Your technique - Line out or mic on your amplifier ? Which one you do ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mikeit
  • Start date Start date

Line out or mic technique on your amp ?

  • Line out/other output

    Votes: 7 10.3%

  • Mic

    Votes: 34 50.0%

  • Mic and line out/other output

    Votes: 20 29.4%

  • Other technique

    Votes: 7 10.3%
  • Total voters
    68
I've done both (using impulses for guitar direct), but it's mostly mic.
 
mikeit said:
my marshall valvestate 20 has one lineout and its from 1990!:D
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Eh...I guess 1990 might seem like a long time ago to some folks. ;)

Most guitar amps were recorded with mics during Rock's heydays…that period of music which the majority of players take their tonal cues fro these days.

Of course with the home recording push of the last 10-15 years...Line Outs became more in demand and more common since people were looking to avoid the loudness of amps in home environments.
Personally I don't see much of a tonal benefit to using Line Outs VS miking the amps...so IMO, using Line Outs is more a choice out of necessity...not much different than pods/sims....but I guess some folks actually might like those choices over miking real amps...and that's fine if it works for them. :)
 
I mostly use the line out on an old Digitech RP300. Sometimes I'll mic, and sometimes I'll mix them both. But mostly the line out because I don't like my mics much.
 
Villain S Deeds said:
I mostly use the line out on an old Digitech RP300. Sometimes I'll mic, and sometimes I'll mix them both. But mostly the line out because I don't like my mics much.
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in fact when asking for these i was wondering if having both situations we can mix them. And using line out gives us the "right" sound and mic gives what the mic can gives us and the environment really counts, and for who hasn't good mics and rooms these can be a nice option. But what i plan to do its use both, compare them, analyze and mix them both or use the best one:)
 
Well yeah...if your mics totally suck ass and/or you are in a very poor recording environment...miking may not be much of an improvement over Line Out.

But I would always try miking first, because if your are using a tube amp, you get the action of the power tubes and not just the preamp section, plus you get the action of the speaker and the interaction of the room (to a degree, which can be easily controlled/changed).
Don’t make just one attempt with a mic and then opt for Line Outs. With mics there can be a bit of finessing required. Sometimes moving your amp/cab 2 feet away from the wall makes a difference in how the mic picks up the sound, and sometimes moving the mic a few inches or a couple of feet makes a difference.
Yes, there some work involved, but the cool thing with that, is you can get ALL kinds of tonal variety and textures using just one mic and never touching the settings on your source/amp...whereas Line Out is just Line Out, and any tonal/texture changes can only be done at the amp/source.

I usually mic everything that can be, even sometimes running synth/electric pianos out to a cab rather than doing the Line Out or I'll take their Line Out and hit some tape with it and then bring those tracks into the DAW...just to soften up some of the digital/sampled sounds and get a more organic/analog vibe.
With guitar amps I never use the Line Outs. As someone put it earlier, it’s just too “flat” sounding.

But to each his own….you gotta go with what you think works best in your situation. :)
 
miroslav said:
Well yeah...if your mics totally suck ass and/or you are in a very poor recording environment...miking may not be much of an improvement over Line Out.

But I would always try miking first, because if your are using a tube amp, you get the action of the power tubes and not just the preamp section, plus you get the action of the speaker and the interaction of the room (to a degree, which can be easily controlled/changed).
Don’t make just one attempt with a mic and then opt for Line Outs. With mics there can be a bit of finessing required. Sometimes moving your amp/cab 2 feet away from the wall makes a difference in how the mic picks up the sound, and sometimes moving the mic a few inches or a couple of feet makes a difference.
Yes, there some work involved, but the cool thing with that, is you can get ALL kinds of tonal variety and textures using just one mic and never touching the settings on your source/amp...whereas Line Out is just Line Out, and any tonal/texture changes can only be done at the amp/source.

I usually mic everything that can be, even sometimes running synth/electric pianos out to a cab rather than doing the Line Out or I'll take their Line Out and hit some tape with it and then bring those tracks into the DAW...just to soften up some of the digital/sampled sounds and get a more organic/analog vibe.
With guitar amps I never use the Line Outs. As someone put it earlier, it’s just too “flat” sounding.

But to each his own….you gotta go with what you think works best in your situation. :)
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i agree with you! Its a question of experiencing and of course line out is always the same! Just wanna know if 99% of you make one thing or another!:cool:
 
Every time I've tried to line in a guitar is was laughable. The sound of electric guitar is the sound of a tube amp. When you play electric guitar you're playing a speaker with a tube amp. Taking away the speaker and amp is, to me, nuts because that's the sound. The guitar isn't the sound any more than my computer keyboard is a computer.
 
RAMI said:
They're talking about using the line OUT of an amp.
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...which still generally sounds pretty atrocious, unless it's a speaker-emulated out, in which case it just sounds somewhere between bad and tolerable.

stevieb said:
ARGGGGGGGG! Somebody, please, please, PLEASE, write a freakin' sticky on all the reasons going direct from a guitar amp is a horrible idea!!
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Why bother? No one would read it. :laughings:
 
miroslav said:
Of course with the home recording push of the last 10-15 years...Line Outs became more in demand and more common since people were looking to avoid the loudness of amps in home environments.
Personally I don't see much of a tonal benefit to using Line Outs VS miking the amps...so IMO, using Line Outs is more a choice out of necessity...not much different than pods/sims....but I guess some folks actually might like those choices over miking real amps...and that's fine if it works for them. :)
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That's how I felt until last week. Talking bass here, but I experiment with a variety of mic, line out and both and even both plus direct into the recorder and blend all three or direct into the recorder without the amp. I use a Fender bassman 100 {which sounds good on either bass or guitar or mandolin} and although it has a line out and a headphone out, it also has this speaker thing, which, if you take the jack connection out {it has an inbuilt jack connection cable}, and put in a jack and connect to the recorder, it disables the speaker but sends it direct to the recorder and has a fantastic (to my cloth ears) sound; I don't understand why that, the headphone out and the line out all produce different tones but they do.
It does seem bass is easier to capture DI than guitar, in the sense that more seem to be satisfied with the bass DI sound, although I personally love the miked bass sound. Actually, I pretty much dig them all.

miroslav said:
You got a "number"...?...or is that intentionally vague? :)
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To be honest, I haven't a clue. Weren't they sending the amp sounds to the PAs back in the 70s ? The 60s ?
 
grimtraveller said:
That's how I felt until last week. Talking bass here, but I experiment with a variety of mic, line out and both and even both plus direct into the recorder and blend all three or direct into the recorder without the amp.


...

To be honest, I haven't a clue. Weren't they sending the amp sounds to the PAs back in the 70s ? The 60s ?
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You know...I kinda forgot about the bass. :eek: While I don't do it Line Out, I do usually track the bass DI into a tube preamp.
There's no right/wrong about it...though again, for me, recording is about amps, mics...the room a bit...etc. Yeah...maybe that's more of the traditional, old-school approach, but that's what I like to do.
AFA getting good sounds without a mic...yeah, I've used a Sans Amps and DI boxes to experiment with, and while it is possible to dial in acceptable stuff...I generally lean towards the mic approach these days for most things.

Yeah they probably did run line-level stuff back in the day, though no you're talking for live PA use. I'm sure someone even did it in the studio...I was just pointing out that it wasn't a common approach back then, and that miking was.

I guess if you have the time & desire to track with mic, line, DI and sim...and then mix all of that together...etc...etc...to come up with some final "sound"...that's cool, go for it.
I think it's easy to sorta’ get lost in the process just for the fun of it..and yeah, it IS fun!
I've just been trying to simplify things as much as possible, since I already get too caught up in the whole production. :D
One track…amp/cab/mic…it works for me.
 
Off topic: why did this go cluster fuck again?

On topic: Depending on your definition of direct there are ok sounding ways of doing it and there are shit ways of doing it (of course IMO YMV).

To me direct can mean a plethora of different scenarios (basically any method of not using a mic).

Guitar--->some sort of hardware modeler (pod, axefx, eleven rack etc...)
Guitar--->amp--->line out--->guitar cab emulator (software or hardware)
Guitar--->DI--->recording interface--->software amp modeler

And the things I would only do with bass:
Bass--->rack preamp (tech 21 or the like)--->interface
Bass--->amp--->line out--->interface
Bass--->DI/mic pre--->interface
Bass--->DI--->interface---modeling software


What (at least to me) sounds like ass is not emulating all parts of a recording chain (guitar--->preamp---->amp--->cab--->mic). So for example just recording the line out of an amp direct without any sort of speaker sim to me sounds like junk (I don't even really care for bass to be done this way, but it's not like it sucks by any means).
 
Guitargodgt said:
...On topic: Depending on your definition of direct there are ok sounding ways of doing it and there are shit ways of doing it (of course IMO YMV).

To me direct can mean a plethora of different scenarios (basically any method of not using a mic).

Guitar--->some sort of hardware modeler (pod, axefx, eleven rack etc...)
Guitar--->amp--->line out--->guitar cab emulator (software or hardware)
Guitar--->DI--->recording interface--->software amp modeler

And the things I would only do with bass:
Bass--->rack preamp (tech 21 or the like)--->interface
Bass--->amp--->line out--->interface
Bass--->DI/mic pre--->interface
Bass--->DI--->interface---modeling software


What (at least to me) sounds like ass is not emulating all parts of a recording chain (guitar--->preamp---->amp--->cab--->mic). So for example just recording the line out of an amp direct without any sort of speaker sim to me sounds like junk (I don't even really care for bass to be done this way, but it's not like it sucks by any means).
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My first thought was: why simulate anything, why not use the real deal? The answer, I guess, would be because you're getting a sound you want.

And if it's the sound you want, who cares how you got it? In the end, it's the song that matters.

For me the mic is a big part of the sound too. It pre-eq's it.
 
If you have the inputs to spare you might as well capture both signals.

It is the most flexible with many options. You can do any kind of treatment you want to the direct signal, and even use amp simulators, and even blend the mic'd and direct signal together.

Blending seems to yield especially enjoyable results when blending a Bass DI'd signal with that of a mic'd amp. Gotta get some air : )
 
A few on topic questions/comments real quick. :D

I have typically used the "DI" on the Line 6 spyder amp my guitar player uses. We are not exactly happy with it. It doesnt sound...how to put this...full? It just feels like its missing something and kinda sounds digital to my ear.

We have avoided miking only because my "studio" is in the basement of a single wide trailer (haha trailer trash I know right :laughings: heard that 1,000 times now) but the walls are block and we were afraid of getting alot of strange reverb off of them. I recently seen a thread where a member has shown he puts a chair back from the amp and drapes blackets over the amp and chair to create (correct me if I am wrong) and iso-booth...is this a good method? I have also heard people mention putting the amp in a closet full of clothes. What are some good methods to get the most out of miking for me, being my situation with only really having a basement to work with....faience claims the upstairs "band free zone" haha
 
dintymoore said:
My first thought was: why simulate anything, why not use the real deal? The answer, I guess, would be because you're getting a sound you want.
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No no, the real answer is noise. Or I guess in extreme cases the room. :D
 
ncmail said:
A few on topic questions/comments real quick. :D

I have typically used the "DI" on the Line 6 spyder amp my guitar player uses. We are not exactly happy with it. It doesnt sound...how to put this...full? It just feels like its missing something and kinda sounds digital to my ear.

We have avoided miking only because my "studio" is in the basement of a single wide trailer (haha trailer trash I know right :laughings: heard that 1,000 times now) but the walls are block and we were afraid of getting alot of strange reverb off of them. I recently seen a thread where a member has shown he puts a chair back from the amp and drapes blackets over the amp and chair to create (correct me if I am wrong) and iso-booth...is this a good method? I have also heard people mention putting the amp in a closet full of clothes. What are some good methods to get the most out of miking for me, being my situation with only really having a basement to work with....faience claims the upstairs "band free zone" haha
Click to expand...

The best thing you can do is just experiment. Don't be afraid of weird reverb if you have never recorded it before. I'm not a fan of sticking amps in a small space (talking less than 4'X4') as it sounds like it was recorded, an amp sitting in a box.

Personally, I say grab a mic and have at it. If you get stuck and want feedback post some clips and get some criticism.
 
I've got a POD Xt Pro with SPDIF out that I purchased with the intent of keeping the signal clean and all digital. It certainly is clean and has a load of options as you all know but for me in a side by side comparison, nothing beats a mic'd cabinet powered by a good old 100+ watt tube amp. That's the way God meant it to be isn't it?

Also, at the time when I bought the POD, noise was a concern and with that in mind, there is something to be said about "environmental limitations". I'd still use it but only as a last resort. I haven't used it in nearly two years and I'm actually thinking of selling it but it can still do a lot if I needed it to.
 
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