Beginner in FX Bus with amp sim, help !

chesterfieldblues

chesterfieldblues

Member
Jan 30, 2008
231
6
18
France
Hi, I'm learning to use FX bus to uses less CPU ressources when I need to get many guitar tracks with the same amp simulator and the same presets.

I used to learn this technique with Overloud TH1 on a project with two guitars , one panned 100% left and the other 100% right, the result is great, only one TH1 instance with the same sound resulting on two different guitar tracks panned in stereo.

Sadly, it appears that every other amp sim I used with this technique don't work in stereo: with the same setup, the two guitars are not panned in stereo, they remain in the center of the panning, like if they were mixed in mono.

The same result is meeted with Revalver, Amplitube, and some other freewares...

I use Reaper 3 as a DAW.

Does this problem is considered as normal, and should I conclude TH1 is a (great) exception ??

Is there any tricks I may get to help me in this way ?

The main objective is naturally to keep CPU ressource, and not to be forced to use an instance of any amp simulator for EVERY guitar tracks...

Thanks !

(hopin this thread will be understood by all, I'm french)
 
J'ai le même problème avec Guitar Rig, ça bouffe mon CPU comme ça a pas d'allure :p

(Same problem with Guitar Rig 3 and 4, it eats CPU like crazy. I'll try SoloC though, even if I use Guitar Rig mostly for clean tones)
 
Why not just track each individually and freeze the track afterward to free up CPU?. If you change your mind later - un-freeze it, make your changes, and do it again.
 
freezing can be annoying though Jind if your trying to make small tweaks and your running out of processing power.

like damo said most amp sims run in mono because guitar's are normally recorded like that. you could try to pre process some of your other tracks and bounce them out as wav's with there effects, comp and eq's (tracks you know you are pretty confident about how they are sounding until your pre final mixdown) and then re-import them into your DAW to save on processing power.

if you have a secondary computer you could set it up as a type of node in which its not controlled by your 1st computer but some tracks are inputting into that one for processing (such as basic eq'ing, comp'ing, triggering etc) and re-routing them back into your 1st computers DAW again.

you could run into latency issues though so watch it

thats all i can think of to save processing power, oh actually shut down any crap you dont need running such as explorer.exe, antivirus's and the usual crap within task manager to save on a few more cpu cycles and ram mb's
 
mick thompson said:
freezing can be annoying though Jind if your trying to make small tweaks and your running out of processing power.
Click to expand...

I was thinking more about this quote:

The main objective is naturally to keep CPU ressource, and not to be forced to use an instance of any amp simulator for EVERY guitar tracks...
Click to expand...

I personally have never tried using a bus for one amp sim with many tracks feeding into it - I've always used individual mono tracks each with it's own sim; I like tweaking each tone since I will often track a slightly different tone from each and blend a bit. While I generally don't have to freeze tracks (sims seem not to be my resource hogs) it is what I do once I have something I like, knowing I can simply un-freeze it if I need to change something. I don't look at it as a hassle.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. My PC is already as optimized as it is going to get for audio as I would hope his is before he even starts worrying about amp sim CPU resources.
 
Am i the only one who finds the whole idea of bussing multiple DIs to a single Amp Sim bus a bit weird?

i mean, that would be like using an adapter to plug 4 guitars into a real amp at the same time.
surely the amp/coding isn't designed for that kind of thing to sound good? how can it possibly react in a realistic way to 2 or 4 different input signals at the same time?
 
TheDriller said:
Am i the only one who finds the whole idea of bussing multiple DIs to a single Amp Sim bus a bit weird?

i mean, that would be like using an adapter to plug 4 guitars into a real amp at the same time.
surely the amp/coding isn't designed for that kind of thing to sound good? how can it possibly react in a realistic way to 2 or 4 different input signals at the same time?
Click to expand...

it will sound like shit if its mono. that's the point of this thread I think.
 
Yes, last posts really brings interesting thoughts about it: I think everyone here knows how bad it sounds when two guitar players plugs on the same guitar amp, especially with distorded sound !

The fact is I thought exactly the same when I learned to use FX bus (remember: I'm a noob on it :)), so when I heard the sound result with the same FX plugin instance of TH1 on my bus with two panned guitars receiving the plugin, it was just amazing I think.

Ok, here is the mix I made with these setups, remember: I assure you there is ONLY ONE Th1 plugin instance for these two guitars and except some subtle weirdy feedback noise just before the drums enters the mix (at 0:15), everything's right, no ?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2816078/_render_last_and_only.mp3

You can try it with TH1 and your DAW if you like, I think this result is just great.
 
As Jind said, freeze is the way.

OT: Je mais parle francais aussi, petit suisses et croissants!
Je aime le cammembert avec huitres et caffe au lait... C'est la vie! Vive le tour de france et la tete de la course!
 
Pasting my response to the same thread over on the Reaper forums:

Some amp sims are designed to work in stereo (LePou's SoloC and Hybrit, for instance), while most of them aren't. I'm not sure about Revalver and Amplitube, but Guitar Rig works just fine in stereo if you set the amp/effects up that way.

One thing to keep in mind is that, if a given amp sim doesn't have a built-in cabinet, your cabinet plugin will also have to work in stereo. Kefir comes in both mono and stereo versions, for instance.

As for saving resources, you might be surprised. I just started a new project, added three tracks, and put SoloC Head on all of them - on the last one, I set it to Stereo. Looking at Reaper's Performance meter, the two mono copies both run at 1.8% of my processor. The stereo version runs at 3.5% - only *slightly* less than two plugins running in mono.

Performing the same test with kefir gives 0.5% (times two) and 1% - again, no resources saved.

Overall, you shouldn't expect to save much (if anything, as we've seen) by running your guitar plugins in stereo vs. mono. When you flip the "stereo" switch on an amp sim, it's pretty much firing up a second copy within itself. This does give you one advantage, in that you only have to adjust one plugin when you want to change the tone for both guitars, but I don't personally find that to be much of a hassle - I'd much rather have the flexibility of using two.

Doing this with plugins that *only* come in stereo will definitely save you some processor space - you could use a single EQ on the bus, rather than one on each guitar track. Keep in mind, though, that this might not give the same overall effect on your guitar sound - a compressor will need to be adjusted to deal with having four times as much signal coming in, for instance.
 
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