Some help needed for reamping guitars!

[John_silent]

Hi,

Were currently recording our album and we're recording guitars seperately at home to save studio time + money.

We're reamping the guitars through an RME fireface 800 into nuendo and whats bothering is..

A) which input to use on the fireface (should we use the input with gain/trims?) or should we use the line inputs on the back for the better overall sound when reamping?

Also the volume at which the guitars should be recorded dry at and what volume is should be sent to the amplifier at.

If anyone can help us out, that would be great! thanks.

 

[greyskull]

is this john fell silent??
this be guy without thought/
call me and ill give you a hand/

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

Also the volume at which the guitars should be recorded dry at and what volume is should be sent to the amplifier at.

I do the following, which I learned here in this forum:

-12 to -15 dB when tracking.
send volume at 0

 

[GuitarHack]

I do the following, which I learned here in this forum:

-12 to -15 dB when tracking.
send volume at 0

Damn, that's pretty low. I like to aim for around -3 or even closer to 0 so I don't need to raise the level too much (and therefore raise the Noise) before sending it out to the reamp box. The Reamp Box (whatever it is) will drop that level a little also (at least the X-Amp does) and then boosted with an OD with a level around 2-3 o'clock to hit the amp with a level comparable to plugging the guitar straight in.

 

[JBroll]

Clipping hurts, though. If you have a TS or something else to tame the signal a bit, it's not as bad, but with 24 bit resolution and sufficient work against noise it's worth it.

Jeff

 

[John_silent]

is this john fell silent??
this be guy without thought/
call me and ill give you a hand/

Ah man thanks alot!
I'll give you a call.

We we're actually reamping the guitars at between -3dB and 0.

Just wanted to make sure that was all ok!

We'll actually be boosting the amps it will be going into with an EQ as opposed to a tubescreamer as we personally prefer it!

Thanks alot guys for the help.

 

[Tesseract]

Hmmmm, im the other guitarist in fell silent and just wanted to clarify a few things aswell...

I read on the sticky about reamping on this forum to record it to around -3db which makes sense so theres a bit of headroom since its so dynamic. At the moment though we're going from the Guitar > A/B switch (B going to an amp/pod for monitoring what we're playing, and A for the dry signal)....from here where should i go like browne asked?

Back input of the RME fireface, front input, or what i just thought what would it be better to go into the instrument input of my avalon mic preamp (EQ & comp off)...then XLR out into the soundcard. Or would this colour the sound to much?

Will have to do some comparisons tonight i think but if anyone has some ideas on the best input to use that would be cool!

Niiiiiiiiiiice

Ohhh also ...the output level on the RME when we send it back to the amplifer. Would it be best to have it set to -10 or +4? (assuming the output on the mixer is at 0db)

 

[greyskull]

USE THE AVALON INTO THE LINE INPUT

 

[deLuther]

Output must be set to +4dB level (if card has such switch).

 

[Force666]

What no one clearly defines usually is that if you're recording direct guitar and have peaks at -3dbfs you are probably around -15dbfsrms.

 

[JBroll]

That sounds like a number for someone who's pretty consistent. Depending on the use of accents and the difference between a palm-muted chug and a chord or single note, it can go significantly lower - I think I've had things go below -25 but I'll have to check.

Jeff

 

[Force666]

That sounds like a number for someone who's pretty consistent. Depending on the use of accents and the difference between a palm-muted chug and a chord or single note, it can go significantly lower - I think I've had things go below -25 but I'll have to check.

Jeff

Yeah, I definitly agree. I was just shooting out an average so to speak. Direct guitar makes for a very dynamic wav.

Basically, you want your highest peak to hit -3dbfs is what I was getting across.

 

[JBroll]

Yeah, I was about to be pretty damn impressed if you got even half of your guys hitting that consistently...

Also, because a Tube Screamer does compress the tone and add very little fizz, and it's usually pretty clear when one will be needed, I have a tendency to record with the TS on and just leave it out of the chain later.

Jeff