shasha
Fractal Fanatic
EDIT: You can skip to the final results here rather than read this entire post of fail. :mrgreen
There's some decent info in here if you really like messing around (i.e., wasting time), but after a few days messing with this it's just not the best working method.
ORIGINAL POST:
OK, this one has been fighting me for a while now. Cliff has said that he would look into a future update in the firmware that would alleviate the small issues here and there with performing a re-amp without the onboard audio interface. I'll update this thread when and if he is able to do it (I would probably bet on that being likely knowing the big brain on that guy). Basically it will let us go 100% analog I/O for recording both wet and dry which of course means that we can use any sample rate in our projects and audio interface that we choose. For me that is an ideal situation for a lot of reasons, but mainly monitoring purposes. I'm really crossing my fingers for it to happen because it will just put the finishing touches on this thing.
But until that day here is what I've come up with for now. It is the most streamline method I could find to perform what I call a hybrid re-amp.
The stuff I'm using is an AxeFXII (duhh), a Focusrite Saffire Pro24DSP and StudioOne as my DAW.
Physical connections are as follows:
The only drawback here so far is that the AxeFXII HAS TO BE THE MASTER CLOCK SOURCE. I have made up so many damn cables this last week and wired this crap up so many different ways and tried everything....there are issues with every config I came up with. 90% of those issues came down to clock sync issues which will cause dropout and jitter. The real problem is that the AxeFXII will not run as slave and sync properly except for when the input is selected as AES input...then it locks right up and runs like a champ. Kind of hard to record a guitar into the AES input.
OK, so the basic operation is:
First take (initial wet and dry tracking)
The basic explanation of what's going on here is that we're recording ALL the wet tracks via analog outputs from the AxeFXII. We don't have to worry about clock issues anytime we're recording analog. The dry signal is only available via digital outputs right now so we are taking it off the SPDIF output. This is why we have to slave our audio interface to it. Then when we re-amp we are sending an analog output from the DAW to the rear inputs of the AxeFXII. Because it was recorded via the front input it has whatever special sauce Cliff put into that input; I just know that it sounds better and I am pretty sure that it's baked into the dry recording this way.
Advantages are that we don't have clock issues (and there are potential for a lot of them either in the recording or while monitoring which will confuse things because you don't know if its in the recording or not). The only thing that we have to change in the AxeFXII's menus are switching between front and rear input for wet and dry tracking. Monitoring works how it's supposed to from within the DAW; this was a major PITA going other routes. The process is smooth, no swapping cables and crap and once once you get it set up and working it's logical.
Disadvantage...well you have to remember to set your audio interface as the master clock after you are finished recording and editing or else it won't work and of course we are still tied to 48kHz projects for the time being.
Now you could go ahead and send the dry track back to the AxeFXII via SPDIF and it will work (just change the MAIN INPUT SOURCE to AES/SPDIF)....but you will also have to set the audio interface as the master clock at this point. Its an extra step and most DAW's will not release the driver (unless you set it in the app's advance settings). This way we don't have to deal with changing clock sources back and forth and the other thing is that if you set up your DAW to release the driver and you click anywhere outside the app's window it will stop recording or playing. Me no likey that way.
I was able to record for quite a while tonight (just horrible noodling) with zero dropout or glitches. Levels were really good throughout the entire process and the main thing is that everything just worked well.
There's some decent info in here if you really like messing around (i.e., wasting time), but after a few days messing with this it's just not the best working method.
ORIGINAL POST:
OK, this one has been fighting me for a while now. Cliff has said that he would look into a future update in the firmware that would alleviate the small issues here and there with performing a re-amp without the onboard audio interface. I'll update this thread when and if he is able to do it (I would probably bet on that being likely knowing the big brain on that guy). Basically it will let us go 100% analog I/O for recording both wet and dry which of course means that we can use any sample rate in our projects and audio interface that we choose. For me that is an ideal situation for a lot of reasons, but mainly monitoring purposes. I'm really crossing my fingers for it to happen because it will just put the finishing touches on this thing.
But until that day here is what I've come up with for now. It is the most streamline method I could find to perform what I call a hybrid re-amp.
The stuff I'm using is an AxeFXII (duhh), a Focusrite Saffire Pro24DSP and StudioOne as my DAW.
Physical connections are as follows:
- Guitar --> AxeFXII FRONT INPUT (sounds better)
- AxeFXII OUTPUT 1/2 --> Saffire INPUT 3/4 (because they are the first non-mic preamp inputs and on the back)
- AxeFXII SPDIF OUTPUT --> Saffire SPDIF INPUT
- Saffire OUTPUT 5 (monitoring) --> AxeFXII REAR INPUT (L)
- 48kHz 24-bit project (we're stuck with this for now)
- Wet tracks are Saffire IN 3/4 (stereo) / feeding main mixer monitor
- Dry tracks are Saffire SPDIF IN 1 (mono) / feeding a 'submix' to the Saffire 5 OUTPUT
- Re-Amp tracks are Saffire IN 3/4 (stereo) / feeding main mixer monitor
- Dry tracks feed the main mixer output and are monitored via my software mixer for the Saffire. The only thing I have feeding my headphones/monitors is the DAW output which is the main mixer.
- Wet tracks are routed to a sub mix or separate mix bus. In my case it's the Saffire OUTPUT 5. I can monitor this if I want, but I obviously choose not to except for verification purposes. It is how we feed the AxeFXII for the re-amp.
The only drawback here so far is that the AxeFXII HAS TO BE THE MASTER CLOCK SOURCE. I have made up so many damn cables this last week and wired this crap up so many different ways and tried everything....there are issues with every config I came up with. 90% of those issues came down to clock sync issues which will cause dropout and jitter. The real problem is that the AxeFXII will not run as slave and sync properly except for when the input is selected as AES input...then it locks right up and runs like a champ. Kind of hard to record a guitar into the AES input.
OK, so the basic operation is:
First take (initial wet and dry tracking)
- AxeFXII I/O menu --> AUDIO tab --> SPDIF/AES SELECT -->SPDIF
- AxeFXII I/O menu --> AUDIO tab --> USB/DIGI OUT SOURCE --> INPUT (this is what gives us our dry track)
- AxeFXII I/O menu --> AUDIO tab --> INPUT 1 LEFT SELECT --> FRONT
- Arm the first Wet and the Dry track for record and just wail away
- AxeFXII I/O menu --> AUDIO tab --> INPUT 1 LEFT SELECT --> REAR
- Arm the re-amp track, mute the first recorded wet track, go back in the timeline to the beginning of the dry take and hit record
The basic explanation of what's going on here is that we're recording ALL the wet tracks via analog outputs from the AxeFXII. We don't have to worry about clock issues anytime we're recording analog. The dry signal is only available via digital outputs right now so we are taking it off the SPDIF output. This is why we have to slave our audio interface to it. Then when we re-amp we are sending an analog output from the DAW to the rear inputs of the AxeFXII. Because it was recorded via the front input it has whatever special sauce Cliff put into that input; I just know that it sounds better and I am pretty sure that it's baked into the dry recording this way.
Advantages are that we don't have clock issues (and there are potential for a lot of them either in the recording or while monitoring which will confuse things because you don't know if its in the recording or not). The only thing that we have to change in the AxeFXII's menus are switching between front and rear input for wet and dry tracking. Monitoring works how it's supposed to from within the DAW; this was a major PITA going other routes. The process is smooth, no swapping cables and crap and once once you get it set up and working it's logical.
Disadvantage...well you have to remember to set your audio interface as the master clock after you are finished recording and editing or else it won't work and of course we are still tied to 48kHz projects for the time being.
Now you could go ahead and send the dry track back to the AxeFXII via SPDIF and it will work (just change the MAIN INPUT SOURCE to AES/SPDIF)....but you will also have to set the audio interface as the master clock at this point. Its an extra step and most DAW's will not release the driver (unless you set it in the app's advance settings). This way we don't have to deal with changing clock sources back and forth and the other thing is that if you set up your DAW to release the driver and you click anywhere outside the app's window it will stop recording or playing. Me no likey that way.
I was able to record for quite a while tonight (just horrible noodling) with zero dropout or glitches. Levels were really good throughout the entire process and the main thing is that everything just worked well.
Last edited:
To slave the AxeFxII the digital in must be the input source. Ergo it must be the guitar dry track in the reamping case.