Fascination Street says reamp/di signal is too low.....

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Maggai

Maggai

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Currently recording my bands next album, and i'm recording the guitars and bass at my homestudio.
I thought using the Axe FX II would be great for this. Recording a di signal for reamping at Fascination Street when they will mix and master.

Sent them a test of the di signal, and they say it's way too low, and will not make for optimal sound for the album.
I should turn up the input signal so that's it's just about hitting the red.

I thought the di signal was low myself, but as I've read about, it's supposed to be that low. Coming straight from Fractal.

But this is Fascination Street (Opeth, Devin Townsend, Soilwork, James Labrie, etc etc), they should know what they're talking about.

So, what to do??
 
I have complained about this in several threads...
And If you roll out your guitar volume often during your playing the DI volume is really ridiculously low :(
 
Yes, it is very low if you want to reamp through analog paths later on (Then I'd rather use a DI, or add some 30 dB of gain within the Axe.). If you reamp through digital paths back to the Axe it is exactly where it should be.
 
it is that low so u dont have to mess with levels while reamping with the axe ..
record di -> set input to usb -> all faders to 0db -> hit play -> perfect reamped tone

my suggestion is: normalize your sample to -6db ;)

first times i reamped i wasnt sure about the low levels too. but i did some testing: even with my guitar volume rolled back nearly to zero and played some licks i couldnt here the difference between playing direct or the reamped signal even the volume of the DI track was REALLY low. dont know how it works but it works ;)

higher levels for reamping are only necassery when reamping analog (because of another DA conversation)
 
There is a difference in what is considered a normal DI track and the AxeFx II reamp track.

The AxeFx II reamp track is designed to be the same level as your guitar output. So if you have passive pups, its at the pickup output level. This is not normally suitable for listening.

A conventional DI guitar track is a much hotter signal and you can easily listen to it.

Also note, most reamp boxes are designed to reduce the track level back to pickup level for reamping. This is not needed with the AxeFx II and it's reamp track. The track is already low level and can be routed into the AxeFx II input without a reamp box.

Richard
 
Thanks for the responses guys! Good to hear this!

Makes sense that there is a difference between the axe fx reamp signal, and a conventional di signal. I've tried reamping with the axe fx,
and it worked great. But using that same signal with analog reamping through a regular guitar amp is different.

Recorded some bass using a sansamp bass driver as a di, into my focusrite saffire 6 usb soundcard now, with "regular" volume level, just barely touching the red from time to time. and then gonna try recording just straight into the soundcard. I have a countryman 85 di, that i've used before with great results, but a friend is borrowing it for recording an album.

Thanks guys!
 
Heres something to try. Put an FXLOOP block as the frist block in your chain and make sure COPY OUT1 to OUT2 is off in the I/O Audio tab.
This should feed a DI to OUT2, turn the OUT2 knob all the way up. Compare that signal to the Axe-fx USB DI and see if its hotter. I cant find
my actual DI box atm to test a "normal DI". :lol
 
Funeral said:
Heres something to try. Put an FXLOOP block as the frist block in your chain and make sure COPY OUT1 to OUT2 is off in the I/O Audio tab.
This should feed a DI to OUT2, turn the OUT2 knob all the way up. Compare that signal to the Axe-fx USB DI and see if its hotter. I cant find
my actual DI box atm to test a "normal DI". :lol
Click to expand...

It will be low. The Out 2 knob does not apply gain, full is unity. The only way to get a hotter signal is to apply gain within the Axe.
 
They are right !
I have been bitching about this before.
It is because of a design issue for reamping. It is supposed
to keep the level the same as the guitar level. But the bit resolution
gets fucked up.
Ii never use the this option
 
I don't know what you guys are talking about... As a matter of fact I have to turn down my DI track... It clips from time to time in Sonar... And by setting my input trim on my Axe-fx to just below clipping (as is recommended) I'm sitting at right under -5.2 (in Sonar) with open chords at -6.1 with palm mutes. Click the I/O button on the front panel, continuously strum while adjusting the input until it is right below red... I'm sitting at 23.9% with stock Ibanez pickups.
 
Thomas Larsson said:
But the bit resolution
gets fucked up.
Ii never use the this option
Click to expand...

Not really, even if the guitar peaks at -40 dBFS you have more than 100 dB (!) dynamic range left, which certainly is plenty enough.

mortega76 said:
I don't know what you guys are talking about... As a matter of fact I have to turn down my DI track... It clips from time to time in Sonar... And by setting my input trim on my Axe-fx to just below clipping (as is recommended) I'm sitting at right under -5.2 (in Sonar) with open chords at -6.1 with palm mutes. Click the I/O button on the front panel, continuously strum while adjusting the input until it is right below red... I'm sitting at 23.9% with stock Ibanez pickups.
Click to expand...

Sure you're using Axe-Fx II and not the first generation? If so, I'm not sure what you're doing. Input trim does not change level on the II, it only optimises the AD stage.
 
Last edited:
The Axe-Fx II USB is 24 bits. This is 144.7 dB of dynamic range. Full-scale is about +20 dBu. So even if your guitar is -20 dBu (-40 dB re. FS) you still have over 100 dB of dynamic range.

A typical single coil pickup can easily exceed -20 dBu. A humbucker can easily exceed 0 dBu. Full-scale of 20 dBu gives you a few bits of headroom in case of very hot pickups.

The self noise of a guitar pickup and associated electronics limits its dynamic range to less than 100 dB typically.

Q.E.D.
 
after you've recorded to the DAW, if you find the signal level is too low you can increase the level digitally

in Logic you do this via the sample editor.
you select the entire recorded part then: Function -> change gain [to boost to taste] or normalise [so boost to the max based upon the maximum peak in the audio]

note though that if for what ever reason you have noise in the original recording, this gets boosted too

I've always found the Axe to be very clean, so this type of boosting works pretty well..
simple and quick
 
That will not bring back your lost resolution that you
throw away. (Just a bunch of zeros)
That's like converting an mp3 to wave format.


clarky said:
after you've recorded to the DAW, if you find the signal level is too low you can increase the level digitally

in Logic you do this via the sample editor.
you select the entire recorded part then: Function -> change gain [to boost to taste] or normalise [so boost to the max based upon the maximum peak in the audio]

note though that if for what ever reason you have noise in the original recording, this gets boosted too

I've always found the Axe to be very clean, so this type of boosting works pretty well..
simple and quick
Click to expand...
 
Thomas Larsson said:
That will not bring back your lost resolution that you
throw away. (Just a bunch of zeros)
That's like converting an mp3 to wave format.
Click to expand...

There is no "lost resolution" as the dynamic range of the guitar is less than the dynamic range of the digital word. If you increased the level of the DI signal the lower bits would just be noise. See my explanation above.
 
lil' thing to add here...

I normalise my recorded audio but it's principly so that I can see more detail [purely a visual thing] in the waveform should I need to perfom some sort of editing on the waveform itself..

also, [wrongly or rightly] the way I learned to prep a desk for mix-down was to set the faders to 0 and use the channel's gain control to bring up the signal to peak at 0 and then start using the faders to mix the levels..
in this 'digital case' the gain control is the equivalent of the DAW's normalisation
it don't change the way things sound though..
and I'll only normalise audio that has nuusually low levels

the whole "need a big signal" thing is all about signal to noise ratio and ensuring that the recorded audio is lifted way out of the noise floor..
this goes back to the analogue days when it was far more critical..
thing is.. with digital gizmo's like the Axe.. there is pretty much no new noise being introduced..
asuming you don't have other noise probs, the noise is generally generated before the signal hits the Axe...
 
FractalAudio said:
You are increasing the level before converting to digital. That's the whole point of the Input Trim page.
Click to expand...

Hmm but from what I figured out the reamp level is lowered by the same ammount you are adding in the input trim.
If you have it tickling red it should mean it hits full scale digital, then if you look at the reamp waveform it actually never reaches that value.
 
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