white noise in guitar amp sims

[dancassani]

Im recording guitar direct into an Mbox 2. The clean signal has no noise whatsoever, very quiet. But when I enable an amp sim such as the Sans-amp plug in or Guitar Rig 5, there is an audible white noise in the background. Noise gates cut the noise out during pauses, but when its playing back, you can hear it. Its driving me bananas. Any suggestions? Anyone else ran into this problem? I thought direct recorded guitar would be super clean.

[albee1952]

Your direct guitar likely is clean, but every amp sim that I have used, has hiss if you are using any hi-gain patch as they are modeling real amps that also have similar noise(and yes, I find it frustrating as well). I usually insert the EQ III 1-band eq after the amp plugin, set it as a lo-pass filter with the frequency all the way up, and automate it so anytime the guitar fades or stops, the frequency ramps down to kill the hiss. If you experiment with that a bit, you will get the idea, and it works better than a gate Having said that, look over all the parameters on the amp plugin as some have a built-in gate(which may or may not work well).

[unkJE]

Also - this tip from SansAmp:

"Keep the Pre-Amp knob at unity gain or higher, to achieve the least amount of noise.


For best results, do not set the Pre-Amp level lower than unity gain when the Drive knob is at 9 o’clock or higher. However, if you want a crystal-clear sound and the Drive control is already near minimum and there’s still too much overdrive, decrease the Pre-Amp’s level as needed.
Pre-Amp also influences different types of overdrive. For instance, a high setting emphasizes pre-amp distortion (see Boogie® Lead-style setting), as opposed to when Drive is in a high setting, which emphasizes power amp distortion (see Vintage Marshall®-style setting)."

More on SansAmp:
http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=1359462&postcount=3

Insert a dither plug-in just before the SansAmp PSA-1

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by dancassani

Im recording guitar direct into an Mbox 2. The clean signal has no noise whatsoever, very quiet. But when I enable an amp sim such as the Sans-amp plug in or Guitar Rig 5, there is an audible white noise in the background. Noise gates cut the noise out during pauses, but when its playing back, you can hear it. Its driving me bananas. Any suggestions? Anyone else ran into this problem? I thought direct recorded guitar would be super clean.

It is; sometimes amp and fx modelers model a little too closely what an amp or fx does and you get things like the hiss or AC mains hum you're hearing. And some high gain amp models like Mesa/Boogie have gain that's insane.

[dancassani]

Thanks a lot fellas. Good to know that its not my gear or anything. And ill definitely try the dither plug in out. Thanks again!