Better Tone Through Reamping

Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

           
 

SEVEN PROS OFFER RECIPES FOR REVITALIZING YOUR TRACKS

BONUS MATERIAL
David Bottrill Interview

Have you ever recorded a guitar track in your studio only to find, long after the guitarist had left, that the sound wasn't quite right for the song? Or perhaps you cut a bass part through a DI but wished later that you'd tracked it through an amp. Or maybe you were mixing a song with a soft-synth track that was well played, but the sound was lifeless.

In all those scenarios, and countless others, sonic improvement could have been readily achieved through the process commonly referred to as reamping — that is, sending your already recorded track through an instrument amplifier or an instrument-level processor (or both), and then bringing it back into your DAW as a new track. The term reamping is a bit of a misnomer because, as you'll see, the track being reamped has usually been recorded direct, not through an amp.

Although reamping most often involves guitar and bass tracks, you can apply it to any recorded audio. Drums, vocals, keyboards, or even a drum loop that needs spicing up can be improved through reamping. The only limit is your imagination. Ironically, in this era of digital signal processing, the devices that make reamping possible are completely analog. (I'll describe these boxes more in a bit.)

In researching this story, I talked to a number of pro engineers and producers who frequently use reamping in their studio work: Dave Bottrill is a producer-engineer whose client list includes Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, and Tool. Producer-engineer Butch Walker has worked with artists like Avril Lavigne, Hot Hot Heat, and Fall Out Boy, among others. Jesse Nichols is a staff engineer at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, whose credits include the Donnas, the White Stripes, and Doves. Joel Hamilton is a New York City-based producer-engineer and musician who's worked with artists such as Tom Waits, Soulive, and Elvis Costello. Paul Antonell owns the Clubhouse, a commercial studio in Rhinebeck, New York, and has engineered for Natalie Merchant, Rusted Root, and Al Di Meola, among many others. Steve Skinner is a producer, composer, and frequent EM contributor whose credits include Akon, Jewel, and Celine Dion. I also spoke with engineer John Cuniberti, who designed and built the Reamp, the first commercially available reamping device. Cuniberti's credits include Joe Satriani, the Neville Brothers, and Train.

Signal Impersonator

Before getting into various applications for reamping, let me explain how the process works. At the very basic level, reamping consists of taking a recorded track, routing it into an amplifier, and then capturing the amplified signal back into your multitrack.

However, it's not quite as simple as that. Here's why: your recorded tracks are low-impedance, line-level signals. They interface successfully with the line inputs of audio interfaces, mixing consoles, and most rackmount processors. But they're not compatible with the high-impedance (and lower-level) signals needed to drive a guitar amp, bass amp, or stompbox. This is where the reamping processor comes into the picture (both passive and active models are available; see the sidebar “Reamping Tools”). These devices take those line-level signals and convert them to instrument level, as if they were coming out of the cable attached to your guitar. “As far as the guitar amp is concerned, it thinks there's a guitar plugged into it,” says Cuniberti.

There are some differences, though. Reamping “will never be as good as having a guy plugged into an amp and standing next to it,” says Cuniberti, because in that scenario, “there's going to be some sympathetic vibration produced from the guitar pickup — and the strings, for that matter — hearing the speaker in the room. There's going to be an interaction there that you just can't re-create; it's physically impossible. So I would never make the claim that it will be the same. Having said that, a lot of times that isn't important. Obviously, if you're talking about guitar players and recording studios, frequently the guitar amp is in a booth somewhere or covered with gobos or blankets or whatever [anyway].”

Once the reamping device is patched in and you hit play on your DAW, the signal for the target track goes out of your audio interface or console, through the reamping processor, where it's converted to instrument level, and then into the amp or stompbox or combination thereof. Simultaneously, you use one or more mics (or, if you're using a processor and no amp, a direct box) to record the newly amplified signal back into your DAW, where you can use it either in place of the original track or to supplement it (see Fig. 1).

One caveat: make sure the original DI track gets recorded noise-free. Any noises on it will be increased substantially when that track goes through an amplifier.

Take Your Pick

Along with bass, guitar is probably the most commonly reamped of all instruments. As with bass, if you want the option to reamp later, you need to record a DI version of the performance — that is, you need to split the guitarist's signal during the tracking session using a DI box, with the XLR output going dry to the DAW and the DI's ¼-inch pass-through jack sending signal to the guitarist's amp, which also gets recorded. (You never know; you might end up with a sound you like, and therefore not need to reamp later.)