The role of DIs and Reamping in a quality metal release Part 2. Reamping
Hello! Welcome back to my home recording blog. Today is part two of a two part series. I’m going to further explain the importance of DI boxes and Reamping to modern metal productions. Today I continue onto reamping.
Reamping is a necessity in heavy music. Especially when songs are recorded at home, by new engineers. As you’ll learn the longer you do this, a guitar tone that sounds great in a room, does not equal a tone that sounds good in a mix. There’s a lot of physics behind the differences of what you hear from a speaker cabinet in a room vs what you hear recorded through a microphone in a finished song.
I already know how you’re thinking and I already know that when you record your guitars, you’re going to move your mic around a little bit until you think it sounds cool, and you’re going to set your amp up exactly how you would when you’re jamming with the band. I know that because, I was you, ten years ago. Your tone might sound good to your ears, but the reality of the situation is that your ears may have not had the time to train and become acquainted with guitar tones that work well in a mix.
“Your ears may have not had the time to train and become acquainted with guitar tones that work well in a mix”
If you listen to the solo’d guitar tracks from just about any album, they’re not something that would really sound great on their own or in the room. Professional mixing engineers have spent thousands of hours and we have thousands of dollars of gear dedicated to figuring out what guitar tones work well in mixes for different styles of music. We can listen to a demo of a song and hear what the finished song could sound like, including a guitar tone that fits the vibe of the music. It could be tight, focused, and bright, such as what you hear in modern prog. Or it could be sludgy, hairy, and dark for something like doom metal.
To reamp, we pass the recorded DI signal through a device called a reamp box. A reamp box does exactly what a DI box does, but backwards. It converts line level signal to guitar level signal. We build a tone from scratch custom tailored to the particular song, part, artist, genre, and style. We use our pedals, tube amps, high end digital modelers, and reactive load boxes to build your song the tone it needs to sound awesome. I promise you that if you use an amp, modeler, or whatever, and the tone is awesome, your engineer will use it.
However, it could be in the best interest of the song to use a different tone. This is a super easy step and you don’t want the project to get messed up by inexperience. There’s nothing wrong with inexperience, by the way. The way you get experienced is by working through being inexperienced. It’s not an insult. The longer you do this, the more experience you will gain, and eventually your engineer won’t reamp your tracks, because you’ll send them killer recorded tones.
“If your engineer can do something better, why not use that service?”
It, like anything, is a skill that takes time and discipline to get there. For now and even then, send a DI track as well as your amp tone. They are essential to the quality of your recording. If your engineer can do something better, why not use that service? You’re already paying for it when you pay for a mix. Personally, I offer reamping as both a stand-alone service, and I include it in my mix rate.
Until next time,
J.
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