Recommendation on guitar recording settings?

[boydwgrossii]

Greetings all,

I plan on retracting some guitar. Do you guys have a recommendation on some settings as I go into recording?

I might do a little bit of compression and some EQ through my Apollo twin Mark II Solo.

I figured if I slightly process the tone into reaper, and then do my processing, it might have a clearer and really good tone.

I wanted to see what you guys do and see if anyone has any examples

[mschnell]

Acoustic or electric ?

Why would you want to do that ?

A 24 Bit (or even better 32 Bit float) recording preserves any detail.

There are some things that are considered to be advantageous before A/D to prevent some left-over artifacts or to prevent the desire of using outboard gear on the recorded audio (e.g. your favorite amp, denoiser, tube preamp, limiting compressor), though.

[martifingers]

Hi. Not quite what you are asking but Kenny's recent videos cover mixing both electric and acoustic guitars and as usual, are very good indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/@REAPERMania/videos

[boydwgrossii]

Thank you guys for the responses!

It would be electric.

[AudioBabble]

Many different ways to do it!

If you like the way your guitar sounds with EQ and comp from your Apollo, go ahead and record that.

If you plan to use amp-modelling plugins and other fx to give you a guitar 'sound' akin to a real amp and pedal board, then I'd say just go direct in to your interface and let the plugins do the work... if they're designed for guitar, your best bet is to give them an un-treated signal set so it's mostly peaking around -18db on your input meter.

Personally, I have an effects chain specifically for electric guitar which is meant to replicate my real-world amp and fx board. So when, I'm recording, I'm playing through that chain (although all that actually gets recorded is the dry guitar signal). If I want to tweak fx settings afterwards, I can do that. In practice though I rarely do... maybe once in a blue moon if I think maybe the overdrive/gain on a particular section could be changed... or maybe I used an fx that I think the take would be better off without, I can manually turn that off in a particular section.

[mschnell]

A (afaik great) free Guitar amp and effect modeling plugin is by Tukan (available in ReaPack),

[boydwgrossii]

Originally Posted by AudioBabble

Many different ways to do it!

If you like the way your guitar sounds with EQ and comp from your Apollo, go ahead and record that.

If you plan to use amp-modelling plugins and other fx to give you a guitar 'sound' akin to a real amp and pedal board, then I'd say just go direct in to your interface and let the plugins do the work... if they're designed for guitar, your best bet is to give them an un-treated signal set so it's mostly peaking around -18db on your input meter.

Personally, I have an effects chain specifically for electric guitar which is meant to replicate my real-world amp and fx board. So when, I'm recording, I'm playing through that chain (although all that actually gets recorded is the dry guitar signal). If I want to tweak fx settings afterwards, I can do that. In practice though I rarely do... maybe once in a blue moon if I think maybe the overdrive/gain on a particular section could be changed... or maybe I used an fx that I think the take would be better off without, I can manually turn that off in a particular section.

Thank you! One thing that really confuses me is what the DAW should be registering in input gain.

[zeekat]

I guess it should be registering the "not clipping". Plugging the thing in and making sure it doesn't clip is about all I do, personally. That and picking the amp model with the prettiest icon.

[Wallaby]

Plug in the guitar direct into the interface and record the guitar clean dry pure.
Then in the mixing producing thousand plugins and all possible amp sims.
The guitar recording remains as a pure piece of art.
I prefer it this way. There is no law or rule. At the end your music is pleasure or pain ?

[AudioBabble]

Originally Posted by boydwgrossii

Thank you! One thing that really confuses me is what the DAW should be registering in input gain.

yep, -18 is the ball-park for guitar/bass and generally 'line level' signals if you're planning on putting further processing on them. It's like the digital equivalent of 0db on an analogue console going into tape.

In practice, what this means is your 'medium' signal should peak around -18db, if you play the guitar softly it'll be lower, if you hit it hard it might jump up to about -12db or even higher momentarily, but I'd say at least 6db of headroom before 0db is an absolute max.

If you were to aim for just before clipping at 0db, you're getting rather too close and not leaving enough headroom... for example, if I did this with my guitar and then decided to stomp on my (real-world) wah pedal, i'd definitely be going into clipping.

Completely unlike analogue consoles going to tape, you're not missing out on anything signal-wise by not cranking the gain so you're peaking higher than -18db, plus you're not trying to overcome noise like tape hiss, so you have no worries about signal-to-noise ratio.

But perhaps most importantly, digital guitar amp sims and fx are designed with this kind of input signal in mind, as are most if not all 'analogue emulation' type plugins like console strips, etc.... so you're really feeding the effects with the ideal input level so they sound as intended.

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by boydwgrossii

Thank you! One thing that really confuses me is what the DAW should be registering in input gain.

The DAW will not have any such problem at all. It will just digest , what the audio A/D interface sends. The gain needs to be correct for the hardware. here 32 Bit floating point hardware shines, as it can cope with any gain equally well.

[Gibson_GM]

Yes, great advice. I never play "dry" when recording, but as previously said - because I'm just playing (not recording) through an amp sim, the dry signal IS what is recorded. Later changes can then be made. I NEED to hear the processed sound as it affects how I play.

If I record using headphones, I also will almost always find I had too much gain when played back thru monitors. Since it's not printed, things like that are easy to adjust, THEN 'apply track effects as new take (mono output)' will burn it - and also leave the original dry take there too if you don't delete it.

[mschnell]

"'apply track effects as new take" is only necessary to save CPU when mixing.

Otherwise you can just have the effect chain processed with any playback or additional track recording .

[mindlessgenius]

Originally Posted by boydwgrossii

Thank you! One thing that really confuses me is what the DAW should be registering in input gain.

The DAW sits after the DAC (digital-analog converter) in the chain, so the gain displayed there is just numbers running through a microprocessor. Gainstaging helps having control over the mix, but as your Apollo has a dynamic range of 117 dB, you're quite unlikely to break anything by not being tedious, especially if you're going direct in. No guitar pickup I've ever played on has that much power

[Gibson_GM]

Originally Posted by mschnell

"'apply track effects as new take" is only necessary to save CPU when mixing.

Otherwise you can just have the effect chain processed with any playback or additional track recording .

Yes. Get a few amp sims going at once, there is trouble. On my machine, at least; I know some have a lot of RAM to burn - I don't. 2 instances of Neural Amp modeler and a drum VSTi, and I'm glitching.

Another 'bonus' of applying the FX is that you could take the amp sim offline, and add a new FX chain 'on top of it' - revert to the dry signal, and audition a different amp sim. It's just one way of doing something, there are of course many. Like copying the dry signal to a new track, mute original.

[AudioBabble]

Let's see now...
Effektor WF3607 (Kuassa)
Electric Matter (Audiority)
Green Reaper (Auditority)
bx_Blackdist2 (Brainworx)
BIAS AMP 2 (Positive Grid)
Replika XT (NI)

Running at 256spls buffer, 48khz

and that's me maxed out... have to freeze all other tracks.

Would be nice to slap a nice spring reverb on the end, but no chance!!

That's on my Win 11 2019 10th gen i7

Under Linux Reaper, same fx (installed under Wine), on a 2012 i5 machine

no glitching... and room for a spring reverb too.

That's without doing any system tweaks yet.

Needless to say, I'm porting over to Linux ASAP

[msundh]

You don't really need one, but a DI box simplify things.

[serr]

Originally Posted by boydwgrossii

Greetings all,

I plan on retracting some guitar. Do you guys have a recommendation on some settings as I go into recording?

I might do a little bit of compression and some EQ through my Apollo twin Mark II Solo.

I figured if I slightly process the tone into reaper, and then do my processing, it might have a clearer and really good tone.

I wanted to see what you guys do and see if anyone has any examples

Since we have the ability to record raw audio at 24 bit with zero penalty for noise or dynamics issues, just record the raw signal and work out the live production you want after the fact. Then you can come back with the production you worked out and roll with it live.

In a studio recording setting, I'd still record the raw input for safety at the very least. If you're going for a live broadcast with some production baked in, recording the raw inputs and sorting the mix/production out after is a thing now. Feels like cheating.

It's still as hard as it even was to undo too heavy of compression, for just one example. Take advantage of modern 24 bit recording to avoid painting yourself into a corner.

[mschnell]

Increasing buffer might help against "glitching".
It does not harm unless you wand to monitor the signal you are recording in realtime.

[Gibson_GM]

Originally Posted by AudioBabble

Let's see now...
Effektor WF3607 (Kuassa)
Electric Matter (Audiority)
Green Reaper (Auditority)
bx_Blackdist2 (Brainworx)
BIAS AMP 2 (Positive Grid)
Replika XT (NI)

Running at 256spls buffer, 48khz

and that's me maxed out... have to freeze all other tracks.

Would be nice to slap a nice spring reverb on the end, but no chance!!

That's on my Win 11 2019 10th gen i7

Under Linux Reaper, same fx (installed under Wine), on a 2012 i5 machine

no glitching... and room for a spring reverb too.

That's without doing any system tweaks yet.

Needless to say, I'm porting over to Linux ASAP

Being a poor ol' country boy, I have like 6GB RAM on my Windoze 10 budget machine.

I can get 50+ tracks going by doing doing 'tricks' like freezing or applying FX. It actually does much better than I thought it would, but still...easier (for me) to just use that workflow (apply as new take, offline the amp sims etc) than to deal with it when the glitching starts.

I have to do things like track big guitar solos in a subproject, process them, then insert them in the main project so they only play rather than have processing going on, things like that.

Next computer will have quite a bit more RAM, I do believe, LOL! But hey, we were doing this back in 2000 with a lot less than what I have now.