Waves Acoustic Guitar Plugin

[Michael Rosiles]

I recently bought CLA vocals, bass, Guitars and Acoustic. I do recordings in Reaper: vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass guitar, drums, mandolin. Can some of you experienced people offer any tips on how best to use these on my recordings please? Some of your preferred settings. I basically play covers (rock and roll, soul standards, vintage pop, traditional folk music) and a few own compositions (probably just as cheesy as the covers but I am easily pleased!)

Because of their design you should be able to set them up on each track relatively quickly, just go by how it sounds and makes you feel. Now this is the key bit, walk away from you mix, do other things, listen to other things, comeback and listen to it again. Does it still sound good??

Thanks very much for your helpful advice, Simon. Using a reference track is a particularly good idea. I do use reference tracks in general but I had not thought of comparing the CLA plugins with professional recordings.

This could be interesting, see it as a tone option for blending with the mic tracks or as lipstick for hack demos. Didn't love the FX on the SoundCloud demos, but easy enough to leave out, wondering why they didn't include an LDC option for the mics, seeing some potenial for additional models if the base concept proves to be useful. Plan to give this a shot though as I've never found much use for any AG sims.

This looks interesting and not a bad price. FYI--three is a demo version available. I have not pulled the trigger yet, but might. It is relatively easy on the CPU when I tried it on an old i5 but no cpu issues.

What other acoustic Guitar FX plugins do you guys know about or use? [ Yes, I know that it is easy to use a series of plugins in a chain (compressor, exciter, EQ, Delay, Reverb, Chorus), but that is six +/- plugins in a chain.]

FWIW, never had any luck/interest in MIDI/sample based playback options of which there are plenty. Only ever tried a couple but they've all struck me as a bit "keyboardy" (static? wimpy? envelope issues?) but generally too much work to get to sound anything like the real thing.

Given the claim of modeling specific makes, I'm assuming this is some sort of IR based approach similar to UADs Woodworks or maybe Line 6 Helix + IRs. It's more than something like Waves Maserati ACG, CLA Unplugged, etc which are just FX chains.

SUMMARY:

It will never replace a well mic'd quality AG in a great room, gets a bit "cloudy/muffled" for me if you get too deep into the FX, but could be a productive option in some cases. What sets this apart is the models with extra points for a scalable UI. In tandem with the Fishman it provides an additional layer of interactive tone shaping that looks promising and might make the DI a viable option for me. I plan to dig a bit deeper.

Ok, decided to give it a go... can't say I'm overly impressed to be honest.

I turned off all the extra effects, set the widening to zero, and set all the EQ bands to zero gain, so all I was hearing was the guitar modelling.

There seems to be some weird hollow resonance going on. The only model that sounds half-decent to my ears is the Gibson, but even that suffers from this strange effect.

The mic choices are strange too. How the SM57 can sound better than the Audix condenser baffles me. The beyer (another dynamic mic) weirdly seems to have the best sound.

Anyhow, I set it to the Martin using the condenser at 50% Neck, 50% hole, and compared it to my Martin body IR's ( via Audio Assault's IR loader ). The difference was night and day. The IR's sound so much better.

Now I'm not saying you can't get any half decent sounds out of this plugin... you can... but you need to use all the extra effects to cover up whatever is happening in the modelling.

I think I'm gonna stick to the IR's.... -impulses/

SUMMARY:

It will never replace a well mic'd quality AG in a great room, gets a bit "cloudy/muffled" for me if you get too deep into the FX, but could be a productive option in many cases. What sets this apart is the models with extra points for a scalable UI. In tandem with the Fishman it provides an additional layer of interactive tone shaping that looks promising and might make the DI a viable option for me. I plan to dig a bit deeper.

If your Taylor has the fishman matrix, you might try to test drive one of the fishman aura pedals with it. If you match it up with the same model and pu used for the capture - it can transform the piezo into something closer to a micd guitar. It isn't perfect of course, but quite a bit different than your typical acoustic preamp toys.

"Technique: Making a DI'd acoustic guitar sound like its mic'd using IR's. - Cakewalk by BandLab - Cakewalk Discuss The Official Cakewalk by BandLab Forum" -technique-making-a-did-acoustic-guitar-sound-like-its-micd-using-irs/

Thanks so very, very much Msmcleod! You info is definitely helpful. You saved me from purchasing the Nembrini Acoustic Voice, but you turned me on to a great set of IRs. I had not heard of 3SigmaAudio before your post. I purchased 3SigmaAudio Classical (Cordoba Torres) IR to go with my Godin Multiac. The Multiac sounds good even great by itself, but often has too much attack. The 3SigmaAudio Cordoba Torres IR is wonderful; it warms up my Godin and make it sound more like a high end classical.

I also purchased the 3SigmaAudio Martin 45 Acoustic IR. It is good as well. At first I was just trying it with a Godin Electric that has an LR Baggs Piezo bridge. It definitely helped tame the piezo and sounded okay, but then I tried it with my 1970's Martin D35 loaded with a Baggs M1a magnetic and WOW. It sounds beautiful going right into the DAW direct. Then I tried it with my old Gibson B25 which has an old Duncan Performer cheap magnetic Sound Hole pickup. The Gibson B25 already sounded okay, but the 3SigmaAudio made a very nice guitar sound even more beautiful. I plan on purchasing the 3SigmaAudio Taylors for acoustic and probably a Taylor 814ce-N and 812ce-N for the classical. I wish that 3SigmaAudio had bundles for their acoustic IRs (they do have discounts on the cabinets but not the acoustic IRs).

Thanks to all of (you) the "above". I have exactly $40 LOL and a Fishman Spectrum AND some nice mics (MA200, MA101fet, M160, ADK Thor )but not a good tracking room/space. I am considering this Nembrini and now going to go explore the 3sigma IR options. I also have the United QuickAG which I thought might help, since I want to "cover" my acoustics, mandolin and violin....

Waves RAxx is intended to optimise the dynamics and level of a guitar or bass guitar. I find it is a great first step to help smooth out a live acoustic guitar performance. Here I was typically going for around 3-5 dB compression (attenuation) on the middle meter.

The next thing I recommend you try is using a more classic compressor to properly even out the main body of the sound. I think the Waves Puigchild 670 is great on acoustic guitars but you can experiment with any compressor hardware or plugins you have.

When choosing attack and release times you must experiment and explore how the front and end of each note breathes and listen to how the stability of the sound changes as you modify the release. (fig 3 below)

Here I just wanted to add a tiny amount of saturation to the acoustic sound to help it sparkle and have a little more grit in an already pretty energetic mix. I used the Soundtoys Decapitator as follows:

As I mentioned before, when we compress or EQ, it is sometimes necessary to EQ after these effects. In this case I decided that with the sound now compressed and saturated a little, I wanted to add some final EQ to further sculpt the sound. (fig 6 below)

This is the final step and you could think of it as the secret sauce in this acoustic guitar processing chain. With the other plugins in place: compressing, EQing and saturating I still felt the guitar lacked a little consistency in the important 2.5 to 3.5 k where the ear locks in to the sound.

To fix this particular issue you want to compress the sound in just one band. For this purpose any multi band compressor will work, but I am a big fan of the Waves C1-Comp-SC. Theres something about the simplicity of the single band and the interface that I like. (fig 7 below)

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