eleven problem

[guitardom]

new to eleven, giving it a try, i am a guitar amp guy, have some nice amps and even nicer gear to record it with. tried sims in the past but they all seem like a joke compared to a well recorded amp.

as an experiment on a project i am mixing, thought i would mute all my mesa boogie tracks and replace them with eleven. i outputed my di tracks to to aux's to combine some amps and tones. but found a weird problem.

whenever i have one of the the buss amp types set to dc modern and the other to a treadplate, (fed from same di, panned the same)it sounds like a pack of cockroaches snuck into my place with their little cockroach sized knife and cut into my speakers!!!:eek:

doesnt matter what setting the amp is on, anything like that. it is totally unusable, even for trent reznor.

any other weird quirks with this app???? not quite sure about it yet, seems ok and might be good to layer assuming can get phases correct between real tracks and eleven.

[Greg M]

guitardom,

I just replicated your discovery - sounds awful. However, just pan one right and the other left and the cockroach stuff goes away. What I also hear more clearly when these two amps are panned to each side is that there is a fair amount of phasing going on. My gut feeling is that when they are panned identically (or very similarly) is that there is a lot of cancellation and only the high pitched buzzy stuff remains - and sounds awful.

I wouldn't say they are unusable and I doubt you would get this effect if you actually double tracked the guitars instead of driving each amp from the same dry track. I have several of the amps/mics/speakers that are simulated in Eleven and find that the simulations are generally very close to the real thing (recorded mic'd amps, not "out in the room listening" to the amps).

I also agree with you that most amp sims are a joke. Some of the other sims I have used sound pretty good solo'd, but when you put 'em in a mix they just sound dead. Eleven seems to work pretty well in a mix.

Greg

[guitardom]

all of the guitars on this project are at least double tracked. no issue there. was just trying to mix amp tones to try to match the tone from the royer and 57 on each guitar track that i mic'd on the real amp and have panned pretty hard together. using one of the amp sims on eleven sounds so much thinner and trying to fatter it up on each side of the stereo field, and try to get a bit more "chug" out of it, which is not a prob on the mic'd tracks.

[Greg M]

guitardom,

This is definitely a phasing issue. Changing the mic type can get rid of a lot of the buzz. Putting an EQ ll with the phase button pushed gets rid of 98% of the buzz. You can play with the Time Delay plug-in to see if you get something you like. Sounds very different at 10, 20, and 50 samples of delay. This only seems to happen with the models that are very high gain. I could get the same issue with the 800 high gain dimed.

Playing two seperate tracks dry tracks yields none of the cockroach buzz. This is the only way I would ever do it for real anyway.

Greg

[guitardom]

cool, did not have time this afternoon to mess with it, but my initial assumption was phasing issues. this seems quite odd to me though i guess it could be dealt with. instead of bussing to aux's with my di track i could just dupe my dry track and nudge or use time adjuster as needed to combine amp tones, though this could get annoying. but what fun is amp sims if i cant combine them and try to make nigel even more proud of us!! plus i believe that most people who track "real" amps use more than 1 mic and i combine amps quite a bit and i am head member and mentor at "reampers anonymous"

[Chris Townsend]

You guys are right that it's a phase cancellation issue. Tubes are generally phase inverting, so the number of tube stages will determine the final output phase. Odd is inverting, even is non-inverting, because you flip once you're out of phase, but flip twice and you're back in phase.

The DC Modern has 3 preamp tubes, so it inverts 3 times, which results in an inverted output. The Recto has 4 preamp tubes, so the inversions "cancel out", so you're left with non-inverting.

Make sense? We considered compensating for this effect, but we decided to leave it the same as what happens in the real amps.

[guitardom]

You guys are right that it's a phase cancellation issue. Tubes are generally phase inverting, so the number of tube stages will determine the final output phase. Odd is inverting, even is non-inverting, because you flip once you're out of phase, but flip twice and you're back in phase.

The DC Modern has 3 preamp tubes, so it inverts 3 times, which results in an inverted output. The Recto has 4 preamp tubes, so the inversions "cancel out", so you're left with non-inverting.

Make sense? We considered compensating for this effect, but we decided to leave it the same as what happens in the real amps.


first, thank you for your response:-)

your explanation makes perfect sense, had no idea it was this detailed in design. i was thinking more along the lines of different heads causing different latency.

i think a way to compensate for this would be great, even if it set as a option to choose from or just as simple as a phase invert button somewhere on the gui.

of course knowing this, i will try just inserting a plug after eleven to invert the phase of one of them and see what happens...of course if we had a phase invert on the i/o......

another thought, in the spirit of being better than all the other sims:D what about a phase "knob" if you will where we have complete control of the phase at all times. like being able to "roll" the phase. ie. little labs ibp or radial phazer. the reason being is the first problems i had with this sim is trying to combine it with real mic's tracks, the phase is all whacky. i spend quite a bit of time getting my guitar mics in phase then inserting this on the di track is like throwing the proverbial "wrench in the spokes". phase issues galore. i believe there is a voxengo plug (vst) that allows you to do this also.

[dookiebrain]

guys i have a problem just getting started on my "eleven". i just got everything on friday, i signed up on ilok.com and digidesign. i installed eleven but when i go to run pro-tools le, i get a message at beggining saying that it couldnt find the liscense for eleven on ilok but yet my ilok is plugged in and it has the liscense from eleven. what the heck?

[guitardom]

just to verify. you signed up with ilok.com, synchronized your ilok online with them and then transfered the license to your ilok? typically there is not much of a problem here. but would double check this process.

[dookiebrain]

i got through that barrier, everything seems ok. i went into "audiosuite" and chose "eleven" and it came up. however, even though i was hearing my guitar through the headphones, i couldnt seem to figure how to make the sounds change in eleven,even though the eleven interface was up. it was just the default dry guitar sound from the m-box. do i have to do anything special to kick off eleven? i turned everything on but still just the same dry sound. thanks for the replys,i know my noobishness may be annoying,especially with retarded questions,lol

[dookiebrain]

anyone know a good reference manual for Eleven?

[DigiTechSupt]

i got through that barrier, everything seems ok. i went into "audiosuite" and chose "eleven" and it came up. however, even though i was hearing my guitar through the headphones, i couldnt seem to figure how to make the sounds change in eleven,even though the eleven interface was up. it was just the default dry guitar sound from the m-box. do i have to do anything special to kick off eleven? i turned everything on but still just the same dry sound. thanks for the replys,i know my noobishness may be annoying,especially with retarded questions,lol

You should read up on Audiosuite from the Pro Tools Reference Guide (under the Help menu in Pro Tools). Audiosuite is non-realtime - meaning you have to process the sound, or at least use the preview button in the Audiosuite window, to hear any changes.

You would probably be better off using the RTAS version on the insert for the track you're trying to run through Eleven.

[dookiebrain]

thanks for the reply and advise,i am making very good progress with pro-tools so far. hey, when i select the sounds i want in eleven and choose preview it says "no sounds have been selected", hopefully that's an easy fix.

my new main problem is playing back. i tried last night to play back what i recorded,it worked but then i got errors stating my drive couldnt process fast enough,may need to defrag. i have an external drive, but will that help??? wouldnt i need a drive with an OS on it?

i need some advise on playback. i defragged last night and hopefully that helps. how can i use my 500gb external drive to help with this?

do the specs on a HP nc8430 laptop meet the requirments for pro-tools? im thinking of using my work laptop instead of my home desktop.

[DigiTechSupt]

thanks for the reply and advise,i am making very good progress with pro-tools so far. hey, when i select the sounds i want in eleven and choose preview it says "no sounds have been selected", hopefully that's an easy fix.

my new main problem is playing back. i tried last night to play back what i recorded,it worked but then i got errors stating my drive couldnt process fast enough,may need to defrag. i have an external drive, but will that help??? wouldnt i need a drive with an OS on it?

i need some advise on playback. i defragged last night and hopefully that helps. how can i use my 500gb external drive to help with this?

do the specs on a HP nc8430 laptop meet the requirments for pro-tools? im thinking of using my work laptop instead of my home desktop.

You should look at the troubleshooting and optimizations available in the General Troubleshooting thread, then post a Sandra report (per the instructions in that thread) if you're unable to resolve the issue.

[dookiebrain]

thanks dude, i will check that out. thanks for helpful advise,much appreciated.

[freeBase]

You guys are right that it's a phase cancellation issue. Tubes are generally phase inverting, so the number of tube stages will determine the final output phase. Odd is inverting, even is non-inverting, because you flip once you're out of phase, but flip twice and you're back in phase.

The DC Modern has 3 preamp tubes, so it inverts 3 times, which results in an inverted output. The Recto has 4 preamp tubes, so the inversions "cancel out", so you're left with non-inverting.

Make sense? We considered compensating for this effect, but we decided to leave it the same as what happens in the real amps.

Hey Chris,
Thanks for your participation on this forum, really helps us users get info. straight from the horses mouth!

As for the phase cancellation, would it be tough to simply put a phase invert button on Eleven (just like any of the other digirack plugs) so that we don't have to add a plug-in simply to achieve this?
C.