Logic Audio and how to record something with a Plug in effect on while recording.

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pisces7378

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I know that when vocals and some other things are recorded it is better to record them dry without any reverb or effects, and add the effects later... but that a singer will 90% of the time perform better if he can hear some reverb and some effects on his voice as he is singing.

Is there anyway within Logic Audio Platinum v. 5.1.3 to turn a reverb plug in on and send that reverbed signal into the headphones for the singer to hear, without that plug in being actually recorded onto the track? or would that give the processor a migrane and shut him down?

This is a basic studio task, I am surprised that I never thought to ask about it before.

Thanks guys,

Mike
 
I haven't tried that yet. I would assume the latency would make it unusable but I could be wrong. I just use external effects for the monitor mix. Sorry that didn't really help but you may be barking up the wrong tree on that one.
 
By barking up the wrong tree... do you mean that I should ask someone other than you or I am asking the wrong question? Or trying to do something impossible?

Thanks for responding anyway. At least someone out there love me. :D
 
r we talking about using software plug ins in real time? not sure i follow.
 
Yes...

I am talking about, arming a track to record, then switching on a reverb plug in, recording a person's voice singing, but NOT recording the reverb to the track, just letting the reverb be in the singer's headphones.

First of all I am not even sure that you can use a plug in WHILE you are recording a vocal track. And second of all I am not sure how I would keep the reverb in the headphones but NOT sending the effect to the Hard disc to be recorded.

The reason I ask, is at the moment, when I am singing into my Rode NTK, I am in an acoustically dry dead room, I am hearing the already recorded song with all of it's reverb and eq etc.. but my voice is all dry. It would be much easier to deliver a better performance if I could hear a little reverb on my voice in my headphones WHILE I am singing, intead of always having to add the reverb plug-ins, after the fact.

Understand?
 
plug ins dont go to disk you have to bounce them to disk so you can record with whatever effect you have in direct x its not going to disk so no worries man
 
Just buy a nanoverb and patch that into whatever your using to monitor (you do have a mixer, right?). That's what I do. Good luck!
 
actually, i have been told that with logic 5 you CAN track to disk with effects. I haven't been able to figure it out yet though, i wanted to use compression or a limiter to stop it from clipping.
 
hmmmm, that won't work. The clipping occurs as soon as your analog signal hits your AD converters, and before it ever reaches your software. You'll need an analog limiter/compressor for this, or just turn the gain down. If you're using 24-bits, you can get away with tracking down around -6 or even lower.

ambi said:
actually, i have been told that with logic 5 you CAN track to disk with effects. I haven't been able to figure it out yet though, i wanted to use compression or a limiter to stop it from clipping.
 
Pisces- I meant you are probably going about the wrong solution for your problem. An outboard effects unit would be the most logical choice.
 
Doulos

Doulos... What is direct X? If the plug ins do not go to disk...can they be sent to headphones for recording? In pro studios they have outboard gear such as EQs and Reverb so that singers can have the "feeling" of singing in the grand canyon if they want, but the recorder dosn't hear the reverb. How do I accomplish this nativly within Logic Audio? I don't have a reverb unit unfortunately, but I want to hear reverb on my vocals AS I RECORD them... am I just screwed?

Thanks,

mike
 
buy a cheap fx box ($50 ) off ebay, and route it in realtime.
 
I was doing this kind of thing with Sonar right after it was released last year. I was using plug ins in real time to monitor as I recorded stuff , though the tracks were recorded dry. The feature in Sonar that makes this possible is 'live input monitoring'. Sonar has a feature that will let you apply the plug ins to the track after it has been recorded , i.e., the plug ins are 'recorded' to the track so you can free up the CPU. Of course, you could also leave the track dry and have the effects become permanent in the final mix , or whatever. The question is whether Logic has something like live input monitoring in Sonar. WDM drivers for Sonar is what makes live input monitoring possible, you can get latency that rivals hardware with a fast enough processor (I was using a PIII 1GHz) and good drivers for your soundcard (I was using a Delta 66). I guess I always assumed that Logic and Cubase would do something like live input monitoring since I haven't heard anyone say that they don't. But then again, maybe most people don't care about this feature. It is really CPU intensive and plug ins won't be able to stop you from clipping, as has been pointed out. However, if you really want to monitor with plug ins and Logic has something like live input monitoring, you could mix everything down to stereo and create a separate project for recording vocals, and then import the vocal track into your original project. By the way, if you can't do this in Logic you probably can't do it with Cubase either, at least if you are using ASIO drivers for Windows; don't know about the mac versions. I am curios to know whether you can do something like live input monitoring with ASIO on a Windows platform.
 
This has been discussed quite a bit on the sonik forum. Many people have asked this question and it seems few people are ever successful or satisfied even after it's explained. Recording the fx is even harder.

Among other things, you have to check "input monitoring" under Audio>Audio Preferences>Audio Driver. This usually means latency problems.
 
Logic recording/monitoring w/effects

Here's how I was told to do it through a logic forum. You create an audio object and make it an input object (no record arming), set the output on that to something other than the outputs of the track you are actually recording on. Route the input object's signal via bus returns to effects. The bus return's output should be set to the same output as the actual audio object, not input object. Then you will hear the effected signal in the cans, but it won't record the effects. sounds confusing, I know, but it works. For my latest project I recorded a vocal on track 12, made track 13 the input object w/ effects sent to return 1. Output of vocal track was 1-2, input object was 3-4, and return was set to 1-2. Worked like a charm. Don't know the guiding principals behind it, just know it works. Good luck.
Mike
 
recording vocals with fxs

Im a little confused with the vocal track routing you described if any way you could some how email me in a little more detail it would be appreciated jrcbrl@gmail.com
 
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