Specifications
Recording the Guitar with or without eects?
Should you use hardware compressors, distortion or other eects before you record the signal? It is your
personal preference. If you can’t live without “that special sound,“ then you should probably record it that way.
But when it comes to compression, EQ, reverb and other special eects that could be produced in software,
then you should produce it in software and not in hardware. That way you can always change your mind
afterward.
To truly access all of the incredible tone shaping that ReValver
™
allows, you should take advantage of a process
called “re-amping.” In a nutshell, re-amping simply means to record the Guitar dry and then use the ReValver
plug-in to change the tones. In this way, you will have unlimited access to all of the amazing tones ReValver
can oer. Of course, as in the paragraph above, if you can’t live without a certain distortion tone, you can still
use ReValver’s eects modules as a rack of eects. The sky is the limit and it’s all at your ngertips! There is one
“eect” you generally should use before sampling the signal, namely “limiting.” It is a function which keeps the
signal from clipping digitally in case you happen to use a too strong signal. Some audio interfaces have a soft
limiter built in; however, when you are recording a dry Guitar the presence of distortion means you are
sending too hot a signal to the computer. If you are recording a dry Guitar to re-amp, there should be no
distortion whatsoever.
Using 16 bit or 24 bit sampling?
Many sound cards today oer 24-bit sampling at high sample rates. While the CD audio standard is only 16-bit
and still sounds quite good, it makes perfect sense to use as many bits as pos sible during recording. In general,
it is always good thinking to use more bits than you will need in the very end.
16-bit audio gives you about 96 dB of dynamic range. 24 bits gives you an additional 48 dB. A high gain preset
in ReValver MK III.V amplies the signal a lot, probably 40 - 80 dB, and with those levels you would start to hear
the sound card “quantization noise” (bit noise). With more bits there is less digital noise. You will still hear
electrical noise, but that is usually signicantly less.
Using 44.1/48kHz, 96kHz or higher?
The higher the better, normally, but in ReValver MK III.V, all vital parts are oversampled to the double-sample
rate to make sure there is a minimum of aliasing noise. Aliasing noise, simply put, is an unpleasent background
noise that can occur with any modeling software or amplier when the CPU is asked to do more than it can do.
You should also consider that most good Guitar sounds are very bandwidth-limited and you probably don’t
need the high frequency range that even 44.1kHz sample rate oers.
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