Trick for better guitars on cheap interfaces

[UMF]

Hi Everyone,
My name is Dan, I´m from Germany and since i just signed up to the most awsome place on the net, I thought, why not start out with something I figured out a long time ago.

If you use Amp Sims and Impulses, you want the best DI signal possible.
My problem was that the only thing that I had for recording was a Tapco link.USB 2 channel interfaces.

One day I did not plug in the guitar cable to the interface and all I did was to record the interface by itself. I had some noise coming through my speakers after I played the "empty" track back. I slapped Voxengo Span on the track, set the db scale to -60/60 and there it was. There were huge amounts of frequencies that were on the track, which were above the interface's noise floor. Those huge db peaks have different reasons, but the point is this.

If you use any parametric EQ, play back the "empty track in a loop" and try to even out the input signal of whatever interface you use, the feed to your amp sim or tube screamer vst will be a lot cleaner.

Just try it, basicly you want the interface to be as natural as it can be.

Cool trick for cheap interfaces to make them sound a bit better....

Again, thank you guys on the forum and thank you Mr. Sneap for all the valuable information that this place holds.

 

[Kohugaly]

I have better Idea....
1.record "silence" with its noise
2.record DI
3.use noise reduction based on noise sample

for example Adobe audition has great noise reduction plugins that can reduce noise practically without any artifacts.

 

[Tommy Evans]

Kohugaly, does that actually work? I'm not gonna lie it's crossed my mind a couple of times but I've never actually done it.

 

[Kohugaly]

It really depends on the noise reduction algorithm the plugin uses. In noise reduction I've actually never found anything better than Adobe Audition. It seems to me it's based on Izotope restoration softwares but I'm not really sure about that. It works really cool to me. Sometimes its like a magic stick. Back on, when I was using the stock computer audio interface to record stuff with my friends Noise reduction saved my ass a few times. Anyway I really use it on DIs very rarely. It sometimes leaves artifacts on Instruments that have noise as part of their natural sound. I once used it on Acoustic guitar and it particularly removed also the natural noisy strumming sound, Also produces artifacts when you reduce the noise from vocal (the vocals are actually not affected but when it comes to breathing, program consider it as noise but usually fails reducing it resulting in bubble/glancering like sound). Anyway works much better than noisegate but when the original sound is way too noisy bubbling artifacts start to appear.

 

[Trevoire520]

So you're basically recording the noise from your interface, looking at it through a spectrum analyser and eq'ing it to make the noise flat?

The thing that makes me scratch my head is it seems like you're assuming that this is a result of the interface eq'ing whatever noise is at the input, and you're assuming that this noise is flat at it's origin.

But what if the noise itself isn't flat in nature, and the interface is actually capturing it transparently? So any peaks or troughs are the actual sonic signature of the noise itself?

I'll admit this isn't something I've heard of before, but I wonder if it could be done differently by actually feeding the interface white noise from a signal generator, as you then know that this should be a flat spectrum.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

I have better Idea....
1.record "silence" with its noise
2.record DI
3.use noise reduction based on noise sample

for example Adobe audition has great noise reduction plugins that can reduce noise practically without any artifacts.

That is a better idea..
OR..
1. Just record the DI
2. Use noise reduction based on noise sample.

The guitar, cable, batteris, DI, etc. can add/pick up some unwanted noise.
I say remove the noise iiiiiif it's an issue.

EDIT:
I've used Goldwave's noise reduction to clean up old live recordings, it works pretty good..

 

[UMF]

Trevoire520,

I know it sounds strange, and it may be only a thing that works on that particular interface, but that eq that I got by dipping the frequencies that had a lot more energy gave me a perfect DI signal to feed to an Amp Sim for example. I tried it with TSE Overdrive --)Lecto --) into Lecab with an Marshall Cab impulse. So the chain was Corrective EQ-OD-AMPSIM-IR-loader. I will see if I have some old recordings to upload and show the difference. But this "1.record "silence" with its noise
2.record DI
.use noise reduction based on noise sample
is a lot better and not as static as an EQ curve...

 

[Kohugaly]

That is a better idea..
OR..
1. Just record the DI
2. Use noise reduction based on noise sample.

The guitar, cable, batteris, DI, etc. can add/pick up some unwanted noise.
I say remove the noise iiiiiif it's an issue.

EDIT:
I've used Goldwave's noise reduction to clean up old live recordings, it works pretty good..

Exactly.... I forgot to mention to record the noise sample with everything connected (or basically leave a few seconds playing nothing when recording and use the "silence" at the beginning as noise sample). Are we clear now?

And I also agree to remove the noise only if needed. Most of the time noise isn't such big deal.