Analogue vs digital...Mic'd amp vs modelled amp

Littlejonny · April 2023

I started my recording 'career' very young, in the mid 90s. Up in Hull, all the recording studios were still tape-based, reel-to-reel establishments. We recorded in The Warren, then Angel Studios, then Wall 2 Wall, then Fairview (where apparently Def Leppard had recorded an album!). We did actually also record for a day in BBC, Maida Vale in London, and that was tape too.

We'd always get very excited to hear our songs played back through the enormous speakers, and were always a bit disappointed when we got the 'master cassette' home and it hissed like a box of snakes! Eventually, my Dad organised a compilation CD of our music, and we were amazed how good it sounded, coming off the DAT tapes. I don't think we got DATs from the first two recordings, they were literally just cassettes. Anyway, I'm enjoying reminiscing...but the point is, as soon as we could go digital, we were all-in!

I remember our friend Gary the engineer at Wall 2 Wall telling us that people were recording on computers 'nowadays' and I imagined a black screen with MS DOS and some complicated system. I was amazed when I was recruited as 'session guitarist' (still waiting for payment) at Digital Hit Factory on Anlaby Road (like all of these studios, no longer there) to see Pro Tools for the first time.

Just prior to this, we had got a Foster Digital 8 Track, which sounded pristine, and my brother bought a Line 6 Pod, which for the first time, allowed us to record without amps and mics.

I can honestly say in the 20+ years that followed, I've never mic'd an amp for a recording (ok, now I can think of 2 occasions where it was done for me in studios but for the vast majority of stuff, I was recording myself and always completely digital.

Last year, I spent a week in Superfly studios near Newark playing guitar for someone's album. They had a tonne of beautiful old amps and of course we mic'd them up. Guitar tones went straight to disk, and they sounded amazing. I also recently spent two days in a nice studio in Oxfordshire with my own band, and we recorded live, with mic'd amps. I'm now mixing the album and I've realised there is something different about the way a mic'd amp sits in the mix so easily, and the way modellers do not.

I don't know what it is, and it's even more complicated that we're still hearing a digital recording, so ultimately it's digital...but IMO there is a difference, and it's been backed up by several musicians and engineers I've worked with, and many who I haven't (including Tom Bukovac).

I guess this is just a conversation starter, but if there is a question, it's...why use a modeller at all? Is convenience king...or great, tangible tone that sits beautifully in a mix. I guess I just feel excited about recording guitar again, after a very long time.

Cirrus · April 2023

Yeah, there is a difference.

For one thing, I find myself wanting to do more to a modelled tone - more notch filters to get rid of resonances, tape sims, mic preamp modelling etc etc and everything that feels like an improvement or that fixes some aspect of the sound also makes it less real.

With a real amp, I don't get that same feeling of needing to "better-ize" it with processing.

Littlejonny · April 2023

Cirrus said:

Yeah, there is a difference.

For one thing, I find myself wanting to do more to a modelled tone - more notch filters to get rid of resonances, tape sims, mic preamp modelling etc etc and everything that feels like an improvement or that fixes some aspect of the sound also makes it less real.

With a real amp, I don't get that same feeling of needing to "better-ize" it with processing.

It's probably not just a feeling. I think there's other stuff at play hear - stuff our ears can detect but we have no way of quantifying.

Stuckfast · April 2023

I met John Spence from Fairview a couple of months back. We worked out that it's probably the third oldest studio in the UK after Abbey Road and Rockfield. Pretty amazing!

Anyway, you're not alone in thinking amp modellers are hard to mix. Bob Clearmountain thinks so too. So do I for that matter, though I don't have a good explanation for why.

Are you still based round Hull way?

Roland · April 2023

I’ve always thought that this is something to do with the sound from a valve amp varying with time. Static EQ measurements are never going to find this. There’s talk about, for example, capacitor discharge/recharge times, or speaker coil heating affecting resistance. Solid state amps generally don’t have the same characteristics. Most modellers don’t either, although Fractal Audio modelling goes some way towards it.

It’s a topic which doesn’t get enough discussion.

PolarityMan · April 2023

For me I think the biggest factor is how it influences the performance.

jasonbone75 · April 2023

I think the negative feedback in power amp has quite an impact. I have done some tests where I used my amp into loadbox with IR and the same IR using a preamp signal and an emulation of my amp into the IR. I have been able to get what feels like 98% of the way to an equivalent sound on all of them but only with adding high shelf to put some sparkle in that appears to come from the power amp. The sparkle/presence/airiness whatever you want to call it is only present by default in the signal chain with the power amp circuit. The other two need tweaking but can be made to match. As Roland pointed out, the actual imprint on the sound is not static but it's presence/absence is extremely noticeable

Danny1969 · April 2023

Generally when I worked as a engineer in a recording studio I always mic'ed amps and I still do now for my own recordings. I will use a modeller for a Youtube video where the sound isn't that important but for a proper recording it's always mic'ed.

I think a modeller does sit better with other more processed sounds like keys and sampled drums but in a real band context playing in a room it just sounds false. A couple of producers I worked with at 2020 have now gone back to real amps after a period of time with the AxeFX and Helix. One of them has built a nice amp room and offers a re amping service. The other guy works in a London studio now and has a nice live room for real amps.

One trick I learnt indoors is record from the pre amp out into your DAW using a speaker simm until you have the part nailed. Then remove the speaker sim and send it out from the DAW into the power amp of your amp. Then mic it up and record it back in the DAW.
This effectively gives you the same sound as you would have got tracking your amp mic'ed up from the get go but you only need to have it loudish for the 4 min or whatever length of the song ... not all the time you're trying to nail the part.

robinbowes · April 2023

Danny1969 said:

One trick I learnt indoors is record from the pre amp out into your DAW using a speaker simm until you have the part nailed. Then remove the speaker sim and send it out from the DAW into the power amp of your amp. Then mic it up and record it back in the DAW.

Taking that one step further, you can record the direct output of your guitar to give you the option of putting it through various backends - modellers, amps, etc.

Littlejonny · April 2023

Danny1969 said:

Generally when I worked as a engineer in a recording studio I always mic'ed amps and I still do now for my own recordings. I will use a modeller for a Youtube video where the sound isn't that important but for a proper recording it's always mic'ed.

I think a modeller does sit better with other more processed sounds like keys and sampled drums but in a real band context playing in a room it just sounds false. A couple of producers I worked with at 2020 have now gone back to real amps after a period of time with the AxeFX and Helix. One of them has built a nice amp room and offers a re amping service. The other guy works in a London studio now and has a nice live room for real amps.

One trick I learnt indoors is record from the pre amp out into your DAW using a speaker simm until you have the part nailed. Then remove the speaker sim and send it out from the DAW into the power amp of your amp. Then mic it up and record it back in the DAW.
This effectively gives you the same sound as you would have got tracking your amp mic'ed up from the get go but you only need to have it loudish for the 4 min or whatever length of the song ... not all the time you're trying to nail the part.

That's very clever! Didn't think of that at all...

I didn't think it was so much to do with valve amps, as to do with a mic on a speaker. Something about that focus, and the way the frequencies behave that seems to find its place in a mix easier. It's like it's more opaque, somehow less transparent.

Danny1969 · April 2023

Littlejonny said:

That's very clever! Didn't think of that at all...

I didn't think it was so much to do with valve amps, as to do with a mic on a speaker. Something about that focus, and the way the frequencies behave that seems to find its place in a mix easier. It's like it's more opaque, somehow less transparent.

No you are right ... It is to do with a mic on a speaker. A trick I got from reading an article from Bruce Swedien mentioned recording synths direct but then sending them out from the tape into the live room and then pick them up with mics so the sound had some real ambience, then mix that it with the synth DI track to make it real and sit in the mix better. We had an HK PA in our live room we could use for this purpose. Vocals recorded in the booth were sent out into the live room and back in the DAW.

Basically nothing close mic'ed sounds quite right to the human ear. We never hear any sounds like that unless an insect crawls in our ear. Everything has room sound on it normally. So anything DI'ed like a modeller HAS to have reverb applied otherwise it just sounds dry as a nun and that's one of the reasons it doesn't sit in the mix right. It's not recorded in the room with a mic like the drums were.
I did engineer a load of game audio where it had to be bone dry. It was a Tome Raider style game and the actress they hired had to recorded running, jumping, panting, being strangled, stabbed and dying etc in this special ultra dry booth we built so they could then use the same samples in various bits of the game and add the appropriate amount of reverb to suit here location .. like running through castle, being stabbed in a forest etc.

@robinbowes ;
Yeah reamping from guitar has been going for a long time now and I am aware of it and have done it. But these days I commit to track the sound I want. I print the pedals in terms of modulation delay and reverb. Same with bass, if I want a dirty bass I record it like that so it can't be undone. It's because I went years of printing the audio of keys and the midi and printing just the dry guitar incase it needed reamping and you just end with too many options. The sessions were getting to the 96 limit we had on PT and it just seemed pointless when the best records I have heard were done on 32 or less.

maltingsaudio · April 2023

Not really one to comment as I hate recording with a vengeance, however I do hear a lot of modellers in my live work and it very rare to hear them totally convincing, this is in my opinion because, there is something about a speaker actually pushing air and the mic capturing that extra bit which makes the difference.

This phenomenon then translates to when you commit to tape, the tone coming out of the modeller when it stays in the digital domain from pickup to hard disk can only be described as synthesised, like pressing a key on a synthesisor, however good the software/algorithm speed of the processor in the modeller is.

Littlejonny · April 2023

Stuckfast said:

I met John Spence from Fairview a couple of months back. We worked out that it's probably the third oldest studio in the UK after Abbey Road and Rockfield. Pretty amazing!

Anyway, you're not alone in thinking amp modellers are hard to mix. Bob Clearmountain thinks so too. So do I for that matter, though I don't have a good explanation for why.

Are you still based round Hull way?

No, left when I was 19…moved to Birmingham, then Oxford.

Amazing - I didn’t realise Fairview was still going! I want to go back…

Everyone else - I’m surprised at the consensus here that micing an amp is still the way to go.

robinbowes · April 2023

maltingsaudio said:

the tone coming out of the modeller when it stays in the digital domain from pickup to hard disk can only be described as synthesised, like pressing a key on a synthesisor, however good the software/algorithm speed of the processor in the modeller is.

I'm sorry, that's simply not true. Witness the recent revelation by Josh Scott:

maltingsaudio · April 2023

@robinbowes sat through as much of that vid as I could stand,17 minutes. What I was saying is that from the moment the signal leaves the guitar and comes down the cable into the Modellor, the analogue signal is chopped up into 0 and 1’s. Then those numbers are crunched by the computer inside it, sent into your DAW then crunched again, and amassed onto the track, with a load of other 0 and 1’s so that resulting sound relies on the software/algorithm and processor speed of the system.

The vid didn’t show if they were going straight into the DAW or direct out from the modellor into a cab and micing that,so can’t comment on that . They also didn’t compare the real thing to the modellers interpretation but we’ll ignore that bit. However when you do that in your studio ie mic the cab,it will add more 0 and 1’s for your DAW to play with, possibly producing a more natural/convincing/needs less editing sound.

koneguitarist · April 2023

Personally the best recorded guitar tone I have ever got was an SG straight into a desk and engineer used some plug ins. Sounded great to me, no one has been able to tell if it’s modelled or mic’s.

Simple answer, use whatever works for you.

robinbowes · April 2023

@maltingsaudio My point was about your assertion that:

the tone coming out of the modeller when it stays in the digital domain from pickup to hard disk can only be described as synthesised, however good the software/algorithm speed of the processor in the modeller is.

This is simply not true.

I note you've now softened that statement to:

so that resulting sound relies on the software/algorithm and processor speed of the system.

This I agree with - poor or poorly implemented algorithms will produce poor results. However, that's hardly a revelation, is it? The same goes for purely analogue recordings, ie. the resulting sound relies on the quality of the components used to produce it - a crap amp in an acoustically-poor room recorded with a poor mic will likely not sound great.

The point of including the JHS/Kemper video was that he used the modeller to demo pedals for a year, and no-one noticed that the sounds were not produced by real amps.

I'm not advocating that everyone should use modellers, or that we no longer need real amps. I'm simply saying that modern modellers and processors can and do produce completely natural-sounding results.

I have a Helix, which is great when I'm doing the PA as well as playing guitar, and I have to set up + soundcheck an 8-piece band then play the gig - I just plug in the Helix and it sounds just the same as it did at the last gig. However, for occasional ad hoc playing I often choose to take an amp and small pedal board because I find them easier to tweak in real-time.

R.

Sporky · April 2023

I have never mic'd an amp. Every recording I've done has had an analogue or digital cab sim on it.

Some of my recordings didn't even have real guitar - just samples from Kontakt's library through Helix Native, or, before that, one or other similar plugin. No-one ever said they'd noticed.

maltingsaudio · April 2023

@robinbowes see what you meant by your comment, my use of the word synthesised , the artificial combining of elements to form a whole

Keefy · April 2023

I’ve often mic’ed my amp but I currently use a Palmer PDI-09 speaker sim DI box with excellent results.

I’m currently working on an ampless guitar rig which I will post on here once sorted.

EricTheWeary · April 2023

I was reading down and thought this sounded like what Tom Bukovac said and then you mentioned him anyway.

And so I was thinking about this (in a fairly abstract sense as I’ve only been in a recording studio twice in my life)and the Steel Panther rig rundown came up on my YouTube feed - same modelling set up for the last eight years touring the globe. Satchel isn’t exactly the last word in taste or subtlety but it’s a classic rock sound and I wouldn’t know the difference between his modeller and a wall of Marshalls in a band context. Whatever works for you/ gets you through the night I guess.

LastMantra · April 2023

Danny1969 said:

Littlejonny said:

That's very clever! Didn't think of that at all...

I didn't think it was so much to do with valve amps, as to do with a mic on a speaker. Something about that focus, and the way the frequencies behave that seems to find its place in a mix easier. It's like it's more opaque, somehow less transparent.

No you are right ... It is to do with a mic on a speaker. A trick I got from reading an article from Bruce Swedien mentioned recording synths direct but then sending them out from the tape into the live room and then pick them up with mics so the sound had some real ambience, then mix that it with the synth DI track to make it real and sit in the mix better. We had an HK PA in our live room we could use for this purpose. Vocals recorded in the booth were sent out into the live room and back in the DAW.

Basically nothing close mic'ed sounds quite right to the human ear. We never hear any sounds like that unless an insect crawls in our ear. Everything has room sound on it normally. So anything DI'ed like a modeller HAS to have reverb applied otherwise it just sounds dry as a nun and that's one of the reasons it doesn't sit in the mix right. It's not recorded in the room with a mic like the drums were.
I did engineer a load of game audio where it had to be bone dry. It was a Tome Raider style game and the actress they hired had to recorded running, jumping, panting, being strangled, stabbed and dying etc in this special ultra dry booth we built so they could then use the same samples in various bits of the game and add the appropriate amount of reverb to suit here location .. like running through castle, being stabbed in a forest etc.

@robinbowes ;
Yeah reamping from guitar has been going for a long time now and I am aware of it and have done it. But these days I commit to track the sound I want. I print the pedals in terms of modulation delay and reverb. Same with bass, if I want a dirty bass I record it like that so it can't be undone. It's because I went years of printing the audio of keys and the midi and printing just the dry guitar incase it needed reamping and you just end with too many options. The sessions were getting to the 96 limit we had on PT and it just seemed pointless when the best records I have heard were done on 32 or less.

So if it's basically about room reverb then can't that be added to the modeler?

Plus a bit of hiss and hum from the amp

Roland · April 2023

LastMantra said:

So if it's basically about room reverb then can't that be added to the modeler?

Plus a bit of hiss and hum from the amp

It’s more than room reverb, but let’s get that out of the way. There are distance-mic’d IRs which incorporate room reverb. I’m not keen on them because they are at odds with the reverb recorded with, or applied to, other instruments.

What interests me are the subtleties of valve amps and speakers which even the best modellers don’t currently reproduce. They’re only noticeable in the studio, and at small gigs. Once the sounds goes through mics, mixing desks, off-board processing, etc they tend to get lost. Well to my ears they do.

koneguitarist · April 2023

This^

We all love a particular guitar or amp etc, that someone else thinks it’s average or ok. But in the room with it and how it responds is where the magic to the player is.

Unfortunately no one else in audience gets that including other musicians watching.

Littlejonny · April 2023

Sporky said:

I have never mic'd an amp. Every recording I've done has had an analogue or digital cab sim on it.

Some of my recordings didn't even have real guitar - just samples from Kontakt's library through Helix Native, or, before that, one or other similar plugin. No-one ever said they'd noticed.

No one will notice...other people don't hear that kind of thing.

It does also depend on what you play - certain intervals produce more clashing overtones with digital stuff. There's a Rhett Schull (not keen on him myself) video where he compares a Helix to a real Marshall and discovers this.

My original premise was that - I hadn't ever mic'd an amp in my own 'recording career' but have recently discovered that it does indeed sound better to my ears. Or at least - has a tangibly different quality in the mix that reminds me more of classic records I grew up listening to!

Littlejonny · April 2023

LIVE is a totally different ball game. A good modeller into a nice speaker or a massive PA works great.

The sound bounces around the room, and the mix will be more chaotic than a studio recording. I actually think it's somewhat preferable if there are fewer mics involved onstage as well.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Become a Subscriber!

Analogue vs digital...Mic'd amp vs modelled amp

Comments