DI or Mixer or Confused?

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Cylkk

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I don't have much experience recording guitar, can anyone advise what will sound best (I realise it's often subjective) between the following, or will they provide near identical results?

Acoustic (battery powered pickup) & Electric guitars into active DI box -> mixer xlr.
Or run them straight into the line-ins of my digital mixer?

I've heard battery powered pickup may be better suited to a passive DI?
I'm thinking about changing the pickup in the future however...
 
Microphones.

Guitars recorded direct like that will sound awful. If you must go direct, get a POD, SansAmp, or the like.
 
is it really a big difference between mics and di? i've found i've got WAY too much ambient noise when micing an acoustic.

i just want to know the quality difference between di and mixer inputs really.
 
is it really a big difference between mics and di?
Click to expand...
HUGE difference.
It's a lot harder to record with mics,but worth the effort.
When you say ambient noise are you refering to the room or the squeaks and creaks of playing a guitar?
 
Well, if your acoustic guitar has a microphone-style pickup or a combination microphone-style and magnetic pickup, then micing it may not provide you with a superior sound as far as recording goes (though it will definately provide you with a different sound). You may also want to try going into an acoustic guitar amp and micing that, though really you should be able to mic your acoustic directly.

As far as electric guitar, you pretty much need an amp modeler to get a good sound or, as most prefer, you should use mic a guitar amp. This takes a lot of effort to get sounding good at first, but then again, just about everything in recording takes a lot of effort. Out of curiosity, what sort of DI box are you using? Just a plain quarter-inch to XLR? There are some "DI boxes" designed spefically for recording, but without one of these you will almost definately need an amp modeler.
 
at the moment i'm going straight into line in on the mxier OR micing the amp
both methods are sounding terrible :/

and by ambient noise i mean i have crank up the mixer gain to get a decent signil, which is noisey. micing is hard cause i live in an apartment near a busy street :)
 
for acoustic you should defintley use microphones. DI will sound really bad
 
DI does *not* necessarily sound bad, but it takes some wicked equipment to get decent DI acoustic sound. Check this track- #5 "Goody's Song"

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/?aid=3239/album680

That was done with a Taylor 710CE with a Fishman stereo blender into the 2 channels of a Joemeek twinQcs. There is no panning, no reverb, no EQ, no compression, except for the EQ settings in the Taylor, but it was bass cut, both on the Fishman, and on the twinQ. Then the 2 tracks were mixed, using somewhat more of the internal mic than the piezo pickup. Now, it may not be earth shaking quality of recording, and I also prefer mics, but it was usable enough to make the first album, with some processing. That recording is the raw tracks, not the finished recording. The extent to which DI sucks is often overestimated.
On the other hand, if you take a cheap pickup and plug it into a cheap preamp (mixer), it *will* suck. If you want to get good acoustic DI sound, you need to plug a state of the art pickup system into a real preamp, and then play around with EQ. A Triad into an Avalon U5 is actually pretty believable.-Richie
 
line inputs are'nt the same as a di input on a preamp or di box. the line in of a mixer does'nt sound very good at all for going direct from an electric guitar and probably not for an acoustic/electric that has no preamp. if your running into a preamp first, it sounds fine to go into a line in of a mixer but otherwise it's pretty crappy.
 
what about when running guitar rig? would that be best via DI?
i've never sued it, but looking into it..

when i mic or stereo mic my acoustic it sounds quite muddy and bass heavy. i'm trying to get a folk strumming sound
 
definitely a di for a guitar software plugin......you will notice a big difference. btw, the M-Audio Audiobuddy is a good low cost DI and mic preamp for about $80
 
Cylkk said:
when i mic or stereo mic my acoustic it sounds quite muddy and bass heavy. i'm trying to get a folk strumming sound
Click to expand...

Acoustic guitar is one of the hardest instruments to record well. It takes a lot of time and practice, and good mics.

What microphones are you using? How are you positioning them?
 
mic placement is a big deal with acoustic, it is to me anyway. some sugguestions I have read are:

keep the mic away from the sound hole to avoid too much bass, don't place the mic too close to the guitar or it will be bassy, try micing coming from over your shoulder to kind of pickup what your ear is hearing, if your room is acoustically bad sounding or untreated try to find a compromising distance between not too bassy and not too roomy sounding.

I'd start off with the mic a few feet away, directed toward the higher frets and listen for too much bass or too much room sound. Find a happy medium. Then play with the angle of the mic for finding the type of sound you're looking for. If the guitar sounds bad, it's gonna sound bad probably no matter how you mic it.
 
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