Recording - January 2010 - 24

various different products to create a unique blend. You can even try to match the sounds with different products, and chances are that they will be close, but not exact. I find that each manufacturer has arrived at similar results using different approaches, and these subtleties in programming code, convolution responses or technologies in general, contribute somewhat to obtaining slightly different sounds that, once properly blended, can make the sum much better than its parts. ~ Breeding clones: Multiple amps, multiple tracks, much more craziness! For even more tonal diversity, and more work, you could use a guitar splitter—companies like Morley (www.morleypedals.com) and Radial Engineering (www.radialeng.com) make some great ones—to send your signal to more than one amp, and then send a line-level signal from each amp into your audio interface. As mentioned above, I suggest that you treat each signal as a different guitar amp and not track the two signals to a stereo track. Having each in its own mono audio track allows you to treat them individually. Basically, the procedure would be: guitar to any stomp box, then to the splitter (you may want to have a pedal after the splitter to change the sound of one particular amp—a wah-wah for example—with the exact same performance), to two or more amplifiers. Then send a line out from each amp—with the power-attenuation or DI method of your choice—to your audio interface. Then create a mono audio channel for each signal and route each one to its own cabinet emulator, or have several mono aux tracks sharing cabinet emulators. The possibilities are huge One of the raves about Eleven is its still unique feature Speaker Breakup, which focuses on simulating the cone’s random behavior, the breakup that happens at high volumes and that can add grittiness to the sound and influence the tone. And with HGRM we can really take advantage of this unique and particularly cool feature. www.digidesign.com I’ve also used Peavey’s ReValver Mk III plug-in with HGRM, and it works great. I actually was quite impressed by this amp simulator, it is particularly good for the tweakers who like to customize the smallest possible detail. In terms of features, such as routing, effects, and customizing options, it’s pretty much the antithesis of Eleven (even the speaker cabinets have eq knobs). This product has a wide array of speaker cabinets with different mics, and although the cabinets themselves have a pretty flat and standardized look, they sound great. www.peavey.com Another great plug-in compatible with HGRM is IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube, which has a whole line of guitar amp simulators. From the simple AmpliTube version all the way through X-Gear and the customized Jimi Hendrix and Fender editions, all these allow you to bypass the additional features and conveniently use one of their speaker cabinets combined with several different mic options, as well as on- and off-axis placement. Although it seems to be a bit more draining on my CPU power than other options, the sounds and features are great. www.ikmultimedia.com Native-Instruments Guitar Rig offers a good amount of features that go far beyond our needs for HGRM, but like the others, you can bypass the amplifier section and just use the cabinet emulators. The realism factor improves with every version and though I haven’t yet had a chance to try their latest version 4, it seems promising. www.native-instruments.com Plug-in simulation: Silicone enhancement for your cabs! There are lots of amp-simulator plug-ins on the market. For our HGRM purposes we don’t want amp simulators, we only want to simulate cabinets, so we should only consider those plug-ins that allow us to bypass everything except the cabinets. If you know some of the “real” devices, you can be the judge of the emulation results, but you can have just as much productive fun by mixing and matching devices that you have never encountered in the real world. That’s what we have ears for The following are a few suggestions that have proven to be very useful in my experiments. I like the convenience of Digidesign’s Eleven—I happen to use Pro Tools LE and Eleven Free is included in the most recent version of all Pro Tools incarnations. I happen to have the full-blown version, which has 5 additional cabinet models (and 14 extra amps), but the two included in the Free version are great. I also enjoy this particular plug-in for its simplicity. It excludes guitar pedals and rack effects (all except for a couple of amp models which, like their hardware counterparts, have built-in tremolo), indepth routing options, distant miking, etc. I enjoy working as if I were getting a signal from a real amp in the ‘live room next door’, and then treating it accordingly.RECORDING JANUARY 2010 Audio Ease’s Speakerphone 2 goes way beyond the scope of what we’re talking about—it has emulations of walkie-talkies, cell phones, distant transistor radios, antique phones, answering machines, megaphones, but it also has the more down-to-earth features that are in line with this article, a collection of about 20 vintage and modern amp cabinet emulations. It also simulates various microphones (you need to capture the sound somehow). There is a less costly version that only focuses on the guitar speaker cabinet emulations; it goes by the very memorable name of Cabinet. Like Altiverb, the reverb plug-in that put Audio Ease on the map, these cabinet emulations are convolution based (made with impulse responses from an original ambiance). www.audioease.com Conclusion These tools will let you get the most out of your digital recording software while still retaining the character of your real amps that you love so much. Have fun experimenting! Fernando Curiel (fernando@musicopro.com) is a guitarist, recording engineer, and the Editor of Recording’s Spanish-language sister publication Músico Pro.

http://www.digidesign.com http://www.morleypedals.com http://www.peavey.com http://www.radialeng.com http://www.ikmultimedia.com http://www.native-instruments.com http://www.audioease.com

Recording - January 2010

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