Axe-FX workflow (reamping advice would be much appreciated)?

R

Raven

Member
Hi guys, I've just signed up to the forum &, as I'm shortly going to become an Ultra owner, I may well be dropping in here regularly over the coming months.

Anyway, I need a little advice if anybody would be kind enough to help? Basically, I'm about to piece together a home studio setup & I'm trying to plan in advance the best way to hook up the axe-fx. It's important to me that I get everything sorted out up front so that I can ensure that I make sensible choices when ordering the various bits.

It's going to be a Pro tools Digidesign 003 system & I like the idea of hooking up the Axe via S/PDIF & I'd ideally like to record the dry signal so that I can get straight to recording & then piddle about tweaking the Axe to my liking (as I'm sure I'm going to need to have to do) in my own time without it having to get in the way of going ahead & putting tracks down. I have been doing some digging on the forum & have seen that it's possible to do internal routing via the FX blocks & send the dry signal out. However, this all seems a little fiddly for me in terms of having an intuitive workflow & I'm a little concerned about flexibility with only having an instrument level signal to work with as opposed to a proper line level DI.

So, here's my main question:

If I was to use a DI box such as an Avalon U5 & have a DI signal recording in the DAW & using the thru on the DI to hook up the Axe for monitoring purposes, would I then be able to run that DI line level signal back into the Axe via S/PDIF for reamping, without sacrificing the tone & dynamics that the Axe would give with the guitar plugged straight into the front of the unit? I know it'll feel exactly the same when tracking as I'll be monitoring through the front of the Axe, my concern is about the final recorded result if the Axe is acting on a line level signal rather that an instrument level signal. I guess analogue reamping through the front would be an option, but I don't particularly like the idea of converting to digital, back to analogue & then back to digital again. I'd rather stay digital after the first conversion has taken place.

Also, in terms of listening back to the tracks while recording & dropping in etc. would it be possible to monitor the recorded dry signal back through the Axe (kinda like a plugin I guess)? I see it as pretty important that, when tracking, I can listening back to the takes etc. before committing to whether or not they're keepers & this might be hard to do if I can only listen back to the dry signal prior to reamping for the final completed track.

Anyways, thanks in advance for your help guys, I look forward to any insights some of you seasoned Axe users may have. :)
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

I use an FX send block in the first grid position to send the dry signal to a track on a stand-alone hard-disc recorder. That track is returned to the Axe via a FX return block in the second position. As soon as the track is armed at the recorder I hear sound. During playback I hear the same sound and tweak to suit. Using all analog I/O connections without complaints too. Super easy to A/B the affect of the signal leaving/returing to the Axe - no audible difference here. No gain compensation is required either.

Watch out for latency issues doing this with Pro-Tools.
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

That's interesting, I didn't know that you could use the Axe that way, I thought that reamping was the only solution for altering the sound after putting down the dry track. Also, if you're doing it analogue, what output/inputs are you using? If it's just an instrument level signal wouldn't you need to send it back through the front of the Axe? I'm probably sounding naive here, but I don't have the Axe yet to fiddle with & work out the ins & outs. Either way, it is interesting that it can be used plugin style though, it's just whether or not latency could be a problem running a digi 003 that connects to the computer via firewire 400 though. ...I suppose I'm not going to know that until I've had the chance to try it though, but maybe there's a way to hook it up to work the same way but using the digital I/O instead to avoid latency issues?
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

I use the FX loop in and out connections. The loop out signal is line-level. The signal is returned from the recorder to the Axe at the same level it left the Axe. The re-amp signal is never fed back to the front input and the hassle of splitting the guitar signal before the Axe and doing all the buffer stuff is eliminated.

Think of it like a pedal inserted into an effects loop, which is located post the gain stage that raises the signal from guitar to line-level. In my case the pedal is a recorder.

Can't help ya with the Pro-tools issues, etc. I'm not an ITB guy, and wouldn't have a clue as to how to go about making this workflow happen in Pro-tools. You asked about users perfect workflow though, and this is as perfect as it gets for me.

Talking out of school here... If Pro-tools can provide latency-free monitoring you may be good to go. But... you may not be going through the converters when doing this, so your re-amp playback signal may be altered by the quality of your particular AD/DA's. You may have some latency issues upon playback too but at that stage it may not matter and if it did you could time shift the track.. Dubbing the re-amp track live might pose a problem though.

There are lots of folks here using Pro-tools. How 'bout it guys....

Forgot my manners, sorry..... welcome to the forum!
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

Thanks for all the info Wildrace, what you're saying makes complete sense & your workflow seems to be pretty seemless indeed. Now that you've pointed out the fact that the guitar signal is lifted to line level before being outputted from the Axe (even when just outputting the dry signal) that actually clears up a whole host of questions for me. With this in mind I'm thinking that my initial idea of using a DI to record into Pro Tools & then sending that line level signal into the axe via S/PDIF may well still make sense for me as the inputs on the back must be intended for line level. Either that or doing away with the external DI & just using the FX block the way you suggested (but sending the signal back in via S/PDIF instead).

The thing is that I want it as straightforward as possible in terms of workflow & the wiki on digital reamping seemed anything but with changing time codes back & forth & plugging & unplugging etc. & that's what's made me scratch my head. I'm trying to find a solution where I can leave it continually plugged in one way & just use the thing without having to bugger about reconnecting stuff & changing settings between tracking & reamping etc. To me I guess it just seems simplest to manually DI, but I guess that's just because I don't yet have experience of the Axe (that & the fact that I know that the Avalon DI signal will be pristine & I don't know what to expect in terms of trying to DI from the Axe itself). ...I guess that's what you get from taking the plunge into the digital realm when your used to just plugging straight into the front of a tube amp & turning everything to 10!!! hehe
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

You may not be aware that the front input is generally regarded as the proper input for guitar, having Cliff's 'sauce' processing there. It's not available at other inputs. If you DI raw guitar and record that straight to PT, your likely going to want to return that track to the front input for the sauce - or maybe not. Do a 'sauce' search here and see what it means to you along with whatever processing should be considered between the track output and the Axe.

FWIW, I prefer to feed a guitar straight to the input rather than having the signal going thru boxes or tracks that mess with the signal before it hits the Axe.

Feeling like a partially informed loner here on the verge of passing misinformation so I'm going to back off. Perhaps someone will chime in, but the thread title is not going to draw attention regarding reamp specifics and such so...
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

Okay, well thanks for your help, I do appreciate it. I will do a search on secret sauce & see what comes up. I'd imagine it'd be a considerable advantage using the Axe's front end compared with a usual DI, but I can't imagine it'd out do the input on an Avalon U5, I shall do more research though (& possibly change the thread title to include 're-amping' when I get home later too ;-).
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

> With this in mind I'm thinking that my initial idea of using a DI to record into Pro Tools & then
> sending that line level signal into the axe via S/PDIF may well still make sense for me as the
> inputs on the back must be intended for line level.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you cannot use both analog and digital inputs and/or outputs at the same time. Also, keep in mind that the Axe-Fx must be the master for S/PDIF clocking. Cliff recommends using analog I/O over S/PDIF.

- John
 
Re: Hooking up the Axe-FX for the perfect workflow?

Hi John, thanks for the info, any idea why Cliff recommends Analog I/O instead of digital? The reason I'd rather use S/PDIF is because once the signal has been recorded into Pro Tools it has already been converted into the digital domain & it seems a little crazy to me, if there is the options of staying digital following the first conversion, to then convert it back to analog again for reamping & then back to digital again for a second time when it renters Pro Tools.

Here's my thoughts on how I'm thinking of hooking it up, do let me know if you think there could be any problems with this (or indeed if you think there's a better way of achieving the same result):

Recording:

Guitar - Avalon U5 DI -out from U5- Pro Tools (recording dry signal from U5)
-thru from U5- Axe FX (front input) -s/pdif out from Axe- Pro Tools (Axe wet signal for monitoring)

Reamping:

Pro Tools (recorded dry signal) -out from Pro Tools- Axe FX (s/pdif in) -s/pdif out from Axe- Pro Tools (recording wet signal from Axe)

...& sorry in advance guys if all my questions are a bit of a pain in the arse, it's just that I'm going to be ordering the Axe, the U5, the Pro Tools rig & the necessary cables all at the same time & I want to make sure I get it right (good cables & such aren't cheap!).

Thanks again for your input.
 
Also, just thinking, but for playing back the recorded dry track to listen back inbetween takes, I guess I cold insert an FX block at the beginning of patches & run the dry track out of Pro Tools into input 2 on the back of the Axe? With this, & the routing mentioned above, I'm thinking I wouldn't have to do any recabling at all between the various stages & would only need to change over the master clock when it came to reamping for the finished track. ....Any thoughts on this? My head's spinning from trying to plan all of this out. :)
 
Raven,
> any idea why Cliff recommends Analog I/O instead of digital?

Check Cliff's posts in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12800 for why.

Here's a quick copy and paste from it, "Doesn't your mixer have analog inputs? SPDIF sucks anyways. You get more noise and distortion due to clock jitter and cheap SRC chips than analog. Any Asian mixer is going to have the cheapest SRC chips that can be found and those typically have lousy distortion specs."

- John
 
Thanks John, much appreciated. He certainly doesn't seem to like SPDIF! Hehe. In honesty though, I can understand what he's saying about cheap mixers (& let's not forget the effect cheap cables have as well). I'm going to be using a Pro Tools interface & VoVox cables, so I'd imagine I should be fine. I shall certainly go on over & read that whole thread though, thanks again. :)
 
Oh, & I wasn't thinking of using SPDIF to get the initial signal into Pro tools, I was only going to use it for reamping.

...maybe I should forget this whole reamping thing & just record wet & have done with it!? It's just that working this way seemed like one of the benefits of a digital system, but maybe it is more hassle than it's worth in the long run. Thanks again for your input though guys.
 
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