Otto Audio II II II II

Personal license – All thoughts and opinion’s within this review are my own and do not reflect those of the developer or others.

INTRO

The II II II II from Otto Audio – a new amp sim that has emerged seemingly out of nowhere. Otto Audio are a company who are great fun, easy to communicate with, and claim to make ‘premium audio weapons’, which after installing and testing, I can’t think of a more fitting description. For their first offering, this might be a game changer for heavy tones, especially as it even goes up to 11.

Lets check it out and see what it can do!

Experience

I found the install to be straight forward, and I had zero difficulties along the way. You’ll need a free ilok account, but once you’ve sorted that out – simple enough – it should be up and running smoothly. It works on all the most up to date Windows and Mac operating systems.

On opening the plugin it has a fantastic GUI and everything seems to be operating and performing well with my system’s resources – so all is pretty good so far.

In its default preset, the II II II II opens with the very impressive sounding mono/stereo mode activated, or ‘WIIIDTH Mode’, as they describe on the website. The developer describes this mono/stereo mode to be “Primarily designed for riffing, but [if using for recording purposes] depending on the mix, you can use it in the mono/stereo setting. If you’re noticing any phasing issues, simply use it in mono and then dual track as usual.”

Mono/stereo mode genuinely made me ‘stank face’. It is exactly the sort of thing that will make you want to play more and more, and any feature like this which can inspire us to do more playing and helps us in our creative endeavors is a good thing in my book, especially when it’s this good. I spoke a little with the developer and he mentioned that basically he wanted to make something that he couldn’t find in any other products elsewhere, “A wall of sound coming out of my DAW.” – I can’t argue with that.

By including this mode, he has made this amp sim one that feels huge, massively alive, and stunning when sitting between two monitors. For headphone users, the developer has also provided an entire bank of presets that will help to optimise the user experience with the II II II II whilst using headphones – a really nice touch and an impressive level of detail. I’ve yet seen that approach to presets in any other product out there.

If you want mono, mono to stereo, or stereo modes (for stereo bus / folder uses etc) there is a drop down menu on the bottom right hand side of the plugin.

The front panel of the amp has a fairly simple and sleek looking GUI at first glance, but on further inspection, it’s actually far from basic. You can click on various areas of the interface and you’ll realise that the II II II II has even more features, giving you plenty of potential to sculpt your tone and tweak it how you want. In front, going from left to right, you’ll find the amp’s main preamp gain and tone controls, presence and depth, but you can also choose from nine speaker load / impedance curves by clicking the symbol on the left of the amp’s controls – ranging from scooped, balanced, to mid and forward tones. And, you can switch preamp flavours by way of the drop down menu, underneath and just to the right of the presets. To the right of the amps main controls, click the ‘OA’ symbol, where you’ll find quick and handy access to the drop down menu for selecting your cabinet choices, of which there are 22 choices – certainly enough to spend a while exploring.

If you click above the controls of the front panel (where the glowing tubes live) you gain access to the back panel. Here you will find about 17 more controls – there is a subtle amp mod switch, a punish switch for tighter and heavier sounds, a 10db boost for even more gain and tightness (think tube screamer), a low end boost switch for a bass boost in the overdrive circuit, a noise gate (really good one at that), and you can even mess about and swap out different power tubes for different levels of headroom etc (el34, 6l6, kt88). A bit further across and you can tweak the power voltage sag, bias, feedback circuit and snarl controls, which all aid your tonal adventure.

Then there are a few more controls for the cab section, which like I said before, has 22 cabs to choose from, a power amp resonance and amplitude control, and of course a cabinet bypass – so you can use an external impulse response loader with your go to impulse responses / cabinet options. On the bottom panel, there is even a power amp bypass (great if you have an external power amp plugin / or hardware power amp) and finally a punch switch too…

Impressive stuff for tweakers and tone searchers, but if you aren’t one to turn all the controls and would rather an easier or quicker option, there are numerous presets to check out in the drop down menu at the bottom left

So what does it sound like?

The II II II II will do a fairly useable dirty clean / crunch sound, even more so if you roll off the input levels and the back panel controls and use single coils / or coil tap – but really if you are going to want to use this amp, it’s because it can achieve some of the most abusive, crushing, and ridiculously extreme high gain metal and djent tones you’ll ever hear. It’s main audience and user base is probably going to be those who want monster tones, using lower tuned guitars, or extended range instruments – simply because it remains tight and full of clarity even at max gain levels. It really is a beast.

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll manage to get some pretty decent rock and grunge tones out of this too on lower gain settings- but I wouldn’t be inclined to use this for jazz, country or blues – mainly because there are plenty of better options out there for those kinds of tones.

I was pleasantly surprised and impressed with the variety of flavours and sounds available in the cab section, although that being said, perhaps a little more control of them would be even better. It’d be cool to have a way to blend the included cab choices individually left and right, and even better if there was an inbuilt IR loader – so one could get the mono/stereo mode, whilst using 3rd party IRs. Maybe an idea that could be included in future updates, if it’s not too much to ask!?

Fortunately, if you want to use external 3rd party IRs, there is the option to simply bypass the cab section entirely and use your go to IR loader of choice instead.

I found that the built in noise gate in the II II II II is very useful and easy to use, and is super responsive and effective. Probably one of the best built in noise gates of any amp sims I’ve tried to date. No excessive ‘pffftshh’ noises at all.

UPS/DOWNS

Great general performance, competitively priced, and has plenty of cool ways to surgically sculpt your tones for ultimate sonic destruction. It’s great to use for recording your extreme music, and it’s just as at home when using it simply for riffing through your DAW, out to monitors or headphones.

In the future, it’d be nice to be able to separate and mix the different cab options for left and right with a blend control to fine tune, and maybe even an IR loader too, so you can then utilize the mono/stereo mode with 3rd party IRs. Maybe one day! It’d be also cool if there was a clean channel so you could use this for all parts of your projects but – like I said before – this was never designed or conceived to bring you beautiful glassy clean tones.

Conclusion

The II II II II really blew me away. As soon as I tried it I was in my happy place, pulling stank faces that I never knew I could pull, and I went and bought it immediately. It chugs harder than most other amp sims put together, and does it all with such clarity of sound, precision and control. Even if it may not have all the bells and whistles imaginable, or suit every genre of music, it certainly gives the competition a wake up call for distorted high gain metal tones.

Go and try it – they have a 14 day free trial and generous sales prices as low as 54% off from time to time!

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See more – release video from Otto Audio