Change Of Tone/characteristics, Changing from audio interface to soundcard Options

[Berglmir]

Hi all!

As some of you already mentioned: Once you start with recording you really get hooked up with this!
Unbeliveable how much time I spend with these things!

Well my issue is this:

I record through my audio interface (Focusrite Saffire LE; Firewire) into Reaper and use headphones for monitoring.
The sound is usually excellent (by far better than my actual playing) but I have to change to direct sound (a Soundblaster X-Fi) for rendering to wav/mp3 because otherwise the sound input would be faaaar to high and I get the strange cranky "sound" (definately NOT what I was playing and not really audible).

So far so "good" - BUT: When I change to direct sound the FX (i.e. Guitar Rig) become somewhat "bland" and quite too much reverb.
The best description for the "new" sound would be something like this:
Someone in a hall is playing guitar through a laptop with guitar rig installed.

So my questions are these:

1) Does anyone know what I´m talking about?
2) How can one counter-act this phenomenon?
3) Should/Could I render the project while still connected to my audio interface? (Tried this before and failed - always get this far too loud output in the render)

Really looking forward to your feedback/support!

Cheers
Berglmir

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

Could you explain a bit more in detail how exactly do you record. If I understood, you are pluggin your guitar into Interface, and then the input is sent into Reaper. Do you use your Interface ASIO driver? I think you should. When you record the track do you THEN insert Guitar Rig as a plugin, or you record with Guitar Rig sound in the first place?

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This post has been edited by Ivan Milenkovic: Jan 5 2009, 06:03 PM

[Berglmir]

Could you explain a bit more in detail how exactly do you record. If I understood, you are pluggin your guitar into Interface, and then the input is sent into Reaper. Do you use your Interface ASIO driver? I think you should. When you record the track do you THEN insert Guitar Rig as a plugin, or you record with Guitar Rig sound in the first place?

I do it just like you said:
I use the AI Asio driver and I record the track WITH the Guitar Rig already enabled.
(The opposite would be to record plain, clean guitar and THEN enabling the FX - this is NOT what I´m doing at the moment)

Thanx for your input!
Cheers

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[Ramiro Delforte]

I'm not sure to understand the whole situation but...did you see if when you change of hardware the parameters in the guitar rig change?

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[Berglmir]

I'm not sure to understand the whole situation but...did you see if when you change of hardware the parameters in the guitar rig change?

I don´t see any changes in the guitar rig settings - but to make sure I even re-assign the GR Effect I used during recording.

To make myself a bit more clear - here´s my recording/rendering procedure at the moment:
1) Connect Audio Interface via Firewire (Monitoring via Headphones)
2) Open Reaper and choose as Device: ASIO - Saffire ASIO
3) Coose Backtrack
4) New Track for my own recording
5) Apply FX (i.e Guitar Rig) effect to my track
6) PLAYING/RECORDING

Until now everything sounds like it should.

7) Save project
8) Disconnect AI
9) Open Reaper and choose as Device: Direct Sound - SoundBlaster X-Fi
10) Open my project (when I play it now it is faaaar too loud and somehow it settles itself after a few seconds - strange)

Now comes my problem;
11) After I can hear my project again it sounds differently - the Guitar Rig effect is by far not so brilliant as when I recorded it.

This must have something to do with the different Audio devices I use.
I think the solution would be to find a setting where I could render my projects while still being connected to my external AI - but at the moment all I get is loud "noise"

Thanks for your input!!
Cheers

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This post has been edited by Berglmir: Jan 5 2009, 06:48 PM

[Dejan Farkas]

I don't understand one thing here, why do not use Saffire for rendering? Do you connect your speakers/monitors to soundcard or Saffire?

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

The solution is not to use Sound blaster ASIO for any kind of work. Use AI ASIO for rendering.

The solution is to find out what is the cause of this extra noise:

Is master channel clipping in any way?

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[Ramiro Delforte]

Yes you must find a way to render with the same interface that you record. I don't understand why you get noise when you do the export. There are many things to check...I think it would be useful if you post some print screens of the audio card settings menu.
It's very strange that you have to move to other device to render. Obviously the problem has to be there in the passage to the other hard.

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[Berglmir]

I don't understand one thing here, why do not use Saffire for rendering? Do you connect your speakers/monitors to soundcard or Saffire?

The speakers are connected to the PC Soundcard. As I use my PC for more than recording I will let that be (for the moment)
But you have a good point - I will try to make the render with my Saffire connected!
Thanks for your input!!

The solution is not to use Sound blaster ASIO for any kind of work. Use AI ASIO for rendering.

The solution is to find out what is the cause of this extra noise:

Is master channel clipping in any way?

OK will do - I did not know that Creative ASIO is so crappy.
When using Creative ASIO to render a project which was recorded using Saffire ASIO the rendering output is +536 dB (very red area) - so I "know" ehy the rendering is so crappy. The funny thing is, that it gets better after one minute of the clip!

"Is master channel clipping in any way?" - I would like to answer you now, and fake knowledge I don´t have, but that´s beside the point. So I´m sorry - no idea what/where I have to check this in reaper?!

THX a lot for your input

Yes you must find a way to render with the same interface that you record. I don't understand why you get noise when you do the export. There are many things to check...I think it would be useful if you post some print screens of the audio card settings menu.
It's very strange that you have to move to other device to render. Obviously the problem has to be there in the passage to the other hard.

I will try to render my project with the Saffire ASIO. Will be interessting to see what the problem was - I´ll let you know asap!

THX very much for your input!

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

OK will do - I did not know that Creative ASIO is so crappy.
When using Creative ASIO to render a project which was recorded using Saffire ASIO the rendering output is +536 dB (very red area) - so I "know" ehy the rendering is so crappy. The funny thing is, that it gets better after one minute of the clip!

"Is master channel clipping in any way?" - I would like to answer you now, and fake knowledge I don´t have, but that´s beside the point. So I´m sorry - no idea what/where I have to check this in reaper?!

THX a lot for your input

Just going step by step here, cause I don't know exactly what the problem is. Didn't want to imply in any way that Creative ASIO is crappy, just saying that Creative ASIO driver is generally not made for music production purposes. Also, your interface has much better ASIO driver, so it is logical that you use only the ASIO from the audio interface.

Following that logic you MUST connect the speakers to the interface, so you have proper monitoring.

Sorry for not explaining better man, master channel is usually the output channel in your mixer, and you can find it in the mixer to the left called "MASTER". I think it's there cause I'm not a Reaper user.

Check there to see if the signal is clipping in any way, and also check other channels as well to see if they are clipping. IF they are clipping, the meter will be above the 0dB limit, which is a certain sign that you need to lower down the volume.

Apart from that, check out in Guitar Rig if the output is too strong. In GR3 the white rack at the bottom is the output rack. See if the clipping comes from there maybe.

Also wanna ask you if your interface has perhaps some kind of a patch or mixer application on its own? Perhaps it is putting out too much of the signal from there.

I hope this helps man, let us know how it went with the trials.

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This post has been edited by Ivan Milenkovic: Jan 5 2009, 10:00 PM

[Berglmir]

Just going step by step here, cause I don't know exactly what the problem is. Didn't want to imply in any way that Creative ASIO is crappy, just saying that Creative ASIO driver is generally not made for music production purposes. Also, your interface has much better ASIO driver, so it is logical that you use only the ASIO from the audio interface.

Following that logic you MUST connect the speakers to the interface, so you have proper monitoring.

Sorry for not explaining better man, master channel is usually the output channel in your mixer, and you can find it in the mixer to the left called "MASTER". I think it's there cause I'm not a Reaper user.

Check there to see if the signal is clipping in any way, and also check other channels as well to see if they are clipping. IF they are clipping, the meter will be above the 0dB limit, which is a certain sign that you need to lower down the volume.

Apart from that, check out in Guitar Rig if the output is too strong. In GR3 the white rack at the bottom is the output rack. See if the clipping comes from there maybe.

Also wanna ask you if your interface has perhaps some kind of a patch or mixer application on its own? Perhaps it is putting out too much of the signal from there.

I hope this helps man, let us know how it went with the trials.

Well (as always! ) you were right of course!
Everything works smooth now - thanks a lot to all of you!

I think it was a mix of different things that caused my problem:
First of all I think the Monitoring SW that comes with the Audiointerface was maxed out at volume so I changed that
Secondly I reduced the overall volume while recording (just boost headphone volume instead)
And last but not least I rendered my project with my Saffire ASIO - worked swimmingly.

Now I can spend even more time with details of recording/rendering.

THX again for all your help!
Cheers
Berglmir

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

I'm glad if I could help in any way man, and good to see you resolved the issue. Don't hesitate to ask anything you need, we're here to share knowledge! Cheers

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