What's your DAW recording rig? Are there any plugins you swear by? Do you mix in the box, or do you have outboard gear?

[nightlight]

I use a few plugins too for guitar. I have Neural DSP's Gojira, Nolly, Nameless, Soldano and Parallax plugins. I also really like the guitar amp that comes with Cubase/Nuendo, which sounds great.

I'm not too happy with my sounds through modellers and profilers, though that probably boils down to user error. Find it much simpler to mic up an amp and cab, or to use my Fryette PS-2 as a loadbox and then run into the cabs in the Neural plugins or DynIRs on my Axe FXIII.

I have a small collection of mics that I like a lot. A Shure SM-57 and E906 (dynamic mics), a Lewitt LC440 Pure (condenser) and a Townsend Labs Sphere L-22, which I can use to emulate other mics using the UAD Sphere Mic Collection, Bill Putnam Mic Collection and Ocean Way Mic Collection.

PS: Thanks for the offer to teach me how to use my gear more appropriately, @PurityS.L.G . I might take you up on that someday, but these days looking for work so that I can get back to playing music in my free time.

All said and done, these are the three best recordings I've done so far, for which I used a Kemper Profiler (gosh, maybe I should get another). The first two are sub-2 minute grindcore songs, and the third is a 4-minute doom song with crap, non-autotuned Ozzy Osbourne vocals)

Look What You Did To Me, Taylor Swift


Fie/Arms For The Poor


Murder By Moonlight


I put it down to the drums being played, just gives the songs a totally different vibe that I have missed with all my new recordings. Kind of feels like I forgot to play drums, but it's like someone keeps adjusting my pedals when I go out.

 

[Monkey Man]

Taylor Swift's never heard so many kick beats in her life, I'm bettin'.

 

[spguitar]

Lately I swear by Neural DSP Misha Mansoor and the Softube Engl Suite. They're just too good with the right IRs.
Sometimes I'll run my Marshall VS102r direct in and layer with the plugins.

 

[ilikehats]

I run Reaper on a Linux desktop. I can load most windows plugins through yabridge as if they were native. After a little optimization, latancy and stability are more than adequate.

The two plugins that are almost always on: Valhalla VintageVerb and Two Notes Genome for DynIRs. I have the Nolly Neural plugin that I like a lot too.

My interface is a simple presonus 26c. I run all amps I to a Suhr RL.

 

[Jeff Hilligan]

Mini Mac, UA volt interface, reaper, rocket 5 monitors. Every amp plug in you can imagine. Now it's a 5150 iconic 15 with a mic

 

[BenoA]

A basic gaming Laptop (that is getting old)
Two screens added for more windows
Behring UMC 1820 interface
Two cheap JBL monitors (they sound good for their size so no plans for updating them)
Various mics but go a lot direct with my Katana amps, ToneX one and other similar devices
Reaper for DAW
I like the EQ and comp that comes with it. I use them a lot
Two plugins I really like: Ozone and the Waves L2 to finalize the mix

 

[cobrahead1030]

Very simple setup for me these days:

Mac mini, running logic
Adam T5V’s
SSL2+
Suhr Reactive Load IR

Typically songs at the idea stage, I record guitars direct & use a handful of Neural DSP plug ins. When I want to really focus on something, it’s usually one of the big amps into the reactive load. Occasionally I’ll still break out the mics, but I do that less & less anymore.

 

[BenoA]

@cobrahead1030 is that a Mesa Badlander that you racked mount into your desk?

 

[cobrahead1030]

@cobrahead1030 is that a Mesa Badlander that you racked mount into your desk?

It’s the rack mount version of the badlander, but yes.

I actually use the clean mode, dime the gain & run some delay in the loop. It’s my go to practice tone most days.

 

[nightlight]

Very simple setup for me these days:

Mac mini, running logic
Adam T5V’s
SSL2+
Suhr Reactive Load IR

Typically songs at the idea stage, I record guitars direct & use a handful of Neural DSP plug ins. When I want to really focus on something, it’s usually one of the big amps into the reactive load. Occasionally I’ll still break out the mics, but I do that less & less anymore.View attachment 434849

Love the desk, the tiers are an awesome idea. I hope to be able to get something like that myself if possible.

 

[PBGas]

Mine is the following:
Mac Studio M2 Max
Luna and Ableton live
Neumann KH-120 II monitors
Adam Sub
UA Apollo X6 gen 2
UA Octo satellite thunderbolt 4
Push 3 standalone
I use everything in the box.

I run my X88-IR directly in or my SLO-100R into a Waza Core and then into my interface.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

FabFilter ProQ 4 - It kind of can't be overstated how good this EQ is. It's nuts.

https://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-q-4-equalizer-plug-in

It also has a built-in frequency controllable compressor/expander, so for example if your guitars sound great but the low end from palm mutes tends to blow out the track, you can cut the lows where the palm mutes bloom out, but enable a threshold that only applies that specific band of EQ cut when the lows exceed whatever level you set.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

Very simple setup for me these days:

Mac mini, running logic
Adam T5V’s
SSL2+
Suhr Reactive Load IR

Typically songs at the idea stage, I record guitars direct & use a handful of Neural DSP plug ins. When I want to really focus on something, it’s usually one of the big amps into the reactive load. Occasionally I’ll still break out the mics, but I do that less & less anymore.View attachment 434849

I love that Racto head mounted straight into the desk. Hell yeah.

 

[stratjacket]

Mine is the following:
Mac Studio M2 Max
Luna and Ableton live
Neumann KH-120 II monitors
Adam Sub
UA Apollo X6 gen 2
UA Octo satellite thunderbolt 4
Push 3 standalone
I use everything in the box.

I run my X88-IR directly in or my SLO-100R into a Waza Core and then into my interface.

What do you think of Luna?
I’ve had the Apollo X6 for a while and installed Luna (it was free) and played with it about 15 minutes and never tried it again.

I’m just too familiar with Pro Tools and went through the struggle to where I don’t feel like going through it again learning a new DAW.

 

[stratjacket]

FabFilter ProQ 4 - It kind of can't be overstated how good this EQ is. It's nuts.

https://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-q-4-equalizer-plug-in

It also has a built-in frequency controllable compressor/expander, so for example if your guitars sound great but the low end from palm mutes tends to blow out the track, you can cut the lows where the palm mutes bloom out, but enable a threshold that only applies that specific band of EQ cut when the lows exceed whatever level you set.

In a drunken stupor Thanksgiving week I purchased one of the Fabfilter suites for 50% off (I think) and forgot about it. It had 4 or 5 plugins, not the full suite.
Got an email about the release of C4 and looking at it again last week and logged in and had all the tools in my account to download. So I got them all now and planning to dig in. Lesson, don’t drink and buy gear.

 

[heath]

Hardware:

• Alienware gaming laptop from about 2 yrs back. Intel i7, 64gb ram, 2TB SSD. Decent enough for what I use it for.
• Allen&Heath Zed 16 mixer (mostly for live use, but the preamps do sound nice)
• Behringer UMC 1820 interface w/a Behringer ADA8200 for expansion so I can do 16 channels at once when needed.
• A bunch of Sennheiser and Shure microphones.
• EVH 5150III 50 watt, PRS MT15, Mesa F30, Laney GH30R, custom built 8watt amp (plexi preamp with a champ power amp), ADA MP1, Peavey Rockmaster, Triple Giant, Custom recto style preamp, Peavey Classic 120 power amp, Peavey 70's model power amp, cheap bass amp, a few cabs, and way too many pedals to list.
• Alesis DM10 Drumkit for capturing midi
• cheap PDP acoustic kit that has not been used in many moons
• KRK Rockit 8s and subs
• KRK Rockit 4s
• Cheap Sony Boombox from 90s
• Car stereo and speakers from 90s

Software:

• Reaper for my DAW since 08-09 when ProTools started going subscription based.
• SSD 5.5 for most of my drum tones at this point.
• UAD Oxide Tape for a touch of tape sound
• Ozone 11
• Nectar 3
• Audio Issues EQ
• Brainworx Masterdesk
• Tonex
• Helix
• UAD 610A Preamp EQ
• Izotope Vinyl
• Brainworx Subfilter
• Brainworx SSL channel
• Brainworx Focusrite channel
• vintage rewarmer
• a bunch I am forgetting

 

[BenoA]

Love the desk, the tiers are an awesome idea. I hope to be able to get something like that myself if possible.

Here is a fish eye photo of my setup. Legs of the desk are "Height Adjustable" I got off from Amazon and put a bamboo counter top on it from Home Depot.
I built a basic desk riser to hide my old Kawai Keyboard (from the late 80s) and added the white riser from Ikea I had from years ago and the Behringer interface was fitting nicely in the middle of it.

Sure my cat had to bomb the photo

 

[Monkey Man]

Here is a fish eye photo of my setup... Sure my cat had to bomb the photo

How'd the fish survive long-enough to take the photo with the cat in there?

 

[PBGas]

What do you think of Luna?
I’ve had the Apollo X6 for a while and installed Luna (it was free) and played with it about 15 minutes and never tried it again.

I’m just too familiar with Pro Tools and went through the struggle to where I don’t feel like going through it again learning a new DAW.

Luna is a great DAW. I was an early adopter back when it first started just as Covid reared its ugly head and did a lot of beta testing on it for UA. There was not as much in it when it first came out but there has been a lot added and created now and moved back to it last year. I find it super easy to use and actually logical. I have used Pro Tools for years and it is a great program to use as well and I don't blame you for not switching. I was reluctant to learn anything new and had the time so it worked out well.

I just did not like Avid's higher subscription rates. It was 99$ at one point then got lifted to 199$. I know, you don't have to do it with a perpetual licence and that is fine. However, if you want the latest updates, it costs $299/year and some of those updates add functionality of if you also update your OS. Add that up after 5 years and you begin to wonder if you are buying a piece of hardware!

 

[nightlight]

I Also use Luna. It integrates well with UAD hardware and that allows you to eun far more DSP plugins. Also, the low latency recording mode is excellent, wish more DAWs had it. It's a life saver when you have to punch in to record a section that had issues when you've already put in some mixing hours.