DI bass and mic questions

[Joshua RodrigueParticipant]

Hi. This might be an obvious question, but if I want to record a DI bass track and have my bass amp mic'd, is it possible to do this in one take? Or is it understood that a DI and an a mic'd amp are two separate takes? I have a passive mixer/splitter but it really didn't sound good when I tried it. Thanks.

[Guido tum SudenKeymaster]

Hi Joshua,
you record it in one take unless you want it to sound like two basses, which you usually won't.
The amp signal will be slightly delayed and you will get a phasing sound very often, when you play the two tracks together.
You can switch the polarity on one of the tracks to see if it sounds better or you align both track e.g. by zooming in on the waveform and moving one track until the waveforms align. That can be tricky when the amp signal is distorted.
You can also put a sample delay (or similar) on the DI track and delay the track while listening to both until you are satisfied with the sound.

Guido

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by Guido tum Suden.

[Joshua RodrigueParticipant]

Ahh. That makes perfect sense. Thank you for the tip. Is a passive splitter good for this task or would an active splitter do a better job?

[Donald MacTavishParticipant]

Hi,

Most DIs have a “Thru” jack that in essence passes the original signal through the DI and into the Pedals and/or Amp.  As Guido mentioned correct phase is critical to understand and align.  Hope this helps.

Prost

[Joshua RodrigueParticipant]

Gotcha. I'm using an id44 and after looking at the manual I see that it's possible on here. Thank you!

[Guido tum SudenKeymaster]

I'm beginning to see…
I think that you use an audio interface, the Audient iD44, which has a Hi-Z input for guitars, to record guitar. People call this a DI input, which it is, but the name is misleading in this case. Donald and me, we were speaking of using a DI Box. Something you use on stage and in the studio, to get a guitar or bass signal to XLR and from unbalanced to balanced.
You can't use your interface outputs to plug into your guitar amp. The signal output is too high!
So you use an actual DI Box, plug your guitar into it and go to your amp from there. Then you use the XLR-Out of the DI Box to go to your interface.
If you want to get a higher signal from your guitar you use an active Di Box, which needs phantom power.
A lot of studios use DI Boxes by Radial Engineering but a less expensive one like a Palmer will do perfectly in the beginning.

[Donald MacTavishParticipant]

If you are using the interface as the “DI” and you want to also route to an amp be sure to understand how to set up (low latency)direct monitoring in the interface. This will allow the guitar signal to go to the amp without a round trip through the DAW. An external DI makes life pretty easy to track both a clean and mic’d amp with no latency risks or issues.
Prost

[Joshua RodrigueParticipant]

I get where you're coming from now too. I thought I figured it out, but once I got to my id44, it seemed to be improbable. I didn't know a DI box existed. That is so helpful. I'll end up buying one of those. Thank you for your recommendations! So, this might be a silly question again, but leaving the DI box, would it be better to get a balanced cable that I can insert into the trs "DI" instrument input or just use a balanced xlr to xlr and run it into the interface that way?

[Donald MacTavishParticipant]

The purpose of a DI is to convert an instruments signal level and impedance to a balanced XLR mic level signal for input to a “consol”. So with that said xlr out to xlr in. I highly recommend investing in Radial products for a DI.  Worth every penny as an investment in sound.
By design an “instrument” input is “high z” or high impedance and a T-S unbalanced input.  A xlr to TS makes no sense here.
Understanding the various input and output standards is a critical element to learn since impedance mismatching can compromise the sound. Pretty easy to learn and apply for a lifetime.
Prost

[Joshua RodrigueParticipant]

I just bought a Radial DI box, thank for the recommendation. Using xlr to xlr makes perfect sense. I hadn't thought it through. I'm still new to a lot of this, so thanks for understanding. Line impedance is just not a topic that you come across as often as you should.

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