5.1 to seperate amps
Home > Home Recording Forum > Live Sound Reinforcement > 5.1 to seperate amps
Posted on May 05, 2008 05:06 am
soundland
Member Since: May 05, 2008
I'd like to do a one man band thing by recording individual tracks guitar,drums, bass, keyboards and routing to individual amps ie bass to bass amp etc to try and create a sound approaching that of a live band.
And i thought it might be possible to use a 5.1 sourround card to do it. Is this a viable option? or is impedence imbalance or some other problem going to knock it on the head? If it's not an option could someone advice me on how to go about it.I like the idea of a punchy band sound using real amps
[ Back to Top ]
May 05, 2008 05:25 am Hey, welcome to HRC!
Sounds like a pretty sweet idea. Are you going to do it live? It should work as long as you can individually route all 5 channels. Did you have a particular sound card in mind? What kind of software/sequencer are you using?
May 05, 2008 07:33 am Thanks for the Welcome Colonel, Yer,i want to do it live. Soundcard wise i'm still trawling the net,but somthing 24 bit possibly firewire running out of nuendo 2 ,all tracks tweaked and routed for there particular amp ( drums through seperate stereo amp & speakers).rhythm amp, bass amp. keyboard either own amp or pa. Me guitar 100 w combo and vocals also recorded backing vocals
It sounds plausible but are there issues i'm not aware of.
Is there a better solution,ie Can i get a good result useing a couple of powered speakers and a sub with appropriate rack gear.
The burning question is can i hook up a 5.1 soundcard to seperate amps,and if so What must i consider rather than plug in blind and look for smoke! Any advice would be much appreciated
May 05, 2008 08:40 am It'll work, and nothing will smoke, but the quality will depend on your sound card. Sounds like you'll need at least an 8 channel soundcard.
So will you be playing back pre-recorded material live? Or setting Nuendo to loop a section and adding different tracks and parts on stage?
Theres lots of ways to go about it. You could get decent results mixing everything in Nuendo, and summing it all to 2 outputs going to a P.A. If you wanted a real guitar sound you could just mic it up and record to Nuendo instead of playing back through an amp. You'd loose the novelty factor though :-).
May 05, 2008 01:03 pm Colonel! So glad to have comfirmation that the 5.1 will work. I've been hedgeing my bets that it would.
I'd prefer to go that way.If you want to get an authentic bass sound you would think running a recorded bass part through a bass amp would give a closer approximation to a live sound than a mix through a stereo pa. Surely
some have done it, but i haven't found anyone on the web who has been doing it.
I'd like to hear from anyone who could point me to a solo musos web site who is doing it.
(so i can glean from his\her rig or pick there brains as to what there doing. It's probably like when you buy a white car then you start seeing white cars everywhere ( theres probably many musos doing it.)
To answer your question colonel, I plan to set the rhythm section in stone, record vocal harmonies for the chorus and cut loose on lead where applicable.I am interested in improv with looping But my goal at the moment is just to get some good quality sets together. lots of work ahead
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
May 05, 2008 01:48 pm Man, you must really want to be a roadie: one person, hauling 5 sets of gear =).
ha, just ribbin ya.
Should be, that each output on a 5.1 system is line level, so you can send line level to anything that accepts line level. But, don't plug the line level output into a mic input. Smoke can happen there.
Plug into a line level input only.
Guitar amps are expecting to see instrument level signal, which is not line level. So don't plug your soundcard outputs straight into a guitar amp. If there's a poweramp in section on your amp, that's a line level input.
If you're really intent to send soundcard into a guitar amp input, then set the output at a very low volume. But be warned, sending too hot a signal into your instrument input can fry the input circuitry.
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
May 05, 2008 01:49 pm i guess i was rather redundant, but you get the idea =/
May 05, 2008 02:22 pm Guitar amps are expecting to see instrument level signal, which is not line level. So don't plug your soundcard outputs straight into a guitar amp. If there's a poweramp in section on your amp, that's a line level input....
Poweramp in section eh
That's the sort of info i need! You may have saved me money on repair bills or an inappropriate purchase thanks.
Lugging speakers and amps! Maybe thats why i haven't found others on the web doing it. They've probably all gone f... this! I'm still keen to try it
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
May 05, 2008 03:45 pm Yeah, it'd probably be a nicer sound, but the $$$ of different amps, and carrying stuff about, eh, i'd probably go with a single PA type thing too.
Still, it I had the stuff around, it'd be neat to try.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
May 05, 2008 07:40 pm I'll inject a little bit of info here on this. Having done set ups like this in the past I have to say the the actual sound is going to be very close to using a good recording set up and then a PA live for the playback. Most places that will have a stage that large for that kind of gear will usually sound very good since most live bands I know of pipe pretty much everything through the house PA system any way for better control of the over all sound.
What you can do though to aid this in working well is get a good 8 channel audio interface so that you can simply route each instrument track out to a separate channel on the mixer for much better control over the end sound. Drums would use 2 channels, bass con be piped out a single channel and the keys will be of course 2 channels as well. Then the guitars of course would be another 2 possibly leaving you one last channel for backing vocals if needed. Then your live playing can simply be routed straight on through the mixer and your good to go.
May 05, 2008 10:32 pm Soundland, if you search for 're-amping' you'll find a lot of info about running direct, line-level signals into amps.
Quote:
Guitar amps are expecting to see instrument level signal, which is not line level. So don't plug your soundcard outputs straight into a guitar amp. If there's a poweramp in section on your amp, that's a line level input.
Thats correct, but I don't think it matters much. I do it when I'm re-amping. Level wise, my lespaul sits at about 100mV, while my laptop is about 270mV. No problem for a tube (or solidstate) (the second stage in my Bassman is being fed around 20VAC), but you can just turn it down :-).
And guitar amps are made for a high impedance input, so plugging a line level (low impedance) input will make the amp a little noisier.
If you're worried about the noise you can buy impedance converters, but I don't think it'll be a big problem.
$.02NZ
