Due to space and
other limitations, I am not able to mic up my amp, so I’m going to have
to rely on plug-ins for my guitar recordings, but I’m worried about how
close I can really get to the sound of my amped-up guitar using this
method. What do you think is the best amp-sim plug-in for guitar? And
what can I do to make the sound better or more realistic? Is this
a fairly common practice with DAWs, or should I be finding a way to mic
up a real amplifier?
Via SOS web site
SOS
Reviews Editor Matt Houghton replies:
The first thing to say is that
yes, use of software amp-modelling in home and professional DAWs is
commonplace, and the technology has come a long way in recent years: the
sounds you can achieve with one of many commercially available software
amp and speaker simulators are really pretty good now. What tops your
personal list will be pretty much down to taste. For example, IK
Multimedia’s Amplitube, Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig, Line 6’s Pod
Farm and Peavey’s Revalver III are all capable of great results, but
Softube Vintage Amp Room is my favourite software for re-amping work.
That’s partially due to the amps that are modelled, partly due to the
quality of those models, and partly due to the simplicity of the
interface, which isn’t cluttered with a gazillion effects and preset
menus, and offers only three amp models. This means that it’s easy to
get to know it inside out and back to front, just like you would a real
amp.
There
are some excellent amp sims on the market, such as the Softube Vintage
Amp Room, which benefits from the simplicity of its interface.
Whatever your personal preference in terms of
sound, though, the key with any of this software is to keep latency as
low as possible while playing, and to play it pretty loud over your
speakers if you can, just so that you can get some interaction between
the speakers and your pickups, as you would with a real amp. It’s the
‘playability’ side of things that concerns me most with much current
software, and hardware modellers too: while the sound itself can be
great on playback, and is usually perfectly good for re-amping purposes,
I find the performance can suffer when you’re not playing and
monitoring through your amp. To get around this, in part, you can use
a basic modelled speaker emulation while tracking — rather than an
impulse response, so that the convolution process isn’t adding
unnecessarily to the latency — and then maybe experiment with speaker
impulses later on, to produce a more realistic recorded sound. On the
question of latency and playability, remember that you’re often standing
away from a loud guitar amp, and if you’re playing closer to your
monitors, that should compensate a little for the latency, simply
because the sound reaches your ears that bit sooner than usual. When it
comes to impulse responses, when they’re played back through a suitable
convolution engine (there’s one bundled with most DAWs in the guise of
a reverb), they can sound very convincing, but do bear in mind that they
capture a static response and, therefore, don’t offer you control over
mic selection and position, and don’t respond dynamically to variations
in level as a real speaker would.
Notwithstanding
this advice, though, I typically only use the software modellers if I
have to, as I know I can get better sounds from a real amp. To keep amp
recordings quiet in a compact space, there are a few options, which
basically revolve around sticking the speaker inside a box to keep the
sound down, if that’s one of your concerns, which you can do with
isolation cabs such as the Hermit Cab. Alternatively, you could put
a power soak in between the amp and speaker, so that you can attenuate
the signal after it has passed through the amp but before it hits the
speaker. If space is at a premium, this might not be the best approach,
and while power soaks all allow you to use your amp, most impart plenty
of their own coloration to the signal, which may not be to your taste.
I much prefer to play through a nice tube-amp head into a power soak
(such as the THD Hot Plate or the Sequis Motherload), and while
I usually just use this to attenuate the output (so that I can drive the
amp harder at sensible recording levels), you can use a power soak to
attenuate the signal completely, and run a line output into your DAW.
You’ll still need something to model the speaker, of course, and some
power soaks include a reasonable speaker emulation, or you could, once
again, look to impulses such as those from Redwirez. A slightly less
complex variation on this theme is to use a high-quality guitar preamp
(or take a preamp output feed from your amp if you have one) and run the
resulting signal through a dedicated power amp and speaker emulator
such as the Two Notes Torpedo VB101 plug-in. Again, it’s difficult to
say how good you’ll find the results from these different approaches.
My
sense is that if you’re comfortable playing through software, and happy
with the sound, it’s a problem that doesn’t need solving. But if you
really do want to go in search for the ultimate compact and quiet
recording solution for guitar, then I hope I’ve given some useful
pointers!
No comments:
Post a Comment