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How do these sound when compared to a software based plugin emulation of your favourite amp? Neither are ideal, but the latter maybe be ultimately superior...?
Originally Posted by Little Jay
Currently looking ar these:
Does anybody have experience with using these in the studio for direct recording?
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10-11-2022 09:13 PM
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Reaper and Ardour allow you to record raw (straight into the console) and add effects later. Both are non-destructive so you can experiment. Spend less time and get better results.
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I know, but the problem is we record the whole group at once, together. To get a ’raw’ guitar sound back on your headphone in a band mix does not work at all for me. I need to have a good guitar sound to be able to play well. Even lack of reverb throws me off already. I found out I am very sensitive to that. Originally Posted by gregunit
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The recording set up (with the whole group at once) does not allow me to get a processed guitar sound back at my headphones while recording and there lies my problem: I can’t play well if I only have a dry/raw/unprocessed guitar sound in my headphone mix. Originally Posted by princeplanet
And I was hoping someone on the forum could tell me how these kind of preamp devices sound…..
That particular one does get excellent reviews everywhere by the way.
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Have not tried a simple DI yet…. Setting up a separate channel to feed back to my monitoring is a good idea. Maybe I could get a processed signal back then…. Have to try! Originally Posted by fep
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That's unfortunate, it's pretty easy these days to get "live" emulation of an amp in your cans while recording a whole band. There is the requisite very small buffer delay (depending on settings etc), but most players seem to cope easily with that (not me, I don't like it...) Originally Posted by Little Jay
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Playing electric guitar through headphones will always feel different from playing an amp, regardless of the signal processing. Maybe you can get used to it?
The comment about re - amping suggests you could re record your dry track played through your amp in the studio, after the fact. Then you have to record with phones but the final track sounds like your amp.
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I use the S-Gear desktop app. I hear the amp sim, the DAW records the dry tone. Very simple and works well
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But how are you hearing yourself without an amp? Monitors? If you need quiet, you have to go with headphones, or you might as well have an amp.
Cheapest way is playing with a guitar plugin on the computer, if your soundcard and system can handle it. Then there are the analog preamp solutions, where you use your pedalboard plus an amp simulation pedal (I really like the sansamp ones, but there are a lot new great products out). Then there is the multieffect unit, which is very convenient. Finally the attenuator thing, which to me is the best solution after normal miking. If i was doing records at home, i would only use mics or an attenuator, but for everything else i find all solutions viable.
Nothing feels and sounds like a real amp to me, but you work with what fits. I prefer the analog sim solution, but digital multieffects are hard to beat for ease and capabilities. Over 200-300$ i would definitely buy a digital unit over an analog one. Just make sure it supports IRs, because they make a difference. Personally i see no point to go expensive when buying multieffects, cause even units like a Kemper or Helix.. i don't really like them, nor enjoy the workflow. But others love them.
Here's a small video ad i did at home for my lessons at the beginning of the year, with all sorts of guitars. It is just a 200$ Boss Gt-1 direct to PC (acoustics and classical don't even use that, just an IR on the computer). Doesn't sound bad at all, it wasn't worth the hassle to setup mics etc..
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Great video and great playing!!! Originally Posted by Alter
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Thanks! I posted it to show the practicality of multi effects. No trying to find mic sweet spots, even levels, etc. Once you settle on the programs you use and save them, you just plug in the guitars and you 're set to go. It took only minutes to record all that.
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I use a Fractal Axe Fx III or another of their units. I record with as dry signal and a stereo outputs form the unit into the board, so the DAW has three tracks. Then I can reamp for tones later if I want/need to. I use headphones so there's no bleeding. This gives me the comfort of my sound and the option of not bleeding into the other mics.
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Originally Posted by Little Jay
Use your amp.
Ask your drummer how he’d like to play with electric drums.
The feel of your rig is critical to your playing and it’s no surprise you were effected negatively by that. Tell your drummer to put his big boy engineer pants on and stop being afraid to mic musicians in the same room.
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Only way I fly. DI in. Then "THEY" do what they want
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We are now also checking how we can process my raw guitar sound before feeding it back to my headphones
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Keep it simple
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Our lead singer and the keyboard player sited audience distraction as the reason for poor performance. As a result the lead guitar player bought bags of nerf ball, armed the wives and kids, and they attacked us aiming for our faces whilst practicing a song. After an angry exchange, the pelting continued the rest of the evening and a surprise pelting two weeks later. You have to learn to play well when thing don't go right, because that can happen a lot.
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I still think you should isolate your amp somehow and use a condenser to mic it that way you won't have to turn up very loudly and it won't bleed into the drums. You can set the amp not that loud and turn the gain on the channel up to get adequate volume in your headphones. It's your monitor so it won't have to be perfect.
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I tried the Simplifier and the H&K, but I didn't like them any better than the American Sound. The H&K was actually worse than the AS, but I was tempted because of the power amp section. So I returned them to the dealer. Originally Posted by Little Jay
I use the Joyo daily for recording after I got rid of my last modeler (I think I'm done with them).
Maybe it would help if you tried to describe what you miss with the AS pedal. It took me some time (years) to get it to sound the way I wanted it to.
(Hint: the secret is in the Drive knob... )
Edit: I also took a look at the Iridium from Strymon. Nice, I liked it almost as much as the AS. There is no extra "voice" control, instead the mid knob serves as the "voice" control. And it costs 10x as much as the Joyo. Why should I spend that much when I already like what I hear?Last edited by DonEsteban; 10-13-2022 at 03:23 PM.
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Good information, thanks! Originally Posted by DonEsteban
With the Joyo I was alteady much more pleased than without it. It was very hard to get it totally clean (but that could also be an input-level thing). But it doesn’t sound like a mic-ed amp (duh…). I did quite a few studio recordings just mic-ing my amp with just a simple SM57 and that sounded great to me and also ‘felt’ right on the headphones.
What I miss most in the Joyo is a certain punch and reactiveness. It’s a bit bland and flat, also lacking some sparkle. Maybe I’m too demanding?
I do have Shure inears, that isolate very well, I will use those next time. The Sennheiser headphones I used are not isolating much and it’s also possible that the drumsound filling the room bleeding through my headphones made things sound much different…..Last edited by Little Jay; 10-14-2022 at 01:43 AM.
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You need a few more things to make this work reliably
First off use your amp! but, not the speakers!!
Use this : https://www.radialeng.com/wp-content...heet-jdx48.pdf
you get your sound, your fx etc.. but, no speakers! It's like a 57 in front of your amp.... NOTE: there has to be a load at the speaker output of the JDX48 , see this discussion and use the suggested 50-100ohm load....
Do you need a di for the "drummer/engineer" who wants a dry signal??? , .You could skip that part.
if not, split your guitar to the amp and DI ....
Finally, you need to have that (Amp signal not the Di) mixed with bass and drums. A system is required to handle this, a computer DAW mix , or a small console, or a dedicated personal system with a few inputs or on a larger budget an aviom or similar would be a major step up..as , you see the aviom consoles on stands near the players..Romain uses all his pedals as he wants he,s dialed it in before the session and it sounds great for everyone....
Hope this helps, you can start simple and progressively expand as the studio expands....
S
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I have liked my SansAmp Para Driver DI into the PA or an FRFR powered speaker for electric guitars, and the Fishman Para Acoustic DI for piezo type guitars. I often use the PDDI into my AI Clarus 2r with good results for electric sounds. Very flexible EQ and drive sounds with a parametric mid sweep. If you're running a pedalboard too, this can be a pretty simple setup. My pedalboard is a George L's 15 foot cord... I don't want to tote a lot of stuff in and out, you know? Come to think pf it, I also have a Zoom MS100bt multipedal that I ran straight to the PA or a powered speaker for a bunch of gigs; sounded good, got lots of compliments, but there is a learning curve to set up your virtual effect chains. Very compact, though!
I haven't tried any of them, but a few of our members use various Boss and other multi-effect rigs and get great sounds on their clips, straight to the DAW with no amp sim. One guy I met uses a Boss floor unit to the PA and has a fake amp behind him on stage! These can sound pretty good.
Many amps these days have a recording out jack and you can cut the speaker in the room. My Cube 60 does, the Clarus does, the Fender Tone Masters do I think. I think my old Polytone MB II did, too, but that's been gone for years. Might be the easiest solution, since it's also useable on a gig.
This insistence of having every single instrument with zero bleed from the other instruments on recordings really annoys me. It's not how it sounds in real life. The only reason to do so is that you're not confident in your ability to play the part correctly and you want to be able to fix it after the fact. If you rehearse the tunes ahead of time and really learn them, this should not be a problem. Personally, I prefer the sound of recordings that have a little bleed through from the other instruments; it sounds more organic to my ears.
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Yeah, I mostly recorded live so far, eveybody in one room and bleeding of instruments in the other mics was not an issue (sometimes some phasing problems, but that can usually be solved in your DAW by reversing the phase of certain channels).
Of course with this method overdubbing certain parts becomes difficult, if not impossible. But for jazz, you usually don’t want to overdub things, because it kills the interaction between the musicians.
But this situation is different. First of all because volumes have to be kept low for the neighours (residential area in the city centre). And secondly because of a concept he has in mind, that requires overdubbing and needs clean drumtracks without bleed of other instruments.
So I am very used to the sound and feel of a live (tube) amp behind me. I realise I also will just have to adjust and get used to it, but if there’s some nifty gadget or way of working that can help I’d like to find out about it. The Joyo American Sound helps (actually for $30 it an absolute genious device that already yields very acceptable results), but I feel it can be better.
Next time I will try the Shure inears, I suspect/hope that will help me getting a much more controllable sound on my ears and might improve the ‘feel’ of my guitar that I’m looking for. I will also try using an additional DI- box, as those are cheap enough.
But you give me good insights withs your responses, keep ‘em coming, I am learning a lot!
Oh and here’s the recording in which I used the Joyo American Sound (rough mix and the individual parts contain lots of mistakes, but perfect playing was not the goal, it was just testing out the recording method):
Google Drive: Sign-inLast edited by Little Jay; 10-14-2022 at 06:35 AM.
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This is true. Originally Posted by DonEsteban
It took me a year or two or three of having a Sansamp before I realized you can put the drive on zero. It's not like the preamp knob on guitar amp that has to be on at least 1 or 2 for there to be sound. The drive can be on zero and it's just clean.
Another thing about Sansamp-type analog preamps is that the controls are more sensitive than a regular amp. On the American Sound, the voice control is really powerful. It's like a completely different amp between 4 and 6, for instance.
Below 5 the voice knob is cutting the mids inside the drive circuit, so it stays clean even if you turn the drive up a bit. Then you can add back in mids with the Mid tone control.
I sound like a Sansamp fanboy, but I think they're rather ingenious little devices.
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I get fine results with the XLR output of my Quilter Superblock US. You can set the output to FRFR and use IRs in the DAW to make it sound like a mic'd cab. There are IRs available at relatively low cost with just about any cab, speaker, and mic combination you can imagine, and done right, I don't they'd be distinguishable from the real thing, especially in a full mix. The right IR will go a long ways towards making it sound like a real amp in the recording. There's no way to emulate in headphones or studio monitors the actual sound of a speaker cab filling the room, which seems to be the part of the amp experience you want to retain.
If you go with the Superblock solution, your audio interface will allow you to monitor the signal out of the amp with zero latency, as opposed to monitoring an effected signal in the DAW, which will introduce some amount of latency—often negligible, but it depends on the performance of your system.
Also, S-Gear software is a great and affordable DAW plug-in with built-in IRs. There are some presets that will work well for jazz with just minor tweaking and it only costs $129 US—I believe there's a generous trial period as well.
https://www.scuffhamamps.com/download/s-gear-v3
Other end of the pricing spectrum, there are devices you can put between your amp and the amp's speaker that will allow you to use your actual amp without the signal reaching the speaker. Here's one such device:
OX | Amp Top Box | Universal Audio
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