what multi effects would you recommend for direct recording?

[mbengs1]

no mics. i use a digitech rp100 which is kinda mediocre sounding. i want a better sounding one. what would you recommend?

[1001gear]

Based on what I've heard live through both guitar amps and PAs, Boss GT stuff or the Line 6 stuff. Even the pod can do the job. Even Tech 21 Sansamps pass for real. Just a matter of the material and your recording/mixing chops.

[WRGKMC]

I been using an RP150 lately. Here's an example of how it sounds. The two guitars have different settings with the RP. The bass is direct through a amp emulation preamp. The drums are a Zoom 123 drum machine.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1682170/More%20Than%20Ever%20%5BM3%5D.wav

 

Here's an example of a Boss guitar preamp recording direct on guitars. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1682170/Rain%20%5BMaster%5D.wav

 

Here's one using an ART SG2000 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1682170/Trance%20In%20Vain%20Yall%20%5BMaster%5D.wav

 

These are very different songs of course but tone wise the gear really didn't make all that much difference. I could just as easily use an RP 50,or 100 and get the exact same tones as I do with the 150. That's the main key. Use whatever you got to get the best tones possible then just play your best. Then do whatever you need to mixing to get "The rest of your sound" to come through.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Many of the less expensive or older multieffects are designed to just do effects. They are not amp simulators or cabinet simulators. Ideally, you'd want to run your multieffects into both an amp and a speaker cab sim in order for your direct guitar recordings to more closely approximate the sound of a miked up guitar amp.

 

There are some software plugins you can use after the fact for amp and speaker simulation, as well as hardware units with those functions built in. You actually have a pretty huge range of things available to you for direct recording these days.

 

What DAW / recording program are you using?

[mbengs1]

Many of the less expensive or older multieffects are designed to just do effects. They are not amp simulators or cabinet simulators. Ideally, you'd want to run your multieffects into both an amp and a speaker cab sim in order for your direct guitar recordings to more closely approximate the sound of a miked up guitar amp.

 

There are some software plugins you can use after the fact for amp and speaker simulation, as well as hardware units with those functions built in. You actually have a pretty huge range of things available to you for direct recording these days.

 

What DAW / recording program are you using?

 

I use cakewalk SONAR LE 8.5

[Phil O'Keefe]

Thanks. That means VST amp sim and cabinet sim plugins are what you should look for. What audio interface do you use?

 

Can you also please tell me a bit more about your computer's specs? CPU, RAM, operating system?

[Danhedonia]

I've posted about my beloved Boss GS-10's many times. Here's a link to the product page:

 

http://www.bossus.com/products/gs-10/

 

They're table-top and often mistaken as a 'version' of the GT series of floor-based pedals. In terms of guts and features, there's overlap but the GS-10 is far superior to the GT-10 I suffered with for a while. Examples of why I love it as a direct box:

 

* Separate preamp section with extensive modeling of amp voicings, speaker layout, and even mic type and placement.

* Lots of better-configured digital effects, like a parametric EQ, 2x2 compressor, 4- 8- 12-stage phaser, etc.

* Reprises some of the Boss effects I liked, delays and reverbs mostly, with some workable ring mod, trem, etc.

* Purpose built. All digital readouts means you can really dial things in. Need a tremolo and dotted eigth delay aligned to your BPM? Easy to do. Also has tons of connectivity options (MIDI in/out, XLR in, etc.)

* 200 presets, 100 user-configurable.

* Easy to find used on eBay for <$300.

 

It just works, and works well.

[mbengs1]

Thanks. That means VST amp sim and cabinet sim plugins are what you should look for. What audio interface do you use?

 

Can you also please tell me a bit more about your computer's specs? CPU, RAM, operating system?

 

What's an audio interface? my processor is AMD athlon 64 x2, ram is 2gb, operating system is windows 7.

[WRGKMC]

An audio interface is a professional sound card that records with super low latency at higher bit rates. It can be USB, Fire wire Thunderbolt or a PCI card based interface but will run low latency ASIO or WME drivers that move a huge amount of data.

 

Windows sound cards on the other hands are consumer junk used for playback or maybe recording a single stereo track. The communication latency on windows cards is very high so they don't work properly for multitracking. Some have gotten better and can play back 24/96 files but thay still aren't Pro quality low latency cards. Most DAW programs wont even recognize a windows card because the programs looking for ASIO drivers when it opens. Without them the program cant load or assign tracks.

 

2G is pretty low for Sonar 8.5. Its specs require something closer to 3G. It may limp along but I'd say running any kind of plugins as a substitute for hardware isn't going to happen without huge amounts of delay and very high buffer and latency settings (like 2 to 3 seconds) I wouldn't even try to run plugins like Guitar rig unless you have 10~20ms latency and allot of memory.

 

Run this little program. It will tell you what the computers lowest and average latency capabilities are. If the latency is over 100ms then you can pretty much forget about trying to use software effects in real time. Sonar is especially a bloated program for running those kinds of plugins and will likely crash running them. You can view the CPU load on the bottom resource bar when you load them. When it gets close to 90% expect a crash to occur at any time.

 

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

[WRGKMC]

Here's the sonar specs. You have to run at least a 2.8G processor. I've got it to run on a lower end processor but it was slow and glitchy as all get out. An Athlon is really old. Some older versions of Sonar will work. You may want to try Reaper too which is supposed to work on many older computers.

 

SONAR 8.5 System Requirements [TABLE]

[TR]

[TD]System Requirement[/TD]

[TD]Minimum[/TD]

[TD]Recommended[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Operating System*[/TD]

[TD]Windows XP[/TD]

[TD]Windows XP, SP3, Windows Vista (32 and 64-bit) or Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit)[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD] Processor Speed [/TD]

[TD]Intel® Pentium® 4 2.8 GHz or

AMD Athlon™ XP 2800+

or higher [/TD]

[TD]Intel® Intel Core 2 Quad Core Q8400 Yorkfield 2.66 Ghz ®

or AMD Phenom Quad Core 9750 2.4 GHz™

or higher[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]RAM[/TD]

[TD]1 GB[/TD]

[TD]4 GB[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Graphics (resolution, color depth) [/TD]

[TD]1024x768, 16-bit color [/TD]

[TD]1280x960, 24-bit color or higher[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Hard Disk Space [/TD]

[TD]200 MB for full program installation [/TD]

[TD]50 GB[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Hard Disk Type [/TD]

[TD]Any [/TD]

[TD]EIDE/Ultra DMA (7200 RPM) or SATA[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]MIDI Interface**** [/TD]

[TD]Windows-compatible[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Audio Interface***** [/TD]

[TD]Windows-compatible[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD] Media Drive******* [/TD]

[TD] Dual Layer DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, or DVD+/- RW Drive for installation/ CD-R OR CD-RW capability required for CD audio disc burning

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]* SONAR does not support Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP x64 or pre-release versions of Windows7

** Required to connect external MIDI devices

*** Required for audio playback

**** Recommended audio devices Dancing Dots can supply.

***** SONAR is presented on DVD media. DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, or DVD+/- RW Drive required for installation. [/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

 

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[t_e_l_e]

 

What's an audio interface? my processor is AMD athlon 64 x2, ram is 2gb, operating system is windows 7.

 

where do you plug the output of the rp100 into your computer?

 

this answer can lead to an simple explanation why its not sounding so good

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

What's an audio interface? my processor is AMD athlon 64 x2, ram is 2gb, operating system is windows 7.

 

It's whatever is used to get audio into and out of your computer. Sometimes it's an audio card (PCI, PCIe) and sometimes its built into your computer (like the audio I/O jacks on a MacBook), and other times, it's an external device that connects to your computer with a USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt cable. Audio interfaces, at their most basic, provide line level audio input and output jacks of some sort. More complex units have mic preamps, headphone jacks and other features.