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Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

Session Sense

If you're a guitarist who records in studios besides your own, going direct through an outboard modeler is an excellent and lightweight option for toting your sound around. Unless you really trust the engineer or producer on a particular session, you probably don't want to record an unprocessed DI part and let them add the modeled amp and cabinet tones later, when you're not around. With an outboard processor, you can have your best sounds saved as presets and ready to go for any type of session, and you'll have more control over your final guitar tone.

One component of a guitar's sound that probably shouldn't get recorded through an outboard processor is reverb. Although your modeling processor likely has many reverb options, it's best to record tracks dry and add the reverb later — even if you won't be present when it's applied. At the time you record your part, it's not always easy to tell how much reverb will sound appropriate in the mix. So it's best not to commit when tracking. This is true not only for DI tracks, but also for miked, guitar-cabinet recordings. Unless you've got a really unusual reverb that's essential to the sound you're going for, I'd recommend turning it off when tracking.

To some extent, the same is true of delay, especially for sounds that use relatively long delay times. It's hard to judge how to set the mix control (wet-to-dry ratio) of such a delay until it's heard in the context of the final mix. What's more, delay plug-ins have the ability to sync to the sequencer's tempo. A tempo-synced delay will often sit better in the track than a manually set (or tap tempo) delay from your outboard processor. (Some modeling processors, like the Black Box and Roger Linn's AdrenaLinn II, can be synced to the host tempo using MIDI Clock.)

Plug and Play

Just as an outboard modeling unit is best suited to processing your guitar sound on the way into the recording device, an amp-modeling plug-in in a sequencer lends itself to being used as an insert effect. Why? Because most digital audio sequencers make it easy for you to insert your modeling plug-in into one of their virtual mixer channels, and monitor the processed sound while recording the guitar to disk unaffected. When you play back the track, it also goes through the plug-in.

Here's how you do it. Connect your guitar to your sequencer using a DI box, audio interface, or mic-preamp instrument input as described earlier. Create a track to record on, and instantiate the modeling plug-in in one of the track's insert slots. If necessary, set your sequencer's input monitoring options to monitor through effects, and you're ready to go.

This approach is doubly advantageous: you get both an amp-modeled sound as you're playing and the flexibility to change sounds later on. Some sequencers, such as Apple Logic Pro 7, Cakewalk Sonar 5, and Steinberg Cubase SX4 — and many personal digital studios — come with their own amp-modeling effects. Adding tone through a plug-in after a track has already been recorded is similar in many respects to the process of reamping.

Tardy Signals

On a sequencer, the most common obstacle when recording a guitar track while monitoring through a plug-in is latency. It can be an issue because your guitar sound has to pass through the computer's processing before you hear it. This introduces a slight delay, depending on how you've set your record buffer. If it's set too high, the delay may be long enough to throw your timing off (you play a note and hear it back a split second later). If it's too low, and you're working on a project with lots of tracks and plug-ins that are already taxing your processor, you might experience CPU overload during recording or playback.

Another downside of monitoring through your plug-in is that if you want to hear a purely processed guitar sound, you can't take advantage of any low-latency monitoring features that your interface or sound card might offer. That's because such a setup typically lets you hear your input before it goes through your audio system's processing, including any plug-ins.

According to Line 6, its recently released GearBox plug-ins are designed with a unique architecture that provides the advantages of recording unprocessed while monitoring through a plug-in, but also gives you low-latency monitoring (when used in conjunction with the included TonePort DI USB interface or certain other Line 6 hardware units). GearBox plug-ins are available in AU (Mac) and VST (Win) formats.

On the Side

Most sequencers will allow you to commit the sound of your modeling plug-in to disk as you record it, but it typically involves some extra signal routing within the program. Even if you decide to do this, I'd recommend sending your signal to a second track unprocessed to keep your reamping options open.

One advantage of printing your track processed is that you won't have to leave the plug-in active after you've recorded the track. Considering that modeling plug-ins are often CPU hogs, that could save you a nice chunk of processing power.

There's another solution to the CPU usage problem: many sequencers offer a function that lets you “freeze” a track, temporarily rendering it to disk after it's been processed by any inserted plug-ins. Doing so eliminates the CPU hit that your system takes from the track's plug-ins, but allows you to still hear it processed. If you decide later that you want a different sound, just unfreeze the track, and you can change it at will. If your sequencer doesn't have a freeze function, you can always bounce a track to disk and disable the original track.

Alternate Means

An increasing number of products have been introduced recently that allow guitarists to plug their instrument into a computer using USB. For DI parts that will be reamped with plug-ins or actual amps, a direct USB connection is an appealing option. As mentioned, many outboard modeling processors have USB outputs.

These days you can even get guitars with USB capabilities. Certain models of the iGuitar line from Brian Moore Guitars feature class-compliant USB audio outputs, which means they work without any drivers. Just plug into your computer and play. Another, less expensive alternative is a ¼-inch-to-USB adapter cable, such as IK Multimedia's Stealth Plug, which should be available by the time you read this.

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SIDEBAR
FOUR-STRING DI
Electric bass is recorded direct even more frequently than guitar (see “Sweet & Low” in the June 2004 issue of EM, available at www.emusician.com). Bassists recording direct usually go through quality analog preamps and compressors. However, more and more products are becoming available that feature bass-amp and bass-cabinet modeling. If you've got a guitar modeler, it may also have presets designed for bass recording and processing.

For example, Guitar Rig 2 and AmpliTube 2 offer bass presets in their standard factory collections. IK Multimedia recently released Ampeg SVX, a dedicated bass-modeling plug-in that provides a large selection of modeled Ampeg bass amps and cabinets, along with effects processing and more (see Fig. B). Some examples of outboard bass processors include Tech 21's SansAmp Bass Driver DI, which lets you dial in a variety of bass-amp tones (using analog circuitry); Line 6's Bass Pod XT; the Korg AX10B; and the DigiTech BP200.