Guitar Gear Forum

This weekend tried recording with DI. Something I've tried a couple times before but never really dove into it. Not to say that I've dove head first into recording with a traditional mic either, but wanted to take a crack at silent recording.

Setup is pretty typical:
Guitar - amp (no effects) - Two Notes Captor -XLR out - Scarlett 2i2 (phantom power) - USB C/Reaper.

I understand that a cab sim has to be applied. Years ago I bought Lynchback and V30 sets from Celestion on a Black Friday sale. I just use Reaverb to import the cab file and set the Dry to 0, and the Wet up high enough to not clip (about -8db)

Can't figure out the latency issue when recording. If I turn direct monitoring off on the 2i2, but leave it enabled in Reaper, I only get the raw signal with no cab sim (as expected), and is super annoying to record with even though the latency is non existent. With monitoring on, the latency with the cab sim applied is way too far behind to use. Buffer/block size is 256k, which is the lowest I can get without popping. The risk/reward is not in my favor here.

Level on the Captor is set pretty low ( like 1 or 2) , amp's Master is quite low as well (barely above 1 on the 2204, 2i2 input is high enough for solid green and no orange. Monday detail stuff. Anything higher on the amp or Captor then I get unwanted noise or high pitched squeal that I'm not going to spend time fixing at the moment.

It seems like there's way more EQ to do on the DI track than a traditional mic. Beauty of a mic is I can lazily set the SM57 - or hell even a shitty phone camera - with the amp volume barely cracked and out of the box with zero EQ or anything sounds like a million bucks compared to me spending hours on tweaking a single DI track that still sounds lifeless and dull after trying to mess with it.

Spent a good amount of time scouring YT and Google on DI recording, but most are just showing the end result, or don't use cab sims. I guess I'm putting feelers out there to see if this is normal for DI recording, or is there a more efficient way to go about it?

I anticipate the responses suggesting my bottlenecks are probably the particular cab sim package and laptop not up to par (it is about 7 years old AFAIK)

i usually change the "block size" whatever that means down to 32 and then back to 2056 when mixing, theres no latency on mine when its at 32

Hipster Salad wrote:This weekend tried recording with DI. Something I've tried a couple times before but never really dove into it. Not to say that I've dove head first into recording with a traditional mic either, but wanted to take a crack at silent recording.

Setup is pretty typical:
Guitar - amp (no effects) - Two Notes Captor -XLR out - Scarlett 2i2 (phantom power) - USB C/Reaper.

I understand that a cab sim has to be applied. Years ago I bought Lynchback and V30 sets from Celestion on a Black Friday sale. I just use Reaverb to import the cab file and set the Dry to 0, and the Wet up high enough to not clip (about -8db)

Can't figure out the latency issue when recording. If I turn direct monitoring off on the 2i2, but leave it enabled in Reaper, I only get the raw signal with no cab sim (as expected), and is super annoying to record with even though the latency is non existent. With monitoring on, the latency with the cab sim applied is way too far behind to use. Buffer/block size is 256k, which is the lowest I can get without popping. The risk/reward is not in my favor here.

Level on the Captor is set pretty low ( like 1 or 2) , amp's Master is quite low as well (barely above 1 on the 2204, 2i2 input is high enough for solid green and no orange. Monday detail stuff. Anything higher on the amp or Captor then I get unwanted noise or high pitched squeal that I'm not going to spend time fixing at the moment.

It seems like there's way more EQ to do on the DI track than a traditional mic. Beauty of a mic is I can lazily set the SM57 - or hell even a shitty phone camera - with the amp volume barely cracked and out of the box with zero EQ or anything sounds like a million bucks compared to me spending hours on tweaking a single DI track that still sounds lifeless and dull after trying to mess with it.

Spent a good amount of time scouring YT and Google on DI recording, but most are just showing the end result, or don't use cab sims. I guess I'm putting feelers out there to see if this is normal for DI recording, or is there a more efficient way to go about it?

I anticipate the responses suggesting my bottlenecks are probably the particular cab sim package and laptop not up to par (it is about 7 years old AFAIK)

I had a similar thread a few weeks ago and I was getting frustrated with recording with IRs. EndTime had a comment about the Celestion IRs not being particularly good, which I have to agree with him there, and he sent me some IRs he liked and sure enough they were much, much better. I ended up liking one of them and I am using it exclusively on my guitars now and it made my life a LOT easier.

So I guess it's just one of those things were you have to try several until you find one that works for you. But once you do, it's plug and play and you get the exact same tone every single time, which is a major thing for me because since I have a job etc, I rarely finish tracking a whole song in one day, it usually takes me a few days in between work and family and my recording area is small and is the same area we have band practice in, so keeping the mics up in the same position is challenging. In that sense, the IRs are a godsend - once you find one (or a few) that works well for you.


In terms of latency, my computer is really strong with 128gB of RAM so I don't have that issue, but honestly, I decided to buy a hardware IR loader (Torpedo Cab M+) so the I can keep the IRs outside of the computer and I don't have to worry about latency at all. The Cab M+ also has a nice headphones out so I can also use to practice quietly without having to turn the music computer on/

Currently my set up is Amp > Load Box (either a Palmer or a Suhr) > Cab M+> Mic Pre (1073 clone) > UA interface. That gives a full mic'd tone, a real analog front end (with the 1073) and it sounds really good.

I agree recording with mics is super easy but I have to say I am a believer in IRs now that I found a good one. I like to record late at night and being able to do it silently and consistently is really awesome.

If you want to try out some different IRs pm me your email and I will send you some.

Moved to the recording sub.

I think that Reaverb plugin is too slow. STL Tones has a free one called NadIR.

https://www.stltones.com/products/stl-i ... -in-bundle