Noisy Guitar Input

[ejwagneresq]

I am playing thru a Fender Mustang II guitar amp and using Ableton Live Lite 8 installed on a HP PC computer running Win 7. The problem is that it is picking up every touch of the string and flick of the pickup switch on the guitar, so it is virtually impossible to play clean. I can hide it with distortion, but that gets old. This was not a problem when running on my older computer. Any ideas how to fix this?

[Linear Phase]

Have you tried the Gate? In your audio effects, right below the flanger... That's what that does.. its a, "noise gate," its pretty simple.. your solution is probably in that... and btw, I dunno what's changed since your old computer..

[Linear Phase]

OH! And another thing you might want to try.. Guitar rig player, or amplitube 3 free. both products are 100% freeware, although, you might have to register at Native-Instruments, or IKmultimedia --- both names are dot coms! or, "google."

Guitar Rig, and Amplitube have terrific gates.. your solution may be there. If abe's gate doesnt work.. try this suggestion, before coming back with, "the gate idea sucked."


If its not the gate... try turning down the level in ----> control panel ----> sound device ---> record. your level is probably at 100 try something like 0, or 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, etc...

[ejwagneresq]

Thanks for the idea about the Gate. It seems to work pretty well, though it can kill long sustain. I will have to mess around with various settings and change them on a song by song basis.

[Linear Phase]

Thanks for the idea about the Gate. It seems to work pretty well, though it can kill long sustain. I will have to mess around with various settings and change them on a song by song basis.

oh ok.. well try the gate in amplitube 3 ** free... its a freeware product, just sign in/create an account at ikmultimedia.com

obviously, that product's gate is specifically designed for guitar, you may get a better result

peace

[ott_face]

Hey, I've just been working on the same problem!
The problem with the "gate" effect is that the threshold setting only goes down to -40dB, which is WAY too high for a guitar noise gate and, as you discovered, kills sustained notes and sounds like crap. Until today I was using both NI Guitar Rig and IK Amplitube free versions, which do the job, but I hate mucking around with VSTs and I hate the CPU overheads they take.

But I think I've found the solution by using the Multiband Dynamics device! Firstly, make sure you put it right at the start of the signal chain so you're affecting the dry guitar signal (I do all my distortion etc. in Ableton so the incoming guitar is clean. If you're using outboard effects this will not work as well, but neither will any other noise gate system in Ableton). Turn off the high and low frequency sections so you're dealing with just a single bandwidth. Leave input and output gains at 0dB, make sure soft knee is selected and set it to peak (not RMS). Leave Time and Amount at their defaults (100%). Under the "T" tab, I brought both the attack and release down to 1ms, and under the "A" tab brought the Threshold right up to 0dB with the ratio at 1:1 (ie. no compression).

All the fiddling happens under the "B" tab. I found great settings for my Godin with humbuckers to be -58dB threshold and 1:0.30 expansion ratio, while for my single coil Peavey I found -56dB and 1:0.25 was necessary to kill the single coil hum. find the best settings for your guitar/s and then save a preset for each one!

The absolute best thing I think about this method is that it uses an expansion ratio instead of a specified gain cut. This means that as sustained notes fall below the threshold, the gain is very gradually reduced, rather then instantly cut by 40dB or something. But this is still with insanely fast attack and release times, so all the dynamics of your playing will be left completely intact! (rather then having to put up with long attack and release times on a traditional noise gate).

[anybody human]

@ott_face ^ Interesting. I'll have to give that a try. Thanks for posting.