Any Home Recording Experts?

[archibald]

Been researching/posting on the gutar forums on this issue for a while but I know there are a bunch of guitar players here on RWG so I thought I'd ask....

I have all of the standard amp sim plugins (amplitube, gearbox, guitar rig, etc.) and for the most part have been pretty pleased with the results, but lately I've been going back to micing the amp (sm 57 and an old school fender twin) and just using the plugins for effects for two reasons: 1) I can only do low bit rates with the plugin amp/cab sims running w/o serious lag and I've found that recording at a higher quality improves the overall sound making the loss guitar tone choice less troubling and 2)I don't think the plugin technology is quite there yet anyway, at least with respect to good old fashioned overdriven tones. So I've been thinking about ditching the plugins altogether and investing in a multi effects rig to use either in fromt of the amp or as part of the fx loop during mixing or both.

I guess the top end would be the new eleven rack but I would love to get away with a cheaper "stompbox" setup I can also use live. Lots of folks like the boss me-70 but it would be great to hear other RWG guitar players thoughts and experuiences on other units.

As always, thanks in advance!

[redwatch]

Hi there. Unfortunately, I would say that the multi-effects rigs are very similar to the plug-ins.......not quite there yet. I have yet to hear a multi-effects rig sound good in the effects loop of any combo amp. To me they are just too digital and don't have that "wow" factor that the individual and really well made separate pedals have. I have worked in the recording industry for many, many years, and the best of the best guitar players all had individual pedals for each "sound" they were trying to achieve. A few times guys would come into the studio with a LIne 6 Pod and always complain that the recordings didn't sound quite right. One of my co-workers had an Eleven Rack for a while and he said it sounded pretty good, but still not there yet. There was too much latency in the box (even though Digidesign claims that it has nearly no latency) and he said it just didn't feel right.

I realize that doesn't really help, but i guess the bottom line is - like replica watches, the effects boxes are good, but not great. Just my 0.02

[plaifender]

Mic your evil twin, run some solid-state effects pedals in the loop and call it a day... I agree very much with what RED said. I record and mix all my live audio directly with Adobe Audition. (I grew up editing with premier... so it was a natural progression for me). In the end, the digital effects, although convenient, will never sound good enough to the purists of the industry. A good friend of mine had a line 6 spider, I had a fender twin (1996 model no longer with me ). When we played together there was no comparing the sound of his nice but very digital sound, to the warmth and feel that the twin put out, even if he put his settings to "twin emulation".. it still wasn't quite right. I think it's a good idea that your going back to micing your amps. Put the effects rig in front of your amp and mix directly into whatever program your using.

Seems to me that a lot of the unnatural sound in multi-effects plugins and pedals has to do with the amount of digital overcompression that these processors apply to your signal. It's all too easy these days to crank your amp up to 9, throw in a digital effects plug-in or effectsloop and forget about having to worry with things like feedback, squealing from preamp oscilation, overheating tubes and speaker blows. In my opinion driving all those forces to their natural limits is what really creates a unique sounds.. not by emulation and signal suspression. My 2 cents..

-Fender

[Dudemeister]

I'm no studio musician, but I've benn dabbling with variuos effects and stuff for the last 30 years.

In principle I agree with red's statement that most digital multi-effects don't sound like the sum of their individual single effect counterparts. But there's something to be said about them too. Most of us can't afford to buy 20-30 stomp boxes and have them neatly attached to a footboard and wired, etc... Hell, the 9v batteries alone or all the mini power supplies would drive me crazy.

A couple of simple well made multi-effect boxes might just do the work, especially if they're properly adjusted and you don't go everboard with the effects. One of the advantages of a multi effects box is that the cable induced noise is nonexistant. Also any post-processing noise and undesirable overdrive/feedback is either non-existand or controllable.

I for one have a few gadgets I use a Zoom stomp pedal (don't remember the model), a rack mount Yamaha GEP-50 (one of the most "analog" sounding digital effects box), a Morley Fuzz-Wah, and a Roland GR-1 Guitar Synth. The Zoom box is a cheap useable box, a little noisy when adding too many effects together, but manageable. The Yamaha is just sweet sounding, if you can find one, get it. The GR-1, I haven't used it in 10 years.

Then there's Guitar Rig and GearBox. I use primarily Guitar Rig on my Mac. I ditched the GR Controller pedal, and I'm using a M-Audio 410 FireWire interface and a Behringer FCB1010 midi controller, and lag is a thing of the past. I had other interface boxes like the FastTrack USB and the GuitarPort from Line6 and they all had some lag regardless of what I tried. The FireWire interface makes all the difference in the world, so you might want to try one of those if haven't already.

Once lag is gone, the amp sims are pretty good. You can do things with them that you could never try in the real worls (or afford), How many people can afford to daisy chain 10-15 delay and splitter boxes, a few Digitech pedals and play them through multiple amps simultaneously ??

Many complain that the emulation doesn't sound exaclty like the real thing. I think that most of the time this is due to post amplification. It should be about as neutral as possible, as any sound coloration it adds, will end up changing the intended sound. In other words, let the sim do it's job, and don't add anything extra in post amplification, keep it flat.

Anyway, that's my 2 bits ($0.25) on the subject.