It seems that every month a new software instrument or DSP plug-in is released, adding to an ever-growing digital arsenal. Although DSP is a young science, it is improving at an incredible rate. We can truly accomplish every imaginable task in audio production “in-the-box”.
But every now and then, it’s good to take a walk around-the-box. Yes, I’m referring to our good friend, re-amping. Re-amping is a generic term applied to any number of configurations that send a recorded signal from your recording medium into external gear or acoustic space to be altered and rerecorded. This could be an echo chamber, triggering a snare drum by placing a speaker on top of it, running vocals through a transistor radio as a bandpass filter, as well as, of course, re-amping guitar lines through a different amp. In short, take your digital signal out for a breath of fresh analog.
Re-amping can be accomplished with any standard DAW and audio interface. In this tutorial, I’ll demonstrate re-amping through a guitar amp using Pro Tools and an MBox Mini. Here’s the plan: for the sake of illustration I’ll use a virtual instrument and send that to a tube amp to fatten it up a bit.
The overall signal routing is quite simple. I’ll create a mono Instrument Track in Pro Tools and instantiate Reason Adapted, bring up the first patch on Subtractor, and just make sure MIDI and audio are flowing properly. Then I’ll create a mono Audio Track and a Master Fader.
Now since the MBox Mini has limited I/O options, I’ll unplug my monitors and connect a TRS cable into the right monitor output. Set the output of the Instrument Track to Out 2. In order to pay proper respect to the gods of gain structure, I’ll use a re-amp box. A re-amp box will take the low impedance, balanced line-level signal from the MBox and match it to the high impedance, unbalanced instrument level input of a guitar amp. Plug in a microphone to Mic Input 1 on the back of the MBox and set the input of your audio track to In 1. I like to set the output to Out 1 so I can compare the original signal in the right headphone and the altered signal in the left.
In order to really push my tube amp, and not get kicked out of my apartment I’ve placed the amp in a closet. If you have forgiving neighbors you may want to experiment with more reverberant locations – like a tiled bathroom or a stairwell.
To recap, I’ve got Subtractor out of Monitor Out 2, into a re-amp box and into the amp. I’ve miked the amp and am returning that signal on the Audio Track via In1. Record Arm and your off.
Re-amping is incredibly simple to implement and can offer sonic manipulation as broad as your imagination. So next time you’re working in the box and something doesn’t sound quite right, take 5 minutes and experiment. |
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