Re-amp
Encyclopedia
Reamping is a process often used in multitrack recording
in which a recorded signal is routed back out of the editing environment and run through external processing or reverb chamber. Originally, the technique was used mostly for guitars: it facilitates a separation of guitar playing from guitar amplifier
processing—a previously recorded audio program is played back and re-recorded at a later time for the purpose of adding effects, ambience, or modified tonality. The technique has since evolved to include many other applications. Re-amping can also be applied to other instruments and program, such as recorded drums, synthesizers, and virtual instruments.
Examples of common re-amping objectives include musically useful amplifier distortion, room tone, compression, EQ/filters, envelopes, resonance, and gating. Re-amping is often used to "warm up" dry tracks, which often means adding complex, musically interesting compression, distortion
, filtering, ambience, and other pleasing effects. By playing a dry signal through a studio's main monitors and then using room mics to capture the ambience, engineers are able to create realistic reverbs and blend the wet signal with the original dry recording to achieve the desired amount of depth.
The technique is especially useful for softening stereo drum tracks. By pointing the monitors away from each other and miking each speaker individually, the stereo image can be well-preserved and a new depth can be added to the track. It is important to check that the microphones being used are in phase to avoid problems with the mix.
(a Direct Input or Direct Inject buffer box) that is fed to a recording console or, alternatively, bypassing the console by using an outboard preamplifier. Often, the guitarist's signal is sent to both recorder and guitar amp simultaneously, providing the guitarist with a proper amplifier "feel" while also tracking a dry signal.
At a later time, the dry, direct, unprocessed guitar recording is fed to a bridging device (a Reamp or reverse DI box) to "re-record" the guitarist's unprocessed performance through a dedicated guitar amplifier and/or external effects box(es). The guitar amplifier is placed in the live room or isolation booth of the recording studio
and is set up to produce the desired tonal quality, including distortion character and room reverberation. A microphone is placed near the guitar speaker and a new track is recorded, producing the re-amplified, processed track. The microphone cable is connected to the mixing console or mic preamp using a cable, as usual, without using a bridging device.
External effects such as stomp boxes and guitar multi-fx processors can also be included in the re-amping process. As well as physical devices that require an impedance-matched guitar pickup signal, software-based virtual guitar effects and amps can be included in the re-amping process.
Manufacturers of instrument processing gear such as guitar effects, or equipment reviewers, can gather a library of dry performance tracks, performed and edited well, and then run these ideal tracks through the processing gear to demonstrate the sounds that the processing gear can produce. An unlimited number of performance playback passes, including looping, enables trying out many combinations of settings quickly, including microphone techniques.
When guitar amp or amp simulator designers try various circuit component values or settings, they can use the dry tracks as prepared, always-available input test signals, and consistent reference signals.
). Reverse-DI means running this same device or technique in reverse – connecting a high-level (typically balanced, low-impedance) signal into audio equipment that was designed for low-level, unbalanced, high-impedance signals, such as a guitar amplifier.
Playing back a signal from recording studio equipment directly into a guitar amplifier can cause unwanted side-effects such as input-stage distortion, treble loss or overemphasis, and ground-loop hum; thus there is sometimes a need for impedance conversion
, level-matching, and ground alteration. Like running a guitar signal through a guitar effects pedal that is set to Bypass, re-amping introduces some degree of sonic degradation compared to playing a guitar live directly into a guitar amp rig.
A re-amping device commonly employs a reversed Direct Inject (DI) transformer with some resistors added for level and impedance shift. Level and impedance adjustment can be achieved by adding a potentiometer or adjustable resistor. A proper re-amping device converts a balanced signal to an unbalanced signal, reduces a high studio-level (line-level) signal down to a low guitar-level signal, and shifts the output to a high instrument-level impedance (typically a guitar pickup impedance).
In conventional re-amplification, a dry recorded signal is sent into a balanced XLR input. An unbalanced ¼" (Tip-Sleeve) phone connector is typically used for the output, which is connected to the guitar amp rig. Some re-amping devices offer a pad (attenuator) switch to reduce a too-hot output level.
Sometimes a guitar volume pedal or buffered effects pedal can work adequately for re-amping, depending on grounding, levels, and impedance. Another approach to simulating the high impedance of a guitar pickup is to use a passive DI and add a 10 K-ohm resistor in series with the signal connection inside a 1/4" plug.
. The Reamp inductively couples balanced line-level sources into unbalanced guitar-level destinations (e.g., DAW output to guitar amp input) and includes a potentiometer which alters both signal level and source impedance. Derivations of the Reamp trademark, such as "reamping" and "re-amplification," have become common terminology in professional audio to describe the process of amplified re-recording – much like the word "Band-aid" is often used to describe adhesive bandages (see Genericized trademark
).
in the 1930s and 1940s used recorded sounds, such as trains, and played them back with ambient alteration, re-recording the net result. Karlheinz Stockhausen
and Edgard Varèse
later used similar techniques.
Les Paul
and Mary Ford
recorded layered vocal harmonies and guitar parts, modifying prior tracks with effects such as ambient reverb while recording the net result together on a new track. Les Paul placed a loudspeaker at one end of a tunnel and a microphone at the other end. The loudspeaker played back previously recorded material - the microphone recorded the resulting altered sound.
Roger Nichols claims to have used a guitar re-recording process (not reverse DI) in 1968, partly to spread the stress on cranked tube amps across multiple amps, one at a time. A sound would be dialed-in for several hours on one cranked guitar amplifier, and if this stress audibly wore down the amplifier components, another amplifier would be used to record the remaining work.
It's been noted that Phil Spector
, re-mixing the original Beatles’ Let It Be master tapes in 1970, may have re-recorded dry electric guitar program through a guitar amplifier.
Film sound re-recording is a time-honored practice. Sound designer Walter Murch
is known for a technique called "worldizing" in which "real world" ambience is added, via re-recording, to dry recorded program. Sound designer Nick Peck describes the worldizing process: "Place a speaker in a room or location with the desired aural fingerprint and position a microphone some distance from the speaker. Next, play back your original sounds through the speaker and re-record them on another recorder, capturing the sound with all the reverberant characteristics of the space. This requires much time and effort, but when only the most authentic reproduction will do, worldizing can get you there."
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
in which a recorded signal is routed back out of the editing environment and run through external processing or reverb chamber. Originally, the technique was used mostly for guitars: it facilitates a separation of guitar playing from guitar amplifier
Guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
processing—a previously recorded audio program is played back and re-recorded at a later time for the purpose of adding effects, ambience, or modified tonality. The technique has since evolved to include many other applications. Re-amping can also be applied to other instruments and program, such as recorded drums, synthesizers, and virtual instruments.
Examples of common re-amping objectives include musically useful amplifier distortion, room tone, compression, EQ/filters, envelopes, resonance, and gating. Re-amping is often used to "warm up" dry tracks, which often means adding complex, musically interesting compression, distortion
Distortion (guitar)
Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones. The three principal types of distortion effects are overdrive, distortion and fuzz. Distortion effects are sometimes called “gain” effects, as distorted...
, filtering, ambience, and other pleasing effects. By playing a dry signal through a studio's main monitors and then using room mics to capture the ambience, engineers are able to create realistic reverbs and blend the wet signal with the original dry recording to achieve the desired amount of depth.
The technique is especially useful for softening stereo drum tracks. By pointing the monitors away from each other and miking each speaker individually, the stereo image can be well-preserved and a new depth can be added to the track. It is important to check that the microphones being used are in phase to avoid problems with the mix.
Example of re-amping
A guitarist records a dry, unprocessed, unaffected track in a recording studio. This is often achieved by connecting the guitar into a DI unitDI unit
A DI unit, DI box, Direct Box, or simply DI , is a device typically used in recording studios to connect a high-impedance, line level, unbalanced output signal to a low-impedance microphone level balanced input, usually via XLR connector...
(a Direct Input or Direct Inject buffer box) that is fed to a recording console or, alternatively, bypassing the console by using an outboard preamplifier. Often, the guitarist's signal is sent to both recorder and guitar amp simultaneously, providing the guitarist with a proper amplifier "feel" while also tracking a dry signal.
At a later time, the dry, direct, unprocessed guitar recording is fed to a bridging device (a Reamp or reverse DI box) to "re-record" the guitarist's unprocessed performance through a dedicated guitar amplifier and/or external effects box(es). The guitar amplifier is placed in the live room or isolation booth of the recording studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
and is set up to produce the desired tonal quality, including distortion character and room reverberation. A microphone is placed near the guitar speaker and a new track is recorded, producing the re-amplified, processed track. The microphone cable is connected to the mixing console or mic preamp using a cable, as usual, without using a bridging device.
External effects such as stomp boxes and guitar multi-fx processors can also be included in the re-amping process. As well as physical devices that require an impedance-matched guitar pickup signal, software-based virtual guitar effects and amps can be included in the re-amping process.
Advantages of re-amping
Re-amping allows guitarists and other electronic musicians to record their tracks and go home, leaving the engineer and producer to spend more time dialing in "just right" settings and effects on prerecorded tracks. When re-amping electric guitar tracks, the guitarist need not be present for the engineer to experiment long hours with a range of effects, mic positions, speaker cabinets, amplifiers, effects pedals, and overall tonality – continuously replaying the prerecorded tracks while experimenting with new settings and tones. When a desired tone is finally achieved, the guitarist's dry performance is re-recorded, or "re-amped," with all added effects.Manufacturers of instrument processing gear such as guitar effects, or equipment reviewers, can gather a library of dry performance tracks, performed and edited well, and then run these ideal tracks through the processing gear to demonstrate the sounds that the processing gear can produce. An unlimited number of performance playback passes, including looping, enables trying out many combinations of settings quickly, including microphone techniques.
When guitar amp or amp simulator designers try various circuit component values or settings, they can use the dry tracks as prepared, always-available input test signals, and consistent reference signals.
Electronic interfacing
Direct inject (DI) is a device or technique for connecting an unbalanced, high-impedance, low-level signal (commonly a guitar pickup) into audio equipment designed for a low-impedance balanced signal (such as a DAWDigital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed solely or primarily for recording, editing and playing back digital audio. DAWs were originally tape-less, microprocessor-based systems such as the Synclavier and Fairlight CMI...
). Reverse-DI means running this same device or technique in reverse – connecting a high-level (typically balanced, low-impedance) signal into audio equipment that was designed for low-level, unbalanced, high-impedance signals, such as a guitar amplifier.
Playing back a signal from recording studio equipment directly into a guitar amplifier can cause unwanted side-effects such as input-stage distortion, treble loss or overemphasis, and ground-loop hum; thus there is sometimes a need for impedance conversion
Impedance matching
In electronics, impedance matching is the practice of designing the input impedance of an electrical load to maximize the power transfer and/or minimize reflections from the load....
, level-matching, and ground alteration. Like running a guitar signal through a guitar effects pedal that is set to Bypass, re-amping introduces some degree of sonic degradation compared to playing a guitar live directly into a guitar amp rig.
A re-amping device commonly employs a reversed Direct Inject (DI) transformer with some resistors added for level and impedance shift. Level and impedance adjustment can be achieved by adding a potentiometer or adjustable resistor. A proper re-amping device converts a balanced signal to an unbalanced signal, reduces a high studio-level (line-level) signal down to a low guitar-level signal, and shifts the output to a high instrument-level impedance (typically a guitar pickup impedance).
In conventional re-amplification, a dry recorded signal is sent into a balanced XLR input. An unbalanced ¼" (Tip-Sleeve) phone connector is typically used for the output, which is connected to the guitar amp rig. Some re-amping devices offer a pad (attenuator) switch to reduce a too-hot output level.
Sometimes a guitar volume pedal or buffered effects pedal can work adequately for re-amping, depending on grounding, levels, and impedance. Another approach to simulating the high impedance of a guitar pickup is to use a passive DI and add a 10 K-ohm resistor in series with the signal connection inside a 1/4" plug.
Terminology
While "reverse DI" re-recording techniques have been used for decades, the process was popularized in part by the introduction of the Reamp device in 1993. The registered trademark "Reamp" describes a patented invention filed in 1994 by audio engineer John Cuniberti, perhaps best known for his lifelong engineering work with guitarist Joe SatrianiJoe Satriani
Joseph "Joe" Satriani is an American instrumental rock guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, with multiple Grammy Award nominations...
. The Reamp inductively couples balanced line-level sources into unbalanced guitar-level destinations (e.g., DAW output to guitar amp input) and includes a potentiometer which alters both signal level and source impedance. Derivations of the Reamp trademark, such as "reamping" and "re-amplification," have become common terminology in professional audio to describe the process of amplified re-recording – much like the word "Band-aid" is often used to describe adhesive bandages (see Genericized trademark
Genericized trademark
A genericized trademark is a trademark or brand name that has become the colloquial or generic description for, or synonymous with, a general class of product or service, rather than as an indicator of source or affiliation as intended by the trademark's holder...
).
History
The process of re-recording has been used throughout the history of recording studios. Pierre SchaefferPierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...
in the 1930s and 1940s used recorded sounds, such as trains, and played them back with ambient alteration, re-recording the net result. Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
and Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
later used similar techniques.
Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
and Mary Ford
Mary Ford
Mary Ford , born Iris Colleen Summers, was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits...
recorded layered vocal harmonies and guitar parts, modifying prior tracks with effects such as ambient reverb while recording the net result together on a new track. Les Paul placed a loudspeaker at one end of a tunnel and a microphone at the other end. The loudspeaker played back previously recorded material - the microphone recorded the resulting altered sound.
Roger Nichols claims to have used a guitar re-recording process (not reverse DI) in 1968, partly to spread the stress on cranked tube amps across multiple amps, one at a time. A sound would be dialed-in for several hours on one cranked guitar amplifier, and if this stress audibly wore down the amplifier components, another amplifier would be used to record the remaining work.
It's been noted that Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
, re-mixing the original Beatles’ Let It Be master tapes in 1970, may have re-recorded dry electric guitar program through a guitar amplifier.
Film sound re-recording is a time-honored practice. Sound designer Walter Murch
Walter Murch
Walter Scott Murch is an American film editor and sound designer.-Early life:Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch , a painter. He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961...
is known for a technique called "worldizing" in which "real world" ambience is added, via re-recording, to dry recorded program. Sound designer Nick Peck describes the worldizing process: "Place a speaker in a room or location with the desired aural fingerprint and position a microphone some distance from the speaker. Next, play back your original sounds through the speaker and re-record them on another recorder, capturing the sound with all the reverberant characteristics of the space. This requires much time and effort, but when only the most authentic reproduction will do, worldizing can get you there."
Legal
Radial and Millennia Media products use the Reamp patent, or a variant of the patent, under license. The Reamp Company acknowledges that words such as "reamping" have become generic/colloquial audio expressions, but asserts that the word Reamp remains their legally registered trademark.See also
- Impedance matchingImpedance matchingIn electronics, impedance matching is the practice of designing the input impedance of an electrical load to maximize the power transfer and/or minimize reflections from the load....
- DI unitDI unitA DI unit, DI box, Direct Box, or simply DI , is a device typically used in recording studios to connect a high-impedance, line level, unbalanced output signal to a low-impedance microphone level balanced input, usually via XLR connector...
- Recording studioRecording studioA recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
- Isolation cabinet (guitar)Isolation cabinet (guitar)The characteristic sound of a tube guitar amplifier as heard on the majority of professional recordings is achieved by playing the amplifier at high volumes, and using one or more microphones to capture the sound. Turning the volume up causes the pre-amplifier to drive the power amplifier into...
- Distortion (guitar)Distortion (guitar)Distortion effects create "warm", "dirty" and "fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound wave and adding overtones. The three principal types of distortion effects are overdrive, distortion and fuzz. Distortion effects are sometimes called “gain” effects, as distorted...
- Guitar amplifierGuitar amplifierA guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
- Guitar speakerGuitar speakerA guitar speaker is a loudspeaker – specifically the driver part – designed for use in or with the guitar amplifier of an electric guitar...