DI/Daw question

It’s possible to consider hooking this up without the re-amping box and see how it does. There’s no damage that could happen as long as you start with your amp turned down low.

I know this isn’t what the product marketing or some articles say.

  1. impedance matching - line level outputs usually have no trouble driving high impedance inputs. It’s the other way around where instruments can’t drive line level inputs. I’d say this is largely if not entirely myth.

  2. Level matching. The re-amp box will pad down the line level as much as 20 dB or so. However, this is no different than turning down the Monitor knob on the Scarlett as far as keeping signal-to-noise ratio goes. Turning down any soft knobs inside the DAW can destroy SNR. I don’t think the re-amp box is helping any here either if the Scarlett is designed how I think it is.

  3. ground loops. It’s likely that lifting the shield on the wire would take care of this. If one doesn’t like modifying cables, it may be worth $99 just for this switch alone.

  4. transformer. Could also help with ground isolation, but is also a potential source of distortion if it isn’t a good one.

It could be totally worth $99 for many other reasons. Like having all the right connectors on it for standard cables or being able to set the pad trim and have it always work without trying to remember where the Scarlett knobs need to be set. It may work fine without it though.

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Yeah, if you’re already using a DAI, I would just try running a line out right to the amp, as mentioned.

Ground lift is a killer feature, absolutely required for me (I have a ground loop between my pedalboard and my computer). But $99 also goes a long way towards a killer preamp/DI/Drive pedal with a ground lift on its out :slight_smile:

Of course that wouldn’t help if the loop was between the DAI and the amp.

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I was reading user comments on Amazon for this. One person said that it works really well with Clean guitar signal, but if you want to use effects, you should use the Active version.
I am just looking into what this is and does, I don’t know very much about it.

The powered one is double price however.

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Interesting. So the basic gist of these things is impedance and level matching, and providing a ground lift?

Certainly can’t hurt. I wonder how much it improves things.

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Well I was just kicking around the idea, I hope everyone isn’t waiting for me to do it :joy:

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I tried doing research on this and I couldn’t find a direct answer to the question of whether you can use DAW effects in a live performance situation. I did find some answers to some of the questions and have tried to piece it all together here.

Can you use DAW effects in a live performance situation?
The short answer is, No. This seems to be entirely related to latency. Even though each device/plugin/app/whatever is only responsible for a very small amount of latency, when you add all of it together it pretty quickly becomes too much. You can only have 10ms of latency before it starts to throw things off.

Bullsh!t, Deadmau5 and Skrillex both use Abelton during live concerts!
Yes, they do. It has features built in specifically for triggering sounds and samples in a live show. This is a very different signal chain - action - result - combination than trying to use a DAW in the way we’re talking about.

What’s causing all this latency? My computer is Bad Ass and I use it for 1st Person Shooter Internet games all the time!
Most computers are built as general purpose machines with the ability to add the bells and whistles you want and make them all work together. This only goes so far since at it’s core it’s still a general purpose machine and not necessarily designed for the purpose you’re using it for.

For instance, most computers can do video games pretty well but a purpose built top tier Corsair One Pro i200 Video Gaming Computer will cost $4500.

Granted, you can spend $4000 on a purpose built DAW workstation for recording but it still isn’t designed for live real time processing like we’re talking about since that’s not the generally expected use for a DAW workstation.

Why can’t musicians have nice things like those gaming nerdz?
It all comes down to economics. Video games are a 138 billion dollar industry (right now). Whereas, the DAW industry isn’t expected to reach 4.5 billion dollars until 2027 (current numbers were hidden behind pay walls).

Since video games are worth so much more it’s worth it to manufacturers to make sure hardware, operating system, and gaming applications work as well as possible. Since the DAW industry is smaller there are fewer people working on it.

There is good news though. Even though the DAW industry is small by comparison it is seeing a sustained boom time which attracts investors who bring in money. More money means more functionality and a faster turn around time on bringing that functionality to market.

We have this thread, Deezer's Spleeter, talking about a new software algorithm that lets you take a completed song and split it back out into the individual instrument tracks, called stems. More investment would see software like this becoming a reality.

Then there is also development on using the Graphics Processing Units on video cards to do audio processing. This could very well make the idea of having your DAW replace all of your pedals and amplifiers a reality for a real time live play environment.

Then what are my options?
This is where purpose built computers shine. Current examples include the Kemper Profiler Stage ($1700), Fractal Audio Axe-FX III ($2000 +$700 with foot pedal), Line 6 Helix ($1700), and to a lesser degree, Zoom Multi Effects, Boss Multi Effects, etc.

What if I want to test this out for myself and plug my line out directly into my amp?
Sounds cool. Please let us know how it goes. Nobody else seems to be talking about it so BassBuzz might get traffic from all over the world to see how it turns out. I will warn that line level to instrument level can cause problems for various electro-magical reasons that @DaveT went over above. Reports I read included hum, buzz, distortion (not the good kind), and it just sounding “not right”.

Well, what about those Re-Amp boxes?
These are highly recommended for this purpose since they can fix all of the problems caused by going line level to instrument level.

As a weird side bar, I ended up getting pretty deep in my searching and found where live sound engineers use these things to solve all kinds of problems. Like if you’re using a wireless unit between your instrument and your other gear you can have buffering problems making your tone sound dull and lifeless. If you put a re-amp box between the wireless receiver and the rest of you equipment it fixes this. How, you may wonder, does this work? I have no idea. Electro-magitism? Maybe?

Dude, why should I trust any of this information?
:rofl: You probably should not. :rofl:
I’m not a professional on any of this. However, my Google-Fu is strong.
And I had about eight hours to spend researching and correlating.
Ahh. Researching and correlating. It relaxes me.
But it does not always make me right.

If anybody finds themselves in a situation to test out the instrument - DAI - DAW - effects - DAI - amplifier for real time play, I would really like to hear how practical experience turns out.

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Amazing work sir. All in all if it was as simple as plugging in to your DAW I think it would be a common practice which it obviously is not. Also software like that Apple one above would not exist, which I think bears more research into (apple mainstage).

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Great overall!

This is correct, though. MIDI sequencers (built in to DAWs) get used live all the time - I’ve done it myself. Every time I have performed live, in fact. And both DJs and EDM musicians use Ableton Live live a lot - it’s arguably what it is for.

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Perhaps I phrased this wrong or my attempt at humor skewed the meaning.

I was trying to illustrate that even though people can use a DAW live, in that way, it wouldn’t work with what we’ve been talking about trying do on this thread.

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Yeah, it’s totally accurate to say that using the DAW live for effects in a way to replace a pedalboard is likely to run in to latency issues. But DAWs are used live for lots of things - MIDI, sample playback, loops and DJing, etc.

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Awesome research, Eric! Thanks so much for putting in all that time and effort!

So, how about that MainStage that Apple is peddling as a way to use your laptop as part of your live rig!?! I kind of asked that question further up already, but nobody seems to have used or tried it… I guess it is a slightly re-hashed version of GarageBand/LogicPro, but with the explicit intent to be used on stage. So, you’d think they tweaked their own DAW it just so to avoid latency issues!?!

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I’m seriously thinking about this if it’s still around $30

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Software latency is a part of the problem but often a relatively small part. Hardware latency in the DAC/ADC hardware getting sound in and out of the computer is often a big contributor. And using the DAW as effects, you get it both ways.

So I would guess that the differences in mainstage are mostly to align more towards the type of user interface you want when performing. The example they show for the vocalist there, etc.

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Yeah for $30, assuming it doesn’t require Logic Pro, seems like a no-brainer to try.

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Thanks @eric.kiser for a great in depth look at this issue you have posted above. Appreciate your efforts :+1:t2:

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USB is one of the biggest latency culprits when getting audio in and out of a DAW. Here’s a pretty good overview of where latency comes from and how Thunderbolt makes it significantly better.

I’m not a fan of having things in the PC because I’m constantly having to chase upgrades and support issues. One day things are there. Less than 5 years later they are obsolete, unsupported or have to be upgraded. I’d much rather have dedicated hardware appliances that work the same way every time I touch them.

Even my favorite laboratory grade measurement DAI that I invested so many $$ into 20 years ago eventually had to be abandoned only because they wouldn’t write a 64 bit driver for such an old product. And I couldn’t get the current measurement software to run on an old OS. That was $$$ I didn’t want to spend again. So, appliances for me whenever possible.

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Thanks for all the kind words everybody. I had fun researching and putting that together.

@DaveT That’s a good article. Pretty cool to see where the work on getting rid of latency is happening.

The Thunderbolt replacement for USB is cool, but pricey. The least expensive unit from PreSonus is $600, and you will need a computer that’s less than 3 years old, or be able to add an internal Thunderbolt card to your PC for about $100, to be able to use it.

@itsratso Yes, it’s still $30 in the AppStore. Not for PC though. So, I’m out on this.

@joergkutter I wish I knew enough to address this in any kind of depth.

All I’ve learned so far is this; Where Logic is designed to be used as a recording studio tool, Mainstage is designed to be used as a performance tool. It’s Apple’s answer to Ableton Live.

From comparisons I read, people generally prefer Ableton Live over Mainstage. They each seem to have their strong and weak points and some people will use both live to leverage that.

For what we’ve been talking about, and at $30, Mainstage seems like the best contender for testing this theory.

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I have two DI/preamps, a Steve Harris SH1 from Tech21 and a Harley Benton Bass Expander DI. I use them both with the power supply that came with the tech 21. I use them with a Behringer 2-channel DAI/mixer.

So, when I use the 1/4" jack out in either DI, it’s noisy AF, the Harley is also noisy AF through the headphone out. When I connect them using the XLR with the ground lift, they get quiet. The Harley also is quiet when I run it off battery.

Any suggestions?

Try a different power supply and see if that is the culprit?

That’s what I figured. I was hoping for something that didn’t involve spending money :smiley: