Electri6ity

[bill45]

Hey Dreambliss,
Good tunes man.I got some killer tones with that rock guitar when testing vandal.That guitar is from pentihouse.But it's nowhere near as realistic
as electri6ity.Remeber Rick and Javi Have gotten great Heavy Rock
results with the tele.The les paul p90 Has a brighter and hotter output
than the other les paul. These might be better choices, if you need a brighter
,more present tone.
Here is a waves mixing tip to brighten distorted guitars.

You could do this with pluggins other than waves.

Benjamin,
I stil can't open that zip file.I just downloaded it from a differant computer.

[dynamitec]

Hi Bill,

very strange. Please try again:

http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/ ... torial.zip
http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/ ... torial.rar

I too checked on three different computers and I'm able to download and unpack the file. Could you try it using 7-zip or an updated WinZip or WinrRar for unpacking?

[dynamitec]

Hi everyone,

here is another tutorial for you. I want to cover the most important settings in Electri6ity which affect the realism of your guitar tone a lot (most of the settings are already covered in the realism guide which can be downloaded at Vir2.com).







(Click on the picture => Save as, so you don't have to scroll horizontally)

[progtronic]

just wanted to add that the suggested timing adjustments on the setup page, are hit and miss.. but usually pretty close.

to really line up the guitars, I create a simple 4 bar drum and bass loop. 16th note, static hi-hat as well as a static (1 note repeating) pick bass.. and, the fast muted 1 note repeating guitar I'm trying to line up. hard-quantize everything so it's exact.

play back the loop, and adjust the timing of the guitar track (in real-time) on your sequencer. use headphones so you can listen closely to everything lining up.

I've had to use up to -100ms (ms? not sure what Sonar's math is.. I think it's milliseconds) compensation to get the guitars lined up, depending on how tweaked the pre-pick noise is on the guitar patch is that I'm using.

[dynamitec]

Hi progtronic,

Does Sonar have automatic plugin latency adjustment like Cubase has? Because the timing adjustment shown on the setup page of Electri6ity is the exact timing Electri6ity needs. If it doesn't fit, it looks as if it has something to do with the host. And -100ms looks very high to me, too.

In Cubase the timing adjustment suggested in Electri6ity is 99,9% correct (at least for me). Make sure to play a few notes before looking at the suggested timing adjustment.

[progtronic]

Hi progtronic,

Does Sonar have automatic plugin latency adjustment like Cubase has? Because the timing adjustment shown on the setup page of Electri6ity is the exact timing Electri6ity needs. If it doesn't fit, it looks as if it has something to do with the host. And -100ms looks very high to me, too.

In Cubase the timing adjustment suggested in Electri6ity is 99,9% correct (at least for me). Make sure to play a few notes before looking at the suggested timing adjustment.

ok I just popped open the manual to check. (page 213 of Sonar 8.5's reference guide)

it looks like Sonar's midi time alignment (time offset, per track) is based on clock cycles (ticks) and does not use milliseconds.

so when I set it to -100.. that's, -100 clock cycles (ticks), back from 0.. not milliseconds.

that would explain the difference.

[bill45]

Benjamin, I know you explained this beforebut I'm still a little confused.
Why do we need to ajust the timming of electri6ity in cubase?Won't the automatic delay compensation fix any timming issues.When offsetting the
timming ,do we need to take the tempo of the tune into consideration.

[dynamitec]

Bill, the timing adjustments are independent of the host plugin delay compensation.

If you setup a Pre Pick-Wait of 20ms in Electri6ity for example, it means that the Pre-Pick noise (the moment the plectrum touches the string BEFORE plucking the note) is played 20ms before the actual note is played.
If you setup a timing humanization of 30ms it means that the pre pick noise and the note will be delayed in a range between -15ms to 15ms. It will lead to a more natural timing variation compared to the method of only delaying some notes slightly.

But to compansate for this additional timing variations and the pre-pick wait (or the slopiness) you have to setup a negative timing offst in your sequencer. By default Electri6ity is setup for live playing with as little as possible latency, but to get a more realistic sound, these adjustments are essential.

A real guitarist is aware of those timing differences and automatically adjusts his playing (meaning he is playing the notes slightly before they should sound), but no software can look in the future unfortunately, so we need to go a different way: delaying the engine and compensating the sequencer for this delay.

You asked how the tempo is affecting the timing. Bascially all I wrote is tempo independent (the suggested delay Electri6ity displays, too). However: the Pre-Pick wait should be setup to get the most realistic sound. And this parameter should be tweaked according to the tempo. If you play back a very slow track, you'll need to setup a higher Pre-Pick wait. If you play a very fast track you should setup a lower Pre-Pick wait. E.g. if you play sixteenth notes picked at 80-100 BPM you can try to rise the Pre-Pick wait and the slopiness to the max. If you play the same at 200BPM you should lower it to about 5-10ms (Pre-Pick noise and slopiness).

I strongly recommend to take the time to read the printed manual carefully. Every setting is explained in detail. We really spent a lot of time writing a manual which not only covers the basics but gives you a detailed insight on how the different parameters are interacting.

[Dreambliss]

I've been having some setbacks with progress. Sonar has been crashing a lot lately and "Kontakt 4.dll" is always the cause with a memory access violation error. A memory access violation could mean that memory is faulty if it happens in multiple apps or even the OS itself, but this only happens with Sonar. I've ran memtest for 24+ hours earlier in the year (when I first encountered the crashes) and never got any errors. I need to invest in building a dedicated DAW and get Sonar moved over to it from my main workstation. I think that's the cause of the crash problem... I am doing everything on one PC and Sonar, like other DAW software, requires a dedicated machine with ideal hardware to function properly.

@bill45 - Thanks for listening and for your input. I've been starting to experiment with each guitar. I really like how the Telecaster sounds for sure.

@dynametic - Hey Benjamin, thanks a bunch for the metal tutorial and info on realism. It's been rather helpful. I've been doing a lot of tweaking and am getting more realistic guitar performances with some improvement in tone. Although I'm still struggling with getting a decent tone. The muted notes sound halfway decent but the sustain notes don't sound so good. If I scale back distortion, the mutes are wimpy. I will eventually find out what I'm doing wrong with practice. I am thinking it's a combination of not using optimal settings in Electri6ity, lack of knowledge and practice in Guitar Rig 4, some EQ issues, and the MIDI guitar performance may need to be tweaked for further realism. I may just need to step away from it all for about a week to give myself a little time so I can come back with a fresh look at it.

@progtronic - I've discovered that recently myself. I wish Sonar used ms instead of ticks, or allow both. The problem with ticks is that the delay between each tick changes with the BPM. If you have a song that has multiple BPM changes, you will end up with either the guitar playing too early (changing from higher BPM to lower), or playing too late (lower BPM to higher). A workaround for this could be to create a new MIDI track for each BPM change and have it still route into the same softsynth instance, but the delay compensation on each new track can be adjusted for the new BPM. I don't know if there is automation for delay compensation, I haven't looked into it. I'm at work and just thought of this now.

[bill45]

Benjamin ,
My apologies for not spending more time with the manual.
I'm visually impaired,So it's taken me a little longer to get through it.
Your tutorials on this thread are making things much clearer.The pictures are
especially helpful.Did you use any electri6ity preamp saturation in the demos.
Thanks again for you patience and support.

Dreambliss,
I'm having the same issues With the mutes and sustains.
Listen to the Di patch whith no amp sim, hit co keyswitch,
Hit a note whith velocity 69 hit a 2nd note whith vel 81, and see
Which is louder.In my case the muted 69 is actually much lounder than the
sustained 81.So the amp sim will react differently to the muted notes You could use the mod wheel to lower the volume of the muted notes.I'm thinking
2 instances of kontact, one mute and one for sustain.Have You thied Benjamin's
Metal setup with the tsex30 and the Lepou impulse loader.This set up would work well with your style.

[Dreambliss]

@bill45 - By default, velocity controls AMT and the articulation is muted<->sustain. Roughly splitting the velocity range in half, the lower velocities play muted notes while the upper velocities play sustained notes. The muted 69 would be louder than the sustained 81 because think of those as subranges. 69 is at the top of the velocity range for muted notes whereas 81 is towards the bottom for sustained notes. Not to mention as Benjamin pointed out in one of his screenshots, there's an option under picking for velocity muted notes relative to sustained notes. The higher the % for this setting, the louder the muted notes are in relation to the sustained notes. The default value is 0%.

I messed around with Benjamin's tutorial a little bit but didn't apply it to any of my songs yet. I may do that just to see how it sounds, but I'd also like to stick to Guitar Rig 4.

I played around with Guitar Rig some more and created my own presets. Also I tweaked some settings in Electri6ty as well as the performance of my guitar tracks. Here's the result so far for "Unnatural Disturbance":

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9580774

It sounds better than what I had before, but I think the tone could be improved on the rhythm guitars. I'm still not quite sure exactly what I'm doing wrong. I tried tweaking the snot out of my presets in Guitar Rig and just can't seem to quite get it. I'm slowly getting there though, as it sounds much better than when I first started . I plan to spice up the lead at some point but not until I figure out my tone problems. I drive myself crazy. LOL

[bill45]

Thanks Dreambliss,
I'm off to play with Benjamin's tutorial right now, if I can open the files.
Did you mess with Benjamin's rhythm guitar midi file that he posted earlier in the thread?
Your tones are getting better.

[bill45]

Benjamin,
I tried the metal tutorial today.I came close to your sound,
The results are a little harsh and treble heavy compared to yours
Where are you setting the channel fader? I set mine to -3db.When set to
odb , or I get clipping.What sample rate should I set the project to?
I set my toneport DI-g to 24bit ,and set the sample rate to 44.1khz.
Did you use any proccessors on the mix bus?
Thanks , Bill

[fatwhitelump]

I am still confused how you folks are getting really fast picking in your songs. I am using a sequencer/keyboard, and when I paint in the notes on the sequencer, if the note is too small, I get no sound -- as if it is not even being recognized. If it paint too much, the note sounds too long and therefore not fast enough to put many notes together. I would like to just achieve a nice steady fast rhythm. For instance and E chord strummed furiously for 4 bars.

Which settings are you changing to get that effect? I read the humanizing tutorials and either it is not there or I did something wrong.

Thanks for any insight.

FWL

[bill45]

I would suggest not using the paint brush tool.You may be creating over laping
notes.Make sure the first note ends before the second begins.
What articulations are you using?Also,try the strum keys.Again, make shure
the first strum ends before the second begins.