How to record and produce better audio?

Gear
#1

Hey @Troy, I’m constantly blown away by the audio quality and your guitar tone (and playing of course) in your videos.

Could you please share with us, how you record / mix / master the audio in your solo guitar magnet clips?

Anything would help from miking technique, signal chain, mix technique, plug-in settings, effects, workflow etc.

Thanks!

PS Everyone, please feel free to jump in and share your own recording / production ideas.

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#2

Went from carefully crafted all-analog to mostly digital with the AxeFX after experimenting with modern reactive load boxes (which as I now see as the gateway drug to the digital). New frontiers… Granted, the experience with tubes, analog pedals, and tape informs what one does with the digital. Cheers, D

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#3

Happy to do so but in truth I do almost nothing - sm57 1.5 inches left or right of the center cone, some verb in Logic, that’s it!

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#4

Great statement. Everyone should learn the dirt simplest way to mic up an amp with the “universal guitar mic”, the Shure SM57, as a starting point. I would also add that everyone should do the same exact thing with a dead flat measurement mic like this, except placed near where their ears are when they practice:

…just to drive home the point that even with nothing but an amp and a mic, and no “effects” per se, you are radically altering what your amp sounds like. This is also true for an AXE or a Kemper or any other device that delivers a “miked up” sound through your studio monitors.

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#5

Thanks Troy! How loud do you have your amp? And what verb settings are you using? Cheers

#6

By loud do you mean how much power amp distortion is happening? Probably not much. The Hellcat is a modern high-ish gain amp so it’s mostly preamp distortion. I keep the Master volume around 9 o’clock mostly.

If you want an actual level measurement I can check the db in the room the next time the amp is on. But it’s not by any means super loud.

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#7

Years ago, I taught myself to record via PC and Cakewalk Sonar with a MOTU 896D interface. My recordings sound terrible, but I was learning. About 4 years ago, I bought a Digidesign Eleven Rack which came with Pro Tools 7. My sound immediately improved because I gather Pro Tool’s sound engine was far superior to Cakewalk. I write my own drum loops with Beta Monkey Double Kick Mania. I dabbled with playing an actual bass versus Spectrasonic Trillian using MIDI writing.

This year I want to buy a preamp such as Avalon or Universal Audio to make my tracks pop or stand out more. And like Troy, I have found that a good ol’ SM57 does the job for amp micing. The Eleven Rack has a decent mic interface and does the trick for demo quality. Digidesign’s (now Avid) interfaces are super expensive for a working man, so a move to Logic may be in order. Pro Tools is a proprietary software so you can only use Avid gear with it. However, I could use something like Audacity with another brand interface and then import my tracks. There’s always a way to get around it.

My question for @Troy is what interface do you use with Logic?

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