Silent Recording Question???

[Jay Clarke]

Hi all

I was reading about the Recto Recording pre, is it truly possible to record great sounding guitar parts silently via direct imput to the audio interface?

Has anyone got any sound clips of the recto recording pre being recorded direct?

I've heard the Palmer PDI-03 was amazing, does anyone use this with mesa amps and have good results?

Just that I would like to record after 7 o clock in the evening without getting evicted and need answers lol

Cheers

 

[CoG]

Jay,

What kind of tones are you looking for?

mark has a whole bunch of clips here:

http://www.thesamhillband.com/

but I think they're all done through a 2:100 and cabs.

I've had my Pre for a while, using it almost exclusively direct, and am very happy with it overall.

I find that if you go absolutely direct the basic tones are excellent though everything sounds like it's miked close, on-axis. For DI I find myself using Amplitube 2's cab sims now and then. I don't do super-gain nu-metal or shred, though, so I can't say how suitable it is for that.

 

[joey_truelove]

Under any circumstance you would need a speaker and mic emulator with a pre-amp, real valve or digital emulator. Of course you can record directly but the response you'd get would sound lined and something tells me having invested in such a gear like the Recto-pre you want it to sound as real as it gets.

 

[CoG]

Joey--

That would depend on what you're doing. In my experience with the Rec Pre so far, most of the time I don't need to do anything *extra* than what I would do with a mic'ed signal, I just need to do similar things in a different way. For example, the Rec Pre's output definitely has a wider "useful" frequency range than most mic'ed signals and responds to eq differently; ditto for reverb. The tone controls have much wider ranges than similar controls on most amps so you have a lot of headroom and versatility even before you lay a track down.

The sound, obviously, lacks a "room" feel. This is something you'll want to make up in processing on some "spacious" tracks, but at the same time it's a blessing in situations where you've got multiple guitar tracks to shelve into a mix. It's pretty much impossible to create a muddy sound unless you really try. I almost never run into that situation where the tone sounds great when I dial it in, but then just can't tweak it into the mix.

 

[123thefirst]

Hi Jay,

Yes, in my opinion so long as you use a good quality speaker emulator you should be able to print some amazing guitar tones. I'm quite happy with the ADA Speaker Emulator. Though I have the UAD-1 card with the Nigel guitar processing suite I've never tried it.

I guess I'll need to record some samples soon and let you know where to find them.

Thanks for the reference to a Palmer PDI-03. Hadn't heard about that before. The Recto Pre is probably very unique in that it's more than a preamp. It's an amp/speaker emulator too, though not really a speaker emulator in itself. It models the correspondence between the amp and speaker very well without providing a real speaker emulation in my opinion.

 

[joey_truelove]

Joey--

That would depend on what you're doing. In my experience with the Rec Pre so far, most of the time I don't need to do anything *extra* than what I would do with a mic'ed signal, I just need to do similar things in a different way. For example, the Rec Pre's output definitely has a wider "useful" frequency range than most mic'ed signals and responds to eq differently; ditto for reverb. The tone controls have much wider ranges than similar controls on most amps so you have a lot of headroom and versatility even before you lay a track down.

The sound, obviously, lacks a "room" feel. This is something you'll want to make up in processing on some "spacious" tracks, but at the same time it's a blessing in situations where you've got multiple guitar tracks to shelve into a mix. It's pretty much impossible to create a muddy sound unless you really try. I almost never run into that situation where the tone sounds great when I dial it in, but then just can't tweak it into the mix.

Yeah, I used to line guitars too, which was a rather frequent practise in the 80s, I believe.

The point I was trying to make is the induced EQ and dynamics of output valves and speakers do have an essential impact on sound. That what I meant by "real". I remember a guy over at Harmony-Central forums who used an computer plugin for speaker emulation. Most computers and portable studios have emulators like these built in or are compatible with emulators like these - so in a sense you can line your guitar and then add speaker emulation after that.

I see your point with intermediate tweaking, which I feel can be a good thing if you can see it all coming together in the recording phase.

I wish they could design variants of the most common valve types with a gain ratio of maybe 10 or so, so you would get full saturation at neighbour friendly volumes and even quieter than that.

 

[CoG]

Yeah, I used to line guitars too, which was a rather frequent practise in the 80s, I believe.

The point I was trying to make is the induced EQ and dynamics of output valves and speakers do have an essential impact on sound. That what I meant by "real". I remember a guy over at Harmony-Central forums who used an computer plugin for speaker emulation. Most computers and portable studios have emulators like these built in or are compatible with emulators like these - so in a sense you can line your guitar and then add speaker emulation after that.

I see your point with intermediate tweaking, which I feel can be a good thing if you can see it all coming together in the recording phase.

I wish they could design variants of the most common valve types with a gain ratio of maybe 10 or so, so you would get full saturation at neighbour friendly volumes and even quieter than that.

Yeah, I agree. It seems like lots of people are trying to go DI-friendly (look at Digitech's new artist-series pedals) but I think it becomes a niche market real fast as you move up the capability/cost scale. As it is, my Rec Pre was direct from Mesa, in its box, not even six months ago, and it was only serial #1785. I don't remember the inspection date on the tag. So they're not selling even one per day since they rolled it out, assuming there's some stock and freebies out there.

I'm pretty blown away by the speaker/mic simulations in IK Multimedia's stuff-- less so by the amps, which sound surprisingly the same no matter what you plug into them.

DI is an imperfect solution for getting that exact sound, for sure. However, I would say (and I could be on thin ice here) that it's pretty easy to get a bunch of really good sounds from the Rec Pre and a cab sim. To get The God Sound out of your actual cab you need a good room, good mics, good mic pres, and a good understanding of how to tweak mic placement. If all those things come together, yeah, your cab will sound like God, um, until you need another tone and everything will change

(The Rec Pre simulates this part beautifully because the **** knobs are so sensitive that if you don't take, like, a full-scale photograph of every setting you will never, ever get it back.)

A good thing about the Rec Pre when it comes to intermediate tweaking is that, like I said, it feels like there's a lot more headroom across the frequency range than there is with a mic'd cab tone. So unless you need to completely change the tone (mid-honk vs. scoop or something) you can get a lot done with eq.