What Does It Take To Get A Guitar Signal Into An Amp Sim??

[ggm1960]

It's been a while but I used to do this stuff all the time. The only thing that's different is that I'm using a MOTU 828mk3 interface this time. It's freaking me out, I have the guitar coming in on Mic/Instrument 1. Without needing to make any real adjustments I hear a good clean signal.




I'm running the guitar into an audio channel in DP8. I'm running the output to a Bus called GTR_Bus.


I have an aux channel setup in my V-Rack. The input is GTR_Bus and the output is Main Out. On that Aux channel I put Amplitube 3 up in the plug-ins area.


I would have thought my guitar signal would go to Amplitube at this point but I was wrong. What am I doing wrong???

[HCMarkus]

Mute Cue MIx for Mic 1. Must monitor thru computer (Input Monitoring)…. use small buffer for low latency.

[David Polich]

Actually, there is a better way that provides you more flexibility.

Set up a new mono audio track. Set its record input to be the Mic/Line 1 input on your 828.
(Or whatever you normally use to feed audio to DP).

Place Amplitube on an insert slot in the audio track you are recording to.

Set buffer as low as you can. You can probably set it to 64 as long as you don't have a lot of
other VI's going in real time in your project, or have a lot of track with CPU-hungry effects on
those track's inserts.

Now here's what I do which makes it even more flexible. I have Amplitube 3 on my laptop, which is connected to a Motu Ultralite. I set up a D.I. to split the signal so the guitar is first connected to the D.I., then the thru of the D.I. goes back to the Ultralite's Mic/Line input which feeds Amp 3 on the laptop. The analog output 1 of the Ultralite goes into a channel on my mixing desk. The mono feed from the D.I. also goes to a channel on my mixing desk. Both mixing desk channels are bussed to the audio interface which is connected to my main Mac running DP.

This way, the guitarist can play using sounds in Amplitube 3, and I have two signals - a direct clean signal, and the "guitar amp" signal coming from the Ultralite. I record them
both and there is no latency because I'm not monitoring thru DP to begin with. So I can be
at any buffer setting, really.

If the guitarist has a favorite amp, I set things up basically the same way - splitting the signal
via the D.I. so that it goes back into his amp (which is mic'd) and also directly into the desk and into DP. It's always best to record a direct clean track so you can put a guitar amp plug-in on that later and change the sound if you want. You're not stuck with whatever the guitarist set his amp to.

Whatever you do, you should always have a direct clean "unaffected" guitar track to work with. Because unless you arrived at the most brilliant, perfectly fitting guitar amp sound to begin with, you will always want to go back and experiment with different amp sounds later.

[ggm1960]

Actually, there is a better way that provides you more flexibility.

I have done this same type of thing in the past, the best way to go for recording for sure!

I should have mentioned that I'm trying to set this up on my system that I'm already using for live gigs. It would be best to put my Digitech GSP1101 in the rack but there is only one space left and I'd like to keep the rack case as light as possible, I'll do it if I must but I'd hoped to try this first.

I also messaged MOTU support after posting here and have a response already that probably addresses the issue I've overlooked or was unaware of.
"Thanks for writing. Go to Setup>Configure Audio System>Input Monitor Mode. Select 'Monitor record-enabled tracks through effects'. Let me know how it goes."

[bayswater]

Actually, there is a better way that provides you more flexibility.

I have done this same type of thing in the past, the best way to go for recording for sure!

I don't know about this. I find the way I play depends on the guitar, amp, effects -- sort of playing the effects and amp as well as the guitar. Tweaking works sometimes, but I have to just play it again if the amp sim changes by much.