OT: Demonized Guitar Track Samples

[Rednroll]

A few people have asked me to upload some guitar tracks that have been run thru the Damage Control Demonizer, where they could hear some unbiased samples of what the demonizer sounds like. It's an external AMP SIM/Cabinet Sim hardware device.
More Info here:
www.damagecontrolusa.com
So here they are.

The Technical Details-

Recording Setup:
1. Epiphone Les Paul Custom Guitar
2. Plugged into a Direct box.
3. Direct Output of Direct box plugged into Demonizer Input.
4. Demonizer output plugged into monitoring system.
5. Mic level direct out of direct box plugged into Mic Pre Input of Sound Devices USBPre Sound Card.
6. Guitar Direct signal Recorded into Sony Vegas 5 at 16bit/44.1Khz mono.

Post Record Steps:
1. Tracks where edited in Vegas to remove mistakes and to shorten length for later web uploads.
2. Edited tracks where Rendered as 16bit/44.1Khz mono .WAV files.

Demonized Steps:
1. The edited track was played back in Vegas thru an Echo Gina20 sound card.
2. Analog out of Gina20 was plugged into a Yamaha 03D mixer channel.
3. Demonizer was inserted into the mixer channel, post mixer pre amp.
4. Demonizer was adjusted to try and reproduce original recording guitar tones.
5. Digital output of 03D mixer was routed to the Digital In of the Echo Gina20 and recorded in realtime playback/record to a mono track back into Vegas.

File Size Compression:
1. .WAV files where imported into Sony Sound Forge 8.0
2. All Files rendered in Sony PCA format to reduce file size but to not lose any quality from the original .WAV format. The downside of this is that you must have a Sony app (Sound Forge,Acid,Vegas, CD Architect) to play them back.
3. .WAV files where reopened in Sound Forge 8.0.
4. Then rendered as .MP3 128kbs mono format.
5. Files where verified to have the same spectral qualities as the original .WAV format.

Basically, if you want to be sure that the files are not effected by the .MP3 compression, then you must have a Sony app which will playback the PCA format. You can then render to .WAV format and play them back in Reaper. If you don't have a Sony app then download the .MP3 files. I set everything on the highest quality settings available for a mono MP3 in Sound Forge and then verified nothing spectrally was lost due to the compression using a Sound Technologies stand alone Spetral Analyzer and comparing it to the original .WAV files.

The Objective:
There are 2 files of 5 song snippets of some common songs that you might be familiar with. Each song has the direct record unprocessed part. Then there is another file which takes that direct record signal and runs it thru the demonizer processing. I figured the direct record files could let others run these tracks thru their amp sim plugins, Line6 Pods, Digitech GNX's, or directly into an amp and see how the Demonizer compares to those devices. The demonized tracks have no reverbs or other effects added to them. These are direct recorded tracks using the Demonizer's Tube Distortion section followed by it's Speaker cabinet/mic emulator circuit. So if you're going to compare a plugin to these tracks, then you should limit that plugin to amp and speaker processing. The main thing I was trying to hear was some good low end crunch provided by the Tubes of the Demonizer that always seems to be missing in other amp simulators and how it compared to a Marshall or Mesa Boogie amp setup. I was also listening for other parts like on the "Eruption" track to see if finger picked higher frequency notes got washed together.

Disclaimer:
The total record session was about 45 minutes long. The monitoring setup was all wrong. Some of the playing is sloppy and the guitar in parts sounded like it fell out of tune. So try to ignore most of that, the main objective was that I had the guitar player play some songs that I knew had some heavy 1/8th note chugging to it that he was familiar with. He didn't practice these songs before the record. It was more of a "Do you know this song?"..."Nope..", "Ok, how about this one?" "Yep"..."Ok, play that", then I hit the record button and he would stumble thru the song. One take, no punch-ins..etc.

Song Selections:
The songs "Seek and Destroy" and "The Zoo" where chosen for their heavy riff feel.

"Eruption" was chosen to see how the demonizer handled finger picked note articulation, to see if a washing effect occured like in other amp sims.

"Road House Blues" (or at least something like it)and the other Blues medley ("A touch of Blues") was chosen to see how the demonizer sounded with less distortion applied with more of a blues rock kind of tone applied by the demonizer.

Downloads:

PCA Versions:

http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=83644

MP3 Versions:

http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=83635

I welcome others to make comments of what you think of the Demonizer and also to use the direct signal record tracks to run them thru some plugins or other amp sim devices and upload the files so we can see how these other devices stack up against the Demonizer.

Enjoy,
Red

[chrishurley]

It sounds very "direct sounding"- like most direct-outs. Sounds nothing like a real amp in the room with you, or a commercial recording of an amp. Sounds mostly like they just lop off some highs and not much else.

I'm a little disappointed because they advertise this amazing "analog speaker simulation" and it really pales in comparison to the digital stuff in that regard.

Now the tone might be great through some other speaker sim. I suspect that it would be!

just my opinions, of course.

[Rednroll]

I suppose it should sound "direct". As I mentioned no reverb or delays have been added. It's suppose to sound like if you place a mic directly infront of a speaker cabinet and record it. So of course in that situation you would get no room sound or reverberation and it "should" sound direct. It's a dry mono track. You add the other stuff in the mixing process.

I also included the direct output from the guitar that was used. So feel free to run them thru some other amp sim like a POD or a amp sim plugin. Don't add any reverbs, or delays then upload them so we can compare how they sound to your amp sound of choice. That's one of the reasons I posted this.

I'm not sure how you're interpretting the information but here's what it says:

Extensive analysis was conducted on the response of professionally mic’d closed-back 4x12 cabinets to come up with the Demonizer’s Direct Output circuitry. The result is a 14th order analog network that goes far beyond traditional techniques, delivering an incredibly responsive feel while managing to preserve the high end presence of great recorded guitar tones.

What this means to mean is that if you place a Mic on the front of a 4x12 cabinet, this will give you the response of the Mic and the speaker cabinet when you close mic the cabinet. Have you ever close miced a guitar cabinet and listened to that track by itself?

[chrishurley]

Originally Posted by Rednroll

I'm not sure how you're interpretting the information but here's what it says:

What this means to mean is that if you place a Mic on the front of a 4x12 cabinet, this will give you the response of the Mic and the speaker cabinet when you close mic the cabinet. Have you ever close miced a guitar cabinet and listened to that track by itself?

Yes, I've recorded various closely mic'd cabinets and i've used just about every direct device I could get my hands on over the years. The demonizer clips don't sound like a cabinet to me, but it does sound like other direct devices. Could be losing something in the mp3 conversion (as the direct clips inevitably will). Shoot me, I guess. [edit- though you seem to have gone through some efforts to ensure that the response of the mp3 clips are the same as the originals, I don't believe that 128k mono mp3's are indistinguishable from the originals]

I'm glad to hear the clips, though. I've thought about buying a demonizer before but the cost of it is too much to overcome- the clips don't really sound "magical", so I can continue with my original plan just to build a low-wattage amp with a non-compensated direct-out and apply impulses to it. I've got one on the bench that I need to finish one of these days when I'm not doing amp kits and such for other people.

Not to say the demonizer isn't as good or better than any other direct device. It certainly sounds better than the dirty sound you get out of a sansamp.

[Rednroll]

Originally Posted by chrishurley

Could be losing something in the mp3 conversion (as the direct clips inevitably will). Shoot me, I guess. [edit- though you seem to have gone through some efforts to ensure that the response of the mp3 clips are the same as the originals, I don't believe that 128k mono mp3's are indistinguishable from the originals]

Well it very well could be and that's why I included the PCA files, because that is a lossless compression. 128kbs is actually pretty good for a MONO file. My spectral meter doesn't lie. For your reference I did a spectral comparison for you.

See Here:
http://www.stashbox.org/uploads/1145...comparison.jpg

This is 2 spectral captures. The first one is of white noise in the .WAV format shown in the RED spectral response, and the curve in BLUE is that same file then rendered as a 128Kbs mono file. If it's losing anything in the .MP3 compression, this graph ought to show you, it is not losing it in the spectral qualities. Now if I was using a stereo file then I would agree that my bit rate would have to be a lot higher, probably more like 320kbs.