How To Get A Good Guitar Tone In A DAW.

[DrNomis_44]

Hi everyone, been doing some experimenting with some plugins in FL Studio trying to get a good electric guitar tone for recording direct into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) without having to mic-up a real guitar amp, here's what I've come up with so far, note that I do most of my music recording/making with PCs so consequently the plugins I use are ones that work on PCs, although there may be Mac versions available too, anyway, I've found that you really only need about three kinds of plugins to record electric guitar directly into your DAW, they are:


1, Some kind of Guitar Amp Emulator plugin, I used Bias Desktop by Positive Grid Bias as it sounds great.

2, Some kind of Speaker Cab Emulator plugin, I used NadIR by Ignite Amps, NadIR is a Speaker Cab Emulator that uses Impulse Responses, which are short audio impulse recordings of the tone of various speaker cabs, this means very accurate emulations of speakers are possible with low CPU consumption with zero latency, NadIR works flawlessly on my PC which is running Windows 10 64 Bit Threshold 2, you do need to download some Impulse Response files though but you can find free ones on the internet.

3, Some kind of Delay or Reverb effect plugin to give a sense of ambience, I used FL Studio's Delay 2 plugin set to give a stereo ping-pong effect and adjusted the effect level to taste.


With these three types of plugins I found that I easily got a great guitar tone without much work.


If you want to download Bias Desktop and NadIR here are the links for you:


Bias Desktop:

https://www.positivegrid.com/bias-desktop/


Ignite Amps:

http://www.igniteamps.com/en/audio-plug-ins


Note: Ignite Amps also offer some other plugins including a Bass Tube Amp plugin.


For the Reverb and Delay plugins try using the ones that come with your DAW of choice.


You can also try searching the internet for free Amp Emulator plugins too.

[DrNomis_44]

Okay, once you have your three plugins selected connect your guitar directly to your computer's Audio Interface using say Mic/Line input 1 if your Audio Interface only has two inputs, set your input level adjustment so that you get a good signal level before clipping, next set up your DAW's plugin chain for the input you're using so that the plugins you are using are in this order, first Amp Emulator, second Speaker Cab Emulator, and third the Delay or Reverb plugins, next go to your Amp Emulator plugin and set it to the basic tone (Clean or Overdriven) that you're after, next go to the Speaker Cab Emulator and select the type of cab you want to use, eg: if you're going for a Marshall Plexi tone you could try a 4 X 12 Speaker Cab Emulation, but you could try others to get different results too, next go to your Reverb or Delay plugin and set it to taste, you should end up with a great guitar tone.

[kimball492]

Dc you may have missed the update recently on Bias desktop you can now load different speaker emulations from within Bias Desktop. It's Under Cab pull down menu click IR loader , then click load the one next to preset below you can then search your computer for whatever Cab IRS you want. Hope it helps

[DrNomis_44]

Dc you may have missed the update recently on Bias desktop you can now load different speaker emulations from within Bias Desktop. It's Under Cab pull down menu click IR loader , then click load the one next to preset below you can then search your computer for whatever Cab IRS you want. Hope it helps


Cheers for that, I think I did miss the update as I was unaware that you could do that within Bias Desktop, I'll have to give it a try.