Studio Diary #55: Tackling Noise In The Axe-FX 3 Pedal Platform Preset

‘Studio Diary’ is an occasional series where I talk about building a home recording setup for hobbyists and enthusiasts like us. I share my personal experiences, and the thinking behind some of the decisions that I’ve made along the way.

Fractal Audio have recently overhauled their amp modelling in the Axe-FX 3 / FM-9 / FM-3. And my recent dive into the Orange Getaway Driver has shown me that I need to revoice my signal chain. I’m taking this as an opportunity to re-evaluate everything about the pedal preset I’ve built for the Axe-FX 3.

Back in July, I tackled the major cause of noise by sorting out the gain-staging for my pedal platform preset. However, that hasn’t completely eliminated all noise in the signal chain. (Some noise is inevitable.) What can I do about the noise that’s still getting through?

That’s what I’m going to look at in this blog post.

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Studio Diary #53: Multi-Channel Virtual Instrument Support Finally Comes To Universal Audio’s LUNA

Earlier in the summer, I went out and bought Apple’s Logic Pro (in part) because LUNA lacked support for virtual instruments (like drum plugins) that had multiple output channels.

A couple of days ago, Universal Audio released LUNA v1.7.0. The big feature? They’ve finally added multi-output plugin support.

My other reason for moving away from LUNA still stands. UAD’s plugins are prohibitively expensive for an amateur band like ours who collaborate remotely.

But for my solo projects (if I ever actually get round to them … 🙄)? I do love tracking guitars in LUNA …

Studio Diary #52: Level-Matching The Pedal Platform Preset

‘Studio Diary’ is an occasional series where I talk about building a home recording setup for hobbyists and enthusiasts like us. I share my personal experiences, and the thinking behind some of the decisions that I’ve made along the way.

Fractal Audio have recently overhauled their amp modelling in the Axe-FX 3 / FM-9 / FM-3. And my recent dive into the Orange Getaway Driver has shown me that I need to revoice my signal chain. I’m taking this as an opportunity to re-evaluate everything about the pedal preset I’ve built for the Axe-FX 3.

Now that I’m done with the gain-staging, I want to quickly cover level-matching scenes within the preset. I promise: this will be a much shorter post!

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Studio Diary #44: Key Decisions About Cab IRs

‘Studio Diary’ is an occasional series where I talk about building a home recording setup for hobbyists and enthusiasts like us. I share my personal experiences, and the thinking behind some of the decisions that I’ve made along the way.

Fractal Audio have recently overhauled their amp modelling in the Axe-FX 3 / FM-9 / FM-3. And my recent dive into the Orange Getaway Driver has shown me that I need to revoice my signal chain. I’m taking this as an opportunity to re-evaluate everything about the pedal preset I’ve built for the Axe-FX 3.

Before I get into detail about dialling in each amp and cab, I want to first discuss some more general things I’ve learned about impulse responses (IRs for short), and how that’s led me to some key decisions (or, if you prefer, design constraints) that I’m going to use to guide me as I dial in the amps and cabs.

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Studio Diary #43: How I Level-Match Demo Tracks In Universal Audio’s LUNA

I’m just prepping the audio for an upcoming blog post, and I thought it would useful to document how I go about it …

… because there’s a couple of gotchas that I’ve run into, that I don’t want to forget about.

And if I didn’t know this, maybe it’ll help someone else who needs to do the same thing? Or maybe someone who knows better will see this and leave a comment with helpful advice?

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Studio Diary #39: Why I Use DAW Plugins For Delay And Reverb On My #TweedTone Comparisons

‘Studio Diary’ is an occasional series where I talk about building a home recording setup for hobbyists and enthusiasts like us. I share my personal experiences, and the thinking behind some of the decisions that I’ve made along the way.

This time around, I want to answer a question that nobody has asked me. Why am I using DAW plugins for delay and reverb, instead of my Axe-FX 3?

Read on if you’re interested in my thinking behind this decision. And if you’re not interested, no worries 🙂

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