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

Charles Henry czhenry at gmail.com
Thu Jul 7 15:38:38 UTC 2011


On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 6:47 AM, Brett McCoy <idragosani at gmail.com> wrote:
> Amp modeling is really big (using Amplitube, Line 6 hardware or even
> guitarix), you can get pretty good sounds out of that. Amp modeling
> played through a tube amp and miked gives you the best of both
> worlds... more control over your tone and the warm tube-y sound.

While I don't want to argue the quality or a matter of preference or
the exact implementation--I completely disagree with the principle!

Amp modeling software should take the place of using tube amps in the
first place.  The filtering and non-linear qualities of the amp being
modeled are what you want to reproduce, not the noise, or the
transformers' hum.  The notion of creating amp modeling
software/hardware is to reduce costs compared to keeping a ton of
different amps for just the right tone, per application.  I think the
most efficient thing to do is to introduce the characteristic
distortion and filtering you want by a processor.

So, you should run the processed sound through an amp that has very
clean, low distortion characteristics (would be nice if such
hardware/software had capability to analyze the output of the
amplifier in use... one can dream... or design it).

That said... nothing sounds like a tube amp, quite like a tube amp :)
Amp modeling software doesn't take the place of tube amps in every
application.  Just watch out for the audiophile hocus-pocus that comes
with comparing amplifiers to each other.


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