Feedback Please - recorded guitar tone

[amra]

I am a complete noob when it comes to practical recording. I have been researching the art for months, and am just now beginning to feel that I know enough to make a try at recording. I have researched, and think I have a basic understanding of levels/meters and clipping: The theoretical target is 0db at your sound card's converters, but practically you want to be a few db under. You can get closer to 0db by compressing, but you lose dynamic range if you go too much.

My goal is to put a competent enough home studio together to at some point be able to make some nicer 'demo' level recordings. Not trying to be a pro, just trying to record some music at a good enough quality where the sound quality of the recording does not detract from being able to appreciate the music.

The recordings I am sharing are short clips, exactly as they were recorded, through my audiophile 2496 (originally at 24 bit 96khz) with no EQ'ing using Audacity. At this point I am just trying to get a good, clean recording of a distorted guitar into the computer. I figure if I can get a good basic recording of heavy, distorted guitar tone, then I can work from there. Until I can manage that, there is no point trying to get fancy with EQ, etc. The whole garbage in, garbage out theory....

Now on to the clips. There are 3 different ones, about 600k or so each. I realize that not everyone is into heavy, distorted sounding guitar tone, so please try to judge this in context of similar tones. Oh yeah, my guitar playing: I am a little rusty and my pacing is off, please try to focus on the recorded sound, and not my playing. Am I on the right track?

Your feedback is appreciated!

Recording 1
Recording 2
Recording 3

Thanks,
Amra

 

[LRosario]

Yeah, lets get that out of your head from the start: it's not a race to see who gets closer to 0db.

The worst recordings I've heard where a result of pushing it too close, which makes it really hard to listen to.

I'll be sure to add my two cents later when I get a chance to be around a set of speakers

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

A little less bass, a little less distortion, a little more master volume up, and everything should be peachy.

This actually doesn't sound bad... you're 90% of the way there. The main problem would be when you doubled/tripled/quadrupled this tone.

 

[DonF]

...The theoretical target is 0db at your sound card's converters, but practically you want to be a few db under....

With a reasonably good sound card recording at 24 bits, you can afford a bit of headroom. This will save you from having to do a retake if you have an "over" in the middle of an awesome solo. Digital distortion is really ugly, as I'm sure you've heard.

When you create your final product, it will most likely be in 16/44.1 format, so a little compression and/or limiting (or a lot, depending on your taste, sorry LRosario) will be needed to bring your average level up closer to 0dBFS. You would want to do this compression before the conversion from 24 to 16 bits.

The guitar tone sounds quite competent to my ears. It's a little heavy on the low end, so you would probably need to use EQ to take a bit of the lows out in order to make the tone sit in a mix. I hear some 60 Hz buzz at the end of the third sample. Pickups too close to the computer monitor, maybe?

Don

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

My target to record to is about -15dbfs, so when the mix is summed it is well underneath 0dbfs so it can actually be mastered to sound good.

 

[amra]

Thanks...

Thanks for the feedback!
I feel a little better now that I know that I am at least on the right track.

I have couple of questions relating to this thread, though:

Is EQ best applied via hardware, or software?
If hardware, should it be applied before the audio is recorded?
If software, is there a specific plugin I should look into, if not what is the prefferred technique?

Also, is there a consensus as to what the peak DB in a recording should be? I understood it was somewhere around -5db?

Thanks!
Amra

 

[xbrianx]

As far as EQing goes I ALWAYS get my tones as good as I possibly can naturally then use subtractive EQ afterwards via plugins. I would never use onboard EQ or use hardware to EQ before the recording. Also, I would never use hardware if I was recording via a DAW (the idea here being that with a plugin you can always change something, but with the hardware little adjustments become tedious). I am in love with the Waves Paragraphic EQs & use them 99% of the time. They are pricey, however, worth every single dime. I would suggest scoping those out.