I was thinking about tracking guitars with AMP SIMS... when you have a work in progress and try to record LIVE audio thru amp sims, in order to reduce the latency, I have to turn off all of my PLUGINs within the FX BINs in order to record the guitar tracks LIVE while monitoring the music of the project.
 
To eliminate this latency, I was thinking about running an AMP SIM program OUTSIDE of SONAR and routing its output into SONAR while tracking the guitar part so that the project mix and new guitar part are in sync and I can play the guitar track with minimal latency.  
 
Does this make sense and has anyone tried this yet?
 
Thanks,
Jim
 
PS - I do realize that I am committed the guitar amp sim settings to audio using this method but it would mimic tracking a LIVE guitar through a real amp, I am just going to replace the real amp with an amp sim.  I need to use a HIWATT head while tracking the guitar and am down to using NI's GUITAR RIG software in that it is the only SIM that I can find that offers a HIWATT head.

I'm thinking of using a splitter, and sending one signal into Sonar and another to an external guitar processor to achieve this.

That way I will have the clean signal recorded, so I can re-amp later. I would also be able to monitor with zero latency through something like a Pod.

Yea, that makes sense. I used to do that when I was recording my V-drums. I recorded the MIDI into sonar and I listened to the V-drums audio for monitoring. You should also record the part you are monitoring. You never know!! you may use it..
 
CJ

I don't think you would get a significant decrease in latency doing the separate amp sim program thing, unless you have a lot of plugs open in Sonar that require PDC.

Yes, my project has quite a few plugins.. mostly UAD2 stuff which doubles the normal latency.  Impossible to track within a mixed project with an AMP SIM... way too much latency.
 
Jim

I just freeze tracks as I go to cut down on latency. Unfreeze them when I am ready to do a some serious mixing.

In such a case where latency cannot be gotten under control, I would consider exporting the project (as is) and creating a new one, import the mixdown, and record the amp sim that way. It may be a more elegant solution for you and takes the plug-in part out of the picture.
 
I prefer to keep the clean guitar signal for later, in case I want to tweak the sound when mixing (or even shift the amp sim used).

I have also bounced all tracks to a stereo image, then in a new project, import the bounced image which will now play with very low latency, then record the new track with and without effects. I then import the new track(s) into the original project to mix. I haven't done this with guitar, but I do it often with vocals so the singer can hear the take with all of the effects.

OK... thanks everybody and I appreciate all the suggestions and I understand all of your workflows around this problem but I was wondering if you can send the outputs of a stand alone PC program into SONAR to record in sync with a SONAR project?  Pretty much the nature of my question.
 
Is anyone doing this today?
 
Jim

jkleban
OK... thanks everybody and I appreciate all the suggestions and I understand all of your workflows around this problem but I was wondering if you can send the outputs of a stand alone PC program into SONAR to record in sync with a SONAR project?  Pretty much the nature of my question.
 
Is anyone doing this today?
 
Jim

Yes, this is done all the time when you use hardware in the mastering process. You output the audio from one pc, and that goes into your hardware and then you send it to another PC that records it.
 
CJ