I record with an iRig HD2. I’m starting to experiment with a compression pedal I got a while back (thanks, @PamPurrs) and I’d like to record with both. Currently, I go from the bass to the iRig, and from the iRig to the amp. Would it work if I went from the bass to the compressor, then to the iRig, and then from the iRig to the amp?
Normally I would just say “eff it” and string them together to try it out, but recording my own audio is a new field for me and I don’t want to blow anything up.
I’m new to recording, but what purpose is the iRig in your signal chain if you’re running into an amp? If you’re recording, wouldn’t you just be getting a raw signal into your DAW? If you put the compressor before the iRig, then you’ll get the compressed signal into your amp and your DAW.
There’s a USB port on the other side of it which connects to the PC, then you plug your instrument into the one 1/4" jack and your amp into the other 1/4" jack. There’s a switch on the side which determines if the amp gets the raw, unprocessed signal, or the signal processed by whatever software you’re using.
The only line out my amp has uses an XLR connector. I suppose I could get an XLR to 1/4" cable and then run amp to iRig, but unless I do that I don’t have a choice but to use the amp passthrough on the iRig. The amp does have an effects loop send and return, but I don’t know if that would apply here.
I’m using Audacity to record, so I import the song, add a new track to record, set the audio output to my headphones, and listen to the song in my headphones and the bass through the amp. So my thought was… run bass to compression, from compression to iRig, from iRig to amp. Unless there’s a better way given the hardware at my disposal? I’m using Audacity because I tried using the Amplitube software that came with the iRig, but there’s something about my PC that doesn’t like it… the bass signal is hissy and overdriven and distorted, and I can’t figure out how to turn that off. I figure it’s a software incompatibility with something on my system, a driver or something. I have installed the iRig ASIO driver.
Long story short, it seems to work and I don’t know another way.
That would indeed be the other way you could attach your iRig to the amp.
That way, you would be able to have whatever the pre-amp of your combo amp does to the sound. This would probably be the most sensible way if you don’t want to fiddle much with the sound and just want to record what you are hearing from your amp (minus what the cab does to the tone)
As most of the time with this stuff, there is no right or wrong. Just try stuff, try to add the iRig to the effects loop (send from the amp into the bass input, amp out from the iRig into the return) and see what it does to the recorded sound.
Bass > Compressor > Amp > Amp: Send > iRig: In > iRig: Out > Amp: Return
This way you can still use your preamp to fatten up your tone, record it to your computer and also play the exact same sound on your amp. If you just want to record you can unplug the return FX loop.
Reaper is a good start if you want much better editing and mixing software (DAW), you can find some threads about it on this forum if you are ready for the next step.
Yeah I would really recommend a real DAW instead of Audacity. Audacity has some DAW-like features but really isn’t super well suited to the usual DAW workflows.
So, ultimately, I probably will move up to something beyond Audacity. But there are a couple of factors at play:
Audacity was free.
It was drop-dead simple to get decent results in Audacity with the gear at my disposal, which I couldn’t replicate in other software (Amplitube and… summat else, I don’t remember… it wasn’t Reaper though).
Professionally, I am a software consultant/developer in the process manufacturing space. I spend all of every workday looking at software, writing software, troubleshooting software, and trying to come up with creative solutions to get software to work in ways that clients need it to work which may not always be how it was designed. And I’m going through a pretty decent “burned out” phase right now. So, the thought of sitting down to learn software more complex than Audacity on my free time - even for something I love and think is super cool like recording music - fills me with a bit of dread.
Like I said, eventually I’ll move up to something beyond Audacity. Just… not yet.
much more useful than a software compressor in many cases.
