Best setup for double tracking guitars and Amplitube

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Post Reply
teaxdriv
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:45 pm

Best setup for double tracking guitars and Amplitube

Post by teaxdriv » Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:53 pm

Hello,
I would like to ask you what would be the best setup in mixer for double tracked guitars and Amplitube effect. Normally this effect would be on every guitar track, but it is very CPU consuming so I would like to have only once for two/ four guitar tracks. The guitars (2 or 4) are panned 50L and 50R for stereo effect. Probably this can be achieved using Send track(?), but I don't know how. I would like to ask you for help with it.
Below I have a picture with an example but it is wrong because Amplitube on "B" track causes 0L 0R panning, so no stereo effect.
Image
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1296 ... OWXazA.png

Michal

fishmonkey
Posts: 4478
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:50 am

Re: Best setup for double tracking guitars and Amplitube

Post by fishmonkey » Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:35 am

you can't mix the two different guitars into a single plugin and then split the output of the plugin back into two different signals. it's like making a vodka soda and then trying to separate the vodka and soda back out into two glasses.

if you are really running that low on CPU then you can resample the guitars and then pan them. or are you wanting this for a live performance setup?

slow.robot
Posts: 188
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:06 am

Re: Best setup for double tracking guitars and Amplitube

Post by slow.robot » Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:19 pm

yeah, it would help to understand the context of what you’re trying to do here (live performance? mixdown? something else?).

if you’re not playing a live performance, your best bet would probably be to record one track with Amplitube on it, then freeze the track, then record the next track with a separate Amplitube on it, freeze that, then keep following that process for as many tracks as you need. best of all worlds.

if you’re performing live, you can’t really double track unless you have two guitarists, so you could do much the same—record the part and freeze it, then use Amplitube on the second track that you can play live.

RobrechtV
Posts: 74
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:32 pm

Re: Best setup for double tracking guitars and Amplitube

Post by RobrechtV » Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:25 am

If you make sure the return track is set to "Post", it should receive the tracks panned left and right, as you set them.

Image

The question is then if your plugin is able to receive and process a stereo input, and if it processes the left and right side separately, essentially running two separate instances of the amp. This is crucial since, as mentioned above with the cocktail analogy, you can't run a stereo signal through a mono effect and end up with two separate sides again afterwards. Also, sending two guitars through a single amp will generally not sound too good – for that reason, I would definitely not group four of them together.

An alternative to using a return track would be to group the panned DI tracks and run the plugin on the group. Again, the plugin needs to be able to handle a stereo input and process both sides separately for this to work.

But I'm not sure how much CPU resources you would be able to free up this way. Like I mentioned, configuring Amplitube for a stereo input ideally amounts to making it run two instances of the amp, one for each channel. That probably means you won't save a lot of processing power compared to simply running two instances of the plugin.

Since I gather you're simply double/triple tracking for a recording rather than performing live, I would second the recommendation of putting the plugin on every guitar track and freezing them as you go.

Post Reply