Straining to get reamp>amp to match guitar>amp

[oyrgawd]

I'm recording the Bypass output from a Boss pedal tuner into the Instrument input of a Digimax FS. ?With the input gain about a quarter up I'm getting peaks between -18 and-14. ?

I record, play back through a Radial X-Amp into the amp and it's waaay quiet even with the X-Amp gain cranked. ?Set the Fireface ouput (feeding the X-Amp) to High Gain and it's a little better. ?Normalize the file, push the faders all the way up in Reaper and in both possible places in Totalmix (the interface's mixer), and the level coming out of the amp is still maybe 85% as loud as the guitar plugged straight into it. ?

Is this just the nature of the reamp beast??

The reamp'd sound is kinda smooth and clean when it ought to be raunchy. ?Of course I can mess with the amp gain, maybe put a clean boost pedal between the reamp and the amp, but it just seems like I'm having to do an awful lot of boosting here when I was hoping the DI>disk>reamp signal journey would be invisible apart from A/D/A conversion -- like unity gain.?

My whole game plan was to track guitars and bass direct to avoid any bleed into the drum mics in our 1-room pracice spot, then reamp them to get the authentic amp sounds afterward. ?It's the "authentic" bit that's tripping me up here I guess. ?I want the same, carefully-tweaked amp settings to work on the signal from the reamp box. ?Anyway, please set me straight.

[vvv]

No real idear on the reamp, butt if you DI'd the guitar and there's no bleed, can't you just re-track and overdub 'em new through a mic'd amp?

As my band is down to two (guitarist pissed off) that's what we do sometimes; I DI the bass along with the mic'd kit for groove and have the option (not taken yet) of re-doing the bass. Then I put guitars, etc., on.

[oyrgawd]

Yeah, I guess there's the overdubbing way. I dunno if we could handle that though. The drums follow the guitars more than the bass. More "noodle" than "groove". And we are not click-trackers.

I've had decent results in the past with just running the bass direct but guitar amps live in the room with the drums. Kept the amps quiet and pointed away 90 degrees from the drums. Amps were on opposite sides of the kit so their bleed into the drum mics still made a pretty stereo picture. Might have to just do that again but now we have less space...

Anyway, I'm still hoping someone will tell me some obvious error in my DI/reamping ways, or that there is another reamping device with a hotter output than the X-Amp.

[BrontoSoreAss]

I'm in a similar recording situation as you (recording the whole band live in a rehearsal space) and I've been considered going a similar route as you have. Lately however I've started using baffles to isolate the amps somewhat which has been helping to keep bleed out of the drum mics, but still allows us all to play together without headphones. It's been a route for us to improve the quality of our recordings, without compromising our comfort/performance (which is the whole point of recording in the rehearsal space, for us at least). The nice thing about this recording wise, is I have a relatively isolated signal from each source as well as a room mic that picks up the whole band together which I find really pulls the mix together.

Just proposing another possible method for this sort of situation. I would still like to try the DI/REAMP route myself though.

[the finger genius]

Have you tried just going direct out from the interface into the amp?

[oyrgawd]

Have you tried just going direct out from the interface into the amp?

Heck no, I paid 100-something dollars for this X-Amp thing!

Seriously though, no. Thanks for the suggestion and I'll try that next.

[ashcat_lt]

delete triple post

[ashcat_lt]

delete triple post

[ashcat_lt]

(Took me a while between typing and posting, so this has already been suggested, but I'll second it).?
Did you at least try it without the re-amp box? ?I'm not gonna guarantee that it'll solve your issue without causing new ones, but it's free and easy to try. ?It certainly won't hurt anything unless your gear is already broken. ?If it works...

The one thing that comes to my mind with your level problem is that perhaps you've got the balanced output of your DAW connected to the balanced input of the re-amp using an unbalanced cable. ?This will usually attenuate the signal about 6db. ?You didn't really specify what you've got going on there, but it's worth a look.?

As for getting exactly the sound of plugging the guitar into the amp, well you're probably going to have to live with close enough. ?If we assume that the trip through the converters and re-amp box is a totally transparent process, then the bulk of your "tone" is going to depend on the guitar, the cable, and the input impedance to which it is connected. ?Do you normally run through that tuner on the way to the amp? ?Especially with a tube amp, it's quite likely that the buffered input of a pedal tuner will have a higher input-Z - usually 1M compared to ~500K. ?This is likely to come out just a touch brighter. ?The difference is pretty subtle, and might be masked by the hf rolloff from the amp/cab, or it could be just enough to bug you. ?

OTOH, a passive DI connected to a typical mic pre usually reflects an impedance somewhat lower than a typical guitar amp. ?The exact number depends on the actual in-Z of the pre and the turns ratio of the transformer, but it's usually a little low, and is even lower if your using the parallel output jack to go to an amp. ?The total resistance of two in parallel is always smaller than either of the two. ?This would tend to roll off some of the top end. It's actually often a good thing if you're not re-amping, because it takes the place of some of that speaker rolloff I mentioned above. ?Might come out a little murky, though, when run through the amp.?

Just things to consider, but here's another: ?Do you really really need this re-amped track to sound exactly like the guitar plugged right into the amp? ?Who's gonna know, or care, as long as it sounds good in the context of the mix?

[ott0bot]

damn good post. Said most of what I wanted and more..

so good it had to be in triplicate! Haha

but yeah...trs to xlr from the interface output to the reamp then a standard gtr cable to the amp. Super important. The transformer in the reamp will alter the signal a bit, but it sounds pretty dang good on my set up. The level on the reamp isn't going to boost it too much, it's more or a fine tuning thing. You'll just have to boost the output in the DAW.

[ott0bot]

doh! double-sized

[losthighway]

ott0bot with the double

re re re amp

[Jitters]

Sorry to point out the obvious but you do know that there is a volume attenuator on the X-amp, right?

[oyrgawd]

Thanks for the thoughtful replies all.

Let's see:

Volume's full-up on the X-Amp.

It's a balanced XLR-TRS connection (unless the cable's bad).

The Boss tuner was used on the way in to disk but on the way out it was reamp>amp only. The buffer's tonal effect isn't much of a biggie next to this overall level issue.

The DI is the one in the Digimax, so I guess that's active. Somewhere among the impedance ins and outs is probably the explanation for the level drop.

I'm getting the picture that 'good enough' is what it's gonna be with the reamp.

I'll try these suggestions but I'm thinking I'll ultimately be happier as a player and recordist with the mic'd amp in the room.

[losthighway]

Thanks for the thoughtful replies all.

Let's see:

Volume's full-up on the X-Amp.

It's a balanced XLR-TRS connection (unless the cable's bad).

The Boss tuner was used on the way in to disk but on the way out it was reamp>amp only. The buffer's tonal effect isn't much of a biggie next to this overall level issue.

The DI is the one in the Digimax, so I guess that's active. Somewhere among the impedance ins and outs is probably the explanation for the level drop.

I'm getting the picture that 'good enough' is what it's gonna be with the reamp.

I'll try these suggestions but I'm thinking I'll ultimately be happier as a player and recordist with the mic'd amp in the room.

Don't you want an unbalanced 1/4" going back in to the amp?