Hi, I cant hide my rock influences, and I want to buy a electric guitar.
Some of you use electrics guitars without amp (direct to the soundcard)?
A few tricks to use guitars in Renoise?
The Ways:
-
Use a D.I. box into your soundcard, or if you soundcard has a supported guitar input socket use it. You can then monitor your input routed via your selected guitar processing VST, for example Renoise’s cab simulator, or commercial options such as Amplitude 2 or Guitar Rig. You can then record the dry or the wet signal depending on your confidence in the sound you’re getting.
-
As above but minus the VSTs and use a multi-fx floor processing unit, such as ones done by Line 6, Zoom and Boss. Higher end unit might have better outputs for getting into your soundcard with less noise.
-
Connect to your favourite guitar amplifier and speaker cabinet. Dial up the sound you want. Use a microphone to record one of the speaker cones: different mics at different positions yield different sounds (e.g. I like a flat condenser sound at close range). The mic is running into a certain pre-amp or channel strip which will also give a certain colour depending on selection. Connect the pre-amp output to your soundcard and place no in-line VST fx on the sound (wet/send ones are ok like echo and verb). Try to have as high bit rate and sample rate as possible in recording. Good digital converters matter too. Do a few test recording to make sure your tone is right, and do all the tone altering with the guitar/amp/mic setup, not VSTs. Enjoy.
Way 3 is the best way.
They don’t make this mixer anymore but this is what I have, a Soundcraft Compact 4.
This mixer is plugged into my Soundcard. To record a guitar I plug it into into Line 2 of the mixer. It has a special “Guitar Button” (i think it just attenuates some frequencies and boosts others) and from there I hit record in Renoise.
I don’t recommend plugging a guitar directly into your soundcard.
Why is that ?
(sorry I guess this question belongs to the “beginners” part of the forum but I don’t know much about using real instruments in renoise… and I’m wondering why you always need a pre-amp if you could for example use a gainer in renoise)
It’s about attenuating both voltage and impedance so that signal levels match up for cleanest, best representative connection from device A to input B. What does this mean for you? It means you’ve got to put the right device connection into the right input otherwise you’ll loose tone, signal and probably have a lot of line noise. There’s good documentation on wiki if you want to look up the technical details.
You guys record guitar directly into Renoise? How do you do that without audio tracks? Am I missing something here? For some odd reason, if I see myself needing to record and edit audio - Live, Reaper…
What am I missing?
Go to sample editor… notice the: [O REC] button? Hit it!
Fucking radical! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.
I need a DI box. $$$$, hopefully it’s something cheap.
I’m sure there are solid state options out there for under $100. Worth checking for second hand units if they are in good condition, as the circuit is pretty simple. I survived for a very long time with a Behringer Ultra DI. It did me fine until I developed more expensive tastes in equipment.
While you can’t record audio clips like you can in Reaper, Renoise is excellent if you want to sync up smaller takes (such as riffs) if you use the pattern sync feature in the sample recorder.
I personally haven’t tried Hum X, but its purpose is to eliminate Ground Loop Hum & Noise.
“The Hum X filters out unwanted voltage and current in the ground line that cause ground loop hum while simultaneously maintaining a solid, safe ground. You no longer have to run your audio signal through any type of tone-sucking filter. Simply place the Hum X on the end of the power cord of the equipment that has a Ground Loop and plug the Hum X into the wall outlet. Ground Loop is gone – safely – and audio signal remains intact. The easiest, safest way to get rid of ground loop hum.” via http://www.zzounds.com/item–EBTHUMX
Edit: I’m going to stick with my old Whirlwind IMP 2, I don’t know what the word on street is on Hum X or products like it.
you need a mic infront of you amp, don’t just plug the guitar direct into your soundcard.
My recommendation would be to get a guitar pre amp, the Line 6 Pod is a brilliant example. They don’t cost a fortune, and can give a helluva lot of different possibilities, and can be connected directly to your sound card.
You can also connect it to your computer via USB and make new amp presets and sounds, really cool.
I have the Pocket version myself, which is more than 'nuff for me. http://line6.com/pocketpod/
yeah the poketPOD is very cool, i have this too 
but not for a guitar, i use it for basslines by sending my micro q through it.
I’ve made a handful of rock tunes with Renoise. It’s still very awkward to play with long guitar tracks and editing double takes, but it’s alright. My current setup:
Guitar
-> Mixing desk
-> M-Audio Audiophile 2497 input
-> Renoise
In renoise I dedicate a track for the guitars and load up plenty of vsts. I’m about to upgrade my current version of Guitar Rig to this. I never had the need for any particular authentic cabinet and amplifier sound, so Guitar Rig suits my need perfectly. + It really boosts my creativity, mostly sound wise.
After loading whichever vsts I want to use to a specific track
-> Sample Editor window
-> click the [REC] button
-> change “No FX” into whatever is your track with the vsts
-> toggle the little speaker icon on
-> check the “Record dry (monitor fx)” button if you want to record the dry signal but monitor using all the effects the guitar track has (and what you are actually hearing when you play the guitar at this point).
Line6 PODs are also very handy when you’re not after any authentic sounds.
It should be pretty obvious that using good microphones with proper techniques and preamps together with a guitar cabinet to reach a sound that is even close to using either guitar amp vst or line6 pod or anything similar is very tough - both skill and money wise.
Now acoustic guitars are a whole different thing…
Besides the Line 6 Pod, pocked Pod, what would be the cheapest pre-amp solution out there right now? My brother is coming over for the weekend and want to bring his bass guitar. Would be cool if I could record him directly in my soundcard.
I do have a mixer which has pre-amps, than I could route an out from the mixer to my soundcard, but am afraid for feedback if I would also play the audio directly back on the mixer.
a cheap solution for getting your guitar connected up to renoise is one of these:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=339389 - usb -> jack lead, but you’ll obviously only get DI signal off of that, it’s possible to use most cheap guitar multi-effects pedals (like those made by zoom) between your guitar and your audio interface to get mediocre sounds, but if you want a decent solution, line6 are the brand to go with- although recording if your recording a DI signal in you could test it out with renoise’s b2.5’s amp modeller 
!
http://www.box.net/shared/ufa0quhcr3 <- recording using renoise, line6podxt, and ezdrummer - thats just a rough demo track for my band so no effort has gone in on the production, if you skip toward the end of the track you’ll here it used for clean stuff as well.
you should be able to pick up a podxt for like £100-150 now second hand cause there are newer models out there, and they do the job just fine, you can record digitally via USB and use them as an ASIO device as well. My line6 podxt is the best musical purchase i’ve ever made hands down, (renoise is probably 3rd behind my guitar but that’s only cause i’m a guitarist at heart)
xx
p.s Forgot to mention, with the podxt, you can monitor with a distorted sound but record a DI signal, which is often much more useful as it means you can re-amp later.
I’m currently using Digitech RP155 floor pedal. It’s cheap, it can be used as decent USB audio interface (recording as well), practice tool and looper. One of the best utilities I’ve ever had. And it can be bought for 100 bucks too.
i have tried quite a lot of these different guitar programmes, i’m using the peavy revalver one for practising on headphones when its too late to be cranking an amp and that sort of stuff. it works great with the 1/4 inch jack of my guitar plugged directly into my UA-101 soundcard. you don’t need an additional preamp, noise-gates, compression or anything because it is all done in software. i prefer it to GTR 3.0, guitar rig, amplitube etc., but really this is just personal preference i guess. also i can use the demo of revalver comfortably for practice because it doesn’t expire and the only limitation is saving presets and a fairly innocuous hiss noise once very few minutes, which would only really be an issue for recording (which i’m not currently doing). if i was going to buy something though, considering the software costs £100+ i think i’d be inclined to get a hardware device.
the pods are meant to be good, and if you were gonna buy something just for this it might be the way to go, because you won’t have to mess around with latency and stuff as all the sound processing is done in hardware. if you can’t get very low latency then guitar software is a waste of time imo, so it depends what computer and soundcard you have. with the pod you can take it anywhere and use it as an effects unit in front of a real amp if you want too. i’ve got a friend who was in this position of needing some amp modelling for practice and he went for the pod pocket just because its simpler, and for the reasons i mentioned. he wouldn’t have had any other use for a usb audio device anyway, so i think the pod was a good choice.
while we’re on this topic does anyone have any recommendations for software or amp modelling for bass guitar? i gave the amplitube ampeg one a go, seemed okay but i guess i find it hard to know what a good bass guitar sound is if its not hitting me in the chest from an actual bass amp…