Best way to record egtr for (re)amp modelers?

I have a Kemper Profiler for electric guitar and bass - and it’s amazing!! I hardly ever even power up my Marshall and Vox valve amps…

But what’s the best way to track with these things? I wanna record 3 channels of audio: the stereo Main out and the mono DI (i.e., before any processing). I’ve played with a few different ways, but none are completely satisfactory:

  1. two audio tracks: one stereo for Main, one mono for DI. The problem here is that now, instead of 5 guitar tracks in my project, I have 10, making it that much more busy and cluttered. Also, any cut/paste/duplicate editing has to be done to both, or they get out of sync and you might as well throw the other one away.

  2. put the two audio tracks in a Folder. Makes the clutter problem a bit better, but also makes navigation and workflow a bit clumsy - now I have to make three tracks for each guitar part I want to lay down. Yeesh!

  3. use one of the 3-channel audio track formats in Cubase, LRC or LRS. I haven’t quite figured out all the routing steps here to make this work for reamping, but I have recorded this way. It does have the desired effect of putting the entire performance into one single track, which is what i want, but it also puts Cubase into “surround” mode, where all the panners on all the tracks now have to deal with that. Stereo tracks seem fine - they can be panned left and right - but Mono tracks now have no panner at all. and I have no idea how much burden this puts on the audio engine, even tho I really am working on a stereo project.

Honestly, it seems like what i really want is a new Cubase audio track format: one that records three tracks at a time, but plays back in stereo - and has a mono send/stereo return using the otherwise unused DI track for re-amping. In some ways, this is similar to what I’ve been asking for wrt Instrument tracks, where I want them to be “chameleons” of a sort: switch between MIDI and (Frozen MIDI) audio modes. Here, I want a guitar track to be either the mono DI track or the stereo “(re)amped” track; I never need both at the same time.

Any other ideas?

– jdm

I know exactly what you mean and used to give that technique a chance, but it failed…
It is easy to record 3 signals to one single LRC track but then the horror begins when you want to monitor them.
You can use the plugin “mix 6to2” use panning and it works basically but its very confusing at least for me.
There should be a special monitoring plugin for us guitar players imo
So when I have a LRC track with 3 signals:
L processed Kemper out L
R processed Kemper out R
C Mono direct guitar signal

It should be able to monitor with a single click between L/R and C without doing panning. C is usually with a guitar plugin.

What you also can do is “direct offline processing” So you have 3 signals on a LRC track and with the plugin “6to2” you can mix it so you hear only the L/R (but C is still here but not audible) So you can work with your L/R till the final mix and still have the direct track on C if needed.

BUT !! for me the direct offline thing has still too much bugs and its dangerous when you copy the offline files to different tracks and positions because they are still linked to each other.

Imo its better to do a decision (DI or post) and than stick to it.

cheers
Bert

Yep, sounds like we’ve been in the same nightmare :slight_smile:

On the “Feature Requests” forum I suggested there be a new audio track type for this - or any other situation where you want to keep a mono, unprocessed performance (e.g., voice) “just in case” but otherwise work with it as a stereo track. Conceptually it’s like Freeze in Instrument tracks - tho as I complain elsewhere, Instrument tracks are horribly incomplete right now - you can’t even delete a Frozen track, let alone split/copy/paste, etc. My suggestion there was to make Instrument tracks like we are saying here for managing mono/stereo as two sides of a coin, but there it’s MIDI/audio.

IMHO these two new/improved track types would dramatically improve modern workflows! Does any other DAW have something similar?

#1. “Re-amp” Track: records two logical audio signals: a mono DI signal + a stereo processed signal. Stereo signal may be recorded simultaneously or generated / rendered afterwards, as described below. Can monitor, view, route both independently, but the primary reason and capability for this track type is to seamlessly manage the two logical signals as one for cut/copy/split/paste/etc editing, e.g., in the Project window. Normally, the stereo signal is used (e.g., routed to mix busses, etc.) but if desired, the stereo signal can be regenerated (rendered) from the mono signal, e.g., by routing through internal or external FX. In other words, the Re-amp Track type has two distinct modes: mono “source” mode and stereo “processed / amped” mode. The most common use case for the Re-amp Track is for electric guitar and bass, using an external amp simulator such as the Kemper Profiler, Line6, AxeFX, etc.

#2. “MIDI/Audio” Track (replaces or redefines the current Instrument track type): records two logical signals: a MIDI track + a stereo audio signal. Stereo signal may be recorded simultaneously or generated / rendered afterwards, similar to the Freeze function in the current Instrument track type. Unlike the current Instrument track type, however, is that a Frozen “MIDI/Audio” track is nearly indistinguishable from a plain Audio track: it can be split/copy/pasted/etc. If necessary, the track can be reverted back to MIDI, e.g., for further editing as MIDI, and then re-rendered (ala Freeze) to switch the track back to Audio mode. In other words, a MIDI/Audio track has two distinct modes: MIDI mode and Audio mode. Each mode should be virtually identical in operation and capability as their plain MIDI and plain Audio cousins; the power and reason of having both capabilities in one track is to manage the two as one, greatly facilitating workflow with MIDI instruments.

Notes:

  1. Everywhere I say “stereo” above could be any supported audio format. I only work in stereo, but there’s no reason that a Re-amp Track or MIDI/Audio track couldn’t render to a surround format.
  2. The initial implementation of both track types could simply discard all changes made in the secondary mode when reverting to the primary mode, similar to Un-Freeze on Instrument tracks today. But I can imagine these track types becoming wildly popular features in Cubase, and thus future versions could actually preserve the secondary mode change history, giving the user the option to re-apply them. But hey, one step at a time. :slight_smile:
  3. The MIDI/Audio track type could potentially manage any number of MIDI lanes/tracks as the MIDI portion. Thus, you could have separate MIDI lanes for each drum in the drum kit, then Freeze / Render to audio when done MIDI editing, thus visually “rolling up” a whole bunch of MIDI lanes into a single audio track.

Of course, some will point out that you can do all this already - by hand. And that’s exactly my point. These two new track types are all about improving productivity and speeding workflow. Whether you’re recording electric guitar, bass, vocals, synths, etc., each individual track moves through phases: recording the raw performance, editing, then rendering/bouncing to audio, ready to be mixed with everything else.

I think this represents a pretty fundamental mind shift from the way we track today. Now: the Project is just a bunch of event streams of various types: a MIDI track to record the MIDI performance, an Audio track to render the audio, and a VST track for the instrument itself. Proposed: the Project tracks become almost completely self-contained for each instrument/performance. For example, the “Drums” track has the MIDI performance, the VST instrument, and the rendered audio, all right there!

Think about how incredibly simplifying and liberating this would be - it moves us beyond the old tape-deck paradigm to a much more modern way of working. If you’ve used Lightroom (or the old Apple Aperture, RIP) you know that professional photography made this move already - long ago. A photo is a photo, all in one place: versions, edits, even stacks of similar photos or photos taken as a burst. I no longer have to manage each version of the photo as separate files, because that’s time-consuming, fatiguing, and error-prone. Same thing with having to manage (at least) three Cubase tracks for one MIDI performance!

OK, I’ll stop now. Time to get some real work done. But I’m very curious what others think. Does this new paradigm make sense? Would it improve your productivity, like it would mine?

– jdm