Waves Guitar Tool Rack Designed in association with Paul Reed SmithTM Guitars THANK YOU! Thank you for purchasing the Waves GTRTM system. We hope that you thoroughly enjoy the creativity and convenience that this can bring to your music. Please read through the information below and begin working with your new GTRTM system. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact Waves Tech Support. We'd love to hear from you! www.waves.com Waves Guitar Tool Rack User Guide. 1 Introduction The Waves Guitar Tool Rack is a software and hardware package that achieves real professional guitar sounds in the virtual world. It offers a comprehensive selection of guitar amp sounds, a complete set of guitar Stomp effects, a precision tuner and the hardware WPGI (Waves/Paul Reed Smith Guitar Interface). The Waves GTRTM is similar to a typical suite of guitar gear, designed with both the guitar player and DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) user in mind. The Waves GTRTM system requires a supported Digital Audio Workstation host application and some basic knowledge of its operation. As always, sound quality is our foremost priority. This software was designed to be used in professional sessions in place of hardware amplifiers and effects. This doesn't mean abandoning your usual recording practices, but instead, expanding your options. Using the WPGI, you can record both the signal playing through a hardware amp and a high quality direct signal to another track for further processing. This way, limitations in the recorded sound won't make you lose a great take. Another advantage is that the GTRTM system requires little or no maintenance to deliver peak performance, while it puts the professionalism and experience of leading guitar sound technicians at your fingertips. Product Overview The WPGI is a hardware unit that sends an optimized guitar signal to your DAW. We highly recommend using the WPGI when recording your guitar direct into your DAW. The Waves GTRTM system includes a collection of 23 virtual Stomp boxes, 3 different sized virtual PedalBoards, a Tuner and the Waves Amp. These software plug-ins were engineered to work with the host application of your choice. The Waves Stomp software offers a selection of effects ranging from basics like EQ, compressor and gate to modulation effects such as phaser, flanger, chorus, and wah wah. Delays, reverbs and a collection of distortion effects are also included. These Stomp effects are chained by the Stomp PedalBoard. MIDI control is easily mastered by using the MIDI learn function. Waves Guitar Tool Rack User Guide. 2 For best results: Use the Stomps together with the Waves Amp!!! The Waves Amp gives you access to a series of premium high-end virtual guitar amplifiers ranging from clean vintage tube amps to modern hard rocking amp sounds. They sound as if they have been recorded with your choice of high end and popular microphones and mic placements. As with any plug-in, you can use as many instances of these effects as your workstation can handle. The software is equipped with a comprehensive set of factory presets that help you get started with great sounding effect chains and amp tones. These presets are easily adjustable. Live Input and Latency Latency is the slight delay you hear between the time that you play your guitar and that you hear the processed sound coming from your computer. This is not an issue when you are mixing but can be annoying when you are playing. While ProTools TDM has no noticeable latency, Native based systems do have some latency. It is important to understand that this latency is not caused by the GTRTM software but by the architecture of your DAW. In some cases DAWs can eliminate latency by direct hardware monitoring of live input. While this method is effective, it eliminates or bypasses any effects inserted in that track. If you are experiencing latency, try lowering the buffer size in your host application. A strong computer with a good soundcard and the appropriate drivers will generally get low latency. For live playing you will need to achieve the lowest possible latency; in contemporary systems, this should be less then 10 milliseconds and can potentially reach as low as 6 ms or even 4 ms. TDM systems function without noticeable latency. Quick Start With the Waves GTR you can do virtually anything you could do with a real set of guitar effects and amps. The better you can operate your DAW, the more options you have for creating amazing virtual process setups. However, in order to get great professional guitar tone all you need is the very basics. For a good starting point it is recommended to open a Stomp6 PedalBoard as the first insert of your guitar input track. Following the Stomp6, launch a Stereo Amp and following the amp launch a stereo Stomp2 for post amp effects. On the Stomp6 you can select you own custom choice of effects or go to the load button and select a factory preset such as the first preset in the first group ­ ReadyToRock. The Amp defaults are a great starting point and in the post amp Waves Guitar Tool Rack User Guide. 3 Stomp2 go to the factory presets under the load menu and select the first preset from the PostAmps group called ­ AmpComplement. Now you have a perfectly playable setup and you can use your skill and inspiration to experiment from here on as you like. Useful Tips ORDER OF PROCESSORS AND EFFECTS Typical electric guitar sound setups usually include different types of effects such as Dynamics, EQ, Modulation effects, Distortions or Non Linear Amplification and Delays, Reverbs or other dimension enhancers. In the following section we will discuss the recommended order of the process chains initially in a concise fashion without going to the depth and reasoning of each recommendation. Please note that a lot of what's documented in this section is based on experience and perception and is arguable although it will be concurrent with what most professionals in guitar and recording business would say. Pre Amplifier effects ­ e.g. A typical stomp effects Pedalboard that the guitar is connected to its input and its output connects to the Guitar Amp. Effects that fit this type naturally are ­ Gates, Compressors, EQ's, Distortions, Modulation effects are very good effects to insert before a fairly clean amp. Manual WahWah effects are great in many places in the chain and inserting them after the distortion effects is recommended in order to get the most wah. However, auto filter and wah effects follow the signal dynamics which is destroyed by distortion effects so an auto wah may work best before the distortion effects. Reverb and Delay effects will work differently when placed before vs. after the guitar amplifier. When working with a mostly clean amp placing delays after the Gates Compressors and Distortions and before the amp will sound great and will receive the warmth and character of the guitar amp. Reverb can also sound great through a clean guitar amp and if you are looking to enhance the wash and surf of the reverb effect then trying it before the amp is a must. For a natural room reverb sound, place the reverb in different place. Guitar Amplifier ­ either a combo or head and cabinet. Many times amps have an FX loop insert between the preamp and power amp stages. This insert point is more commonly used in live performance and for the most part it is similar to Post Amplifier effects, thus the GTR does not provide any effects processing within the Amplifier. Post Amplifier effects ­ e.g. a set of audio processors inserted on the channel that captures the guitar signal from a microphone recording the amp cabinet. Vibrato and dimension enhancers such as Reverb and Delay/Echo are common post amp effects where the delay and echo are set as insert effects so that they Waves Guitar Tool Rack User Guide. 4 are added to the input signal. This corresponds with the mix settings of 0 ­ 50 on the GTRTM dimension stomp effects. Auxiliary Send effects ­ These effects are inserted on an auxiliary bus and usually output just the effect rather then a mix of the effect over the direct signal. Here you can insert any effect that can have an effect only output such as a 100% wet Reverb, Delay, Doubler. This corresponds to using these GTRTM stomps at a mix value of 100. Using GTR you can use a Stomp2 Stereo plug-in on your aux send insert and place a reverb and an EQ to tone shape the reverb sound or use a compressor before the reverb to make the dynamics of the Reverb input non linear to the affected signal. You can use multiple auxiliary channels e.g. Aux1=Delay+EQ, Aux2=Comp+Reverb. And send from more then one. It is important to have the mix of the reverb or delay on 100 or fully wet. In Guitar recording tradition the basic setup is usually comprised of a set of stomp effects that are connected to the guitar amp. In many cases the guitar amp can provide some of its own effects such as a Spring Reverb, Vibrato (Tremolo is actually the correct term for this type of amplitude modulation) and in some cases chorus and naturally distortion. There's no absolute rule of thumb as to what the order of the effects has to be but there are some useful guidelines that can help getting good results. One of the important considerations is the type of Amp you use. A fairly clean amp will work great with a full preceding set of stomps, however a distorted high gain amp will many times work best on the direct guitar signal and most of the effects processing is better done after the amp. In real high gain amplifiers there's many times an FX loop insert between the Preamp (that introduces most of the distortion) and the Power amp. In the studio, it is common to use an amplifier as it is to get good basic tone and then add any further effects at the desk. MULTIPLE PARALLEL AMPLIFIERS Some of the most renowned guitar hero's produced their huge sound by using multiple amplifiers both on stage and in the studio. While the Waves GTR software offers a choice of 2 cabinets and microphones in each amp, even greater, thicker and bigger sound can be obtained by using multiple amplifiers with different settings from slightly different drive and tone settings to simply different amp types and different cabinets/microphones. Important! Instantiating multiple amplifiers in series will not result in this magnitude enhancement. Achieving parallel amplifiers means splitting the input signal by clever usage of your DAW Routing, or simple replication of the direct guitar track and opening separate Amp instances on each track. Waves Guitar Tool Rack User Guide. 5 SETTING UP GTRTM FOR STEINBERG - NUENDO OR CUBASE When using Cubase or NUENDO for playing live through the GTR software, all you need to do is ­ 1. Open a track that takes input from the physical input that the WPGI ­ Waves PRS Guitar Interface is connected to. 2. Launch the plug-ins that you would like to play through. 3. Press the little speaker icon on that track. This will pass the input to your monitoring system and you should be able to hear your live input guitar playing through your monitoring system in real time. Any added plug-ins on the track's inserts should also be affecting the live input in real time. Minimize Latency and Eliminate direct monitoring From the Cubase Devices menu select the bottom most item ­ Device Setup. It is important to check the Device Setup panel and make sure that the VST Audiobay is set to optimal buffer settings and does not have Direct Monitoring checked because this will bypass any plug-ins on the track and the sound will be direct only. Click the VST Audiobay page and look for the Direct Monitoring checkbox. If the Direct Monitoring checkbox is checked, uncheck it. Check that the input and output latency are less or equal about 10ms. If the indicated latency is more, then you should reduce the buffer size for your ASIO device by selecting it, launching its device control panel and reducing buffer size to 128 or as your device and computer CPU will allow. Note that smaller buffers allow lower latency but add load on the CPU so when you are not recording and latency is no longer a problem, it may be a good idea to increase the buffer size settings for better CPU performance. Track Routing and Channel configurations In Nuendo and Cubase the track routing path is output oriented. So if your output is Stereo you need to use a Stereo Track. While a guitar requires a mono input, in many cases you would want to open mono to stereo and stereo effects. However, it is possible to do the wrong thing and open stereo or mono to stereo plug-ins on mono track. The results will be wrong and wont sound as they should. Read on in order to understand how to make the routing work. When working in Cubase or NUENDO mono plug-ins go on mono tracks; stereo plug-ins go on stereo tracks; Mono to Stereo plug-ins go on a stereo track w/ mono input, this is a common and useful configuration fo ...