Help Recording DI Distorted Guitar Tones

[Old Music Guy]

"With a DI into a Scarlett You are essentially double loading the input" Yes, for an active DI the Z will drop to 500k. But this only has the full effect when the guitar's VC is set to maximum. Back it off even a dB or so and the things get much more complex.

Then a fair middle ground for pup inductance is 5H. Load that with 1 meg and the response is down 3dB at 32kHz (keeps the bats happy!) Load at 500k and the 3dB point shifts to 16kHz, now audible if you are under 20 and female but won't be reproduced by any guitar speaker I know of!

But you might have a guitar with 10H buckers? Now the 500k load will start to chop at 8kHz but that is still well down on the output of most git speakers.

Of course, passive guitars usually have more than one pickup and tone pots and capacitors, in short a complex mess that cannot really have its sound predicted but I maintain that putting another one meg across MOST guitar outputs will make very little audible difference.

@ecc83 While I always read your post replies, multiple times when necessary, THIS one is so over my head, that I can't make any sense whatsoever.

 

[TalismanRich]

Great vid. I have a TASCAM 16x08 and had no idea about the gain knob.
BTW: I would kill for the tone he has on his solo! (Notwithstanding the great reverb and very subtle echo)

I have the same, and yes, I learned something new. I don't use amp sims, I've got a PodXT and an Iridium but it something that I've tucked away for the day I need it.

 

[Old Music Guy]

I just bought a Positive Grid Riff. Sounded like a good idea until I found that I need to spend another $$ to get anything useful out of it. It's good for sitting on the couch with headphones. Supposedly, I can use it (after In app purchases) and use that as an amp sim. I already have a ton of those in my VSTs.
My quandary is that in order to get any kind of useable tone out of my amps (a Fender Champion 20, and a Fender Blues Deluxe 1x12), I need to push the volume up to an unusable place given my circumstances. I have good mics, but that's moot given the previous.
I'm tired of throwing good money after bad trying to find something that I can work with that opens some door to creativity. I spend more time and money on s*it I don't need instead of making music.
How do I get out of this GAS loop?

 

[ecc83]

@ecc83 While I always read your post replies, multiple times when necessary, THIS one is so over my head, that I can't make any sense whatsoever.

I am gratified and humbled OMG that you take SUCH notice of my ramblings!
That reply was written in response to a statement about the effects of loading on guitar pickups. My reply was therefore made with the assumption that the person involved was familiar with the "physics"?

The "H" stands for "Henry" the unit of electrical inductance after the great man. Inductance has the property that its impedance increases with frequency. This is opposite to Capacitance which falls as frequency increases (and some VERY weird things happen if you put them together!)

A magnetic PUP is an inductor and so the voltage it will produce across an external load, like the input of an amp or pedal (or DI!) will be frequency dependent, it will be lower at any given frequency if you make the load resistance lower...BUT! As with all things git related IT DEPENDS! The figures I produced were an attempt to show that reducing the load from the normal amp input of 1 M Ohm to half that value, 500k, connecting an active 1meg DI, is unlikely to have any audible effect except perhaps on a very high inductance humbucker.

A PASSIVE DI on the other hand has a much lower input resistance, likely no more than 150k Ohms and that will have two very noticeable effects.
1)It will partially "short out" the pickup causing quite a volume loss, but more importantly..
2) It will cause a considerable loss of high frequencies, extending possibly down to the higher mids, 5kHz say?

That could help the OP's situation because IMVHO he is driving SOMETHING too 'king hard!

I hope that helps?

Dave.

 

[Papanate]

Mic an Amp? Always much better if you can.

DI-ing gives a really crappy EQ to your guitar, put an EQ plug in on your channel before the Virtual Amp. and maybe afterwards too.

Better than what? A DI guitar doesn’t have a crappy EQ - it has Direct Guitar Sound which you may or may not like -Jimmy Page DI’d his guitars a number of times - inlcuding Black Dog - which was his Les Paul #1 through a direct box - into a mic channel which was overloaded - then two URIE 1176 Universal compressors in series - and finally he triple tracked the guitar - it depends on what you want - what kind of sound you want - and what kind of mix you are going for.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Mic an Amp? Always much better if you can.

DI-ing gives a really crappy EQ to your guitar, put an EQ plug in on your channel before the Virtual Amp. and maybe afterwards too.

Eh, I'm a "guitar into a real amp" guy myself, and this is hands down my preference too....

...but VSTs really have gotten awfully good. I've switched to using DI tracks and amp VSTs while writing, and (partly because I have a newborn now and a lot of my recording is going to be late at night) recording DIs and reamping them after the fact through my amp when I have time to turn up a bit. As long as you're recording a good signal through a high-Z instrument in, I can't really hear any perceptible difference between straight into the and reamped through an amp, and doing null testing with the mic'd thru-signal audio vs reamped audio, I got almost total washout of the two signals merged out of phase, which considering I was recording two tracks at a time through seperate mics is impressive (I should pull up the audio and see if I just flip one of the SM57 signals out of phase it's even more perfect, but asit was I got barely audible hiss with a SM57 and MD421, thru and reamped, one out of phase... and I assume some of that is just the amp's own ever-so-slightly-different response.

This isn't really a perfect test since I was trying to work out if tracking the DI hotter than unity made more sense from a gain staging standpoint (tl;dr - I've heard a lot of arguments that it foes, and near as I can tell, it doesn't), but I think if you compare the first straight-into-the-amp track to the subsequent thru audio/reamped tracks, you're not going to hear any sort of difference.



Idunno. I love working with real amps, I've built up a great mic and preamp collection over the years, and I do think there's upside in flexibility by working with a real amp and real mic and the ever-so-slight position changes you can make to get it just right... But the fake stuff has gotten so good in the last 20 years that there's no reason at all you can't get awesome results out of it.

I certainly don't think you need to add corrective EQ to a DI you plan on reamping or running through a VST. I mean, for creative reasons, sure- never say never, if it gets you a sound you want... but it shouldn't be necessary.

 

[Papanate]

Eh, I'm a "guitar into a real amp" guy myself, and this is hands down my preference too....

This isn't really a perfect test since I was trying to work out if tracking the DI hotter than unity made more sense from a gain staging standpoint (tl;dr - I've heard a lot of arguments that it foes, and near as I can tell, it doesn't), but I think if you compare the first straight-into-the-amp track to the subsequent thru audio/reamped tracks, you're not going to hear any sort of difference.

Idunno. I love working with real amps, I've built up a great mic and preamp collection over the years, and I do think there's upside in flexibility by working with a real amp and real mic and the ever-so-slight position changes you can make to get it just right... But the fake stuff has gotten so good in the last 20 years that there's no reason at all you can't get awesome results out of it.

I certainly don't think you need to add corrective EQ to a DI you plan on reamping or running through a VST. I mean, for creative reasons, sure- never say never, if it gets you a sound you want... but it shouldn't be necessary.

Off Topic - but you are getting really close to SRV territory when riffing - you definitely are in the Johnny Lang wheelhouse - excellent job BTW.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Off Topic - but you are getting really close to SRV territory when riffing - you definitely are in the Johnny Lang wheelhouse - excellent job BTW.

Thanks - sort of intentional here, I'm more a Satriani/Timmons/Nick Johnston sort of guy left to my own devises, but since the DI/VST/reamp world is so, well, modern metal and djent focused, I figured doing a video demo where I was using something with more of a heavy blues-rock vibe for comparison would be kind of a fun change of pace.

But thank you - SRV was a pretty big eye opening experience for me when I first heard his "The Sky is Crying" back in the mid-90s, partiuclarly his take on Little Wing. He's still one of the best I've ever heard.

 

[ecc83]

"Miccing a guitar amp is best" Arguable but there is one big omission in that statement. THE most important thing is the speaker. Guitar speaker response is characterized (as much as the very large number of them can be) by a lack of bass below about 100Hz, a peak somewhere around 3-5kHz, maybe more than one, and a response that dives off a cliff from 10kHz, often as early as 8kHz (will find a graph)

Someone, maybe two decades ago realized that this was why guitar sounded shit straight through studio monitors (or indeed headphones) Some studio tech, somewhere then developed "speaker EMULATION" circuitry! I have posted a question elsewhere to try to find this out.

The bottom line is, E guitars do not sound good DI'ed through most interfaces because they lack such emulation. Rock gods in studios might well have DI'ed their masterpieces but they then had an engineer to EQ the ***k out of it!

Dave.

 

[Old Music Guy]

I don't know, @DrewPeterson7. I likes all of the versions. I did have some trouble figuring out what was what, but my ears likes the first clip, and the 4th and the 5th.
If that were me, I would mix all three together.
I thought that the 4th and 5th had a little more bite, and some nice, aggressive harmonics which I liked.
Very nice!

 

[Old Music Guy]

Guitar speaker response is characterized (as much as the very large number of them can be) by a lack of bass below about 100Hz, a peak somewhere around 3-5kHz, maybe more than one, and a response that dives off a cliff from 10kHz, often as early as 8kHz (will find a graph)

This lacks some context. The frequency range of an electric guitar is between ~80Hz (low E) to ~1.5kHz (high E, 24th fret). The human ear, nominally, can detect a change in "loudness", i.e. SPL, of 3dB. A 10dB change in SPL is nominally detected as "twice as loud".
From your graph, the dB change from 80Hz to 1.5kHz is ~8dB at best. Assuming a realistic frequency response to be <~ 1.2kHz, the delta is much less. According to the graph, ~ 4dB. I submit that's barely perceptible. Of course, this doesn't take into account frequency that is humanly perceptible. As we age, we lose our ability to hear higher frequencies, yet we respond more to mid-frequencies to upper lows.
I think the debate "to mic, or not to mic" is a personal decision. We all have our own situations that allow for turning our amps up enough to mic. Or not.
Judging by @DrewPeterson7 samples, I doubt whether anyone who hears our music and contributions would be able to tell the difference. Nor do I think anyone would really care.
IMHO

 

[ecc83]

This lacks some context. The frequency range of an electric guitar is between ~80Hz (low E) to ~1.5kHz (high E, 24th fret). The human ear, nominally, can detect a change in "loudness", i.e. SPL, of 3dB. A 10dB change in SPL is nominally detected as "twice as loud".
From your graph, the dB change from 80Hz to 1.5kHz is ~8dB at best. Assuming a realistic frequency response to be <~ 1.2kHz, the delta is much less. According to the graph, ~ 4dB. I submit that's barely perceptible. Of course, this doesn't take into account frequency that is humanly perceptible. As we age, we lose our ability to hear higher frequencies, yet we respond more to mid-frequencies to upper lows.
I think the debate "to mic, or not to mic" is a personal decision. We all have our own situations that allow for turning our amps up enough to mic. Or not.
Judging by @DrewPeterson7 samples, I doubt whether anyone who hears our music and contributions would be able to tell the difference. Nor do I think anyone would really care.
IMHO

I am not quite sure of the point you are trying to make friend? Regarding the frequency response of the guitar there are harmonics extending well out to 12kHz (and the MP3 encoder has surely mashed more!)

That of course was a steel strung acoustic but an electric will have much the same spectrum. The real horror however is when we distort the signal because then 3kHz becomes 6kHz and 9khz and the amount of HF energy increases. My point was that this extra "fizz" does not sound good but is largely removed by the speaker.

Also, if you look at the overall shape of that V30 response (chosen at random BTW) it is really that of a very low Q band pass filter, i.e. it will add a "colour" to the sound. Any other guitar speaker will have its own, unique 'shape'. No wonder there is so much argument as to the best unit!

I have not listened to and commented on the clips because MY response is -20dB at 2kHz and then that's all she wrote!

Dave.

 

[Old Music Guy]

@ecc83 I don't want to be a dick. But, let me give you a little bit of my background. I started working in electronics when I was 25. I'm now 72. I know a little. Thankfully, I don't need to write anymore resumes, so I'll just name drop.
-- I worked with a gentleman, who is also retired, together as technicians back in the early 80s. This gentleman now is one of five Division Fellows at a well known semiconductor company. He has four patents to his name.
-- I worked at Polaroid in the mid 80s. My direct report was Tom Sholtz boss, the Director of Engineering.
-- I had the pleasure of working with Syd Alonzo, founder of NED, and developer of the Synclavier.
-- I also had the honor of working with a gentleman whose mentor was Dr. Harold Edgerton, who developed the xenon flash used in high-speed photography. .
-- I worked with another gentleman, at his company who, with Dr. Edgerton, helped develop side-scan sonar.
-- I've worked on avionic systems, satellite systems, weapons systems.
I told you that I read your posts, and I appreciate them, But, I have to say, that recently your posts are condescending and have very little to do with trying to solve problems. It's obvious that you know your stuff. Your contributions would be better received if they addressed to issue(s) rather than give "physics" lessons.
Not everyone is familiar with "Eddy Current and Millie Ampere walking across the Wheatstone Bridge". Impedance, resistance, capacitance, reactance, inductance, capacitive reactance, inductive reactance, blah blah. Sometimes they're just words.
Sorry for being a dick.

 

[ecc83]

Old Music Guy, I do NOT think you are in any way a "gentleman's appendage"!

My "physic" replies were prompted by Papa's statement, "The Scarlett if already giving him a DI - so no need there -" and I was trying to make the point that the F'rite's DI will not tame the fizz that afflicts raw guitar sound when it does not go through the filtering medium of a guitar speaker.

I then introduced the idea of a passive DI as a possible solution since its lower input resistance will both reduce level and HF fizz. I would aver some speaker emulation would still be necessary.

I am sorry you find my tone "condescending" but then I can go on a bit sometimes! There is IMHO a great deal of BS spoken and written about electric guitar "tone" and precious little to no decently constructed blind testing*. I try to bring a little order to the proceedings? I am 79 and, as mentioned, clinically deaf so I cannot and do not comment on "sounds" Physics is about all I have left!

*I have made rigs for Blackstar to A/B things like valves and OP transformers. These tests were done with great players with long experience and in all cases the differences between components were minimal or more usually non existant. If a cap or traff works 'to spec' it sounds the same as any other brand.

Not of course double blind tests with a statistically valid selected panel but good enough for rock and roll!

Yours very respectfully,

Dave.

 

[Papanate]

My "physic" replies were prompted by Papa's statement, "The Scarlett if already giving him a DI - so no need there -" and I was trying to make the point that the F'rite's DI will not tame the fizz that afflicts raw guitar sound when it does not go through the filtering medium of a guitar speaker.

I don’t get a ‘fizz’ sound with my Apogee Duet nor my Scarletts 2i2 - I do get a UN-EQ’d sound of the straight guitar - I also use Helix and Helix Native - and the clean sounds aren't fizzy at all - they are very good - I’m not the engineer type that @Old Music Guy or you are - I am the real use world with some knowledge of engineering - and I don’t hear any less or more errant sound when I put a Direct box in front of either interface - the Impedance may match up better - but I do not hear anything being solved.

I then introduced the idea of a passive DI as a possible solution since its lower input resistance will both reduce level and HF fizz. I would aver some speaker emulation would still be necessary.
ave.

I tried a version of this with a Resistor to emulate a guitar amp input - I got the Ohms up and created a higher input impedance to allow more signal from my guitar's pickups to pass through - trying to preserve the high-end frequencies and enhance clarity - I had varying results - I don’t do it anymore.

 

[ecc83]

I don’t get a ‘fizz’ sound with my Apogee Duet nor my Scarletts 2i2 - I do get a UN-EQ’d sound of the straight guitar - I also use Helix and Helix Native - and the clean sounds aren't fizzy at all - they are very good - I’m not the engineer type that @Old Music Guy or you are - I am the real use world with some knowledge of engineering - and I don’t hear any less or more errant sound when I put a Direct box in front of either interface - the Impedance may match up better - but I do not hear anything being solved.

I tried a version of this with a Resistor to emulate a guitar amp input - I got the Ohms up and created a higher input impedance to allow more signal from my guitar's pickups to pass through - trying to preserve the high-end frequencies and enhance clarity - I had varying results - I don’t do it anymore.

Fair enough Mr P. Yes, clean tones will be little affected it is when those upper mids are turned into higher harmonics en masse that the fizz tends to start.
On a related note? I wonder how many budding guitarists here put their instrument through dad's hi fi? Many a tweeter has gone to that great speaker graveyard in the sky because of that!

My contacts in Another Place tell me speaker emulation began about end of the 1980s?

Dave.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I don't know, @DrewPeterson7. I likes all of the versions. I did have some trouble figuring out what was what, but my ears likes the first clip, and the 4th and the 5th.
If that were me, I would mix all three together.
I thought that the 4th and 5th had a little more bite, and some nice, aggressive harmonics which I liked.
Very nice!

Well, that's why I recorded both thru AND DI versions - if by 4th and 5th, you mean 0:55 and 1:13, then that's the same performance, the first was recorded through the amp while I was playing it, and the second was sending the DI back to the amp after it had been recorded, volume matched with the original performance, to see if recording a DI hotter than unity so it took less output gain on the Radial to reamp it made a difference.

So, tl;dr - what you're reacting to was something about that performance, I suspect.

If you carefully compare 2 and 3, and 3 and 4, nothing about the tone of the guitar itself is changing in those clips that I can tell.

My "physic" replies were prompted by Papa's statement, "The Scarlett if already giving him a DI - so no need there -" and I was trying to make the point that the F'rite's DI will not tame the fizz that afflicts raw guitar sound when it does not go through the filtering medium of a guitar speaker.

Ok, I think I understand why we're not agreeing with each other here.

the OP isn't just plugging his guitar directly into an interface and wondering why his tone sucks. Or, into the interface, then applying a distortion effect, and wondering why his tone sucks.

Rather, he's plugging his guitar into his interface, and within the software running it through a plugin that's a virtual amp and virtual speaker cap and virtual mic, to replicate all of those various stages of the recording chain.

As technology, its really pretty cool. And, it HAS gotten pretty realistic in the last decade or so. I personally still prefer a real amp... but it's totally usable.

So, when we're talking about the DI track, it's not the effected DI track, but the raw "this is exactly what comes out of the guitar's output jack" sound he's trying to capture in his DAW, to then feed into this plugin.

 

[Old Music Guy]

the OP isn't just plugging his guitar directly into an interface and wondering why his tone sucks. Or, into the interface, then applying a distortion effect, and wondering why his tone sucks.

Rather, he's plugging his guitar into his interface, and within the software running it through a plugin that's a virtual amp and virtual speaker cap and virtual mic, to replicate all of those various stages of the recording chain.

So, thinking back on some other posts, (specifically the low gain on the interface) it seems as though "gain staging" is the answer. Start low, and add gain as you go.
I'm guilty of "overdriving", and I think that has to do with the nomenclature of levels. I am used to analog meters: VU meters. I know what 0VU is. But I get lost with dBm, dBu, db?, +4dB or -10dB whatever unit.
Life used to be so simple.

 

[ecc83]

." I am used to analog meters: VU meters. I know what 0VU is. But I get lost with dBm, dBu, db?, +4dB or -10dB whatever unit.
Life used to be so simple."

NOT! Trying to be a dick...REALLY not OMG but it really wasn't!

Yes, "0 VU" was most often equal to an output of +4dbu for pro tape machines (Mr Beats will surely correct me if wrong?) but the actual FLUX recorded to the tape was all over the shop depending on country and organization*.

"dBm was strictly a voltage tied to a load, 600 Ohms when 0.775 V rms produced one milliwatt but "600 Ohm working" had gone from most studios and broadcasting companies before you and I were in long pants but people kept bandying dBm about as a voltage regardless of the circuit resistances.
So "dBu (UNloaded) came about. Same reference voltage 0.775 but not tied to any load or source resistance.

But another, far more logical signal voltage reference emerged, the "dBV" referred to one volt rms. This is 2.2dB higher than 0 dBu and thus tends to make manufacturer's specifications look a bit poorer. Cynical of me to suggest it but maybe the reason the archaic 0.775V is still with us? The guitar electronics industry has embraced dBV.

Yet another level protocol is -10dBV (316mV rms) and was introduced mainly for devices that used low supply voltages and thus could not produce "Pro" levels. "Neg ten" is often called "domestic level" but it really isn't. Your cassette recorder, hi fi amp etc operates closer to 100mV not 316mV.

What really annoys me is the total lack of any level standard for audio interfaces! Those that operate directly from 5V USB power vary make to make, over a range of at least 10dB. Those that use an external power supply or direct mains could easily delver +4dBu for -18dBFS say but few do!

*Dear Aunty Beeb of course uses the PPM and, IIRC, 7 on that meter relates to an output of +8dBu?

Dave.

 

[Slouching Raymond]

I came to dB from electronics.
dB was 10*(log(10) of a ratio), when talking about power. -3dB was half power.
But when talking about voltage, dB was 20*(log(10) of a ratio), because power is proportional to V*V. -6dB was half the voltage.

Decibel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org