Record a guitar live?

[brad62]

I wanted to record a singer and electric guitar player playing live into Logic Pro yesterday in my small home recording studio.

This is the first thing I ever done with live musicians in Logic.

 

The guitar player is using his guitar as a line in to my Motu pre8.

And then using the built-in plug in amp in Logic.

I'm using a Mac mini and recording to an external FW disk.

And sending the outputs from the motu to a headphone mixer. This is where they also get their headphone signals.

 

But the sound in his headphones are a little delayed and could also hear the clean tone from the guitar.

What I want is to send the processed sound of the amp plugin to the headphones so they can hear what they play.

 

How is this thing done in the correct way?

Seems like I'm doing something wrong.

[teamworkmammal]

the delay is probly due to buffer size. get it as low as you can without the system going haywire.

 

im not sure about your unit, but on mine, theres a knob that changes the amount of the processed signal that is sent back. maybe look for one of those?

 

i have a feeling it might also have to do with monitoring settings in logic, but i never really figured those out because i haven't needed to.....so maybe someone else could step in there? what does that "auto input monitoring" button do anyway? it doesnt seem to make a difference either way for me.

[LukeDunn]

The audio input monitoring (under the audio selection at the top) allows you to monitor your incoming signal through Logic, on the audio tracks you have record armed. Im guessing the clean signal your hearing is coming from the monitoring system for your 8pre unit. I would take a look at the settings on your Cue Mix console (motu's direct monitoring software) and make sure that it's not passing the input that the guitar is coming in on strait through to your main outputs.

 

Luke

[davidrice]

You will always experience some degree of the delay you're noticing, no matter how low the buffer. This is why pro engineers working with multiple musicians and tracks don't typically run sessions on Logic. The workarounds are too clumsy and prohibit basic tasks like "punching in." I'm not Logic bashing; it's my primary tool for production (but I'm typically recording one person at a time - often myself).

 

That doesn't mean you can't get around it. Disabe software monitoring and use your cue mix on the MOTU to create a headphone mix with the live inputs. Only trouble here is in your case the guitarist won't be able to play to his effected signal because cue mix will only be passing the direct input to the headphones. Does you (or does he) have a Line 6 POD or something else (maybe even a real amp) you can use? I doubt he'll have much fun playing with latency.