This is more of a thinking out loud post, and looking for confirmation that my thought process is sound, or for someone to tell me that Iām being sillyā¦
I treated myself to a audio interface this week as Iām enjoying recording my guitar, and wanted a better way of recording my rubbish vocals. My amp is a Katana 50 gen 3 (no line out socket) so Iād been recording it by connecting to my laptop via USB. I tried using the headphone socket as a lineout to my AI but itās a bit crackly. So Iām thinking I should maybe have bought a Katana 50 Gen 3 EX which does have a line out. HOWEVER, if I plug my guitar straight into the AI and use plug ins on Reaper, I can get a decent variety of guitar tones, and I avoid recording a specific tone from my amp, so I can chop and change tones after recording by changing plug ins. So my thinking is that I use my Katana for practice, and for recording I plug straight into the AI and use plug ins for the tone (or record via USB if I want a specific Katana tone). Have I got the right idea??? Apologies if this is a naive question - I searched previous questions but couldnāt find a similar one!
Colin, neither naive nor silly. Smart and in-tune with the way many today would recommend you approach recording your guitar.
Of course there are pros who still record by micāing amps and benefit from the feel of playing with a real amp, often tube, often loud. And they are so experienced in recording and working with a band, producers etc that they know what they are looking for tone-wise in a song or part.
Personally I have never recorded myself on the electric guitar via an amp. As you say, my amp is purely for practice and a bit of āliveā fun.
Next comes making choices about which plugin(s). Iāve done OK with Waves GTR, but never been super fussed about tone. There are other free options and a host to consider if willing to spend some money to purchase.
If you always record them separately, then you could continue recording direct from the Katana USB. Thatās what I do. You just need to select the appropriate audio interface (Katana or other) in the Daw when recording.
The only reason to plug the Katana into the audio interface would be if you were simultaneously recording something else,.like vocals.
This is because DAWs usually only let you record from one audio device at a time.
Hi Colin
Myself, Iāve had good enough luck just putting a mic in ft. of my amps.
I even have good enough luck with 2 mics. for when I do vocals and mic the amp at the same time. I use a condenser mic close mic on the amp, and a dynamic mic to sing into. Only reason I do that is because them are my only 2 mics that I have. I suppose if I had it my way, Iād do two dynamic mics.
fwiw, I suppose I could do Line out on 2 of my amps, to the AI. But I like the tones of the live miced amp, so do it how I described.
Iāve got a relatively cheap condenser mic that I use for online work meetings- i might have a wee play about with copying your set up. Oh wait, my condenser mic is a usb mic so wonāt go into the AI. Oh well!
Micing an amp is the original āold schoolā way of doing it. Which is still fairly common practice in recording studios where they have to deal with older valve amplifiers.
But, they have:
carefully controlled acoustic environments
sound control that enables them to crank their amps
recording technicians with a wealth of knowledge on how to mic amps to get a particular sound
a selection of decent mics to use
Most people trying to do this at home donāt have all of this. Trying to mic a guitar amp and get a good tone is a faff and a bit of an art. If you have the option to either use an decent emulated/modelled output or a built-in USB recording interface (you have both options on the Katana) I would use those: they will be far easier and probably give you far better results than trying to mic the ampā¦
@sclay Shane, I know you use plug-ins, and for some reason always forget the one you settled on. If you have a moment please share some of your experience and insights with Colin
As far as I know you can record both the wet and dry signal from a Katana amp. So thatās another option to consider.
āConnect the amp to your computer via USB, and then set up two separate stereo tracks in your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW): one for the processed (wet) signal using inputs 1 & 2 (or Primary) and another for the unprocessed (dry) signal using inputs 3 & 4 (or Secondary). This setup allows you to capture both the ampās effects and a clean guitar signal simultaneously, giving you maximum flexibility during the mixing stage.ā
You can even āre-ampā through the Katana: take a track that was recorded ādryā and send it to the Katana to apply processing, and received the processed signal to record on another track.
I would suggest that it might be easier to use plugins though.
My problem with recording guitar via Katana - Focusrite DI - Reaper - Windows was, that windows is limited to take only one input / output - means you cannot take Katana as Input and Focusrite Scarlet as output (there are 3rd party drivers that should help here, but I did not solve that).
So if you have a track you have to play to and want to add guitar I ended up to put the headphones into the katana ā¦ Or used mics to record the output of the Katana into the DI.
I ended up skipping the Katana ( and sold it ) and record via DI. Tonocrazy Plugin is great for guitar sounds or NAM Plugin (Neural Audio Modeler) - both free. (a friend of mine is playing NAM / DI / Computer also live ā¦ )
cheers Tobi
Thanks @TobiPi - i get tge feeling that i coukd ehd upmusing the Katana mostly as a practice amp, and record straight into the audio interface (with VST plug ins for tone). Iāll check out the plug ins you suggested.
