[LAU] Applying effects when recording electric guitars: before or after recording?

[Dale Powell]

> Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 12:17:02 +0200
> From: sed at free.fr
> To: dj_kaza at hotmail.com
> CC: linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org; arve.barsnes at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [LAU] Applying effects when recording electric guitars: before or after recording?
> 
> ----- "Dale Powell" <dj_kaza at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > >
> > > The only difference is that you can push hard on the box with your
> > > foot while you play live.
> > >
> > 
> > Disagree! Effects pedals and the like have almost no round-trip
> > latency (through soundcard, to the processor, and back for monitoring)
> > and usually a much lower processing time (especially if they are
> > analogue!) both of which are very important points when you are
> > listening to the effected path while playing.
> 
> okay, I half-agree with that. The latency problem...
> 
> On one hand it is, indeed, a difference. The computer gets some data
> in, in chunks, process it, and sends that back to physical world. All
> is in the chunk's size, which introduces some delay. Right.
> 
> But! did you actually try to play the guitar and use a linux-based effects chain?
> I tried guitarix. With 1024 samples of latency I notice some delay. Below I
> don't notice anything. 256 is fine. Go down to 64 and it's psychologically
> similar to no delay at all. There were links about latency issues on the
> lists a few weeks ago. So yeah, latency. But below a given threshold you
> don't feel latency at all.
> 
> So there again, just try and see/hear what happens. I am personally not
> disturbed by a bit of latency (a bit being 256 samples at 44.1KHz).

OK I admit personally I don't play guitar but have done some recordings for people in the past.

I can generally agree that with a reasonably modest computer (doesn't have to be the fastest in the world) and a half decent soundcard, just using one or two not-too-intensive effects you can usually get away with monitoring through the effected chain of the PC. If you are going to do this I would suggest using a more simple chain to give the idea of the sound you are after, record the dry (or both) signal(s) and then you have the option of applying more CPU/latency intensive plugins once it is recorded, yet you can monitor with at least an idea of what it will sound like, rather than monitoring dry.

I also have to admit so far I haven't played much with the effects available on Linux. Still trying to get myself migrated from Windows but little niggles often pull me back to the dark side...
 		 	   		  
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