1st Gen 2i2 Electric Guitar sound

[Rodd]

Hi guys, hoping someone could shine a little light on this. I’ve had my old 2i2 since it was released around 2011, together with Logic Pro X and M Audio BX5 D2s.

Would upgrading my old interface to something like the new SSL 2 or a similar Audient model, improve electric guitar (strat) sound at all? I’ve tried a ton of different plugins in attempt to improve things but find they all sound fairly similar. A bit like hearing a piezo pickup in an acoustic guitar, with a modelling effect layered on top. It seems to suck the life out of the pickups when compared to a real amp. I primarily use clean jangly sounds, and tend to default to Fender Twin or Ac30 clean plugins. I use the Vermilion plugin mostly and amp designer in Logic. I don’t mic up amps as I live in an apartment. I notice heavy distorted guitar plugins generally sound much better, but unfortunately I don’t cover that genre.

I did some YouTube research and heard better results from others when demoing plugins buy unsure how they achieve it.

So would upgrading my 1st gen 2i2 improve the sound of guitar plugins? I’m not itching to upgrade just for the sake of it. But would if it’s a better sound.

Any advice much appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 196982]

I think the first gen Scarlett was not known for their DI implementation but without hearing a raw track you’ve recorded it’s hard to say whether that’s the first thing to change.

I will say that I always found playing through a good emulator like the POD HD I used to have was a lot more satisfying. I’d probably be saving up for a Helix or similar if I was primarily recording electric guitar.

 

[Rodd]

Thanks for the reply. Yes the 1st gen seems to be well known for its signal clipping, and it does it even with the tepid single coils in my strat. It was a great upgrade from my old GuitarPort at the time, which I guess must sound awful by today’s standards. Am I right in understanding that it’s the DI preamps in the interface that determine the basic sound quality. Then whatever modelling sim to flavour that sound comes next?

 

[Deleted member 196982]

Thanks for the reply. Yes the 1st gen seems to be well known for its signal clipping, and it does it even with the tepid single coils in my strat. It was a great upgrade from my old GuitarPort at the time, which I guess must sound awful by today’s standards. Am I right in understanding that it’s the DI preamps in the interface that determine the basic sound quality. Then whatever modelling sim to flavour that sound comes next?

Well, a bad preamp would be first in order of impact, but given that an electric guitar signal is relatively noisy and limited in frequency content compared to something like a grand piano, most preamps are probably not the key problem IMO. But I know companies that make preamps usually do "make noise" about their DI implementation (i.e., standalone preamps with both an XLR and DI input), so there must be something there. That kind of thing starts to run into money, and you could always try a good DI box to see if that makes a difference by going in directly to the mic preamp and perhaps having a better impedance match.

Good amp sims on top of a well captured track are pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing IMO/IME. Getting that natural compression and subtle drive that really behaves properly when controlled by your guitar volume, even in relatively clean models like you cite, is something that's missing in many.

 

[Rodd]

So if I’m to understand you correctly, upgrading my 1st gen 2i2 in the hope of a better clean guitar sound from the plugins would only be a side step, and probably not worth it for that reason alone.

 

[Deleted member 196982]

So if I’m to understand you correctly, upgrading my 1st gen 2i2 in the hope of a better clean guitar sound from the plugins would only be a side step, and probably not worth it for that reason alone.

Maybe post a raw track, unedited, your version with plugin, and a reference track link so some folks experienced in this stuff could make a guess as to what might be going on/missing. I'm not saying an interface isn't going to help, but I'm kind of guessing. (I used my Saffire for guitar DI in the past, and it's presumably basically similar front-end innards, if not a generation earlier.)