I recently talked about DI bass vs amp recording and mentioned the option of re-amping as a benefit of recording DI. Let’s define what is re-amping exactly, give some reasons to do it to get better sounding recordings, and lastly and very importantly cover how to re-amp in your DAW.
What is Re-Amping
Re-amping is a recording technique which involves using an existing, prerecorded, unprocessed/clean track, and playing that through an amplifier and recording the output via a microphone.
This existing track is typically recorded DI, or direct input, ahead of time.
This means that rather than sending the guitar (for example) to an amplifier, it was recorded straight into the audio interface hardware via a single cable. This gives you just the clean sound of the guitar and its pickups.
The prerecorded DI guitar is later sent to an amplifier or head and cabinet so it’s processed and output with the settings you dial in. That output can then be recorded via your microphone of choice.
It’s virtually the exact same thing as playing the part live through the amp, the only difference is that it’s already recorded.
Well, it’s slightly more complicated than just playing live straight into the amp from your guitar and recording, but we’ll address that in a moment.
Let’s talk about why reamping is worth it first.
Why Should You Re-Amp
Re-amping comes with a number of advantages, pretty much all of which are connected.
First, you don’t need to find and commit to the perfect amp settings and microphone placement before you record. When inspiration strikes, you can just pick up your instrument of choice, plug into your audio interface, and start recording.
This is advantageous in case you just want to get that part recorded quickly or aren’t at your home studio, but it’s also helpful considering you don’t always know what the perfect sound you want is right off the bat. You may record a guitar part with a lot of gain, then realize later on that in the context of the mix it’s too much and doesn’t fit.
We can adjust our tone to better fit the mix later with reamping.
Reamping also makes finding amp and microphone placement settings you’re happy with a lot easier. Unless you have someone else playing the guitar live for you, it’s difficult to monitor in real time whether a slight change in position of the microphone is a step in the right or wrong direction.
When you’ve got a reamped signal, you can just play it on a loop, then pop on some headphones and monitor the effects which slight changes to the microphone placement or to the parameters on the amp itself are having on the tone.
Plus you can also nail the perfect performance for the part ahead of time via DI recording. Having the best performance can help you make better choices as opposed to someone just noodling around while you’re trying to dial in the perfect settings.
Lastly and most obviously, with reamping you’re not locked into any one particular sound like you are when you record the conventional way with a microphone on the amp as you play the instrument live.
And even if later on you decide you don’t like the reamp track you’ve made, you still have that DI track so you can go back and reamp it once again.
How to Reamp in Your DAW
We’ve covered the why, now let’s cover how to reamp in your DAW, going step by step.
You’ll need a few things to reamp as we’re describing in this example:
- A DI recorded audio track.
- An audio hardware interface with inputs and outputs.
- An amplifier and microphones.
- Your DAW.
- Reamp device (semi-optional).
Regarding the nebulous “reamp device”, first I should mention that sound from your DAW where the DI track audio has been recorded and is stored will be at “line level”. This is much louder than the instrument level that your amp is expecting.
As a result, simply connecting a cable from the output of your DAW via an audio interface to your amp will likely be too hot and overload your amp’s input, not to mention cause some electrical noise by way of impedance mismatch.
While you can certainly just turn the output level of the amp down lower, the point is the sound being fed into the amp is going to be excessively distorted and not sound like that dry DI audio sounds in your DAW before you output it to the amp.
For these reasons, it’s a good idea to have some kind of reamp device like the Radial ProRMP.
This essentially converts the line level to instrument level and adjusts the impedance so you get a good and clean sounding instance of the DI track going to your amp which you can then mic.
Now let’s get into the steps.
Step 1 – Set Up the Amp and Microphone(s)
First and foremost, we need to get the amp and microphone(s).
I put together an entire overview on how to mic a guitar cabinet which explains how the tone is affected by the microphone itself and its placement relative to the amp’s speaker:
As you can see, the more centered with the speaker, the brighter, more immediate, and punchier a tone you’ll get. Likewise with putting the microphone closer to the amp itself.
Conversely, the more you move that microphone off of the center of the speaker and farther away from the amp itself, the darker and warmer sound you’ll capture along with more of the room sound/natural reflections.
The tone is also affected by the microphone itself with some microphones capturing a darker or brighter sound, not to mention a higher fidelity, more faithful sound than others.
Dynamic microphones generally work well because of their ability to withstand a louder source like a guitar cabinet when you typically need to turn the output up to a decent level to get the most out of the amp in delivering the best tone:
I put together an overview on the best microphone for guitar amp recording, so refer to that for more information, as well.
One last thing to mention – I did say “microphone(s)” as you always have the option of using multiple microphones to mic your amp. If you do happen to use more than one microphone to give yourself a blended sound rather than more options, make sure the two recordings are in phase!
Step 2 – Connect the Audio Interface, Reamp Box, and Amp
Next we want to physically connect the DAW to the reamp box and ultimately the amp by way of the audio interface.
Connect one 1/4″ instrument cable from an output on your audio interface (outputs are typically on the back) to the reamp device’s input. Then connect another 1/4″ instrument cable from the device’s output to the input on your amp. Lastly, we would connect our microphone(s) back to our recording hardware interface via an XLR cable to one of its free inputs.
Note that the higher the quality of the instrument cables and thicker they are, the less noise they will introduce in the signal. I do live gigging, so I like to keep designated cables for the studio versus ones I take on the road which are more likely to get damaged through the wear and tear of gigging.
Step 3 – Set Up the Tracks and Routing In Your DAW
Now it’s just about setting up the tracks and routing between your audio interface and DAW.
In most DAWs like my Ableton Live, routing is extremely intuitive and simple to set up.
In this case, we will set the output of the DI, prerecorded track in our DAW to match whatever output we connected our cable to in the last step.
If we put that cable running out from output #1, we’d select output #1 as the Ext. Out in our DAW.
Now we need to create another track, this time armed to record and setting the input as whatever input we connected the microphone to on the audio hardware interface.
When we play the DI track, it should now output from the amplifier and likewise be captured by the microphone.
Step 4 – Playback/Record and Adjust the Tone on the Amp
Lastly, we just need to play the DI track, recording the tone.
You’ll want to solo and listen to that recorded tone on that input track in your DAW with a good pair of headphones as you adjust the various parameters which are affecting the tone.
Things which will affect your reamped tone at this point include:
- The reamp device itself. Reamp devices like the aforementioned Radial ProRMP have an output level adjuster. If the sound is still too distorted or gain heavy, turn the output level down on the reamp device; this will make it cleaner and more faithful to the actual initial sound of the DI guitar.
- The microphone and its placement. I talked about this earlier, but the microphone you use and its position relative to the speaker of the amp will affect the tone.
- The amp settings. It’s obvious, but we’re using the amp just like we were recording the guitar straight into it, so its settings will considerably affect the tone. Refer to my guitar amp EQ settings overview on getting the best tone going in so less work is necessary after the fact “in the box”.
- The preamp level on your audio hardware interface’s input. Pretty self-explanatory but turning this up will record the signal the microphone picks up with more gain and potentially make it more distorted.
Again, the good news with reamping and one of the main reasons to do it is that you can take all the trial and error you need to dial in those perfect settings across the entire setup.
Once you have the sound you want, you can playback the DI track and record that tone in earnest via the amp and microphone(s).
You can even use this to create your own impulse response guitar to apply to subsequent guitar recordings down the road – the benefits of reamping are limitless, so it’s always a good idea to make sure you grab that DI track no matter WHAT you’re recording.
