How do you track with your Fractal?

mwd

mwd

Power User
Been recording a long time with my Fractal products. I love the tone and sound but I have come to the conclusion that I am tracking wrong. My guitar parts seem a bit weak when compared to professional tracks regarding the audio image.

First let me state this IS something I’m doing wrong not a weakness or flaw in my Ultra & XL. I know my boxes are capable of huge sounds on records but I have not discovered the formula for achieving such.

Tone is good but my sound is reserved. It gets buried. Doesn’t smack my ass like I want it to.

I record mostly in stereo direct to Logic. I am wondering how others track using the Fractal. Should I be amplifying it and capturing the amplified sound with mics.

Ideas please.
 
Direct (via USB) into Logic. I don't find my sound to be reserved or buried.



I did come to realize that when I owned a Soldano, I tended to dial it in such that it tended to get buried in a mix. The amount and type of gain you use, equalization, and the effects applied all affect your sound's ability to hold up in a mix.

Do you have any clips to share that can help us understand exactly what you mean by "buried"?
 
Multiple stereo tracks is going to yield an indistinct stereo field which might account for the lack of "smack" (definition?) in your mixes. I believe one famous engineer called this "big mono."

Try tracking in mono and see if it makes a difference.
 
You absolutely have to setup your patch in the context of the song. Have the drums, bass and other instruments looping over a verse or chorus and THEN start tweaking your patch so you hear it through the filter of everything else that is going on. Sure do some post processing in your DAW if you need too, but most of that should be happening in your patch in terms of gain, bass, mid, treble, cab etc.

Also you may have to go over the EQ of other things in the mix to make room for the guitar during this process.

As for stereo / mono. I didn't find it makes much difference unless you are deliberately trying to introduce stereo elements. Like running the main cab to the left and the delay / verb to the right say.
 
You wont sound pro unless you are a pro. Thats the way it is. And mixing and getting great "record sound" is not something you learn in a year. You have to develop your brain. Getting great aural memory takes a lot of time. Its difficult because the ear/brain is made to get used to the sound you are hearing, so even the most seasoned pros will loose focus after a couple of hours. To me it happens after an hour or so.
Your tone is buried probably because it is too big and does not have space or depth. Nothing to do with the axe, will happen exactly the same with a miked amp.
Post a sample (no mix please) and I can give more advice.
 
fret said:
You absolutely have to setup your patch in the context of the song. Have the drums, bass and other instruments looping over a verse or chorus and THEN start tweaking your patch so you hear it through the filter of everything else that is going on.
Click to expand...

^^^This

Thank you. I think that I have not done this as much. I have always tracked with my Sennheiser 650's but I tried tracking live thru my Adam A7X's and the recorded result sounded larger probably because of what you mentioned. Hearing it more in context.

Part of it is my context of listening I'm sure. Been listening to too much guitar work from Tool or Satriani ....lol.

@tolchocks I will try posting some samples soon to pick your brain. Not a pro here but not a beginner. Been recording 45 years... digital about 17 years.
 
Most of my tracking is done in mono. I do track in stereo when there's a specific stereo sound that I'm looking for, but I find that with the style of music that i mainly work in, mono tracking works best for me layering multiple passes. I also track these mono passes dry for the most part, adding ambience and any other effects later.

Live is a totally different story since I can't double track and/or add effects later, so it's game on!!!!
 
I track in mono and stereo, depending. Mono gives me cleaner transient response. Stereo lets me print with stereo effects (yes, I am in the minority: I actually like to print with effects). Of course, I'll do multiple passes and comp tracks if I have to as well. I track straight from the Axe into my Chameleon 7602 MKII XMod preamp when tracking at home. At West Orange Sound, they take my output straight into a Focusrite ISA 828. They used to mic my FRFR monitor, but I finally convinced 'em it was a waste of time. The outro solo on this track was recorded in mono at West Orange by James Dellatacoma. Straight cord from the XLR out on the back of the Axe to the Focusrite. To my ear, it sounds MORE like a real amp to me than the middle guitar solo, which was played through a real amp (though the middle guitar solo signal was dweezed through a Zoom multi-fx unit first, which squashed it a bit), the outro solo, played by me, was, if I recall correctly, a custom 'Rust Never Sleeps' patch some kind soul on this board had posted. I may or may not have also had my Morley Vol/Wah/Distortion distortion effect on too - not sure. The guitar sound, the the responsiveness while playing it, is so real to me.

Both my home studio and West Orange Sound use Apogee Rosetta 8 converters. I have found using the Axe USB to be problematic in many way, so, yes, I eat it and do another round of D/A A/D conversion.

Most of my patches have two different cabs, but they're panned together when I record mono.



Another track. The guitar solo is the Das Metal patch with the Morley distortion on (Morley comes before the Axe in my setup, not in the FX loop, so I'm playing with gain staging here (bad!), recorded in mono with my Chameleon preamp at home. It has a crisp transient response and an incredibly 'organic' attack (to my ears, anyway). It's about halfway through the piece:

 
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I usually record mono tracks, but I use a Saffire Pro for my interface. I have played around with using stereo to record, but I do it a little different than has been talked about already. I'll use the new Stereo UR cab and use two different cab/mic configurations and hard pan them. I go into the DAW on two mono channels and I can mix them as I see fit. I started doing this because I have always done it that way in a studio working with a pro engineer. I've always seen them use at least two mics on the cab and use a mix of them in the final mix. I also use the fx loop to send out a DI of the guitar so I can always reamp later if I need to. That's a total of 3 tracks in the DAW for one guitar. I don't print any effects though, everytime I did, I regretted it later.
 
How I track is simple, but a little difficult to explain.

From my guitar, I go into a Little Labs Red Eye 3D. I use phantom power when using passive pickups.

Then the DI is split.

One is sent to my Steinberg UR28M, while the thru is sent to the front of the Axe-Fx II.

When I'm tracking in Cubase, I opt for zero latency. I do this by setting up my patches with an FX Loop block splitting off near the end of chain.

So, "Output 2 FX Send" is sent to my studio monitors L and R. My studio monitors are also receiving a feed from the UR28M as a standard audio interface would take care of all sounds (my monitors have multiple inputs).

So, while I am recording my DI in Cubase, I am able to monitor the Axe-Fx in real time and able to control its volume via the front "Output Levels 2" knob.

After DIs are recorded, I'll later reamp through the Red Eye 3D (which is very convenient because all I have to do is push in the "reamp" button on it). This allows me to tweak the Axe-Fx II to perfection before printing to an actual track.

When I do finally print to Cubase, I do so through the Axe's "S/PDIF Out" to my UR28M.
 
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