Recording Questions

I managed to slip away from the computer for a bit to head over to the Pro Tools master class being held over at West LA music’s Cahuenga Blvd store.  This particular evening factory expert Sean Halley was on hand to go over the interesting new guitar rack piece the Digidesign Eleven Rack.

I have to say I am not a Pro Tools user and I don’t really plan on switching anytime in the near future, luckily this box can be used on just about any recording setup…so stick around.

My experience with amp simulation does not extend much past my trusty copy of Amplitude Guitar Rig that I occasionally use to plug in and pretend to play guitar with so it came as a pretty big surprise to see how far guitar emulation has come.

Every guitar track on the Motley Crue album ‘Saints of Los Angeles’ was recorded using the Eleven plugin.

It seems that Digidesign is doing the same software modeling Universal Audio does with their UAD plugins.  They bought every single amplifier and effect and the proceeded to tear down every stage to the resistor level and then modeled it in software — quite remarkable.

Using it in your studio:

I can see a lot of uses for something like this in the studio for several reasons.  You can use it as a direct interface for guitars thus bypassing the need for any power amps and speaker cabinets.  There is something to be said for uncluttering the studio from unnecessary gear.  But this piece works just as well paired with a speaker cabinet and amp.  The Eleven lets you match instrument impertinences with the amplifier input, but turn speaker modeling on and off at will.  On top of this, the elven makes re-amping signals a snap by easily splitting signal and recording it direct an wet.

It’s all quite fascinating to me…I’m starting to see live gigs are studios pumping out awesome music — all without an amp or speaker in sight.