The role of DIs and Reamping in a quality metal release Part 1 of 2: Why a DI box is mission critical.
Hello! Welcome back to my home recording blog. Today is part one of a two part series. I’m going to further explain the importance of DI boxes and Reamping to modern metal productions. Today I start with the DI box.
A good DI box is not the most glamorous piece of gear. None of your guitar gear nerd buddies will probably even know what they are, why they exist, or the problem that they solve and you won’t be able to show it off because no one other than audio production geeks care. But……
If you are recording guitars in your home studio, guitar and bass DI tracks are absolutely mission critical to having a final product that sounds great. The outputs of a guitar or bass and microphones have very different electrical properties. At this stage we are talking about a raw signal passing through cable. I’m not going to go too much into the technical detail of these differences in this article. What is important right now, is that you understand how different these signals are from one another and why it matters.
“Consumer audio interfaces do many jobs at once.”
Consumer audio interfaces do many jobs at once. They serve many different purposes in a home recording ecosystem. They are the microphone preamps, they serve as digital to analog converters, they serve as a word clock to keep any digital devices connected to your system recording in sync to avoid nasty pops and clicks that result from samples firing at the wrong time. If that last sentence looked like a foreign language to you, that’s okay…. Just understand, the instrument inputs on these interfaces will not get you the best possible recording of your raw guitar or bass signal.
Most consumer interfaces use a combination jack for line level signal from XLR sources and instrument cables. These inputs are optimized to handle line level signal. Instrument DIs captured through these combination inputs alone will lose sonic detail. Highs and lows will be lost as well as transient detail. The DI box works as a dedicated transformer, it takes the instrument level signal that the combination inputs are not optimized to handle, and converts that to a line level signal that the jack is optimized to handle. This will especially benefit you if you’re using amp sim plug-ins or are considering having a professional engineer reamp your guitar and bass tracks.
Your guitar tones will simply be better. The reason being, the signal that was captured had been optimized for the microphone preamp through which it was recorded. Mono DI boxes usually have one input and two outputs. One output is XLR, which goes into one of your interfaces mic preamps. If you are recording through a tube amp or if you have a modeler like the AXE-FX or Helix, the DI box has a 1/4 inch guitar cable output that will then go to your pedalboard/amp/modeler and you simultaneously record both signals at once. There are both active and passive models (powered or unpowered). I’ve heard engineers recommend that guitars with passive pickups be recorded through active DIs and guitars with active pickups be recorded through passive DIs. I only have one DI and have used it with both active and passive pickups and got great results, so take that with a grain of salt.
“ Metal and rock mixing engineers are almost always setup to reamp your recorded dry guitar and bass signal.”
Metal and rock mixing engineers are almost always setup to reamp your recorded dry guitar and bass signal. They use their own top notch pedals, amps, cabs, and other gear. I will say this, if a client sends me guitars that they have recorded, and they sound sick, I will definitely use them. Recording guitars with great tone is just a skill that needs to be developed over time. I will discuss reamping, it’s role in a modern production, and why it’s the smart choice to leave leave the option open for your mix engineer to make critical decisions related to your guitar and bass tone in my next entry!
Interested in professional mixing and mastering for your project? I can help.