Hardware Insert plugin -- check me on this, please?

[otalgia-2000]

Hello everyone, and happy new year to you all

I don't use Hardware Insert very often, but I decided to try it while re-amping an electric guitar signal that was originally recorded straight into a Hi-Z input.

I'm running the DI-recorded signal out of my DAC to an amp, which is mic'd, and then recording the mic'd amplifier on a different track back into DP.

I decided it would be good to get to know Hardware Insert a bit better in general anyway, and the Latency Compensation feature made the idea additionally attractive.

I looked at the "Plug-Ins Guide" for Hardware Insert, and it explains how H.I. works.

But the documentation doesn't seem to provide a usage scenario for this particular application, and I found myself unsure about which track to place Hardware Insert on. Which I know sounds crazy, but...

Does it go on the source track? That didn't seem right to me, because the track needed to see input from the amp to determine (and compensate for) the latency interval, and of course I didn't want to wipe the source track while re-amping it.

However in a scenario like my current one, I discovered that you definitely don't want to put the plugin on the track currently being recorded -- feedback loop! So placing it on the destination track is out too.

I'm now wondering if H.I. is an unusual kind of plugin in that it can be placed on almost any track (except one with a live mic) -- even an otherwise-unused one -- and then fulfill its function on a different track. But in that case, does the Latency Compensation feature still do its job?

It occurs to me that this particular example might a little unusual because it involves using a signal that's already been recorded, as opposed to, say, directing the output of a soft-synth to an external processing device.

But really, re-amping... i mean, that little cheat is older than time, right? Surely it shouldn't be too daring...

o-2k

[bayswater]

The Hardware Insert is just like the inserts in the Mixer, except it lets you use a hardware effect instead of the usual software plugin. So you're not going to get feedback problems any more than you would using an EQ plugin.

You tell it which input and output on your audio interface are connected to the hardware processor. You can do exactly the same thing with Aux channels routed to the same channels, but it is meant to make it all easier. In addition, it is supposed to deal with the problem of latency compensation that would not normally happen.

You should be able to use it to reamp a guitar, if the physical connections are to and from an amp or amp/mic signal path. In that arrangement reamping is just an effect that changes the sound of the guitar.

The problem reported by many is that the latency calculation this plugin makes is unreliable. I haven't tried it for a long time because of that, but it might have been fixed.

[otalgia-2000]

Thanks for your reply!

You're entirely correct in that I was using re-amping to tweak the sound of a guitar already recorded.

But just so that I am clear about your explination -- do I understand correctly that you're describing placing the plugin on the source track -- the one with the DI-recorded guitar, even though that is not the track being recorded on to?

The Hardware Insert is just like the inserts in the Mixer, except it lets you use a hardware effect instead of the usual software plugin. So you're not going to get feedback problems any more than you would using an EQ plugin.

Oh, but I managed to do just that!

Happily however I was able to restrict that particular (and brief) moment of unpleasantness to feedback at the amp, having switched my studio monitors off during the process.

Not sure how I managed to create the loop -- After moving the H.I. plugin around from the source, to the destination, to another track entirely, It might have been that I had the channel onto which I was recording the re-amp still set to INPUT MONITOR (after earlier having tried a bit of this & that just to get signal to pass all along the chain from A to Z -- I'm using a new DAC, and getting used to its signal flow). Anyway, perhaps that set it off.

If I understand you correctly though -- that Hardware Insert is used either on the source track (as I believe I understand) or the destination -- then I have a feeling that I never actually derived any benefit at all from Hardware Insert this time around, because I had it on an another track entirely -- an otherwise-unused one.

I did that thinking well, I've told Hardware Insert where signal is coming from and going to, so... maybe it doesn't matter where the plugin is actually located.

Having at last printed... well, something anyway, the timing of the re-recorded (re-amped) track didn't sound outlandishly latent to me afterwards -- and I recorded it with a very high buffer setting, now that I think about it. But it's intentionally a pretty mushy-sounding thing and no paragon of tightness and accuracy in itself.

I suppose that I could just as easily have set the output of the source track to one of the hardware outs, leaving the input of the destination track set to the DAC's mic channel, and skipped Hardware Insert entirely -- compensating for latency the "new-fashioned way" (dragging or shifting the recorded soundbite by n samples).

But I guess that "use a new feature" itch was simply getting the better of me.

Thank you again for responding!

o-2k

[bayswater]

Yes, you put the Hardware Insert plugin on the track that has the sound you want to process, just as you would do with any other plugin. The only difference is you route the sound out of the computer, into whatever “effect” you have in a piece of hardware, and back again into the computer where it plays back on the same track.

I don’t know why you would get feedback. Was there a track in record mode, or monitoring mode, along with a mic that was picking up the sound from the amp? Nothing has to be in record mode for this to work. Later if you want to print the track, you would do that like any other track with an effect. E.g. route to another Audio track and record to that. I assume Freeze will work with this plugin too.

On latency, yes sometimes the plugin works. The problem I had is that it was inconsistent . And you can always do the latency compensation manually if needed.

[otalgia-2000]

Thank you for the additional explanation -- I appreciate the attention I hope that my thick skull hasn't proved too terribly frustrating.

It's getting a lot more clear, and I think I'm beginning to understand that -- because I was routing the mic'd signal back to a new track -- it likely wasn't necessary for me to use H.I. at all in my particular scenario, since I wasn't really after a strictly "in-line insert" type of facility (it's not as if I wished to route a soft synth out through a PCM41, and then back in to the same track for example).

For re-amp'ing, I think I can just run the DI signal out of my DAC, and then back in as described in my reply above.

In the past I've used "timing hit" procedure to visually identify (and hopefully correct) re-amp latency: you place the timing hit -- say, a nice tight closed hi-hat -- on a track and record that out & back in, then compare its placement before & after re-amping and move the later one up accordingly.

(I can see you thinking "yeah right, and he probably gets water from a well in the yard too." and you wouldn't have been too far off the mark there, up until a few months ago!)

Thanks again,
o-2k