Using a virtual amp in the mix

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ESPplayer7

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Hey guys i have a V-amp and i read this from tweakheadz site on them :
Over the past few years there have been a landslide of virtual guitar amp simulators on the market. These work by taking the direct sound of your guitar and running them through a mathematical model that imparts the sonic characteristics and artifacts of particular amp models. These devices usually have some effects added in, such as the typical chorus, flange, delay and reverb in various combinations that we have grown to love. I have the Behringer V-Amp, which i reviewed here. There are many others out there. Do they really sound as great as a vintage amp as they claim? Yes and no. In the mix with other instruments, few will be able to tell. The great advantage of these is that one can record clean and apply the modeler later, as an insert on a mixing board. As with plugins, you can dial up the amp model./effects combination you need at mixdown and try others. That's pretty cool in an of itself


What exaclty does this mean, i can plug my guitar straight into my mixer without going through the v-amp at all, record a clean signal, then plug in the v-amp somehow (a little lost on this) and apply the tone i want? how does this work guys im a little newb, thanks a bunch for the help
 
I think this month's EQ mag has quite a few articles on this. Check them out, a good read.

To answer your question, basically take the dry signal from the guitar via a direct box and record it to another track. Then you can feed it into a simulator, or even a real guitar amp later.

I've done the later by using a passive direct box and plugging the dry recorded signal backasswards so that the impedence matches correctly when going back into the amp. I still prefer the real thing for most Rock tracks, but a simulator can create some unique sounds.
 
wait im still a little confused on this, could someone explain a semi simple proccess of how i would do this. So i would just plug my guitar line STRAIGHT into my mixer input, record my part, then somehow i can send lets say "ultra distortion" to the recorder part? why would i need to plug the guitar into a direct box?
 
A guitar signal is not quite up to the line level required by the mixing board. So

1. Plug guitar into a direct box then into board then into DAW
2. Get levels and record guitar part
3. After recording insert (or whatever your DAW calls it) the virtual guitar plug-in and have fun.

You can now try ultra-distortion, or change the plug to ultra-clean without re-recording the part.
 
thanks, i think i get it, just one last thing, what is a direct box exactly and why do i need to plug into this before i plug into a mixer to record a "dry signal"? does this mean i have to buy a direct box or can i use something else? One more i promise, what is a dry signal exactly, just a guitar not going through any type of amp or simulator meaning always through a direct box first? If someone could answer this i would be way stoked,thanks
 
ESPplayer7 said:
Do they really sound as great as a vintage amp as they claim?
Click to expand...

No they sound much much worse and are usually burried in FX to mask how bad they sound. They not only sound sub par at best but they make other elements in the mix (such as drums and vocals) sound worse as well.

If you are doing ultra clean sounds they can be so so, but add any amount of gain and they just blow.

Believe it or not, I have an open mind about this issue, but every amp emulator I have ever heard has been awful and hurt the record. When emulators get even remotely in the ball park of the real thing i will stop ranting, but they have a long way to go. I mix tons of records recoreded by other producers and engineers and for the most part I turn down working on records where the guitars were done with fake amps becuase most of my time will be dedicated to fixing how bad the fake amp screwed up the record instead of fun creative work.
 
Being a guitar freak in general I agree with Ronan.

However sometimes getting a cool guitar sound is totally different then getting a good guitar sound. Things like poor phasing when using 2 mics can create some interesting effects, in EQ mag this month Joe Barresi mentions micing a guitar amp from the toilet, stuff like that.

If you're trying to use an emulator to replace the real thing it's probably not going to happen. On the other hand, if you want to get a synthetic type of sound an emulator can be useful.

Didn't Lenny Kravitz use one on a few tunes? I forget which offhand, or maybe it was a Line 6 amp. To me not much difference anyway ...
 
I think all amp modelers are the Devil incarnate.

And Lenny Kravitz should be castrated for using one.
 
ESPplayer7 said:
thanks, i think i get it, just one last thing, what is a direct box exactly and why do i need to plug into this before i plug into a mixer to record a "dry signal"? does this mean i have to buy a direct box or can i use something else? One more i promise, what is a dry signal exactly, just a guitar not going through any type of amp or simulator meaning always through a direct box first? If someone could answer this i would be way stoked,thanks
Click to expand...

The signal from the guitar needs to be amplified somewhat to be recorded cleanly. It is not up to line level, which is what your mixer needs (unless it has a specific instrument level input) A dry signal means just what you said, a pure signal from the guitar with no modeling/ effects or anything on it.
Also, your V-Amp, not being a plug-in but a piece of hardware, will be physically routed to from your PC/Mixer or whatever you recorded on by the use of some kind of "re-amping" box that will bring the signal back down to instrument level to be suitable to go back through your V-Amp. Basically a direct box in reverse. I've never tried actually using a direct box in reverse as masteringhouse said so I guess that might work, I don't know. I use a re-amp box from radial engineering called the "X-Amp". Keep in mind that this is also an excellent method to use when using a real amp as well. However "virtual" re-amping with a plug-in is a little easier so you might consider that route if you want to keep it simple.
 
metalhead28 said:
I've never tried actually using a direct box in reverse as masteringhouse said so I guess that might work, I don't know.
Click to expand...

It works, just make sure that it's a PASSIVE direct box. I've been told this is essentially what a REAMP box is.

http://www.reamp.com/
 
Some of the better direct guitar tones using Virtual amps like POD and V-amp etc have sounded quite convincing on a clean setting. I would even go as far to say you can actually get a convincing clean tone without the use of an actual REAL amp.
But when looking for distortion these virtual amps kinda loose it. The better recordings I have heard can sound close to a real amp sound when playing with the rest of the mix, but as soon as it is only the guitars it is pretty noticeable that the guitar was recorded direct.
So stay away from them.
 
thanks for the help, still confused on what metal head said, is there any way you can be a little more specific or someone help me out on what he said? i dont understand the whole part he said on "essentially a direct box backwards". So i guess to avoid my confusion more could someone give me the set up of how i would record my guitar using the v amp into cubase two ways, one wet and one dry.

My guess would be Wet= guitar > v vamp > direct box > mixer> sound card

Dry= Guitar > direct box > mixer > soundcard

If this is right why would i need to plug my v amp into a direct box to record a WET signal, isnt the line level already boosted by the v amp

sorry for the long post really appreciate your guys help a lot
 
if you ask me, it's harder to get a good clean out of solid state then it is distortion.

clean-tubes
distortion-tubes or solid state (depending on the sound)


digital is for people with no other options.
(because it's better than nothing)
 
I think that part of the confusion has been that some (myself included) have been talking about using a virtual amp plugin in a DAW.

This weekend I was at a session and we used the Bass V-Amp Pro. We initally tried running the preamp output from an Ampeg head directly to a tube preamp onto tape, but weren't happy with the sound. We were looking for a dirty Queens of the Stone Age type of bass sound. We ended up plugging the bass into the Bass V-Amp then into the tube pre with a bit of compression and tube grit and then to tape. Got pretty close to what we wanted.

This is probably the first box from Behringer that I've been almost impressed with. We might have been able to achieve the same or slightly better sound by running a distortion pedal or another tube pre into the amp, but since we didn't have loads of time to screw around it was actually pretty nice just dialing up a setting, a few minor changes, and letting it rip.

Anyway, back to the original question. I think that you can just insert the V-AMP into a channel of your board and re-record it if you don't want to commit to one sound during recording. You shouldn't need a direct box with this.

Which model do you have? If it's the V-AMP pro you can also insert digitally from the looks of the specs.
 
why record the track dry and add the plug in after? I just arm my recording track WITH amplitube and record...then BAM...i have a distorted guitar track recorded. :D
 
Markaholic said:
why record the track dry and add the plug in after? I just arm my recording track WITH amplitube and record...then BAM...i have a distorted guitar track recorded. :D
Click to expand...

For non-commital types, in case you want to record the performance but screw around with the sound later.
 
Okay, I'm gonna try and break it down from scratch!

If you want to record your guitar with a totally finished sound meaning distortion, effects and all (wet), then just plug into the V-amp and plug the V-amp straight into your soundcard. It is a line level output.

If you want to record a dry guitar sound with no effects, either use a direct box into your mixer and then to your soundcard, or use the V-amp's bypass output into your soundcard. (it basically is a direct out signal which bypasses the effects.)

The reason for recording a dry guitar track is so that you could send that back through the amp or modeler after the initial take so you could try out different sound combinations, or layer multiple tracks with different tones using the same performance. You would do this by using a "reamp" box which would take the output from your soundcard (the prerecorded DI track) and return it to an instrument level signal so you could play it back through your amplifier/modeler. This would be basically recreating the signal as it comes out of your guitar. That is what I meant by direct box in reverse. A more simplified way to do this "reamping" is to do it virtually in your DAW by using a "plug-in" modeler such as Amplitube or something like that. In that case you are not routing anything back out of your DAW, you are just adding effects to the dry track. Obviously this technique is alot easier, but if you're using the V-amp this is not an option.

Hope this helps.
 
masteringhouse said:
This weekend I was at a session and we used the Bass V-Amp Pro. We initally tried running the preamp output from an Ampeg head directly to a tube preamp onto tape, but weren't happy with the sound. We were looking for a dirty Queens of the Stone Age type of bass sound. We ended up plugging the bass into the Bass V-Amp then into the tube pre with a bit of compression and tube grit and then to tape. Got pretty close to what we wanted.
Click to expand...

Why didnt you go Bass - Vamp - amp (mmmm ampeg) - direct out to tube pre - tape?
Means you would have got the flavour of the real amp and you could have added extra distortion or tweaks to taste then used compression and the tube pre to really beef it up. And also a mic to get some depth and "air" (if thats the right term).
 
ecktronic said:
Why didnt you go Bass - Vamp - amp (mmmm ampeg) - direct out to tube pre - tape?
Means you would have got the flavour of the real amp and you could have added extra distortion or tweaks to taste then used compression and the tube pre to really beef it up. And also a mic to get some depth and "air" (if thats the right term).
Click to expand...

There are endless combinations we could have tried, essentially we dialed up the one above and the bassist was happy and I was happy so no need to go further. Plus the Ampeg really wasn't giving us what we wanted for this session, though it's a great amp.

In general I prefer running a bass direct over a mic, the combination of a mic and direct always runs into phase issues if combined without some sort of compensation. Also a direct bass track can always be reamped later if need be, a miced track or combined track less so.
 
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