I'm just recording a new album at home (digital interface into a DAW on my laptop) and I'm having trouble getting the sound I want when recording overdriven electric harp. I've got the sound I want coming out of the amp, but in order to avoid it clipping, I have to turn the input gain on the interface down and the input volume on the DAW down. This gives me a low volume track, which really needs beefing up in the mix - causing (of course!) clipping and horrible mushy distortion. Post recording compression, prior to upping the volume in the mix doesn't help. A friend of mine has suggested that I need an outboard preamp to compress and eq the signal before it hits the digital interface, which I think makes sense as the overdriven harp has such a big dynamic range. So my question is - does anyone have experience of this? Has the suggested solution worked for them, what kind of compression have you used?
"I have to turn the input gain on the interface down and the input volume on the DAW down"
No, you don't. If your signal is so strong that it clips the preamp of your interface, turn down the gain of the preamp, and you are set.Then you can turn the volume of that track in the daw as loud as you want. Preamp gain and the fader in your daw are not linked.
Watch this:
Amplified harp is a really compressed sound, so I prefer not to compress it even more when mixing.
Also, if you want I can help you with the mix. Just send me an email at my username @ google mail service.
---------- Sorry for any misspell, english is not my first language.
