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

Another approach to “decheesifying” loops and MIDI tracks is to do what you would with a guitar part, and send the offending track out to a reamping device and then through an amp, and capture it back to your DAW through mics.

Nichols says he might do that when a track “just won't sit right or is too clean and kind of cheesy. I'll run that through a guitar amp, with vibrato on it or any kind of weird stuff, and just smash it,” he says. “Or maybe bring it back and run it through an old compressor and just squeeze it and get an interesting sound.”

Beat It

Reamping a snare drum track is yet another application. Hamilton uses a pretty interesting setup for that. “Lately my favorite trick has been to put the snare through a little Fender Pro Junior and then put five or six snare drums on their side on a moving blanket, all just tuned randomly,” he says. “And then I have a pair of stereo room mics picking up that racket” (see Fig. 4).

The sound pressure of the snare drum beats coming through the amp triggers the other snares to sound. “The duration of the pulse is exactly a snare drum length,” explains Hamilton. “One thing that it helps me with a lot is if somebody has an incredibly poorly tuned snare and I'm presented with it in a mix situation, and there's a crazy ring right where the body of the snare is, something I can't notch out easily.”

If the original snare track has too much leakage from the other drums to cleanly trigger the snares in front of the amp, Hamilton sometimes sends the track through a MIDI trigger, which keys a snare sample. The sample is sent through the reamping device into the amp. “I just get the sound of the snare sample coming through the amp perfectly clean,” he says. “And acoustically that's keying the three or four snares sitting in front of the amp.”

Mirror Images

Although many reamping scenarios include the replacement of the original sound with the reamped tone, it doesn't have to work that way. You can also add the reamped tone to complement the original one. This additive approach allows you to layer the original and reamped tracks, giving you a bigger sound.

In such an additive scenario, it can often help to move the mics back from the amp when recording the reamped track. “When I'm talking about keeping an original sound and adding to it, I usually put some distance between the mic and the source,” says Hamilton. “It sits better with the original. It's like putting the original thing that came out of a box or out of a plug-in into the real world, and the real world has space around it.”

He points out that if you're keeping the original track, you have more latitude to be experimental on the secondary, reamped tone. “You can kind of mess with where you point the mics and what you're willing to accept and how much you want to EQ the return. You can go bananas with it because it's not the primary sound in your mix.”

Layering through reamping does not yield the same effect as layering through replaying a part. “Because you're working with the same performance, you wind up with what just sounds like a multiamp single performance,” Hamilton says.

One thing to watch out for when using the additive approach is that your newly reamped track isn't out of phase with the original. Hamilton notes that phase is a problem particularly when adding multiple layers of reamped tracks. “If you're printing the same exact performance through the same exact mic position through the same amp and everything,” he says, “you're going to have funky phase issues going on.” By zooming in on the original and newly added tracks in your DAW, you can slide the latter to get it in phase. “You can look at it, find out where your peaks are, where your transients are, and put it in the right spot,” says Bottrill.

Into the Mix

Clearly, reamping is a very useful creative tool that gives you greater control over the sound of your tracks, after they've been recorded. The applications described in this article are just some of the options available through reamping. If you experiment with the process, you're sure to find even more ways to use it.

(Check out the online bonus material at emusician.com for additional reamping techniques from Bottrill and Walker.)

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Mike Levine is EM's executive editor and senior media producer. He hosts the twice-monthly Podcast “EM Cast” (emusician.com/podcasts).

Reamping Tools

Here (in alphabetical order by manufacturer) are some of the most commonly used reamping boxes. Some are dedicated devices, while others are multifunction units with reamping capabilities.

Creation Audio Labs' MW1 Studio Tool ($1,350 direct) is a combination DI and reamping device that offers variable impedance, clean boost, flexible signal routing, and more.
creationaudiolabs.com

John Cuniberti's Reamp ($199 direct; see Fig. A) is the original reamping device and was designed by John Cuniberti. Many of the other manufacturers of reamping devices license his design. It uses passive circuitry, including a transformer.
reamp.com

The Little Labs Red Eye Recording Tool ($250 direct) can switch between two functions: a passive reamping device and a direct box. The unit offers expansion capabilities, allowing it to be daisy-chained with other Red Eyes. (See the review of the Red Eye in the August 2003 issue of EM, available at emusician.com.) The Multi Z PIP ($625 direct) is an active DI, preamp, and reamping device. The IBP Analog Phase Alignment Tool ($600 direct) includes a reamping output as well. The PCP Instrument Distro ($1,100 direct) offers guitar splitting, reamping, and more. The IBP and the PCP were EM Editors' Choice Award winners in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Reviews can be found at emusician.com.
littlelabs.com

The Millennia TD-1 ($1,795) is much more than just a reamping box; it's a full-featured tube/solid-state channel strip. Among its varied I/O are two reamping outputs: one to emulate the characteristics of Les Paul pickups and one that does the same for Strat pickups. (See the review of the TD-1 in the November 2005 issue of EM.)
mil-media.com

Radial's X-Amp ($199.95) is a Class A active reamping box that offers two outputs for driving two separate amplifiers. The Pro RMP ($99.95) is a passive model with a single output. The JD7 ($999) is a combination reamplifier and guitar-signal distribution system that lets you feed up to seven amps at the same time.
radialeng.com

ONLINE LINKS

Reamp site
www.reamp.com

Radial site
www.radialeng.com

Millennia Media site
www.mil-media.com

Little Labs site
www.littlelabs.com

EM review of Little Labs Red Eye
emusician.com/hardware/emusic_little_labs_3/index.html

EM review of Millenia TD-1
emusician.com/mag/emusic_millennia_media_td/index.html

EM review of Little Labs PCP Instrument Distro
emusician.com/hardware/emusic_little_labs/index.html

EM review of IPB Analog Phase alignment tool
emusician.com/signalprocessors/emusic_little_labs_2/index.html