Even before lockdown, it was becoming clear that an SM57 on a grille cloth might not be either the most practical or best-sounding solution for electric recording in 2020. Happily, it’s never been easier to capture professional tones at home without waking up the neighbours. Whether you’re making your first foray into recording or planning a multi-layered magnum opus, here are 20 pieces of essential advice that will help you get the best results possible, whatever your budget.
Whether you’re plugged into a laptop in your bedroom or shredding in the live room of a multi-million dollar studio, your needs to be the best it can be. Perhaps more importantly,
need to be the best you can be. There’s no fixing poor intonation in the mix, and if your jack socket is crackly or your signal intermittent, even recording a scratch demo can turn into a draining experience.
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Although limitations can sometimes be inspiring, whatever instrument you plan to use, it shouldn’t be an impediment to your creativity. Tune it up, make sure it’s acclimatised to the room temperature and tune it up again. The same goes for every part of your chain, from patch cables and pedals to your interface or amp. The only mistakes you want are the odd bum note, and you don’t want a great take to be ruined by a noisy signal chain.
In most cases a simple audio interface for your laptop, desktop or tablet is the best option for plugging in, as the less gear you need the more budget you have for other stuff: monitoring, cabling, other s. And you can never have enough s. At a bare minimum you’ll want it to have quarter-inch jack and XLR inputs, with outputs for headphones and monitors. If you’re planning on recording vocals or acoustic , 48v phantom power drastically increases your microphone options too.
If you’re planning on getting your electric tones from software amp-modelling plugins then you may not need anything more than a pair of headphones and a basic audio interface to get started.
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Even simple interfaces with two inputs and outputs are pretty powerful and sophisticated these days – Audient’s new EVO 4 (£99, evo.audio) includes Smartgain functionality that automatically and intelligently sets the input levels of your microphones or instruments to avoid clipping or signals that are too quiet. The former causes unwanted distortion if the input signal is too loud, while the latter can cause hiss when the level is boosted to match other instruments.
More ambitious budding recordists among you might want to consider interfaces with dedicated reamping outputs, multiple monitor outputs, more than a couple of line inputs, a range of digital I/O or internal mixer routing. Money no object? Check out the Universal Audio Apollo x16 (£2, 747, uaudio.com).
High-quality monitoring is vital for high-quality recording. For mixing this means the best monitor speakers and/or headphones you can afford. For recording, this means minimising the delay between what you play and what you hear (latency). More than a few milliseconds will throw your timing and feel unnatural. When recording with amp modelling plugins on a computer, the more raw CPU power you have, the better.
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External DSP can help take the load off of your CPU, and interfaces such as Universal Audio’s Apollo range and Audient’s Sono (£419, audient.com) offer amp modelling solutions free from computer-based latency. Of course, another way to reduce the potentially for latency is to get your amp tones from a dedicated modelling unit such as the Strymon Iridium (£399, strymon.net) before the signal reaches your audio interface.
At the higher end, reactive load boxes with speaker emulation tech such as the Universal Audio OX (£1, 150) and Boss WAZA Tube Amp Expander (£1, 143, boss.info) offer a low/zero-latency monitoring path and the ability to record your favourite tube amp silently. In many ways, these offer a ‘best of both worlds’ solution that retains the feel and response of your favourite amp under your fingers but offers the convenience of direct recording.
From old favourites such as the various Palmer speaker simulators (palmer-germany.com) to the aforementioned new wave of multi-function reactive load boxes such as the OX and the Torpedo series from Two Notes (two-notes.com), there are numerous ways to squeeze the roar of your favourite tube amplifier into a line level input without disturbing the neighbours.
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However, before you cause a disturbance to your wallet, we recommend testing out some digital modelling plugins first to see if you can find tones you are happy with. In addition to dedicated plugins such as AmpliTube (ikmultimedia.com) and Rig (native-instruments.com), we’d encourage Mac users to explore the amp simulations in GarageBand and Logic. Unless you have a huge library of vintage and modern gear at your disposal already, you may find that the additional array of tones and effects offered by modelling plugins are a springboard for creativity as you venture into uncharted sonic territory.
If only the hardware route will make you happy then some sort of speaker simulator is probably the best way forward, but before you try that, don’t discount the humble power attenuator. Using a power attenuator to bring the volume down to an acceptable level, you may still be able to get pleasing results by recording the old-fashioned way with a microphone. Numerous high-quality attenuators are available but if you are handy with a soldering iron, find out how to build your own for less than £50.
Pro ists have been relying on impulse response (IR) speaker simulations for their live front of house mix for years, as well as using them in the studio. In a nutshell, IRs capture the sonic fingerprints of a mic’d speaker cabinet in a room with a three-dimensional quality that can be indistinguishable from a recording of a physical cabinet.
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The advantages are obvious: total recall, consistency in any room/studio, hundreds of models to choose from, multiple virtual mic’ing options, no bleed, and of course cost and portability. The only real disadvantages are the lack of that tactile in-the-room experience and the possibility of wasting time auditioning hundreds of IRs.
Two Notes’ Torpedo Wall Of Sound plugin is free for the first 30 days and a great place to start. Alternatively, modelling stompboxes such as the Strymon Iridium not only come with convincing IR speaker sims onboard, but also allow you to load your own third-party IRs via usb, a shedload of which can be found either for free or for a reasonable fee online. Better than the real thing? Sometimes sonically, but always in ease and affordability.
Digital audio resolution breaks down into two components: sample rate and bit depth. The CD rate of 44.1kHz (44, 100 samples per second) and the common video rate of 48kHz are regarded as the basic sample rates. Higher sample rates, HD audio if you will, are multiples of these two, e.g. 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz and 192kHz. Despite hot debate on this topic, there are some audible and processing advantages to 88.2kHz and 96kHz; going any higher strays into snake-oil territory. The higher the sample rate the more disk space your recordings take up, and for most purposes 44.1kHz and 48kHz are fine, but do experiment with higher rates as equipment/software can behave differently.
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With regard to bit depth, or the granularity of each sample, 16-bit is not dissimilar to human hearing, but it’s best practice to work at 24-bit as most analogue-to-digital converters operate at this level.
Prior to recording, eliminate as much noise at source as possible. This means the induced pickup hum from lighting (especially dimmer switches), mobile phones and computer monitors, so move your around to see which positions and angles are the most/least noisy and toggle lighting sources to see which are birthing gremlins.
Hunt ground hum sources from wherever power sources are linked via audio connections. Whether it’s your laptop and pedal power supply, or an amp connected to a reamp output, make sure all power is drawn from the same point, observing socket fuse ratings (safety first). Toggle ground lift switches on DI boxes, interfaces and pedal power supplies and listen for audible changes. Finally check audio and power cables are kept apart from each other, or at least cross them at right angles to prevent induced hum.
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Aim to record a clean signal, even if the source is pure filth. The interface input level should not ‘clip’, and setting it a bit lower beats overdriving the A/D converters – a source of distortion you don’t want to hear.
As DI signals are highly dynamic, set your recording input level so that even your most animated thrashing does not clip. Boost pedals may be great at saturating a valve amp input stage but they will crunch your interface buffer in an unholy manner, so proceed with caution. modelling plugins/apps expect a large dynamic range and a relatively low input level so try to keep your input peak level below -10dBFS.
Also be aware that a distorted tone has a lower peak level than a clean one for a similar perceived volume. At each
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