[NAM] Profiling Rigs, Tools and Techniques

[FrankyFire]

Hey everyone,

I thought I start another thread to discuss experience with capturing different kinds of gear, what works best for you and getting tips on how to capture great profiles. Be sure to check the thread on setting up your gain level.

I'll start with my first question:
Somehow I have issues with some Amps and pedals being too noisy for profiling. The capture process will fail due to bad SNR/failed tests. Do you use noise gates for captures? What is your experience with them and do you set them as tight as can be or just make sure to reduce the noise floor? Digital in the DAW or an analog pedal?

 

[Orvillain]

You won't get away with a noise-gate for capturing. There are parts of the reamp signal that will fall below the gate threshold, and without them going through the system, you'll corrupt the profile.

You just need to optimize your signal to noise ratio. Don't have anything extraneous in the signal path, excellent cabling, excellent power, no ground loops, no extra digital conversion in the signal chain, minimize RF and EMI.

 

[2dor]

Hey everyone,

I thought I start another thread to discuss experience with capturing different kinds of gear, what works best for you and getting tips on how to capture great profiles. Be sure to check the thread on setting up your gain level.

I'll start with my first question:
Somehow I have issues with some Amps and pedals being too noisy for profiling. The capture process will fail due to bad SNR/failed tests. Do you use noise gates for captures? What is your experience with them and do you set them as tight as can be or just make sure to reduce the noise floor? Digital in the DAW or an analog pedal?

Noise gates make things worse - I tried it and it's a big no-go in my book.

The best way to go is identify where the noise is coming from & eliminate / work around it.

For instance, using the ground lift on the reamp box or something I ran into after I got a Mac was that the monitor I was using was injecting some coilwhine-like noise via the Thunderbolt cable I was using for a "1 cable desk setup".

The fix I had to settle on for reamping (after spending 1 full day trying things out) for the later was to just keep the Mac disconnected from the monitor.
In essence, the same held true to profiling with the Quad Cortex no matter where I was - having the least amount of cables connected to the thing while profiling helped a ton.

Profiling in general doesn't play well when you throw high amounts of high-end & saturation together. Profiling an amp head + boost pedal together will be harder to nail than if you'd do the 2 individually.

 

[FrankyFire]

You won't get away with a noise-gate for capturing. There are parts of the reamp signal that will fall below the gate threshold, and without them going through the system, you'll corrupt the profile.

You just need to optimize your signal to noise ratio. Don't have anything extraneous in the signal path, excellent cabling, excellent power, no ground loops, no extra digital conversion in the signal chain, minimize RF and EMI.

Good to know! Because I already saw profiles captured with gates.
I should be alright as far as I can get. Cables are short, thick and high quality, I'm using a Black Lion Audio Power Filter and try to minimize conversions. I thought it might be that my Amp tubes are dead, but I'm having the same issue with the Horizon Devices Apex Preamp (on pretty low gain settings actually).

The fix I had to settle on for reamping (after spending 1 full day trying things out) for the later was to just keep the Mac disconnected from the monitor.
In essence, the same held true to profiling with the Quad Cortex no matter where I was - having the least amount of cables connected to the thing while profiling helped a ton.

Oh wow. Gonna try unplugging everything I don't need. Thanks for the tip! And I'm kinda glad to hear I'm not alone with this issue.

Profiling in general doesn't play well when you throw high amounts of high-end & saturation together. Profiling an amp head + boost pedal together will be harder to nail than if you'd do the 2 individually.

Figured that as well. But I cannot easily combine 2 profiles into one, which I need for my Sonulab StompStation (non Pro).

 

[2dor]

Good to know! Because I already saw profiles captured with gates.
I should be alright as far as I can get. Cables are short, thick and high quality, I'm using a Black Lion Audio Power Filter and try to minimize conversions. I thought it might be that my Amp tubes are dead, but I'm having the same issue with the Horizon Devices Apex Preamp (on pretty low gain settings actually).

Oh wow. Gonna try unplugging everything I don't need. Thanks for the tip! And I'm kinda glad to hear I'm not alone with this issue.

Figured that as well. But I cannot easily combine 2 profiles into one, which I need for my Sonulab StompStation (non Pro).

On the noise gates I really went to town testing etc to convince myself if I can leverage a gate and still keep signal integrity.

Routed one of my RME UCX II Line outs to my SignalArt reamp box then into the Zuul / Lichtlaerm "Key & Gate" and into the loop.
Routed another Line Out from my RME UCX II to my Lehle P-SPLIT reamp box and into the input of the amp.
Both Line Outs were pumping out the same training sequence but the SignalArt was only responsible for triggering the gate while the P-SPLIT for keeping a linear / faithful signal going into the amp.

Even with the thresholds on the gates at minimum, the profiles still turned out better when I just had no gates involved.

Also bare in mind that most FX Loops will have, even if a little, some coloring (no-loss ones included) and you'd need to make sure the FX Loop is calibrated for unity gain if there's an FX Return volume control.
There's just so much stuff to tweak / consider ..

 

[FrankyFire]

Also bare in mind that most FX Loops will have, even if a little, some coloring (no-loss ones included) and you'd need to make sure the FX Loop is calibrated for unity gain if there's an FX Return volume control.
There's just so much stuff to tweak / consider ..

I'm having it turned down at the moment, because I was not happy with my results including FX Loop (and DI Box) in between. Still good hints to check out for! Thanks a lot!

 

[Orvillain]

Put all RGB stuff in the bin; mice, keyboards, PC rgb lights, other peripherals. They all need to go. Studio lighting with dimmer switches, certain kinds of LED lamps, chuck it all in the bin. It all adds noise.

 

[FrankyFire]

Put all RGB stuff in the bin; mice, keyboards, PC rgb lights, other peripherals. They all need to go. Studio lighting with dimmer switches, certain kinds of LED lamps, chuck it all in the bin. It all adds noise.

I won't put it in the bin, but I'll consider unplugging them
It just came to my mind that I'm using a Powerline adapter for Internet connectivity. It's probably in the same "curcuit" as my computer. That one could add loads of noise. I'll test and report.

 

[Orvillain]

I won't put it in the bin, but I'll consider unplugging them
It just came to my mind that I'm using a Powerline adapter for Internet connectivity. It's probably in the same "curcuit" as my computer. That one could add loads of noise. I'll test and report.

Oh yeah man! Those are absolute bastards for noise!! 10000000%

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

The fix I had to settle on for reamping (after spending 1 full day trying things out) for the later was to just keep the Mac disconnected from the monitor.

Same for me! When I’ve been doing NAM or Tonex captures, I have to unplug the power to my monitor and use Logic Remote or TeamViewer to start the capture process…

I wrote up my method and experience for doing captures with an HX Stomp as interface/DI. It’s far from perfect, for example no ground lift option on the hardware, but can be a good start for anyone who wants to try making captures with something they have lying around.

Link to thread on capturing with HX Stomp

Since then I’ve tried doing NAMs with the Nano Cortex as well (and V1 NDSP captures of course). I don’t have a laptop so same thing with unplugging the monitor. But the Nano has a ground lift at least which removes a lot of noise from my setup. I’ve gotten comparable results between the Stomp and Nano, but I think the leveling is off somewhere since my NAM captures come out way hotter than NDSP V1 caps.

I’ve given up on making my own Tonex captures for now since NAM/NDSP is more useable for me. Had a Tonex One for awhile but it was very noisy and limited as an interface.

 

[jbrrrrr]

I won't put it in the bin, but I'll consider unplugging them
It just came to my mind that I'm using a Powerline adapter for Internet connectivity. It's probably in the same "curcuit" as my computer. That one could add loads of noise. I'll test and report.

Also, you should be *really* thorough about checking for that annoying USB whine that can creep into your signal path - as that would also corrupt any profiling you're trying to do. Sometimes it forces you to look at what USB devices are connected into which ports, and if you have a hub, if it's sending power to any device over USB and also hosting an audio USB device - that tends to bleed in. There's all kinds of wonky fixes you can start looking into if you discover it but it can be as sneaky as showing up just because you plugged something into different ports than the last time.

When you get your setup connected, monitor the input track to the computer and listen to the noise - if it's not buzz or hum and seems to be in the 15khz and up region, it might be USB-related - you can check where the noise is at by putting an EQ on your input channel and seeing if high passing or low passing the input makes any difference.