Eleven: Clean Sounds

[Mount Royal]

Greetings. In dialing Blackface and AC30 "Clean" patches, I'm not getting the sounds I expect. There is a good deal of tube saturation and modeled distortion - even at low input values. This upon hitting the plug pretty softly with green-only input indicator. Tones are reasonably pleasant to my ear, but not what I need from a clean patch. Having a good bit of experience with the chassis designs modeled by Eleven, I know what clean should mean.

Any insights?

John Caldwell

[rockridge]

Are you using a hardware preamp before going into Protools?

[Mount Royal]

Are you using a hardware preamp before going into Protools?


Yes, and I should have included that it my op. Tracking single coil and dual coil p/u through Avalon 2022 DI input. Levels at the converter are solid, but certainly below 0db FS.

Thanks,

John-

[rockridge]

I've been using Waves GTR3 and I've used Guitar Rig in the past...
I'm guessing Eleven is along the same line, but to me it is all just software.

When all is said and done, I wonder if guitar amp modeling really isn't just a combination of EQ and compression at it's core?

I've tried Speakerphone which mixes the recorded impulses of various cabinets with your guitar sound, but my first impression wasn't that favorable.

Still, you should get decent results from your setup...sounds like you're signal is too hot somewhere... maybe internal clipping in Eleven that does show up on any meter?

Do you get a undistorted signal when you go straight in... using no plugins?

web page (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=79723408)

[Mount Royal]

No indication of plug clipping or digital clipping by metering or sonic character. My impression is that the distortion is modeled distortion, that is, intended distortion but it is occurring much sooner (at lower input levels) than I would expect from the clean patches.

Thanks.

John-

[rockridge]

...so you're signal is clean before the plug?

Do you really need to go through that plug if the sound is already clean.
Maybe just compression and EQ would give you what you're looking for when it comes to a clean guitar sound...

After all, it is just software...

[drenkrom]

If all the levels are good and the guitar sounds good when the plug is bypassed, there is no real problem. There's many ampsims out there. My guess is you just chose the wrong one for the character you were looking for.

[PTUser NYC]

Levels at the converter are solid, but certainly below 0db FS.



You're tracking too hot. Levels should be averaging around -18dbFS, and NOWHERE near FS. You're probably overdriving the Avalon and/or sending the plug more gain than it wants to see. I don't know the plug, so I may be wrong about that part.

Imagine going into a blackface fender amp, but first going through a booster that adds more than 12db of gain - wouldn't that sound distorted?

Remember, 0dbVU = -18dbFS. If the level was right for a Studer 24 track, then why puch the preamp 12db more for digital? It just makes everything get thin and crappy.

The argument about getting more bits is crap too. Bits = dynamic range. A 24 bit word has a theoretical S/N of 144db, and any modern converter gives 100db S/N. If your guitar has 70 db S/N (which I DOUBT) then you could record it with peaks at -29dbFS, and still have the noise in your guitar above the noise in the converter. If you do that, you've gotten all the resolution possible regarding "getting the bits" the rest is just overkill.

So recording with your preamp at 0dbVU, where it was DESIGNED to operate, will result in a signal around -18dbFS (if that's how your converter is setup) and sound as good as possible - not to mention giving headroom for your plugs.

Try it - its good technique. If Eleven still sucks, then do something else, but use 0dbVU from now on on all your recordings and everything will sound much better.

BTW, when you get the mix finished, and its still peaking way low on the meter, its OK to use a gain or compressor plug in as the last thing on your master fader to bring the whole thing up to -0.1 dbFS before you bounce down to 16 bits or make a CD. if you do it then, you'll have reaped all the rewards of working lower all along, and still have a competitive product.

[Mount Royal]

You're tracking too hot. Levels should be averaging around -18dbFS, and NOWHERE near FS. You're probably overdriving the Avalon and/or sending the plug more gain than it wants to see. I don't know the plug, so I may be wrong about that part.




There is no audible analog clipping in the unprocessed track. The Avalon appears unstressed. Eleven has an input level indicator: Green to yellow indication on the GUI is advised by Digi. When touching Eleven's green zone, the symptom is present; yellow more so. I think the behavior might be the intended behavior of the plug, as I don't believe I am disrespecting intended gain structure.

Thanks,

John-

[PTUser NYC]

There is no audible analog clipping in the unprocessed track. The Avalon appears unstressed. Eleven has an input level indicator: Green to yellow indication on the GUI is advised by Digi. When touching Eleven's green zone, the symptom is present; yellow more so. I think the behavior might be the intended behavior of the plug, as I don't believe I am disrespecting intended gain structure.



K, I gave my advice.

I can't speak to the plug in, but if you want to run your preamps at 12db (or more) over nominal as a practice, then go ahead.

[StudioRhythm]

Aren't you confusing average levels with peak levels? Nominal signal level is measured in dBVU, not dbFS. A track that's recorded at a nominal level of 0VU=-18dBFS may very well end up peaking close to 0dbFS, because the (typically analog VU) meters that are used to judge nominal signal level respond to average program level, not peak levels. Peak levels are generally significantly higher than average levels, especially on drums, cymbals, and other transient-heavy sources. IOW, if your converters are calibrated to 0VU=-18dBFS and you're reading a max of 0 on your VU meter, you're probably going to be peaking digitally 10 to 18 dB hotter than that, depending on what you're recording -- sine waves not so much, but DI guitar, definitely...!

What you say about bits and dynamic range is right, but I think you're comparing apples and oranges a bit in this specific case -- if he's not peaking near 0, the loudest the guitar is getting is probably around +4VU or so, which shouldn't be hot enough to clip a decent preamp. Perhaps Eleven would sound cleaner if John were to put a trim plugin before it to bring the level down some, but with a normally calibrated A/D of good quality, it doesn't sound like the Avalon should be running too hot (their site quotes maximum output at +36dB....) It sounds like whatever is happening is happening in the plugin -- after all, if he's not hearing distortion without it, how is the problem present without it, really?

For anyone who's not really familiar with peak vs. average levels and how this all works, try putting the Bombfactory Meter Bridge plugin on a track, set to RMS at -18dB. Notice what your peak levels on the PT channel strip meter read when the Bombfactory meter reads 0VU. Unless you're recording a synth, or a seriously compressed or distorted signal, they're going to be higher than -18, often by quite a bit.

[narcoman]

nominal level, when not pushing stuff for effect - generally means "forte" passages. If your forte passage is hovering around the -18dbfs there is no way you'll hit up near 0. The biggest timpani smash in the world wouldn't get up there. Now , if you want to push into stuff for effect (like we used to with tape occasionally) then that is diferent - but if you ARE using the AES -18dbfs guideline then it refers to forte passages - ie a rock band pretty much going at it.

[StudioRhythm]

The guideline is for 0VU to be set to -18dBFS as I have always understood it -- correct? Or are we talking about something else?

By definition, a guideline setting a reference level for 0VU means you'll be judging record level by VU meters which read average level, and when that's the case, the peak level for a 0VU hit will reach considerably higher than -18, which is fine. The bulk of the sound will be hovering around -18dBFS and the ear will perceive it to be at around that volume, but the transient peaks can reach significantly higher in the case of cymbals, snare drums and other instruments with lots of high-frequency content.

There's really no problem unless you clip. For digital processing it's important to keep levels 6dB or so below clipping, which can be done after recording if necessary, but in the recording process there's no reason not to get closer to 0 than that if it happens... there's also no real reason to record that hot either, but it's not a problem if/when it occurs.

In most real-world situations there would be no difference in quality whether you're peaking to 0 or to -20 (or often lower depending on source and signal chain), but I do feel that there's a lot of misinformation about this flying around lately. There's nothing inherently wrong with peaking towards the top of the scale assuming you're using a calibration and equipment that can handle it, which most high-quality signal chains are capable of.

[Extreme Mixing]

Eleven likes to see lower levels coming into it than you might expect. Try running a trim plug in before the Eleven on stuff you've already recorded, and see what happens. It should be better.

Just like a real amp, if you run a VERY hot signal into the input, you may have trouble getting a clean sound. The plug is set up to respond like a real amp. I'm pretty sure that's what is happening here. Give it a try.

Steve

[Chris Townsend]

Hi John,

I'm the lead developer for Eleven and hopefully I can shed some light on this issue. The problem is a difficult one to solve since we do not know what kind guitar, DI, and gain settings that you're using. Because of it's small size and resolution the LED on Eleven is a fairly rough indicator, so I suggest just using it as a guide to get you in the ballpark. A better option is to use a track peak meter.

Basically 0dBFS in in Eleven corresponds to the highest output guitar we could find played as hard as humanly possible. We did this to handle to the worst case scenario. If we calibrated to a lower output guitar then switching to the hotter output guitar would result in clipping or if you compensated by turning the gain down then the hotter guitar wouldn't be driving the amp as it normally would. Here's what we recommend you do:

Use a guitar with the hottest pickups you can find. Generally this means using a humbucker bridge pickup. Now route your guitar signal into ProTools. Enable the peak meter indicator on your guitar track. On Windows I think you control click twice on the track's gain text display. On the Mac I forget what the key is. By the way, a slightly more accurate option is to monitor the peak level on a Master Fader (I'll save you the details as to why). Now play with all of the gusto you've got. I usually strum an open E as hard as I can. Sometimes it takes 10 seconds or more for the tippy top most peak to come through. Now adjust the gain on your DI until you are about 1 or 2 dB below full scale. Of course this is not totally 100% foolproof since your hot humbucker guitar might not be as hot as mine, but I think it will get you close enough. Let me know how that works for you.

Now there's one other more advanced option, which assumes you know how to use a volt meter. In terms of volts Eleven is calibrated to approximately 3.5v RMS = 0dBFS. If you want to calibrate this way, hook an output from ProTools into your guitar DI. Setup a signal generator plug-in, so it's routed to the Pro Tools output at or near full scale with a 1kHz sine wave. Now hook up your volt meter (set it to AC mode) across the hot and ground (tip and sleeve) of the cable going into the DI. I usually do this by unscrewing the jack cover on the cable. Now adjust the level going into the DI to 3.5v RMS (you can of course do that by adjusting signal generator directly or with an analog gain control). Lastly set the gain on the DI so that Pro Tools sees just under 0dBFS coming in.

We didn't mention this method in the Eleven documentation, because we were afraid that it would be too complicated and error prone for most users. If you try this method, I suggest you also use the standard method to corroborate your results. If the results are really different and you've double checked everything I suggest you go with the standard method. I hope that helps.

[Mount Royal]

Excellent, Chris, and thanks. I'll do as you suggest, reducing levels considerably to see what impact it has. I'll gather from your comments that you designed Eleven to play without modeled distortion when input is low enough. Great!

Thanks all. Will report in.

John-

[Mount Royal]

Chris and others:

I'm still not satisfied with Eleven's clean sounds. The clean amp models require very low input values to approach the sound I would call clean and not over-driven. The gain structure seems, to me, not appropriate as I can't titrate the amount of overdrive as my input setting are 1-3 - that with track audio recorded -18 dbfs. IOW, small input value changes exert large tonal changes. Further, in many cases the resulting processed output requires gain addition for makeup. By comparison, Amp Farm permits sounds I'd consider much closer to the amp when not overdriven, even with far hotter audio input. I am not saying that Amp Farm's algorithms sound better; I am commenting only on Eleven's gain modeling and the difficulty I am having modeling the sounds of the blackface and AC15/30 amps I own.

Perhaps I'm alone in this. But what's the value in reserving presets for the cleanest of patches when avoidance of overdrive is only achieved with non-typical workflow? We do get the dirty patches, so why not make clean literally that?

Many thanks,

John-

[15yearsonptools]

I know what you mean. Although I've been really thrilled with 11 in general. I've tried turing the amp off. Leaving on the speaker sim on to get a really clean tone.
I've also tried putting a compressor before 11. I've been using the Waves renaissance set in my own "La3a" mode. Opto, attack 14.3 Release 15.8 (fast) 6:1 ratio. (I'm not sure how close this is to real thing, but it works). This helps keep the overdrive under control.

[Guy McDude]

Chris and others:

I'm still not satisfied with Eleven's clean sounds. The clean amp models require very low input values to approach the sound I would call clean and not over-driven. The gain structure seems, to me, not appropriate as I can't titrate the amount of overdrive as my input setting are 1-3 - that with track audio recorded -18 dbfs. IOW, small input value changes exert large tonal changes. Further, in many cases the resulting processed output requires gain addition for makeup. By comparison, Amp Farm permits sounds I'd consider much closer to the amp when not overdriven, even with far hotter audio input. I am not saying that Amp Farm's algorithms sound better; I am commenting only on Eleven's gain modeling and the difficulty I am having modeling the sounds of the blackface and AC15/30 amps I own.

Perhaps I'm alone in this. But what's the value in reserving presets for the cleanest of patches when avoidance of overdrive is only achieved with non-typical workflow? We do get the dirty patches, so why not make clean literally that?

Many thanks,

John-



Hey John,
long time no see, hope youre doing well.

Although I havent fooled with the Eleven clean sounds as much as the dirty ones, I have found the models pretty accurate when compared to the real thing.

BTW,What kind of guitar/pickups are you using?

And FWIW, Ive found that this plug prefers a much lower input [at least with my guitars] than amp farm, chrome tone etc. I print my guitar via an Eclair Evil Twin DI, and its output is all the way down.

take care,
Sean

[Mount Royal]

Hi Sean. Nice to share a word.

I can't understand the gain structure intended for Eleven's Clean tones. It strikes me that as others pursue cleaner tones with this plug, they will do what 15years does: turn the amp off. That reflects an unusual design, in my view.

John-