services and journalists. In this paper, we present a virtual pedal board (a set of chainable audio effects on the form of "pedals"), and a guitar tube amplifier simulation for guitarists, that will be associated with songs from the WASABI database. Music schools and music engineering schools are interested in such tools that can be run in a Web page, without the need to install any further software. Take a classic rock song: isolate the guitar solo, study it, then mute it and play guitar real-time along the other tracks using an online guitar amplifier that reproduces the real guitar amp model used in the song, with its signature sound, proper dynamic and frequency response. Add some audio effects such as a reverberation, a delay, a flanger, etc. in order to reproduce Pink Floyd's guitar sound or Eddie Van Halen famous "Brown Sound". Learn interactively, guitar in hands, how to fine tune a compressor effect, or how to shape the sound of a tube guitar amp, how to get a "modern metal" or a "Jimi Hendrix" sound, using only your Web browser.