lots of noise when direct inputing guitar

[francis eyre]

I have long used PT for recording electronic music. Recently I'm trying things with the ancient beast known as the electric guitar..I'm curently DI'ing my electric into a Focusrite ISA220 Session Pack which then goes to my 96 via AES..Does anyone have any tips on how to minimise the noise from the guitar..it's really loud espec with amp farm..is this normal? where does all this background noise come from? do I simply use a noise gate? is that what a noise gate is really for? I don't want to get into mic'ing up the guitar by the way..scary!..I'd appreciate some help as i'm a bit of a guitar novice..

[randyT]

With just your guitar plugged in the direct input and no distortion plugins etc.and your guitar turned all the way down..you should get less than -80 DBFS noise floor. If you don't, something is not right with your direct input or direct box. Once you use an amp plug-in the noise floor will increase radically depending on the amount of over-drive etc...just like a real amp. It will probaly get to the range of -50 DBFS. A noise gate is probably best at that point. Nothing you can do about it if you want over-drive. With a clean guitar you can get a much better noise floor.

randy

[francis eyre]

randy..thanks

[Alécio Costa]

Here, -96dB and -49db.