Working with ampsims - tips & tricks

[susiwong]

Hi folks,
let's stick to discussing how to get the best out of ampsims here, for fights about which sim is the best and why sims suck in general please start a seperate thread (and don't forget to invite me ).
I'll start out with some concepts I've been working on over the last months, please discuss and add your own secrets !

Have fun,
susiwong

[susiwong]

General tips to get the best from your ampsim :

-- TFTs don't induce hum in your PUs like CRTs do
-- good quality cables, symmetrical where possible, do make a difference
-- it pays off big time to use a specialized DI made for electric guitar, the high input impedance keeping your tone intact
-- Humbuckers and noiseless „single coils“ are easier to record in a cramped home studio with electromagnetic fields surrounding you
-- don't forget the age old studio trick of „turning to Mecca“, by turning around while holding your guitar you'll quickly find a direction which is less noisy than the others
-- ideally noise reduction should be located before the ampsim to get the cleanest possible signal into the sim, the sims themselves hardly produce noise of their own
-- proper gainstaging is as important here as it is everywhere else in audio
-- speaker sims do make a big difference, too. Experiment with Voxengo's free Boogex and cab impulses of your choice instead of the built-in cabs of your sim
-- a tiny bit of ambience / room reverb can add realism to your tone.
-- nobody can stop you from getting into layering different amps, most guitar tones recorded in the last two or three decades use amp- or cab layering to various degrees.

[susiwong]

Working around latency

One of the big problems when working with ampsims is latency, your PC has more power at higher latencies, but realtime playing is best done at 0 latency.
This contradiction is getting absurd when using DSP cards, since every DSP plugin potentially increases latency.
The good news : there are ways around this, enabling you to record with confidence at whatever latency your PC works best.

Here is a walkthrough, it's a lot simpler in reality than it looks on paper.
-- Do yourself a favour and invest in a really good active DI with HiZ input, I'm using the WavesPRS DI which is perfect, there are other alternatives around ca. 100 $/€.
-- The DI splits the signal coming from the guitar, the XLR out goes directly into the line in of your soundcard, giving you the natural sound of the guitar.
The pass thru output is the important part for now, as this is realtime, independent of your PC's latency.
Connect this either to a small guitar amp or, like I do, to a guitar preamp or POD style modeller connected to your mixer. Dial in a sound that's reasonably close to the sound you're planning to have in your song (I wouldn't want to record a country solo with death metal distortion or vice versa).
-- Now you should be hearing your guitar in realtime, even when the PC is off.
-- You need not record this „guitar monitoring“ signal.
-- What you record but don't hear is the clean DI signal, perfect to be abused by whatever ampsim and/or FX you prefer, and it will be lined up perfectly with your backing track or click.
-- Of course you should turn off monitoring in your host while recording guitars.

This basic idea can be enhanced/adapted in many ways to suit your needs.

Once you have the DI setup up and running you might just as well record the output of your monitoring device, too, for maximum flexibility.
That's probably done best by recording the clean DI signal to the left side of a stereo track, the monitoring signal to the right side of that same track.
Don't listen to that track directly, instead send L and R to 2 groups where you can insert ampsims, speakersims and/or FX independently for the two signals.
The reason for the single stereo track:
If, like me, you're not exactly a first-take-monster like Gary Moore, you can do all your editing in that single track easy as pie, affecting both signals at the same time.

[buscemi]

Don't be afraid to realize the cab sims in your amp sim may suck. Look to Boogex or similar to handle your cab impulses. Hopefully the "suck" comment preceding this was not one that is worthy of its own thread

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Happy to be invited Susi thank you very much and a really good idea my friend, for now i am just sort marking it for the moment so i get e-mail's in my hotmail when more information is posted and of course i will contribute what i can ASAP Susi

All the best and a very good call

Dean

[susiwong]

You're welcome !
susiwong

[Mudcat007]

Susi,
Great tips!

I wish they had been posted about a year ago! LOL!

I've sussed out most of these on my own but only recently realized I could use IR responses from Boogex or ReaVerb (I'm a REAPER user) in conjunction with Amplitube LE. Using IR based cabinets in place of the modelled cabinets in Amplitube is a HUGE improvement. The combination sounds and responds much more like an actual mic'ed amp.

I also figured out the approach you describe using a hardware amp modeller to avoid latency issues while recording. This set-up makes life much easier, especially if your computer CPU is from the stone age as is the case with mine.

Here's my tip: Remember you can copy a guitar recording to multiple tracks and apply different amp models and/or effect chains & panning to each track to come up with something more interesting than an individual ampsim.

EDIT : DOH! I didn't see you listed this in your earlier post!
Tracy

[Hink]

I'm not sure I could add much to your tips susi, the signal splitting with a pod is exactly what I do, except I'm not sure you really need an active box. I think that the Radial Big Shot ABY box is the best (pic below). The "tuner" out is a true bypass that's always on and the two ouputs connected to the switches give you either/or and both. So really you can switch to two outputs but you can split the signal to three signals. I run the tuner out to my presonus bluetube and into my soundcard for re-amping (muted of course for monitoring) and I split between my pod and either my boogie (into my dead box) or my marshall pre which eventually goes into a cab impulse.

I think the bst tip I can give is be creative, back in the day we had work arounds to be creative, but now you can do some funky things. Avoid looking at any limitations you feel you have, instead jump on what you can do. Another tip is stay away from only factory presets, I hate that term. I see presets as saving my sound for when I go back to a song and factory presets should be jumping off points until you know how to dial in your tone. Also he trend with sims is to emulate brand name amps, forget about what amp it's suppose to sound like and go with what you like about the sound. Also I suggest if you're close to the input cut back on your cable length, a 20' cable isn't helping if you only need the sound to travel 5 feet, but you will lose sound.

And where was my invite

[susiwong]

Hi Hink,
good to see you !
I didn't invite you personally because grandparents are so un-rock'n'roll ...
No, I just happened to run into Nekro in a completely unrelated thread, that's why he got a personal invitation, and I wrote

Nekro, may I invite you and all others interested to my new thread about working with ampsims here :
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3424071
Your experience will be appreciated !

so it's not really a case of "Sleeping Beauty", lol.

Re: creativity - yes, please !

Re: presets - don't forget you and me have been tweaking amps for centuries, newbies or non-guitarists will benefit more from presets, but can we agree that it's fun to tweak ?

Re: active DI - am I mistaken, or are you mainly using active guitars ?
Then of course you can use whatever splitter you want.
With passive guitars I found a HiZ input keeps lots more treble intact, though there sure is no rule
And Radial is a great company for sure, so an alternative could be the J48 Active Direct Box which has the advantage of being phantom powered, the WavesPRS is not.
http://www.radialeng.com/di-j48.htm

Cheers,
susiwong

[Hink]

I use both active and passive guitars, okay...one is passive But the truth is that probably the number one thing to get the most out of a sim imo starts at the soundcard. Pretty much every semi-decent card has both high and low z inputs, the pod effectively is a D.I. as well is my Marshall pre leaving only the need for one "guitar" input. But then running into my blue tube with my direct signal acts as a D.I. so I guess you're right. I didn't always use the blue tube, for a while I was going direct into my presonus firestudio. What I found though was the pres in the firestudioo were just a little too good and a tad bit sterile, so my re-amping signal isn't pure. However it really sounds great with everything I have, dirthead especially.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Ok i shall expand a little on using a Noise-Gate/Reducer before going into your DI Box/High Impedance Interface Input by looking at what is available:

what works best for me and i do use hi-gain sounds for the most part is:

- Boss's NS-2 Noise Supressor Pedal, you can pick them up dirt cheap at about
£35. However some players feel the NS-2 'Colours' the tone of your guitar.
Used by both Killswitch Engage guitar player's amongst others. Visit Boss's
Website for further info.

So here are the most popular alternative's:

- Rocktron's Hush The Pedal 2, a little more expensive than the Boss, however
i know many players prefer this unit due to it colouring the signal less.
Used by Michael Ammot of Carcass, Arch Enemy and Spirtual Beggars fame along
with many others. For more info visit Rocktron's website

- ISP Technologies Decimator Noise Reduction Pedal, this pedal is even more
expensive than the Rocktron unit, however it was designed by the same guy
whom designed the Hush pedal and rack units. This pedal cost me £110, i
still prefer my lowly Boss NS-2. Of the top of my head i can not think whom
uses this unit but a quick trip to isp technologies website should give you
some idea

- Rocktron Hush 2 Rack Mount Noise Reduction - Used by Kerry King for example
and many, many other famous guitar players, obviously not cheap but most
definately worth trying alongside the others. For more info visit Rocktron's
website

- ISP Technologies Decimator Noise Reduction Rack Mount unit - Again even
higher in price than Rocktron's Hush rack mount unit, but has a solid
reputation as being the most transparent of all mentioned Noise-Reduction
units. Again visit ISP technologies website for further information

All are must try before you buy as usaul with any hardware. I hope that gives some people an idea of what is available to combat the noise issue's we are all faced with and commonly used Noise Reduction devices by both famous guitarist's and also us unkowns. It may sound obvious to many but if you are starting out and wondering how the hell all that noise is removed then in a nutshell any of the above are a good place to start going about it

I have yet to find a gate ITB which does the job like the pedals and rack mount devices mentioned and i have tried nearly all of them i think

All the best and hope its a useful contribution

[heffus]

How do I configure Boogex so I here only the cab impulse and not the amp?

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Another tip to eliminate hum when recording using pedals - If Possible USE BATTERIES instead of WALWARTS, although this is not what i use on my pedal board when playing live due to the chances of a battery going dead when i am recording its a different story. The problem with the walwarts stems from the current needed to be converted from AC (Alternating Current) into DC (Direct Current). Without going into great detail by using battery power you avoid the AC to DC conversion so are powering your pedals straight from AC power and removing a potential hum culprit from your chain.

Here are some company's worth browsing through, whom have solutions for ridding you of all your hum related problems:

Furman offer a wide range of power conditioning solutions which are IMHO very good investments indeed (not just for us guitar/bass guitar players but also all audio equipment which any music making individual might use). For further information on Furman's products and the technologies used head over to visit there website: http://www.furmansound.com/

For quick removal treatment of them bloody ground loops and mains hum these two passive boxes can be had very cheap and do the job with mimimum fuss, there other products may be worth looking also:

> Ebtech's Hum Eliminator: http://www.ebtechaudio.com/he-2des.html

> Applied Research And Technology ARTcessories Cleanboz II Hum Eliminator: http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp ... =13&id=103

Hope that some people find this info useful

BTW: I must add that i am not a salesman or attempting to pimp stuff at you i promise!

[Hink]

on the walwart, it's been my experience that it's the opposite as long as you're using the right adapter. I have had this with Boss more than once, some 9 volt adapters are fine and yet others aren't. I have an original Super Chorus and a Turbo OD and both are the same, my dunlop power adapter for my mxr dist+ is fine with the boss, I have an ibanez adapter that hums on both boss pedal but it works fine with my sansamp and mxr. The multi adapters hum more than a two bit gutter slut

[Dean Aka Nekro]

How do I configure Boogex so I here only the cab impulse and not the amp?

Turn down all the 'amplifier' section knobs to zero (IE: Tone, Drive, Dynamics & Phase) plus leave the 'Pre-Filter' Lows, Mids & Highs Knobs flat at 0.0 db.

I Hope that helps heffus

Dean