sharke
 I think his goal in reducing the noise was to stop the amount going into the amp sim. 

Exactly. The point of my article is to reduce the amount of noise going into the amp sim, nothing more.

Sheanes
Hi James, 
 
Firstly I'm not sure what would sound better, the raw big portion of noise, or the compressed smaller portion.
Sure you hear less noise, but it might be the rest of the mix suffers from the compressed portion of noise / fighting to cut through it.....this is something I'm not sure of but just thought it could happen.
 
Then you would need to add an expander which could give you latency.
And then maybe that noise would actually be nice in the mix, the last thing that would be a problem in my personal mixing (if that ever took off) would probably be noise.
Probably DAWS would have such a function if anything like this noise reduction would be good, I'd say.
But it's always good to read and think about things, thanks for sharing too.

This doesn't get rid of the noise, it merely turns it down to a more manageable level. That said, it's subjective. If the noise works for your song, use it. I love noisy rock. The amp noise in "Hey Man Nice Shot" adds to the feel of the track.
 
But with a lot of amp sims, if you're using a cheaper interface and a guitar that's not shielded, the noise can be intensified. This is merely a tool to help you manage it. Regarding latency, I'm not concerned about latency during mixing. If I've got my DI already tracked, I can put the expander on and shape my tone for the mix I'm working on.
 
Regarding noise reduction tools, those don't sound good on DI's in my experience. I'm not talking about 60 cycle hum or anything like that, but rather just typical guitar hum. That comes from compressing the signal at the amp stage, which is what a distorted amp does. It's a distorted compressor. When you compress like that, it brings up the noise floor. If you don't want that, use an expander to push it down before the amp.

sharke
So what about just manually editing out the noise between phrases? Is that more common? I may try out that Boss NS2 because I do have a problem with a noisy Telecaster. 
 
I have to say though, sometimes I quite like that noise in between phrases. I'm working on a track now that has a section of just drums with some intermittent guitar phrases, and the buzzing in between phrases kind of adds to the whole atmosphere and creates more of a "live" sound. 

If you've recorded an amp, and there's a ton of noise, manually edit it out. No big deal.
 
However, if you push your noise floor lower before the amp you won't have as much noise to manage that way. Hence the expander.
 
Regarding noise between phrases, this doesn't get rid of the noise. It just turns it down. It's still there, and if there's a part where the noise may be desired you can always automate the expander into bypass for that section. Remember this is something you can do in post production after the DI is recorded.

Chandler
I was using spectral tools to clean up my DIs, but it might be better to use that as well as an expander. I'll have to test it, but it might be better to have 2 things doing just a little work than 1 doing everything.

I've never had good luck with spectral tools for cleaning up DI's. They always seem to remove frequencies that make the guitar DI sound more natural. For me, the expander moving the noise floor much lower sounds more natural. It does nothing to the spectrum of the guitar DI, and with the threshold set low enough it's only going to push down when you're not playing.

By the way, thanks for posting my article here. Great discussion, and I'm happy to see my thoughts being shared around. Kudos!
 

No worries, nice blog by the way. X Theme? 

sharke
No worries, nice blog by the way. X Theme? 

yup. X-Theme.
 
Thank you by the way!