2. Common Use-Cases

Audio interface can act as a hub and can take signal from many different sources. Depending on what physical gear we already have and limited by the number of available inputs on the interface, we can use audio interface in many different way and we can combine different methods at the same time to get better results and have more flexibility.

Guitar plugged straight into the interface

The simplest setup we can have. By plugging the guitar straight into the instrument input interface, we rely solely on digital amp and effect simulators to transform guitar sound. For most bedroom players this is just enough to get pretty good results.

Pros:

  • Very flexible. We are recording dry sound and any processing that we do can be changed later. We don’t like the amp sim we recorded with? No problem, we can just swap the plugin and render the track again.
  • Very simple, requires only one guitar cable.

Cons:

  • Some would argue that 100% digital sound will never be as good as a real tube amp and real pedals.
Using real pedals and/or (tube) preamp before an interface

This setup is a bit more complicated. We hook up the conventional guitar rig with real pedals and/or a nice tube preamp and instead of plugging the output from the last pedal in the chain into an amplifier, we plug it into the line input of the interface. Then we add amp simulator, cab sim, or any additional effects and tweaks we want in digital post-processing.

Pros:

  • We can capture the sound of actual physical pedals and/or preamps.

Cons:

  • Less flexible. Once we record the sound of the pedal, it’s done, we can process that signal further, but we cannot tweak the pots of the pedal after recording.
  • Makes the setup a bit more complicated.
Mic’ing an amplifier

Kind of an old-school approach that uses a full-blown guitar rig with all the pedals we need and a real amplifier with a real cabinet, mic’d using a real microphone. We connect the microphone to a mic input of an interface and record the end result of our rig. On top of that sound we can add more digital effects in the DAW, but most of it is pre-cooked. As a next-level, we can add more microphones and capture the sound with multiple mics from different distances, or use different mic types that we can later mix and process independently.

Pros:

  • We can capture the sound of actual physical pedals and amps.
  • Captures the sound of the room without the need of cabinet simulations.

Cons:

  • Even less flexible. Once we record the sound of the pedals and amps, it’s done, we can process that signal further, but we cannot tweak the pots of the pedal after recording.
  • Not very practical for bedroom players as you need to record a loud cabinet.
  • Results will depend greatly on how good the room sounds and how good the mic is positioned.
  • Makes the setup a bit more complicated.
Tapping on the amplifier output

Similar to the previous approach, but eliminates microphone from the equation. Instead of plugging the output of an amplifier straight into the cabinet, we can add a device in between that will tap the signal and give us line-level signal that we can record through an interface. Palmer PDI-03 and PDI-09 are well known examples of such devices. Some of them have an internal dummy load, others expect you to connect an actual speaker or a resistive dummy load instead of the speaker to prevent the tube amp from blowing up.

Pros:

  • We can capture the sound of actual physical pedals and amps.
  • We don’t need to worry about how the room sounds and how the mics are positioned.

Cons:

  • Palmer PDI and most similar speaker simulators have built in speaker simulator that cannot be bypassed, so we can’t use impulses that will often sound better than hardware speaker sims.
  • Makes the setup a bit more complicated.
Combining two or more from above

With some additional work (and gadgets) we can combine two or more approaches from above and record them at the same time, provided that we have enough free inputs on the interface. If we split the signal right after the guitar, we can take one tap and plug it straight into the interface and take the other tap that can be plugged into pedals and/or amps. That way we get the flexibility of having dry signal, but we also get some of the goodness of actual pedals and amps. We can process both signals independently and mix them to get the best results.

Pros:

  • Very flexible. We are recording dry sound and any processing that we do can be changed later. We don’t like the amp sim we recorded with? No problem, we can just swap the plugin and render the track again.
  • Combines qualities of dry and wet signal recording.

Cons:

  • Makes the setup quite complicated.
Re-amping

As opposed to the previous approaches, re-amping is a two step process. The first step is to record dry guitar signal. Once we have the dry signal on a (virtual) tape, the second step is to output the dry signal back to analog output of the interface, run it through a real-world rig consisting of physical pedals and amps and record the output again, either using a microphone or some direct approach. We end up with both dry and wet signal, but now we can re-record wet signal over and over again and change the signal chain or settings as many times as we wish. That’s probably the ultimate approach but requires the most work. For simplicity, we can use digital amp and pedal sims to monitor what we are recording (nobody likes to hear dry sound in real time). Using a splitter box, we can record dry signal and monitor wet signal through an actual amp, but it’s a bit more complicated.

Pros:

  • Super flexible. We can tweak the digital effects in DAW, but we can also tweak real pedals and amps and we can run the dry recorded signal through an actual guitar rig as many times as we want and re-record the output.
  • The best sound quality can be achieved.
  • Combines qualities of dry and wet signal recording.

Cons:

  • Ideally, we would need a re-amp box that converts the dry output from line level to high impedance instrument level, making it a more realistic input for guitar pedals/amps. Otherwise, line-level signal that interface outputs is more similar to the output of active pickups.
  • Requires more knowledge to get great results.
  • Makes the setup quite complicated.
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    The idea behind this site is to share my experience with Do It Yourself approach to guitars, amplifiers and pedals. Whether you want to save a couple of bucks by performing a mod or upgrade yourself instead of paying a tech, or want to build your own piece of gear from scratch, I'm sure you will find something interesting here. Also, this is the home of DIY Layout Creator, a free piece of software for drawing circuit layouts and schematics, written with DIY enthusiasts in mind.