Poll: Guitar processing/sims, what do you expect from them?

[Hink]

I guess latency is less of a big deal to me. I have 15ms total latency. Which I could get to well under 10 if I needed to. But, I've played on stages with far worse than that.

now see I really understand what you are saying, I have tried to figure out why I'm not the same and I think it's simply because on stage there is also similar distance based latency coming from every band member whereas with headphones on while recording there is none from the rest of the instruments. It could be all in my head (the one on my shoulders, not the ones on my cabs ) and ftr you have done what I hope to do (amp camp) so you would know better on the technical parts...but it does bug me

[SJ_Digriz]

I know a really good guitar player who simply can't play electric guitar without reverb. And I mean he's really good. Acoustic, no problem. Plug an electric direct and he has no feel or timing. Give him just a hint of plate ... instant guitar god. I just share that because everyone has their obstacles.

For me, as I've stated and seems one other person chimed in with the same thing, I just can't get sims to sound good in a recording. I can do it with amps and mics in seconds. There's no need to spend hours and hours faffing about with virtual knobs. Heck, it's hard to make some of them sound bad unless I'm messing around by putting mics in bathrooms and stuff like that. It's frustrating because I've heard 30920248234 brilliant recordings from sims. And, I've managed to get some good results myself, but at the cost of an incredible time investment just to get something that is usable. Good signal control into the audio interface is an absolute necessity. And that's just a start.

Anyhow, all the amp camp did for me was remove a lot of the mystery around things like "rectifiers" and tone stacks etc.. It gave me the confidence to open the damned amps up and not just see a bunch of wires. But, I'd still never work on some of the more complex stuff like a boogie etc.. put out. It's a jungle in there.

[donkey tugger]

How do people work around it while tracking live?

I use a little amp mic'd up into the direct monitoring to get a rough approximation of the sound, and record a clean DI signal into the other soundcard input. Sometimes end up keeping the 'guide' sound in as well...

[trmupstage]

That sounds like a great idea. use the real amp for tracking but also record the DI. Then you can always go back and add the amp sims later without latency.

[SJ_Digriz]

How do people work around it while tracking live?

I use a little amp mic'd up into the direct monitoring to get a rough approximation of the sound, and record a clean DI signal into the other soundcard input. Sometimes end up keeping the 'guide' sound in as well...

Yep this ... I also have direct monitor mode available on my interface so I get my live signal in the monitors/headphones instead of what's getting tracked. I tend to use that for vocals and what DT says for guitar.

[donkey tugger]

That sounds like a great idea. use the real amp for tracking but also record the DI. Then you can always go back and add the amp sims later without latency.

Or even (with a bit of fiddling..I've almost blasted my ears out a few times.. , watch that routing! ) put the DI signal back out through an amp again an use different settings/mics etc.

[Etienne1973]

Back on topic, I would love to know what has improved as far as latency goes with sims since 2010 when I went back to tube amps. How do people work around it while tracking live?

I'm also latency sensible that's why I'm going for a Thunderbolt audio interface with <3ms (roundtrip: audio in > audio out) in the near future.

interesting, I need a minimum of 6 inputs for my tube rig (two can be coax digital or analog, I use up to 3 mics but typically two, a dry direct from an aby box, line out from amps and the stereo return of a lexicon mx-400 so I can record and monitor through effects without committing to them).

In your situation (if I understand correct) I would go direct monitoring zero latency with a "small" analogue mixer. You want to re-amp your DI signal from DAW back through your guitar rig, right?

[Hink]

How do people work around it while tracking live?

I use a little amp mic'd up into the direct monitoring to get a rough approximation of the sound, and record a clean DI signal into the other soundcard input. Sometimes end up keeping the 'guide' sound in as well...

well I do that too pretty much because of my aby box, my inputs

1 mic (e906)
2. dry from radial aby box or acoustic guitar direct
3. mic (sm-57)
4. mic/direct bass from tech 21 bass driver phantom powered (bass/baritone)
5. line out from amp
6. open (or third mic for guitar)
7. open QSR L
8. open QSR R
digital coax in
9 mx-400 L
10 mx-400 R

so I can do the same but tbh the most common addition software wise is to put an ir on the line out track because amp line outs sound horrid direct.

[Hink]

Back on topic, I would love to know what has improved as far as latency goes with sims since 2010 when I went back to tube amps. How do people work around it while tracking live?

I'm also latency sensible that's why I'm going for a Thunderbolt audio interface with <3ms (roundtrip: audio in > audio out) in the near future.

interesting, I need a minimum of 6 inputs for my tube rig (two can be coax digital or analog, I use up to 3 mics but typically two, a dry direct from an aby box, line out from amps and the stereo return of a lexicon mx-400 so I can record and monitor through effects without committing to them).

In your situation (if I understand correct) I would go direct monitoring zero latency with a "small" analogue mixer. You want to re-amp your DI signal from DAW back through your guitar rig, right?

well I do, that's the whole premise, just minus a mixer because I have mixer on my card and the inputs. Note my input list, it's all direct monitor of course, I run the line out of channel to the lexicon multi fx and return them on their own channel so I can monitor through them without latency but also record them to their own tracks in case I want to use them. Trust me, I have no issues with my rig for recording tube amps, it's flawless for me and has been in place for years.

My issue is playing live through a sim and the latency of the computer which I haven't done in ages and why I was asking now what people do. Of course because I record the dry track I can use a sim, but if I go through all of the above steps I'm likely going to stick with my recorded tracks from the amp. My wish for a sim would be to play in real time and get some inspiration from concepts and combinations only possible from sims without latency.

Perhaps I'm over sensitive, I would have a guitar synth if it weren't for latency

[SJ_Digriz]

so I can do the same but tbh the most common addition software wise is to put an ir on the line out track because amp line outs sound horrid direct.

You don't want the amp out, you want the guitar feed via Hiz of some kind. It can be a DI box. But, the best reamp opportunities, including using sims, is from a clean guitar level input.

[Hink]

so I can do the same but tbh the most common addition software wise is to put an ir on the line out track because amp line outs sound horrid direct.

You don't want the amp out, you want the guitar feed via Hiz of some kind. It can be a DI box. But, the best reamp opportunities, including using sims, is from a clean guitar level input.

I think you misunderstood, I do that...my guitar goes direct to a radail aby box with one side going to the soundcard direct and clean and the other going to my amps. All but my boogie have a line out so I record that as well, not in place of the dry signal. It sounds pretty good with irs, but tbh I really haven't done it recently.

Edit: my card has mic/hi-z inputs on channel 1 & 2 that's why #2 is direct. Both channel 1 & 2 have sends so channel 1 also uses the send to the fx, that only leaves on hi-z input channel 2...then channel 3 is a mic again not needing a send

[CapnLockheed]

So many options but, at the end of the day, what constitutes "good tone" remains a highly subjective matter.....even to a single listener. What sounds great on one song might sound like total shiite on another. I've got ALL the toys hard and soft. I've done plenty of setups that were as complicated as what Hink has been talking about BUT I've also gotten some mindblowingly great sounds just by slapping a single SM57 on a Champ. It's great to have options.....we've never had more. But, sometimes, less IS more.....

Cheers.....CL

[Etienne1973]

My wish for a sim would be to play in real time and get some inspiration from concepts and combinations only possible from sims without latency.

Amp sims and effects I use for live tracking and monitoring are all zero (additional) latency. But I can't escape the roundtrip latency (audio in > audio out). The only answer I found currently are Thunderbolt audio interfaces to lower latency down to 3ms @44.1kHz or even approx. 1.7ms @96kHz.

[sjm]

If I close all other apps, and the project itself is still light, I can reliably get <5ms round trip latency with my USB interface without issues. The minimum buffer size (64) generally works too, but I avoid it just because every now and then something goes wrong and you get a random dropout. Not worth risking ruining the perfect take for a few ms IMO. 3ms input latency hasn't caused issues yet. My standard amp VST adds another 1ms or so to the signal chain. So that's ~4ms total.

On my previous interface, 6ms input latency was really as low as I could reliably go, and often needed 10ms. Personally, I'm happy with a round trip of ~10 ms or less; obviously the lower the better. Even in more extensive projects I can reliably get 6 ms input latency with the new interface - to me that's fine. It only starts to be an issue when I've got loads of mixing FX in the project; at some point the required buffer is too high to be comfortable. If I find I need to record guitar later on in a project when there's more going on, I bounce out the rest of the audio to record in a clean project to get latency down again.

I don't own a proper amp; I've got this really terrible 25 year old amp that came with my first guitar and sounds so awful I'd never use it for anything. I'm guessing not owning an actual amp is probably sacrilege to many of you

[MeldaProduction]

I really dig the current poll results : 12 - 12 - 13 - 11, that doesn't happen very often