Guitar Rig 3 - issues

[nitch]

I recently picked up Guitar Rig 3 and I am having some issues.
First Ill explain my very simple and straight forward set up.  I have a Yamaha Audiogram 6 USB device as my sound card running directly into my Dell Windows XP laptop, I use Cubase AI4, and guitar rig 3 as an effect preset.

In the past I've found that keeping the "DAW" knob centered at 12oclock works best for recording many instruments and playback.  Now that I am plugging my guitar directly into my sound card using guitar rig the daw needs to be turned all the way to the right to allow guitar rigs full effect to come through.  If I keep the DAW centered at 12, I hear two distinct guitars (my dry signal, and the effect),  When I turn the DAW all the way to the right my guitar is 100% effect and sounds good, but now all of the other tracks in the project whether it be drums, vocals, or bass, are WAY to loud and clipping which leads me to bringing down the tracks individually in  the Cubase mixer almost all the way down to the bottom which is -87.

Is there a way to stabilize all other non guitar tracks when turning the DAW knob all the way over so that the full guitar effect comes through without effecting or clipping the other pre recorded tracks?  Maybe I'm not set up properly and I am missing something.  If you have guitar rig, I'd like to hear about your set up and how you use it.  Here is a pic of the audio gram 6 so that you have a visual.

Thanks

[Paulo]

Guitar rig should be inserted in a channel not as an Send/Return Effect.

[CosmicDolphin]

Two words...Gain Structure !

How to fix it depends where it's clipping....I mean you should be able to turn the DAW knob all the way to right without it distorting everything or without making the DAW track so low to be virtually non existent.

So maybe you need to find out what part of the signal path is being overloaded when you do it...It's not distorting within the actual DAW right ?

What happens if you turn down the Master volume down as you turn the DAW knob up ?

I don't think it's a Guitar Rig specific problem , just about getting the gain structure right.

CD

[mickbrit55]

Hiya Nitch

I use Guitar Rig 3. You are loading the VST into Cubase right? Not trying to utilise the standalone version in any way, because that's not how it's supposed to work. Once you have the GUI on your screen inside Cubase, look at the very top for the INPUT section. There is a volume knob that defaults to 50% which you can increase to get more volume just for the VST. If you have any of the effects loaded in your stack each one will have a MIX control that you can tweak to mix the dry and effect signal.

Mick.

[nitch]

@ Paulo, I am actually using GR3 as an insert.  I called it an effect preset because I select GR3 from the same menu.

@ CD, thanks for the tip, Ill check out the gain structure, however off the top of my head I do remember strumming really hard while setting levels and ensuring nothing was in the red.  Ill check again

@mick, definitely not using standalone.  Ill take a look at the master, maybe I need to bring the amp down and master up?  Question.  what kind of track do you create when loading GR?  audio track? instrument track? FX channel track?
I've been using audio track.  Let me know!

Ill have sometime to mess around with it later tonight.

thanks guys.

[nitch]

Here is another issue that I am having, I've looked throughout the manual and the net and no luck.

Take a look at the attached screen cap, the last 2 tracks, solo part 1 and solo part 2.  You can clearly see where audio was recorded.  The guitar effect that was used was a high gain on full blast so there is a lot of noise throughout the entire track but its barely noticeable during the solo.  How do I shut it off until the guitar playing kicks in?

[CosmicDolphin]

Use a noise gate 

CD

[nitch]

But there is no actual audio for me to noise gate.  If I right click over top of the actual track I have noise gate options.  Just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of this.....

[CosmicDolphin]

But there is no actual audio for me to noise gate.  If I right click over top of the actual track I have noise gate options.  Just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of this.....

Eh ? 

If there's no actual audio then there can be no noise. 

If there is noise then insert a noise gate on the track , set the threshold so the gate doesn't open until your solo comes through , then it should close again once the solo is over and the track will be silent again.

CD

[nitch]

There definitely no audio and noise.  My guitar rig is on and I can see the levels go up and down when the song is stopped even without a guitar plugged in.  Its basically the sound of air coming from a cranked amp.  If I switch off guitar rig it goes away, but if I do that, once its time for the solo to come in there wouldnt be any effect just my guitars dry signal.

[CosmicDolphin]

There definitely no audio and noise.  My guitar rig is on and I can see the levels go up and down when the song is stopped even without a guitar plugged in.  Its basically the sound of air coming from a cranked amp.  If I switch off guitar rig it goes away, but if I do that, once its time for the solo to come in there wouldnt be any effect just my guitars dry signal.

There is audio else there would be silence , what you mean is there isn't any recorded audio all the way through but residual noise from the active Guitar Rig.

A noise gate should still work in exactly the same way , just insert it after Guitar Rig and set your threshold.  I think GRig may even have it's own gate that you can put into the signal path within itself.

Or.....you could bounce/render that track and switch GRig off and just trim the bounced track to get rid of the bits before and after.

Either way will work 

CD

[mickbrit55]

Hi Nitch ...

What CD says is 100% correct, a noise gate will strip out any incidental noise until you begin to play, providing you set it up right. Seeing as you have 2 parts of your solo already recorded you can add the gate to the tracks. Look at the tools that Cubase AI provided you and see if there is a noise gate, most DAW software provides one. Also, you can slip-edit the clips to chop out any noise before and after, just be careful not to take out any delay/reverb tails.

Mick.

[docmidnite]

Mick and CD you both are right but the question is:
Why the heck is there noise where nothing is recorded?
Why do tghe fx vanish when Parry turns GR off???
Answering this

[CosmicDolphin]

Why the heck is there noise where nothing is recorded?

Because he's using a model with high gain and you get noise, even with the real thing

Why do the fx vanish when Parry turns GR off???

Same reason as if you disabled any plugin your audio was being processed through....Because he turned it off ....If you turned off your real amp it would also stop making noise

CD

[mickbrit55]

What CD said +1