ORIGINAL: stratcat

Go here and listen to their samples. Listen through a good system and turn it up.

http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=guitarcombos_us

Those are great.

you can notice 1.9ms latency...you must have bionic ears. I dont think its humanly possible or your computer isnt registering the correct latency..
CJ

I cant notice 1.9ms...I guess i dont play that fast.....

I didnt take it that way, Im so used to being corrected in this room. I am the master of mis-information. also, Being corrected is one of the ways i learn all this PC mobo gombo stuff.

CJ

I do notice the latency, if not I would have gone down the Guitar Rig route a long time ago for recording purposes. The other problem with latency is that to work at 1.9ms puts a lot of stress on the CPU, and Guitar Rig proportedly puts a good deal of stress, plus reverbs and other effects on other tracks, and we're asking for trouble.

The computer is not the only source of latency. I bet my V-AMP has a minute latency, then there's the whole signal path and multiple conversions that have to take place before my speakers can get the sound to me at the speed of sound (another latency factor).

There is a point here though, if someone is just strumming out rythm parts at 100bpm I doubt latency will be a factor, but shredding out 16th note triplets at tempos around 160bpm and there is no chance of keeping in time. I may be part of a dying breed, but I love shredding through arpeggios and creating intricate tapping runs at extreme velocities.

I never thought about this from a drummers perspective. It must drive them nuts too, especially with V-Drums.

Anyway, this is a great topic and let's keep it going and keep adding to it.

Over the last 35 years I have had the pleasures of playing what most would consider excellent gear, from Marshall stacks, Mesa Boogies, Fender Twins, even an ENGL Savage. Most would consider me old school, I'm in my 40's and like playing neoclassical music, and still play Jackson USA guitars with floyd rose tremolos.

With that background, I will state that guitarists are stuck in the past and need to experiment more with the wide range of tones they can achieve today. Why do I make such a bold statement? When the electric guitar came out there was basically only tube amplification, and I am sure the first tube amps completely sucked when compared to today's standards. Over time manufacturers improved the tonal possibilities and tube based amplification improved. At that time there wasn't much at all in solid state or it was prohibitively expensive for mainstream. Anyway, over time Solid State amplification arrives, sucks at first, and manufacturers improve its tonal capabilities and today there are great sounding Solid State amps. Unfortunately history already dictated that Solid State must emulate the vacuum tube because that had become the defacto standard sound.

My point is, why do we have to accept that defacto standard? Is the tube mindset actually a limitation? Why don't vocalists amplify their voices with tube based rigs (TBR)? Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs? Why aren't PA systems tube based? Keyboardists don't rely on tubes.

I really want to know why I should believe only true electric guitar tone can come out of a tube amp, and the only way to get good recorded tone is to mic a TBR which then gets amplified via transistor technology and ultimately converted to a binary signal.

I'll admit I got great sounds out of a pair of Mesa MKIIs in stereo with a roland GP-16 processor back in the 80's. Today I get much better sounds out of a Behringer V-AMP Pro going into a small Behringer 12 channel mixer that feeds two active speakers from SR Technology. And the SPDIF from the V-AMP goes direct to the soundcard and records great digital tones that I couldn't be happier with.

Maybe somewhere I stopped listening to guitarists who are stuck in the past and started listening to what my ears were hearing.

CJ, I don't have a myspace or related site, and I'm not into speed metal, its more of a Malmsteen like approach. I don't even have much time to play, as most of my time is devoured by my consulting practice and family. I play the guitar maybe 5-10 hours a week, in which I spend about half just practicing and the other half composing small sections that I can use to solo over. I guess I lost interest in public attention and just do this as a personal hobby. I basically just enjoy the physical and mental challenges of playing guitar and creating neoclassical riffs. I usually never complete a song, and usually never even bother spending time to properly mix what I do record.

That being said, a friend and I just worked out the Bach Prelude in C minor at 130bpm with a neoclassical twist and he wants to record it with video and put it on MyTube. If we do this in the next few weeks I'll send you a link.

By the way, I really liked the tone you got on the first song on your music site. If I remember well, you did that with a Tonelab?

ORIGINAL: CJaysMusic

you can notice 1.9ms latency...you must have bionic ears. I dont think its humanly possible or your computer isnt registering the correct latency..
CJ

My memory tells me that standing 1 meter from the ampspeaker = 4ms latency, so I´m pretty sure there´s something more going on in Jose´s signalchain. To me a useful latency is anything under 10ms.

However I prefer "real" amps for the way they make me play, my theory is, that I get the "right" feedback from an amp - even if it doesn´t howl, it does make the strings vibrate = I play more relaxed/like when I´m playing with the band.

Because of this I can usually hear what has been recorded with some kind of simulator, i.e. the sounds may be perfect simulations of the real thing, but very often it sounds like it´s played under stress. This doesn´t mean I deem them useless, I mean look at my hero Jeff Beck - a lot of his work during the 90´s was recorded through just a preamp.

"Beauty is in the ear of the listener" - good sound = what fits the feeling of the song.

I don´t have any speakers connected to my internet-pc, but I got really interested in CJ´s music, I´ll listen later.

pgw, i just finnished reading that book with that in it. The producer stopped him before he did it and thats how they came to putting it in a leslie speaker...

CJ

It was just a story. Another thing was when jogn suggested it, the engineer and producer both laughed at him and said "instead of you hanging from the ceiling upside down and swirling around the mic, why dont we just swing the mic around you."

CJ

Hey CJ and all others interested, I did do a recording the other night of a "concept" I am exploring. I always thought that While My Guitar Gently Weeps isn't very sad actually, so I decided to do a "While My Guitar Screams in Agony" version just to see how it would turn out. Here is a piece of the first attempt I did in order to capture a more agonizing sound.

http://www.kencampbell.it/agony.mp3

Keep in mind this is not mixed, mastered (although I did have to pass it through Elephant to bring up the volume) and is a "Proof of Concept" piece. If it get's a green light from me and others, I may look for online collaborators to do the bass and drum tracks.

Related to the thread, this was done with a V-AMP Pro, using a Mesa amp sim with some delay/chorus and reverb and recorded direct using SPDIF. The rthym guitar and lead guitar used the same patch and were not processed further in Sonar.

ORIGINAL: mottull

Anyone can give any tip on how to get a more proffessional sound from my guitar on my mixes?

I'm recording direct using a multieffect pedal and I have Guitar Rig 2

I'm assuming that since you have pedals, rigs and such that you have an electric. You guys might find this site interesting

http://guitar.about.com/od/guitaristsgear/Guitarist_Tones_Settings.htm

I thought that this was gonna be a thread about those awful piezo acoustic pickups (like Tim Reynolds live stuff)...sounds like a kazoo. A great guitar sound (acoustic) is on Buddy Guy's "Blues Singer"...what he uses...I'd like to know.

this post vanished for 2 days...?

anyhow, Mot- what type of guitars are you using, and what type of amps?

is this live or in the world of electronica(no sarcasm intended...)

-JD

My point is, why do we have to accept that defacto standard? Is the tube mindset actually a limitation? Why don't vocalists amplify their voices with tube based rigs (TBR)? Why do most bassists seem to prefer solid state rigs to TBRs? Why aren't PA systems tube based? Keyboardists don't rely on tubes.

Some of the answers are very practical. PAs would be tremendously heavy, hot and expensive if they were powered by tubes.

Bass players that like solid state rigs like the fast response, light weight and high power and low maintenance. I heard a guy using a 1200W Trace Elliot amp the other night. The head wighed maybe 30 lbs. A 300W tube SVT weighs what, 85 lbs or so?

Keyboard players want clean, low maintenance, relatively low cost hi-fi power and solid state is the ticket there.

Are guitar players stuck in the past? Some things are just great and don't necessarily need to change. If they are "stuck", where does that leave orchestral string players?

Personally, I don't feel stuck. Quite the opposite. There's a home and a market for practically any noise I can wring out of my guitar. I use everything I have at my disposal (how about controlling a Korg KARMA synth with a midi guitar??) and I'm having a TON of fun.

I'm digging everyone from Jimi to Jimmy to Jack White. Things have never been better for guitar players. More tools, more markets, and more means of expressing ourselves.

Tube, SS, modelers, let 'er rip. There's room and a demand for all of them.

Interesting BC76, but I am actually MORE inspired by plugging in to GR2 than going through my rig.

And the best part to recording this way is, I split my signal so I have a clean signal and the effected signal, so I can keep the original performance - and yet have one to tinker with. As soon as I lay down the track, I do apply the effected track to save CPU, knowing I can go back if I don't like it with the clean track.

DigiDis, I do some quick, arpegiated runs and I never experienced a noticable latency when laying down a track - that may have something to do with your setup. If some piece of hardware is sharing an IRQ, or you didn't tweak your machine, then I could see having a problem - but otherwise there is no way you should. I have a older machine - an Athlon XP+ 2600 with 1GB of ram and I can do a lot and stay in sync and not use a lot of cpu.

pgw, I have to scientifically oppose your theory I usually record my parts late at night, with ambient lighting and a few beers - if you can hear the stress in that, you need to donate yourself to science! Like I said earlier, even when I recorded in a real studio, I still was in the control room when I did my parts, for me, it isn't any different.

I still stand by my earlier comments that only the most trained audiophiles MAY be able to detect a higher-end amp sim, but 99% of people could not correctly identify when an amp sim is being used on a song that is fully mixed. That is my theory!