Recording Direct - other options

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 1 May 2018 1:28 am

As a follow up to an existing thread, there are many options available to us. I also have several amp sims but can never seem to find the "tones" that are satisfying or pleasing to me. I am not one to settle.

I gave up on mic'ing amps a long time ago for tracking, I don't have a good noise free room and was never pleased overall.

The typical setup for me is Steel direct to one of the Channel Strips, usually the DBX 376 which has on bd parametric EQ and compression, of which I use them both. What I hear thru the preamp is what gets tracked.

For the guitars I add the Voodoo labs Sparkle Drive ahead of the 376, I dial in what I like to hear, plus all tracks may not use the same DIALED IN settings. Thats what gets printed to Pro Tools.

I don't add any EQ or track limiting on the DAW tracks unless something is really in need. Reverbs and Delays ,yes of course.

As of late I have found that recording direct with one of the Channel Strips up front and tracking with whatever it is I dial in has become my normal process. I really just try to dial in the tones that sound like ME when I'm playing gigs.

There is never any right or wrong but rather what is it that makes US happy with the end result.

Here are two tracks from the CD I just completed. All Instruments recorded direct , no EQ added to any DAW tracks. Steel direct , as is, to the 376, Telecaster thru the Sparkle Drive to the 376. The only thing with a live mic is obviously the vocal track.

http://www.tprior.com/FLYAWAY.mp3

http://www.tprior.com/FAMILY.mp3

additional tracks at www.tprior.com

Dan Kelly · Post by **Dan Kelly** » 20 May 2018 4:07 pm

Great sound tony! Nice job!

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 May 2018 2:11 am

I haven't found a channel strip "preamp" that I like for steel. I had an ART Pro MPA II (tube) and didn't like it. I had a Presonus Blue Tube preamp and the starved plate design tube didn't do anything. I have a Presonus Studio Channel and don't like that for steel, I have a Focusrite ISA One and it doesn't do it either. The built in preamps and various EQs in my MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid doesn't do it either. I have two SansAmps, a guitar and a bass, and neither work for steel.

I've used my POD X3 for Lead (Twin model) and for Steel and best direct I've got so far although I can't say I really hear a "Twin" sound.

I haven't had a chance to try my new Steelaire Rack direct.

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 21 May 2018 4:52 am

Jack, I'd be curious how you like the Steelaire direct out for recording. I tried mine and it was sort of 'meh', not horrible but not great. I think it's supposedly 'voiced' somehow to get closer to the speaker sound.

I will say the live the sound guys that have used it give it pretty favorable reviews.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 21 May 2018 12:52 pm

Jack Stoner wrote:I haven't found a channel strip "preamp" that I like for steel. I had an ART Pro MPA II (tube) and didn't like it. I had a Presonus Blue Tube preamp and the starved plate design tube didn't do anything. I have a Presonus Studio Channel and don't like that for steel, I have a Focusrite ISA One and it doesn't do it either. The built in preamps and various EQs in my MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid doesn't do it either. I have two SansAmps, a guitar and a bass, and neither work for steel.

I've used my POD X3 for Lead (Twin model) and for Steel and best direct I've got so far although I can't say I really hear a "Twin" sound.

I haven't had a chance to try my new Steelaire Rack direct.

Jack, I hear ya, I own an ART Dual MP system, an ART PRO MPA-II , a Presonus Studio Channel and the DBX 376. While I like them all to some degree but the DBX 376 is my favorite . These were not cheap when they were available, I believe near $500 . On the used market they are often found in the $250 to $300 range. It took me a bit of time to understand how to dial it in for consistency with the DAW. I'm liking it a ton.The Presonus Channel strip is very close to the 376 but they do require dialing them in , especially with the low end and the mids. Trail and error.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 2 Jun 2018 12:35 am

"Funny thing happened on the way to the Forum"

I'm currently rehearsing with a local rock-a-billy band on Telecaster, no Steel at this time. All originals, it's fun.

I gave the guys a copy of the Gospel CD which I just completed so they could gauge if and when they may want to use some Steel on their upcoming DEMO recording sessions.

In discussions they all want to use Steel on a few tracks then commented that they want all tracking done with MICS and AMPS, like I did on my Gospel CD. No DIRECT tracking is what they said.

Then I dropped the bomb...

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 2 Jun 2018 8:31 am

Regarding the channel strip discussion, I recently obtained a UA LA610 preamp/compressor channel strip. Haven't tried it with a mic yet, but the DI on the front is really nice for steel.

EQ was flat, but the legendary UA warmth was definitely there, and the comp was really nice. The comp reminded me a lot of the UA 1176, very 'gentle' even with more aggressive settings.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 3 Jun 2018 12:27 am

Bill, that UA LA610 is a serious piece of gear ! Let me borrow it for a year or two !

The thing about tracking direct, for me, my experience. What is abundantly clear is that what I hear on the tracks is perhaps 90 % just the Steel with minimal tone color. I do use the lo end cut on the preamps, all the time every instrument. The cut is typically in the 60 to 80 HZ range. If I color the tone at all ahead of the DAW it may be a slight adjust on the mids and the lo end, basically to clear up any mud that may be present, otherwise the EQ's are flat. NO DAW EQ or maybe just ever so slight in a particular freq region with a narrow Q.

This is something I picked up from the few demos I do in the RETAIL studio's. They track the Steel direct thru a nice clean preamp and maybe make a tweak or two later in the process to balance the tones across the entire track. And yes of course now and then I will track in a nice studio with an amp, it's the engineers call, not mine.

It may not be for everyone but it is worth giving it a shot. And yes, different preamps (channel strips) make a big difference. If we are using a preamp without parametric tone controls then of course this would be a difficult task.

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 3 Jun 2018 6:48 am

Tony wrote:..that UA LA610 is a serious piece of gear ! Let me borrow it for a year or two !

Yeah, that LA610 is pretty awesome. There's a bit of a story on that one. I've done a lot of work for a singer/songwriter guy over the last few years, many road gigs, a lot of studio work, and mostly gratis mixing of his live recordings (he records every gig to multi-track with a Mackie DL 32). We've become really good buds.

He recently moved and decided that his home studio was something he didn't need or want any more, and asked me if I wanted any of his stuff. I told him I'd be interested in making offers on anything I could use, and he said "No, I want you to just have it." Wow.. The LA610 was the first piece I got, and he's got a lot of other stuff packed up in storage that I haven't even seen yet. I know there are some high end mics, some other outboard gear and some converters of some sort, not to mention a bunch of more mundane but useful stuff like cables, stands, etc. He won't even consider letting me pay for anything, I've tried.

Christmas in June..

Back to the discussion; I may have mentioned this somewhere before (maybe even in this thread?) but lately we've been recording his latest record at Harter Music Studios in San Antonio. Those guys are so cool. I asked about doing a DI on the steel, along with a mic on my amp, and the engineer was totally on board. So we use a Royer ribbon on the amp (a ribbon on steel amp is a GREAT solution for me) and a DI through a single channel Avalon pre (no EQ). It's a great way to give you a LOT of flexibility at mix time. We've used the DI on some tracks, on others the amp sound seemed to work better. That's something that even low cost home studios are able to do.

The DI track is also something where I've been able to overdub punches in my home studio with minimal difference in sound. All that said, I'm usually DI first choice at home, it's just more convenient. I tend to record totally flat, but usually end up with a low-cut similar to what you do somewhere down the line. Different ways to get similar results I guess.

Next on my gotta have list is a nice ribbon, the Royer R-121 most likely. There was a thread somewhere here about ribbon mics that was pretty informative.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 3 Jun 2018 11:01 am

Bill, no argument from me tracking with a nice mic and DI at the same time. thats a huge plus if it can be done. The reason for my DIRECT topic was strictly for us HOME guys where we don't have a good room for a real sensitive mic. There are some discussions to that end now suggesting software removal of extra noise .

I think many times some of us feel that direct recording cannot give us a quality track . My take, if we have a reasonably good channel strip preamp, (doesn't have to be a UA LA610) with a para EQ and a compressor, we can get something very workable, especially if we are starting with an Instrument that has good natural tone.

I don't have a quiet room, I don't record retail either. I have had engineers come to me with a two track and record my Steel on my PT 12 system direct. They left happy and paid me so it couldn't have been to bad ! They used the tracks in the final product and evidently nobody is the wiser !

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 3 Jun 2018 11:13 am

Yep, no arg about the problems with mic'ing in a home studio, been there and done that. I learned to cobble together a mix on headphones in a pinch for the same reason. No monitoring after 10PM.. LOL..

I was lucky enough when we built our house a few years ago to be able to build a stand-alone studio 'in the back forty'.. It's had some minimal iso treating, but when I drew it up I decided no windows, which are the biggest problem in my experience.

So I do have the option of using a mic if I want, but for 'internet sessions', I usually just do direct, and the clients are generally quite happy, as you noted. I totally agree that a DI can work great with just a little attention to detail.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 4 Jun 2018 1:11 am

Funny thing, at least to me...

I gave up mic recording guitars thru amps many years back and focused on direct recording, for all of the obvious reasons. Noise, Cat, can't track at night, can hear the Mailman, can hear the TV, all that stuff.

For years I played Carter Steels, always enjoyed them. I spent many hours tracking songs for the net, all direct recordings. One time I got an excellent response to a track, it read something like this;

" Your Push Pull sounds awesome on the track "

I responded back, thanking him for the nice comment and just simply said, "my Push Pull has a Carter badge "

We both got a good laugh. That one Carter did have a very good natural tone which gets back to, if we have an instrument with good inherent tone we should be able to capture it direct to tape.

I'm also a Headphone mix sorta person,but before I end with a final mix it goes thru the monitors, but I can't do that at 10PM either ! Sometimes not even at 10AM !

Dale Rottacker · Post by **Dale Rottacker** » 4 Jun 2018 6:32 am

Tony, Iâ€™m a NOVICE at best, and after starting recording with a mic, eventually I went direct. I liked the idea of being able to contain the sound within my headphones, and I really like what I hear in the headphones. HOWEVER, I have just enough ringing in my ears 24 hours a day as it is, that the headphones which I really like aggravate and add to that ringing. So I ended up giving up the Headphones to record, though I was still recording direct. I also liked mixing with headphones. Like I said Iâ€™m a Novice at best, and my recordings arenâ€™t very complicated as Iâ€™m only recording Steel and then mixing that with Rhythm tracks professionally recorded by the likes of Junior Knight, Rusty Danmyer and Mike Headrick among others. So Iâ€™m basically â€œBalancingâ€. The 1st few recordings I did I recorded wet, cause I was afraid of pluginâ€™s. Iâ€™ve gotten braver since and maybe use 3-4 different Reverbs when Iâ€™m mixing.

BTW, to show you how much of a NOVICE I am... the 1st time I recorded Nameless Shuffle with my Mullen, I did so with a Session 500 sitting a little behind me to my left so that I could reach the knobs, with an SM-57 sitting on the floor and a pillow between the Mic and the rear left leg of my guitar to isolate pedal noise. I never trust my ear, or if Iâ€™m hearing what Iâ€™m suppose to hear, but didnâ€™t â€œFeelâ€ that I got a lot of ambient noise in that recording.

A few weeks ago, I bought a Quilter Rack-mount, which has a Direct Out in it, and tried some sample runs recording direct with it, but found that it didnâ€™t record direct as well as the Revelation that Iâ€™d been using the last 2-3 years. I thought the Revelation direct was very close to what I was getting with a Mic. The Quilter, to my ear is not as good direct. (I should add that throughout, Iâ€™ve been using a PreSonus FireStudio Project for my interface.) I liked what I was hearing from the speaker cabâ€™s, but it wasnâ€™t translating into the DAW. So after a couple of years recording direct, I went back to an SM-57 in front of my speaker cab, which is about 8 feet behind my guitar. Recording 2 tracks at the same time, I find the Mic track to be warmer, richer and more cohesive than the direct track, which I thought was brighter, thinner and maybe that sterile thing I keep hearing about. This wasnâ€™t my experience with the Revelation, but perhaps Iâ€™m now doing something wrong with the Quilter, which live, I really love.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 5 Jun 2018 2:09 am

Dale you are not a novice ! The thing about recording, be it the best retail studio or the lo-cost home studio, it all gets back to our ears. Sure the retail studios have wonderful gear which offer the best performance and specs because their purpose is not a simple MP3 for sharing across the net. At home, we need something that gives us good overall performance , probably not the best specs, but does it really matter ? It's our ears that matter in the end . Did we accomplish something that is even close to what we were expecting ?

We find the best path to our end goal, how we get there is not really the determining factor, our final result is what matters.

The tools we use are just a means to the end result.

If we know how to use our tools, then kool , if we don't , well then we may not like the end result and then blame the tools !

"that guys guitar and amp sound fantastic, I have the same guitar and amp and it sounds like CRXP " ... "I know it's not me"

We never heard that before !

Dale Rottacker · Post by **Dale Rottacker** » 6 Jun 2018 1:21 am

Tony, when you go direct... Do you go straight from the Steel into the Interface or from the pedal, or the Direct Out from your amp if you have one?... Like I said, recording direct with the Revelation gave me better results than the DO or the Quilter, but perhaps thereâ€™s a better method?

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 6 Jun 2018 10:28 am

Dale Rottacker wrote:Tony, when you go direct... Do you go straight from the Steel into the Interface or from the pedal, or the Direct Out from your amp if you have one?... Like I said, recording direct with the Revelation gave me better results than the DO or the Quilter, but perhaps thereâ€™s a better method?

Dale, my PREAMPS are routed to the DAW Interface. I plug directly into a PREAMP. My DAW Interface is NOT a preamp , I don't want it to be either !

No I don't use a direct out from an amp, there really is no need as I use the available preamps. But I could, that option is there.

Here are the preamps I use the most, the backside shows the cables and on the far left you can see the 4 channel interface ( color coded cables) which is connected to the interface PC bd inside the PC.

Dale Rottacker · Post by **Dale Rottacker** » 6 Jun 2018 10:57 am

Tony, this is what is said about what I use, which doesnâ€™t mean an awful lot to me.

...

The FireStudio Project features high-quality A/D/A converters with 114 dB dynamic range and the same award-winning Class A XMAX preamps found in our popular StudioLiveÂ® mixers, so you can record and play back 24-bit audio at sampling rates up to 96 kHz with remarkably low noise. And with PreSonusâ€™Â® lauded JetPLL jitter-elimination technology, you get the tightest, most reliable digital sync in the industry. In short, the FireStudio Project provides the audio quality you need to succeed.

Were you able to sell your PreSonus Preamp?

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 6 Jun 2018 11:56 am

Dale yes the preamp sold in a few days, it's already in another home studio rack .

I don't own a combo interface/ preamp , not that they are not good, I'm sure they are but I may use different preamps for different instruments or functions. I'm not familiar with any of them to be honest !

I use an M Audio Delta 66 which is a 4 in 4 out audio with dual digital in / out. The PC bd resides in the PC with a cable that goes out to the interface. I have varied interfaces wired to different inputs.

It all works for me but it may not for someone else.

Les Cargill · Post by **Les Cargill** » 9 Jun 2018 1:01 pm

Y'know - I bought a cheap Samson S-Direct Plus two-channel DI for live use with a keyboard instrument years ago, and I just track with that.

I'll use an amp VST or a convolution-playback VST and a convolution signature of my Blues Deluxe & 1936 cab now and again, but increasingly, I just use the direct signal. It rarely even needs EQing.

The impulse player is Rosen Digital Audio's PULSE. I do own Waves IR convolution player but it won't work with short impulses.

If you're recording, always make a DI track. You never know when you'll need it.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 15 Jun 2018 2:16 pm

Follow up on the Quilter Steelaire direct recording. I finally did some recording this morning with it and direct to my MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid recording interface unit. I can't hardly hear any difference direct or miked (EPS 15C speaker and SM57 mic). I've tried or did do direct recording with other amps I had, such as the Nashville 400/1000/112 and the Carvin BX500 and GK MB200 but they all seemed "sterile" on direct out. The Steelaire is the best direct steel recording sound I've found. Others may have different opinions.

As a side note, I also did some "mellow" Tele guitar on one recording. I used the Steelaire and the same steel EQ settings.

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 17 Jun 2018 9:21 am

Thanks for the follow-up Jack. I'm going to try using the Steelaire direct out again this week on some stuff I'm working on.

For whatever reason, the FOH guys really seem to like it. But then again maybe that's just because they don't have to put up a stand and a mic.

Dale Rottacker · Post by **Dale Rottacker** » 19 Jun 2018 6:35 am

Jack Stoner wrote:Follow up on the Quilter Steelaire direct recording. I finally did some recording this morning with it and direct to my MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid recording interface unit. I can't hardly hear any difference direct or miked (EPS 15C speaker and SM57 mic). I've tried or did do direct recording with other amps I had, such as the Nashville 400/1000/112 and the Carvin BX500 and GK MB200 but they all seemed "sterile" on direct out. The Steelaire is the best direct steel recording sound I've found. Others may have different opinions.

As a side note, I also did some "mellow" Tele guitar on one recording. I used the Steelaire and the same steel EQ settings.

I might be doing something wrong Jack, but my experience with the Steelaire DO, is thin and crisp, where as the Steelaire with the mic is full and warm... I didnâ€™t notice a difference like that when I recorded direct with the Revelation... I love the Quilter live, but not so much when recording Direct... I might should record two tracks at the same time, one Direct and one with a Mic, and see if anyone hears a difference.

Dale Rottacker · Post by **Dale Rottacker** » 20 Jun 2018 11:20 am

I recorded a couple quick unpolished clips this morning... I recorded both tracks at the same time, one Direct and one Micâ€™d, using the Quilter Steelaire Rackmount and the X10 pup on my S10 MSA... besides a little room noise with the Micâ€™d version, what differences are you hearing...

Direct,
http://picosong.com/w9yPJ/

Micâ€™d
http://picosong.com/w9y9Z/

Joseph Carlson · Post by **Joseph Carlson** » 21 Jun 2018 12:55 pm

To my ears, the mic'ed version sounds a little fuller and rounder. I'm actually a little more partial to the direct version just because it will sit in the mix a little better and cut through more.

Both clips sounds really great though!

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 Jun 2018 3:00 pm

I like the direct sample. The mic'd sounds like the highs are cut and more lows.