Using guitar rig 2 live RANTS and RAVES

Hi,

I really like guitar rig 2 I think it has the best amp models to date and I look forward to NI only improving the technology. As a result of my new found fondness for all things digital I am seriously considering abandoning my traditional gear. Unfortunately guitar rig has a couple of limitations when using it in a live setting.

1) When I change patches there is a pretty long period of silence while the next one is loading. This silence is emphasized by the fact that the delay and reverb tails get cut short. A small work around for this is using the SPLIT effect. You can patch your signal to different paths and fade or switch between the two. You can even "nest" SPLITTERS to use more two distinct setups. This, however, can be quite cumbersome and processor intensive when you start making virtual triple amp setups.

Bottom line is that it would be GREAT if NI could make GR2 morph between patches preserving both reverb and delay trails.

2) WHISHLIST.... It would be REALLY, REALLY, REALLY cool if NI could have a universal "device" that could host any VST or DXi effect on your computer. For example I have a really nice reverb plugin that I would love to be able to use in my rigs. I can do this in a DAW environment by patching the plugin to the same track that GR2 is on, but, how cool would it be to use it in the stand alone app while gigging and be able to change patches and stuff!

3) Pedal board upgrade? Something a little beefier maybe? Does NI release it's specs to 3rd parties who could develop such a thing. Might there be a cool market for custom NI pedal boards??? I have played guitar in just about every major rock club in NYC and the smell of some of the bathrooms in these places can kill a boss pedal.

4) Is it possible to directly enter delay times in milliseconds as opposed to tapping the tempo by clicking the mouse button or twiddling with the knob? I can never get it right by mouse clicks!


Thanks for listening and keep up the great work.

-d

 

Hey Db777,
I'm 100% with you on the morphing concept and switching! One of my favorite rack effects over the years was the Lexicon Vortex. It would seem to me that during a patch change the parameter numbers could just numerically alter to the new setting, I'm guessing there might be some great mutations with that setup. Obviously the more different the sounds the more the change would be drastic.
And trailing verbs and delays should be able to continue also.
It's good to know I'm not the only one dreaming of these kind of things.
Dirk

 

Totally!

Morphing between presets is an absolute minimal requirement in an effect processor. I sure hope Amplitube 2 doesn't do it, otherwise I am going to have to sell GR2 and cough up more $$$

-d

 

Hear, hear!
I talked about morphing presets a while ago.
Reaction was minimal.
Glad you brought it up again.
Let's hope N.I. listens.

 

I'm not experiencing any delays when switching presets when I use the thing live, but I'm not using amp modellers either (I'm using it in the effects loop of my Seymour Duncan 100W Convertable). I'm guessing the delay you are talking about is dependent on what you are using in GR2.

As for the ruggedness of the pedalboard, it seems pretty solid to me.. I've played a lot of dives over the last 17 years of live playing, and beat the s**t out of a lot of pedalboards, and this one looks like it's well built. We'll see how it handles beer and/or multiple spilled rye and cokes. I'm actually using a Behringer FCB1010 with GR2 now, and THAT thing is built like a tank...

I too have been wondering if there was an easier way to enter in millisecond times for the delays.. One thing a friend showed me was that if you hold down Shift while adjusting a knob, it moves less so you can get more precise with it. Another thing is to convert milliseconds to BPM, enter in the BPM into the metronome, then sync up the delay to that. However, it would still be nice to be able to enter in milliseconds directly. I'm trying to replicate some older effects I had set up on my Alesis Quadraverb, and it's difficult to have to do the silly conversion for each one.

 

"One thing a friend showed me was that if you hold down Shift while adjusting a knob, it moves less so you can get more precise with it." - Very cool. Thanks for the info!

The silence when switching patches is deafening so to speak. If NI wants to crush their competition they need to fix this. Lexicon and TC have been "morphing" between patches for years and with todays high performance computers there is plenty of CPU power to make it happen. Sometimes I wonder if companies tap the collective knowledge of gigging guitar players before they design products.

Reagarding the pedal board, I think they should have increased the gauge of the material. A little thicker would have been better.

Anybody try Amplitube 2 yet?

-d

 

The silence between changing pathces is not acceptable.

I can understand it happening from a technical perspective: the silence is longer between complex patches which use a lot of CPU and memory. Contents of memory needs to be flushed, and new content loaded in and this is simply bound to take time. Note that GR is not the only one with this problem, it appears also in many hardware racks. In GuitarRig I think the amp & cabinet simulation is the main offender. I'm pretty certain they use what is called 'convolution reverb' of some sort, and this is VERY heavy stuff. Try it with any audio editor that has this feature, and you will quickly find that it bends to its knees pretty fast when trying to run a few instances of 'convolution reverb' simultaneously.
So: since loading a new effect like this is bound to take time, my suggestion to NI if I may be so humble, is to have a set of 'fake' amp&cab-simulations ready for instant patch changes, hiding behind the curtain so to speak. With 'fake' I mean a very basic simulation using just EQ. This is very fast to load, and while it runs, the real simulation - using convolution reverb, loads in the background (we are talking object oriented programming here, aren't we). When it's ready, the patch will switch to it. My guess is that this could take up to a second, probably much less, and I belive most guitarist would be happy with a slightly cruder amp&cap-simulation for that short period, instead of hearing just silence.
Delay and preferably reverb MUST be able to 'hang over' from the last patch when loading a new (Again: it's OOP). Most guitarist will want this is my guess, but if (when!) it gets implemented it should be optional.

 

I bet the engineers at NI sit around and laugh their asses off when they read stuff like this.... But hey, what the hell, I'll take a stab at it.

I tend to organize patches in terms of songs (or banks). I might go through 3 or 4 distinct sounds in the process of one tune. It seems to me that a bank of 3 or 4 songs could be loaded and when the player changes patches within the bank the input signal could be virtually routed to another amp configuration already loaded. The outputs of all the patches would be live at all times. Technically we can already do this with the A/B mixer in GR2 by placing two distinct rigs in either channel of the mixer and cross fading between them. Why not make an ABCD switcher? With the advent of dual core processors and huge amounts of RAM it seems to me that this should be trivial. (I think I hear laughing in the distance)

-d

http://www.myspace.com/davidbochkay
http://www.imagesofio.com

 

a few things...

1. the delay between patches is definitley dependent on what's being used.

2.the split function gets me pretty far to change within a song
and I know that if they gave me ABCD I'd complain there wasn't an "E"

3.the delays and reverbs should tail, totally

4.Whenever I find a limitation I think of all the things I couldn't do with my pedalboard and feel better.

 

Agree very strongly re: the delay/silence. Agree even more strongly re:

"2) WHISHLIST.... It would be REALLY, REALLY, REALLY cool if NI could have a universal "device" that could host any VST or DXi effect on your computer. For example I have a really nice reverb plugin that I would love to be able to use in my rigs. I can do this in a DAW environment by patching the plugin to the same track that GR2 is on, but, how cool would it be to use it in the stand alone app while gigging and be able to change patches and stuff!"

This doesn't seem to concern many forum members, but I've been begging for it since day one of GR1. It is even more compelling when you add softsynths to the equation, if you happen to have a MIDI pickup on your guitar!

 

I was just browsing some old threads dealing with the same problems I encountered, so...

You can do this with two sequential splits. Look at this thread. It's not a preset switch but it's the best you can get right now (as far as I know). Delays and reverbs are tailing totally.

Cheers,
Tim