Now that Softube Metal Amp Room plugin is available, home studio recording has the potential to be a bit more bone-crushing. According to Softube, Metal Amp Room "was designed to bring you the most brutal, evil and aggressive sound that is possible to squeeze out of your DAW." Softube enlisted the aid of Patrik Jensen, guitarist for The Haunted, to make Metal Amp Room as heavy as possible. For added security, the cabs were measured in the In Flames studio.

As with one of Softube's other products, Vintage Amp Room, the old dog of continuous mic placement has returned with some new tricks. To maximize the mass of sound, Softube used twin mics with adjustable stereo panning and control over phasing effects. You can also use just one of the mics dead against the cone or compromise between the two extremes.

One of the foundational goals of Metal Amp Room is that less is more. Instead of packing the plugin up with too many different amps, effects rigs and the like, Softube stuck with two channels, two cabinets with one dynamic and one condenser miking each and a single-knob noise gate that reacts to the speed of your play whether it be simply blistering or time bending.

Time bendingly fast features:

• A brutal metal amp with a raw and authentic sound
• A program-dependent guitar noise gate
• Two cabs with two mics per cabinet
• Easy to use balancing stereo mic preamp for balancing the two mics
• Flexible and continuous click-and-drag mic positioning
• Fully automatable parameters
• 3-D rendered photo-realistic user interface
• Compatible with all effects that work with real amps