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Old 01-28-2013, 12:00 PM   #1
Gooey
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Default Realtime effects for guitar

Maybe this topic has been explored on here before. But I couldn't find anything about it. If anybody knows how to point me towards any such posts, let me know, and I'll slink away and read all of them.

What I want to do is plug an electric guitar into a guitar preamp, plug the output of that into my computer's sound interface's input, then run Reaper hosting some plug-ins to do realtime processing effects; primarily, slap-back echo/delay, chorus and reverb.

I'd like to hear from any and all people who are doing this, particularly guitarists (but anybody doing this for any instrument). I strongly gravitate towards clean, noise-free effects rather than to things like pedals/stomp boxes, which is why I want to use Reason/plug-ins in the first place.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts that you might pitch my direction.

Last edited by Gooey; 01-28-2013 at 04:07 PM. Reason: typo
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Old 01-28-2013, 12:04 PM   #2
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There are so many amp sims available it's almost funny. Have you Googled them.

I am sure you must know about GTR, Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Revalver, Vox, etc.....no preamp necessary, just plug into your audio interface and rock!
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Old 01-28-2013, 04:06 PM   #3
Gooey
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dea-man View Post
There are so many amp sims available it's almost funny. Have you Googled them.

I am sure you must know about GTR, Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Revalver, Vox, etc.....no preamp necessary, just plug into your audio interface and rock!
Thanks, but I am well aware of all the amp sims, etc. (and strongly dislike the whole lot of them). My question is very specific. I want to go this precise way.
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Old 01-28-2013, 04:29 PM   #4
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There is no question anywhere in your post, so no it's not "very specific". You strongly dislike all amp sims and yet you want to do the exact thing they are made to do. If you're asking how to do this:
Quote:
What I want to do is plug an electric guitar into a guitar preamp, plug the output of that into my computer's sound interface's input, then run Reaper hosting some plug-ins to do realtime processing effects; primarily, slap-back echo/delay, chorus and reverb.
just do it. What else do you need to know?

Are you running out into a real amp? I can imagine adding all these effect to a dry singal and then amping them would sound very good - reverb, delay, chorus, etc, all generally need to be in a loop between the amp and cabinet to get the desired effect.
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Old 01-28-2013, 05:47 PM   #5
Gooey
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Originally Posted by Swamp Ape View Post
There is no question anywhere in your post, so no it's not "very specific". You strongly dislike all amp sims and yet you want to do the exact thing they are made to do. If you're asking how to do this:

just do it. What else do you need to know?

Are you running out into a real amp? I can imagine adding all these effect to a dry singal and then amping them would sound very good - reverb, delay, chorus, etc, all generally need to be in a loop between the amp and cabinet to get the desired effect.
I don't want to come across as a pain, or like I want to get into an argument over semantics. What I meant was that my interest is very specific. I should have stated my "question" more specifically (which I now have, in my last post, at least I hope I have). Since I didn't say so, it makes perfect sense that nobody here would have assumed that I was hopelessly addicted to real analog guitar amps, or that I'm such a prickly SOB/curmudgeon about it.

To somebody like me, who's into gourmet boutique guitar electronics, the suggestion that I might use Guitar Rig or some other modeling thing, causes a hackle-raising knee-jerk reaction, because it makes me feel kinda like Pablo Picasso might have felt if he were told that maybe he should get a paint-by-numbers set (because after all, aren't those paint-by-number sets designed to do exactly what he's talking about?)

Your point about having the delay, chorus and reverb ahead of the amp is certainly a good one. But I'd be sending to the computer out of an effects loop output, then bringing the processed signal back to the amp chain. I'm just thinking that the computer-based effects would likely be a lot better (higher resolution and quieter) than say, stomp boxes would be.
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Old 01-28-2013, 04:30 PM   #6
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I am assuming you want a clean, no distortion "preamp".

There are a lot of interfaces that have Hi-Z inputs (guitar preamp) built in. Pick one, go to town...

Or, if you already own an interface that doesn't have a Hi-Z input, a good quality DI (eg. Radial ProDi) will do fine connected to a mic input.
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Old 01-28-2013, 05:10 PM   #7
Gooey
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Well thanks everybody for trying to answer. But this isn't going in the direction I want to go in. Sorry for whatever confusion factors I have contributed to the discussion.

I was trying to be very clear and specific. But I don't seem to be coming across. Perhaps I need to say more about it. I realize that I haven't posted very much here before, and that this is a newbie category. But in an effort to dissuade people from assuming that I'm a newbie in general, let me say that I am in no way in need of guidance about how to implement the idea of playing guitar through a [fill-in-the-blank-sequence-of-equipment]. I was naively assuming that because this is a Reaper forum, that my "question" would be taken in the context of being something confined to Reason itself, rather than about how to implement the idea in general. I see now in retrospect, how that's certainly not obvious.

I have lots of real amp heads, tube preamps, etc. I have been designing and building analog guitar amp circuits (tube and solid state) for decades. I'm a computer systems guy by trade, and have been writing software for a long time too. So I am not seeking anyone's opinion about choices of things like preamps, or new to the idea of software modeling (which I passionately LOATHE).

What I AM a newbie at is the idea of using a computer as a realtime effects device, specifically using VST delay, chorus and reverb. I haven't even tried it yet. I am hoping that someone here has done that. Because I have Reaper, I figure that I might as well use it to host those VST effects. It seems to me that doing that would probably work, even if I never hit <record>. But it could well prove handy to be able to use Reaper as a scratchpad recorder while I'm at it.

So in a nutshell, I want to interface one or more of my existing guitar amps/preamps to my Reaper-based DAW, and use it to host VST delay, chorus and reverb effects. I don't want to even remember that there are things in the universe like amp sims, etc.
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Old 01-28-2013, 05:47 PM   #8
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Sure, this works fine as long as you can avoid latency. I wouldn't use any of Reaper's built-in reverbs or choruses but there's some interesting delays at least. It ought to work like in an effects loop like pedals would - guitar->preamp or amp head->fx loop to interface into reaper and out->back into amp or cabinet, unless are you looking to record into Reaper at the final stage.

It's kind of unwieldy though - more trouble than it's worth to me after some experiments. It has the disadvantages of both actual amp recording and of simulation while canceling most of out the benefits of either. It's interesting that you have such a distate for amp simulation yet you want digital reverb, as the two are so intertwined.
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Old 01-28-2013, 04:58 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gooey View Post
Thanks, but I am well aware of all the amp sims, etc. (and strongly dislike the whole lot of them). My question is very specific. I want to go this precise way.
Sorry.

I guess I misunderstood what it is that you wanted.
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