Native Instruments Guitar Rig

Anyone using this software which offers a virtual rack system on your computer to build all kinds of guitar sounds? I'm having trouble with noise. I leave the noise gate on low and put a Noise Reducer in as the first of all my guitar presets, but these tend to shorten the sustain of high notes. I output through my mixer in a Bugera V55 Infinium with varying degrees but always with some annoying static.

Originally Posted by: TerranautAnyone using this software which offers a virtual rack system on your computer to build all kinds of guitar sounds? I'm having trouble with noise.[/quote]
I suggest looking at the Native Instruments website for a FAQ about noise issues, then checking their forum.

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/

I don't use their guitar rig, but I do use some of their sound libraries (drums, orchestral). It's all great stuff!

In my experience, the biggest sources of noise when you are connecting guitars to digital tools (DAWs, emulators, etc.) are:

1. RFI (radio frequency interference).
2. Grounding issues.

It's amazing how much RF interference you get when you put studio gear, lights, guitars, amps & computers in the same room. :)

It could be anything from the input levels are too high, to the cables you are using are unshielded & acting as antennas, to the lighting in your room is being picked up & causing buzzing.

Sometimes I've noticed that if I turn my guitar from directly facing the computer monitor to a 45 degree angle, the buzzing is considerably lower! Sometimes, it's 90 degrees. Sometimes it's just proximity, I have to stand at least 10 feet away from the computer when I hit record if I have a loud, gainy tone! :)
[QUOTE=Terranaut]I leave the noise gate on low and put a Noise Reducer in as the first of all my guitar presets, but these tend to shorten the sustain of high notes. I output through my mixer in a Bugera V55 Infinium with varying degrees but always with some annoying static.

My first thought is adding FX even if they are "noise gates" are just adding to the trouble. I suspect you should just simplify the signal chain as much as possible to locate & eliminate the problem.

So, troubleshoot one thing at a time. Troubleshoot everything in the signal chain from the guitar all the way to the speakers. Research your specific issues on the internet & NI forums. For example:

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/print/eliminating_troublesom_hum_buzz_created_by_electric_guitars

http://ask.metafilter.com/84056/How-to-reduceeliminate-RF-noise-in-my-home-studio

Best of success with it!

Thanks Chris. Tried it all. I appreciate your diligent answers and links. Some things decrease noise but nothing knocks it out so far. I have to use a noise gate as my first component in every rack set up. The global one I can't turn up more than 20% or my high notes lose all sustain. The component ones I have to use lightly as well or lose my sustain on my leads. It's crazy to have spent so much money and have to deal with this.

I use GR5 and don't have noise problems. Can you detail out your signal chain?

What guitar/pups are you using?

Originally Posted by: bob99I use GR5 and don't have noise problems. Can you detail out your signal chain?

What guitar/pups are you using?

I have three electrics--one has Seymour Duncan mubuckers with coil tap, one is a Mexican Strat (Deluxe Lone Star Strat with humbucker in bridge position with coil tap), and I have an Epiphone ES 339 Ultra which has Gibson burst-buckers and a nano-mag (which is analogous to a piezo).

I don't go though any external effects. I plug into a Behringer Xenix Q1002 USB mixer which acts as my audio interface. My guitar signal goes from there into the computer and into Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5. The output comes back out the USB back into the mixer and I run the output through a Mogami cable to a Bugera Infinium 55 at tube amp.

Before going to Guitar Rig, I bought a Boss GT001 and a top end Digitech effects processor both of which would not allow me to control effects and models from my PC screen (I I used to with my Boss GS10 circa 2005 with no problem) without a din of high pitched noise. I returned both the $300 Boss and $300 Digitech.

As of now I have made a decision to stop seeking to use my computer(s) in my guitar effects chain. I have an Intel 7 core with solid state drive for the OS which is fast, fast, fast. But it seems to not like to be connected via usb for music making. So I just ordered a Line 6 M 5 stomp box modler which is small but has a fairly big LCD screen of its own built in. I can use it on my desktop. That is important to me because I use programs like Riff Station, Audacity etc. I haven't gotten into computer recording although I have Cube Base, Traktion, and a few other daw packages. For now, I just want to keep learning and improving my chops. I don't need a bunch of different amp and cabinet models. If the Line 6 effects modler comes up short, I can still just go back to Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 and deal with the noise. I was looking at a product by Rolls which may offer an answer. I have a headphone amp by them which is really good for the money. I have found that they offer a "noise eliminator" which is not a noise gate in the usual sense--it's a ground hum eliminator said to be more for my kind of application than an external pedal line. It's about $45. The Line 6 box is $129.

Terranaut how do you find Riffstation? I downloaded the demo of it but when I used it I found the program got too many chords wrong on the songs I loaded into it so I didn't end up purchasing the full copy.

I picked up a Behringer USB mixer last year to try as an interface. It's on the shelf - too noisy ...

What do you have in the preset in GR5? If you have any amp/preamp models loaded, the noise is expected because you'd be feeding the output of one amp into the input of another.

I mostly feed signals into the computer for recording rather than back out to an amp, but I have fed signals back out to my Laney IRT Studio amp without any noise problems.

Some effects are best fed into an amp's guitar input; pre-preamp. Other are best applied in the effects loop. IMX, the RP1000 or GT-100 work well with a regular amp because they can be cabled (4-wire method) to insert the different effects at different points; frontend vs effects loop.

I traded in my RP1000 to get a GT-001 desktop unit, which I also like a lot for studio use.

This isn't hard and fast, but is a good starting point figuring out where to insert effects:

Originally Posted by: bob99I picked up a Behringer USB mixer last year to try as an interface. It's on the shelf - too noisy ...

What do you have in the preset in GR5? If you have any amp/preamp models loaded, the noise is expected because you'd be feeding the output of one amp into the input of another.

I mostly feed signals into the computer for recording rather than back out to an amp, but I have fed signals back out to my Laney IRT Studio amp without any noise problems.

Some effects are best fed into an amp's guitar input; pre-preamp. Other are best applied in the effects loop. IMX, the RP1000 or GT-100 work well with a regular amp because they can be cabled (4-wire method) to insert the different effects at different points; frontend vs effects loop.

I traded in my RP1000 to get a GT-001 desktop unit, which I also like a lot for studio use.

This isn't hard and fast, but is a good starting point figuring out where to insert effects:

Awesome pic. But wouldn't you switch the compressor and overdrive?

Originally Posted by: fuzzb0xTerranaut how do you find Riffstation? I downloaded the demo of it but when I used it I found the program got too many chords wrong on the songs I loaded into it so I didn't end up purchasing the full copy.

Riff Station is awesome. None of the software programs that purport to read files or wave patterns and tell you the chords work better than 70% and they never will. But Riff Station is the closets I've seen at it. It doesn't even have any really sophisticated or slash chords in its data base so I know going in that it can't be precise. But one thing that has been worth the money for me is that it has two speed features. One is the "slow downer" which doesn't change the pitch which allows you to learn riffs at a slower pace, and the other--that has been worth more than its weight in gold--is the ability to slow or speed where the pitch DOES shift. This allows you to re-tune any music that is not in tune with your guitar (assuming you're in perfect tune) to the guitar rather than having to re-tune the guitar to the offness in pitch of the song due to post processing tape issues or w/e. You simply nudge the music faster or slower in hundredths of a semitone until it's in tune with your guitar.

I wish I would have had this all my youth. Re-tuning for one song to play along with it on the stereo eats up time and can be a nuisance.

Another thing I do with Riff Station is that, say I hear any bit of music where a guy plays a riff I like. I can capture it with the free program "Audacity", turn it into a short MP3, and then bring it into Riff Station and put it on infinite repeat at a slow rate and keep playing along with it until I'v gotten it. I will write it in tab. There are lots more uses but in Riff Station, you can also isolate the lead guitar so it stands out while in slow motion. You can hear it better and learn it easier. I haven't even used some of the other functions for which it was designed. But the ones I use it for I do so every day. Great tool

Originally Posted by: GT StaffAwesome pic. But wouldn't you switch the compressor and overdrive?

Honestly? I wouldn't compress anything at all until I started mixing.

For live use use I would experiment to see which order gave me the sound I was after.

I wouldn't follow the pic for specific ordering. I think what it illustrates best is whether an effect will be better up front or in the effects loop.

Originally Posted by: GT StaffAwesome pic. But wouldn't you switch the compressor and overdrive?

Compressor first. You don't want to take the chunky overdrive sound and then squish it. At least in my experience.

Originally Posted by: TerranautRiff Station is awesome. None of the software programs that purport to read files or wave patterns and tell you the chords work better than 70% and they never will. But Riff Station is the closets I've seen at it. It doesn't even have any really sophisticated or slash chords in its data base so I know going in that it can't be precise. But one thing that has been worth the money for me is that it has two speed features. One is the "slow downer" which doesn't change the pitch which allows you to learn riffs at a slower pace, and the other--that has been worth more than its weight in gold--is the ability to slow or speed where the pitch DOES shift. This allows you to re-tune any music that is not in tune with your guitar (assuming you're in perfect tune) to the guitar rather than having to re-tune the guitar to the offness in pitch of the song due to post processing tape issues or w/e. You simply nudge the music faster or slower in hundredths of a semitone until it's in tune with your guitar.

I wish I would have had this all my youth. Re-tuning for one song to play along with it on the stereo eats up time and can be a nuisance.

Another thing I do with Riff Station is that, say I hear any bit of music where a guy plays a riff I like. I can capture it with the free program "Audacity", turn it into a short MP3, and then bring it into Riff Station and put it on infinite repeat at a slow rate and keep playing along with it until I'v gotten it. I will write it in tab. There are lots more uses but in Riff Station, you can also isolate the lead guitar so it stands out while in slow motion. You can hear it better and learn it easier. I haven't even used some of the other functions for which it was designed. But the ones I use it for I do so every day. Great tool

seems like I need to give riffstation another look then, is there a feature that allows you to learn the solo's in songs then? does it show you the tab for these parts?

Originally Posted by: fuzzb0xseems like I need to give riffstation another look then, is there a feature that allows you to learn the solo's in songs then? does it show you the tab for these parts?

No. There aren't any programs out there that read either digital or streamed analog music precisely. RiffStation does a better than most job of naming the chords, but if you look into the number of chord types it can name, you'll see no ninths or slash chords or dims or augmented etc. I'm hoping the next version at least lets you write them in, even if they are not in the data base. There is a part of Riff Station that I haven't looked into too much that has to do with, yes, "riffs". But it doesn't seem all that capable.

What it's best at--at least for me, is the two speed models I mentioned, one of which allows you to tune the music to the guitar rather than having you tune your guitar to the music. Since I play along with records mostly, this is a panacea. I never have to touch the tuning pegs. It has a window in the middle where when you activate it you can slide a gizmo from side to side to find where the lead is in the wave so you can isolate on it and cut other stuff that gets in the way out. Because you have complete control of the speed and the ability to back up, You can write the tab yourself on some tab line paper. There are plenty of free tab paper files on the net you can print.

Unless you're trying to tab the fastest shredder in the universe, traditionally the lead in a pop song isn't really that long. I'm an older guy and my kind of music is XTC, the Who, The Kinks--you see, groups that are song-centric not IMO speedy show-offy stuff. I like groups that have lots of tunes that don't sound the same that have cool but relatively short guitar breaks. Riff Station is a tool that works great with the freeware called "Audacity". If you hear any rif you can record it and make an MP3 out of it--just the riff, you don't have to record the whole song. Then you bring it into RiffStation and slow it down, isolate the lead. Write the tab if you need to. Play the MP3 over and over at slow speed and play along. Increase your speed in increments of 20%. All of a sudden, you're playing the lead or the riff at full speed. There are plenty of other ways to use these tools but they'll start to occur if you don't give up.

Addendum to above post to fuzzbox. Want to hear something really cool that I sometimes do with Riff Station. Take a recording like "Key to the Highway" from the Derek and the Dominoes album featuring Eric Clapton and Duane Allman. Play along with it until you have it nailed. Then play it back minus two whole semitones. This changes the key from A to G. Or bump it up from it's original by three semi-tones and it is then changed to the key of C. All of the chords called for change on the horizontally scrolling sequence of chord projections, most of which are right in this case. I don't know any other programs that let you do this and it helps you to adjust the leads and turnarounds to different keys where the song is actually played in that key where you can just play along.

Another thing I do is I like to play a lot of Jimi Hendrix songs. He often tuned a semitone lower that standard pitch. Take a song like "Nightbird Flying" from The Cry of Love. I load that and speed it up 1 semitone. Suddenly in in the key of E and in tune with the song at the higher pitch. I whacked this song out to where I can play all the leads and accompanying flourishes. Then I dropped it that semi-tone to Eb. It was major league easier to adapt to that speed change than to try to learn the song entirely in Eb. These are ideas that took no effort to pull off and they help your brain adjust standard riffs and turn-arounds as well as the progression chords to different adjustments a working musician should be ready to make.

Terra -

Thanks for going thru the RiffStation description. I tried the demo a couple of years ago, but ended up not buying it. I'll be checking it out again.