Hackin' the sh@t out of windows audio

So, you're curious about how to get sounds from your PC on a basic USB audio interface concurrently with sounds from NI Guitar Rig 5 and that's why you clicked this link after reading Solution No.1?

Well then, here is

Solution No.2

So, as (semi-)pro audio applications tend to take complete control over the audio interface, they have to be tricked. Windows itself offers next to no help to achieve that. This is where VB-Audio's Voicemeeter virtual audio mixer software enters the scene.

It comes in three 'flavours', i.e. complexity levels, of which I recommend the banana version, which is the one in the middle. My setup could not be handled by the basic version, but as the software is released as donationware, I can afford to use whichever I like. VMB can handle 3 hardware in/outputs and 2 virtual ones, offers a compressor and a limiter on the physical inputs as well as echo, modulation and panorama effects, effect inserts, graphic equalisers and a sound recorder. (Of course, volume sliders, too.)

Installation creates virtual audio devices corresponding to the virtual main and insert channels of the software. Running it takes control of one ASIO interface as the first hardware device of the mixer (A1), accessing the other ones (A2-A3) via WDM, MME or KS protocols, and routing the signal from any hardware or virtual input to any such output or combination thereof.

Let me demonstrate it via my own example!

My goal is to be able to use GR5 on my guitar signal while playing quality backing tracks from Youtube. So I set my Peavey Xport as hardware input 1 on the left and A1 physical output on the right. You can see that on the left strip A1 is chosen, which means that the signal entering  the XPort is routed to its own physical output; as a result, the preamplified clean guitar signal exits via its line out and headphone ports, after applying the gain, volume, EQ, compression, etc. of VM - the case when GR5 is not running.

Now, you cannot see, but in settings, I have activated the insert send and return for HW input 1, which is a virtual ASIO device. I have set that device as the main I/O port for GR5 - thus my XPort signal leaves the mixer, gets processed in GR5, returns to the mixer, then leaves via the XPort output.

Let's add the backing track from Youtube!

I have chosen Voicemeeter VAIO on the Windows system tray as the active audio device, so when the browser plays its sound on the default device, it enters via the 4th strip (in the middle), conveniently named 'From PC'  (Voicemeeter VAIO) there. As you can see, the signal is routed to A1, which is the output on my XPort.

And some further options:

Should I want to hear it on my laptop speakers, too? I'd have to switch on A2 as well, having set the on-board audio chip as HW I/O2.
Should I want to add a VST drum machine running in my Cantabile VST host? The second virtual input on the Voicemeeter Aux virtual device 'From Cantabile' takes care of that - having set it as the I/O in Cantabile settings.
Capturing my voice too? Unmute and route the microphone on HW input 2 to A1.
What about recording? Meet the recorder in the top right corner! Unless I want to route my inputs to B2 for example and set the VM Aux as the input device in Audacity.

And this is but the tip of the iceberg and the second-born of the VM software package.

Would you like me to present further scenarios to you? Do leave a comment!

From Hungary with love,
BLC

My travel gear...

... or practising your repertoire on the go.

I spend a few days away from home every week on business, but practice cannot stop, now can it? (Unless for the occasional blog post.) Although I take my car, I still prefer travelling light, with only the indispensable gear. That consists of my faithful Epiphone SG, Barbory, a pick, some cables and my son's old Peavey XPort USB guitar interface. Oh, and naturally my laptop, Pippa, but as she always travels with me, she does not count. If I can't find a stereo lying around to plug these in, I can just use a pair of headphones.

On the soft side of the ware, I use Guitar Rig 5 to spice up the tone. That also covers my needs for a metronome, tuner, audio player and recorder and what is the best: a 2-track looper! What else could be missing?

Oh, yes, something essential: a drum machine and a Youtube player, preferably with the ability to get (at least) the former recorded in the loop. Windows, as we know it, leaves much to be desired in the flexibility department when used with basic audio interfaces. As GR5 takes komplete kontrol (pun-an-intended) over the ASIO soundcard, it is not possible to mix a standalone drum machine or a Youtube backing track to the output, and even less routing any of these audio sources into the GR5 looper.

This is where the story ends. :(

For most, but not for the el cheapo gearhead! So let me show you a few solutions!

Solution No.1

If all you want next to your processed guitar signal is a drum machine, download the VST host by Cantabile and the MT Power Drumkit VST drum machine. As a guitarist you should have GR5, so you can load its VST plugin version into Cantabile alongside MTPD. Cantabile will take control of your audio interface, you can route the signal with MRPD output into GR5, then patch this combined signal into the output and you're done.

However, if you need your Youtube backing tracks too, you shall need something more complex, as I have not found a VST browser plugin yet. So, how badly do you need a solution? Badly enough to click on

Solution No.2?

From Hungary with love,

BLC

From zero to stage in x months

It has long been my goal to get back on stage. But how? Do I have the skills on any of the (numerous) instruments I play to be entertaining for a whole set? Unfortunately no. Do I know a repertoire well enough that would fill a concert? Again, no. As a non-professional musician do I have the time to practice, memorise and improve at a pace that would make me a marketable standalone entertainer in the foreseeable future? Sadly, no. Do my like-minded and similarly aged friends have the time to form a band, and practice regularly? Tragically, no.

Do I have a way out? Hell, yeah!

There is a marvellous musician in Andorra, Jesus Cuerva, who has uploaded thousands of backing tracks on Youtube, also available through his website. His arrangement of hit songs are rendered in several versions; missing vocals, guitar, bass, keyboard or drums, so that all these musicians can practice their repertoire.

That is what I have been doing lately, for sure, and by next summer I will have a quality repertoire to stand out there with a whole set. You can buy his tracks via his website and perform with your virtual band.

The quality of the tracks is somewhat mixed. Some are played quite audibly by midi instruments, but most seem to have tracks recorded on real instruments. Musically, they seem to be exact, precise and correct. The lyrics and chords can be read on screen. All in all, it looks like the tools made by Master Cuerva for himself as a gigging musician, and shared with the world.

Hats off to the man!

From Hungary with love,
BLC

Newsed Gear Day

As I have already hinted at in my previous post, a newcomer has replaced Tina, the Cort Source in my harem, a 2014 Ibanez AM93L whom I shall refer to as Inez.

To tell you the truth, about a year ago I had a GAS attack after finding ads of two Ibanez lefties on my favourite domestic site. That time I could fight it with success and let go; nothing could have justified having two semi-hollows, and Tina was my number one. The arrival of my strat, Maria Juanita tipped the scales, but it also made me ratify a one-in-one-out agreement with myself: a new piece of gear can only enter my collection when another one leaves.

Then, long after those were sold, there came an ad of another lefty AM93 made of quilted maple and finished in antique yellow sunburst, but way overpriced compared to the final selling price of the former one.

A little side-remark:

Internet wisdom says that Ibanez guitars are way too underrated (and underpriced) in the Western world compared to their quality. However, in Hungary the brand rings different bells for the middle-aged. You see, in the eighties and early nineties, when all we had were Musimas and Jolanas from the Eastern block, Ibanezes counted as the luxury that the chosen or lucky few could afford and procure. This makes my purchase 'something to write home about' and explains my lust for Inez.

So I felt safe in the happy belief that I will have nothing to do that beauty. Well, to ensure that, I should not have given a friendly advice to the seller on the price the prior one finally sold at - for when he reached that low (about €490) he sent me a message. What's even worse, he was also open to trading in my Cort Source. So it was done, after some haggling we agreed on trading Inez for Tina and about €210. The sum is quite close to the average price difference between the new righty price of the Source and the AM93 - outliers omitted. And did I make a good bargain? Let's find out in the following review section!

It is difficult to find out where 'under God's great Chinese sky' these guitars are made. Certain articles, like this and this suggest that formerly penniless hard-working peasants build them at Zhunyi Shenqu Musical Instruments. After Shakespeare, though this be PR, yet there is method in it? Thinking of families reunited by guitars just warms the heart and sweetens the tone, doth it not? (Axes empowering peasants, like during the French revolution...)

Internet reviews suggest sweet tone with excellent playability. And the looks? Well, absolutely stunning! The quilted maple, the yellowish sunburst, the gold hardware, the fake ivory binding, the acrylic inlays are just a sight for sore eyes. On stock photos and when new, that is. Time spent with owners less sickly concerned about cleanliness and conservation of their tools made her develop a patina; gold rubbing off from the bridge and the tailpiece, mattening on the pickup covers and the tuners, and even "uglish" corrosion on a strap button. This looks fine on this genre of guitars and luckily, the wood and the lacquer seems unaffected.

Now let me list the impressions she made on me as a musical instrument, good and bad altogether:

• The guitar's maple body is very resonant, playing her in a warm embrace just feels so fine...
• ...but it seems to be (when pickups are removed) a 3-layer laminate, and not solid wood as some reviews suggest.
• Yes, similarly to the Indonesians, not even our Chinese friends could wire the guitar or order the knobs to make 10 be loud and 0 silent... (It's just fair, I think differently than my right handed friends and neighbours, so why should they recognise the error of their ways?)
• ...but at least they chose the right pots, so the tone knob is effective all over its range, whereas the wiring seems to be shielded, resulting in a low-noise axe. And yes, the knobs with the rubber ring are very clever!
• The pickups are Chinese Super 58's (valued at about $65 apiece as some forum comments suggest).
• The truss rod is smoother and more responsive to adjustment than anything I have ever tampered with (Fender, Epiphone, Aria, Squier, Seagull). The neck is straight and healthy-looking...
• ...but the fretboard seems not to have been dry enough on assembly (or not kept humid enough in the 5 years since then) as the 7th fret inlay is loose and protruding. (As there is no fret sprout, it may be but a poor glue job, which can even happen to overpriced Gibsons, as wisdom on the web has confirmed.)
• Again, too much safety margin for wear and tear at the nut, it could be lower.
• The bridge is less sharp than the Cort's (very) or the Epiphone's (reasonably). But it fits more loosely on its posts, not good for intonation, nah. Also, the large diameter of the post is so small that it can't be turned by hand, only by a screwdriver from the top. But with its wear it currently looks copper (unless it's just plating to allow for gold anodisation).
• The strap buttons were loose and came loose after tightening when working the Ibanez straps on (not easy). When installing the strap lock buttons I sadly saw that the lacquer is cracked, and so is the wood at the bottom side. Well, it's only aesthetic, and invisible, so why worry?

But finally, here is the evil: she has some high frets, confirmed by buzz, fretting out and fret rocker inspection, so I cannot set the action as low as I would like. It does not seem to be due to wrong fret insertion, but rather some other phenomenon. My hypothesis would be mild deformation of the wood caused by drying and reaching its final shape, (further supported by the loose strap button screws and inlay). If I dug up the information about the factory correctly, they possibly relocated their production in 2013 - meaning that wood was transported, or sourced from a different supplier altogether. This can explain a lot.

However, it is not much to worry about, I've already polished the frets (overdue, they were tarnished due to missed cleaning after playtime), now I will find a way to give the high ones a mild sanding and re-crowning, without levelling all of them, which seems unnecessary (no visible fret wear, no issues at moderately high action). But it is still a way to go before it plays as smooth as my Epiphone G-400 or Fender Strat. (To tell the truth, those have a 12th fret low E action as low as 0.03-0.04 inches with only minor string buzz at certain places, partly thanks to the bone nuts I made, if my measurements err not.)

So did I make a bargain? Inez is definitely not a €210 improvement over Tina in their current condition. Considering that in this transaction Tina valued at about €270 (and deliberately ignoring the law of diminishing returns) Inez should be 43% more of the guitar. In different lights, having her over Tina should be as much more satisfying as owning a better-equipped Harley Benton telecaster in my collection.

Well, sadly, this is not the case, so I should have bargained harder (which I would have, if I had discovered the high frets and loose inlay upon my quick inspection). But...

But on the sunny side of the street I may state that now I have a guitar that I shall play regularly instead of one in the case. Now Tina may get the playtime she deserves and Inez's Sleeping Beauty days are over, too. Her new owner did not have to sell Inez way below value and the money I gave him went right into his Marshall cab, thus keeping the used market rolling. Inez is just in the condition where I will not find it a sacrilege to have a go at her frets and nut with a sandpaper or file so that I can bring out her full potential. It will not bugger me if I have to pack her up without giving her a thorough wipe or break my heart if someone spills beer on her at a jam session.

Moreover, (not as if it really counted) I will not have to explain that "you see, it's a Cort, you may not know it, but they produce most of the budget lines of big brands like Squier, Schecter, Ibanez, Music Man; and that actually some say that the Source plays and sounds as good as a Gibson ES-335, blah, blah." It's much quicker to say "...you know, Super 58, Benson, Scofield, you dig?"

And the lesson for myself to take away:

An ad saying "flawless condition, perfect setup" does not mean anything, even coming from a seller with great feedback. You see, we perceive low action and buzz differently, some play riffs, some play chords (and cowboy/power/bar/root ones at that), your food may be my poison, and so on.

Yo cats, that's all for today,

Keep it ringin'!

From Hungary with love,

BLC

Parting with Tina

The time came to bid farewell to my first real lefty electric guitar, the Cort Source I named Tina.

Thirty years earlier...

...or a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was born behind the Iron Curtain, enjoying the last years of the already crumbling Communism. Resources were scarce, supply routes were controlled by the Bolshevik, so I set out on my path to playing the guitar on a Bulgarian made righty Orpheus steel string acoustic stringed upside down. Well, as it had no scale length compensation whatsoever at the bridge, stringing it lefty made no big difference to its (in)ability to intonate. Now, this is all the good I can say about it, so moving on to...

...my next "number one" which was a Russian 7-string Zolotoe Koltso similar to the one in this photo. (In case you ever wondered how I have not became a pro guitarist.)

My first electric was a Hondo HSS 6-point trem superstrat, but still a righty stringed in Hendrix style; I may write about her one day. Anyhow, by the time I got it ('conveniently' amplified through an East German turntable) "the thrill has gone" (on to my trumpet playing in a wind band, probably).

Long story long, I bought my first lefty Sherwood acoustic in Paris in 2001 and my Cort Source in 2015. I did not want a cheapo Strat or LP copy, so I decided to go the semi-hollow route; being late for a second hand Epiphone Sheraton II, I chose to buy the next best thing new (huuuuuuuuge mistake - buying new, that is). Her kind got real good reviews on the web so I ordered one online. She got me practicing again, took me to my happy place, and yes, she's been a real beauty. So why did I let (that bitch) Inez do us part?

Well, partly due to a fault in my personality, partly due to her flaws.

Firstly, I really should not buy objects new (and at full retail price), for I then tend to become overprotectively trying to conserve their factory condition (happened to my Amati trumpet, too). The one time my lady almost tripped over the case I had left by my bedside (luckily closed) the night before, fortunately pouring hot coffee over my (dead?) body instead of Tina's made me buy my first backup electric (Collins strat copy I called Rat-o-caster, but now call Jackie after her makeover), 

then my Epiphone G-400 SG (Barbory), finally, my beloved MIA Strat, Maria Juanita (of whose birth I still owe you an update). So it was Tina who pushed me down the perilous path of sickly gear acquisition!

Now, on to her shortcomings: 

• Sometime early in her history her truss rod nut hex hole got stripped - result of some weak pot metal mating with imperfect-sized wrench supplied with the guitar - so it became only adjustable with an oversized torx bit crammed into it.
• The beautiful factory-equipped Graph Tech NuBone nuts were cut with too much safety margin, thus not allowing an as low as possible buzz-free action.

(Tip of the day: place a capo on fret 1. If you can see/measure/feel a difference in your action at fret 12 and overall playability, you can still lower the nut!)

• One of the volume pots developed a crackle. And as a bonus:
• Stupidity combined with eagerness! You see, our kind Indonesian workers did the courtesy to their most esteemed lefty customers to wire all the pots backwards, so we can raise volume and tone counterclockwise. But adding lefty caps would have probably 'raised the cost through the supply chain too much', so max volume lived at notch position 1, and mute on 10. Typical first world problem for us lefties, you may say, but read on for something more substantial: if you wire a logarithmic pot backwards (as the tone pots were in this case), it mainly acts as an on-off switch, making it useless and taking away most of the countless tones a 4-pot 2-humbucker guitar is capable of.
• Finally, she also developed some hum-buzz while sitting in her case, something I do not take lightly in a humbucker-equipped guitar.

Really, quite an acceptable number of flaws for a then €300 guitar (now €400+), if only my own "keep her stock" craziness would have let me remedy them. On the positive side, the laminate maple was beautiful, the finish impeccable, the tone was quite alright, the build was sturdy, the neck straight and strong; and the alnico pickups were of the 4-wire variety, so could have been modded to be split for single coil tones, too. (I just could not will myself to taste the kind of oral sex rewiring semi-hollow guitars may be/become.)

So I got to the point where she became redundant.

Barbory, the Epi SG became my beater; having been already scratched, gutted and beaten when I bought&rebuilt her (for about €130) I do not fear to take her anywhere come rain, heat or prolonged stay in my car (as it usually does happen in the music camp I attend). A future upgrade of the Epi pickups will probably handle most of her tonal shortcomings, and the neck feels marvellous with no buzz or fretwear and with low action (also thanks to the bone nut I made myself).

Maria Juanita, my Strat became the one to cherish, to be proud of, to play in the safety of my home or at low-risk venues. A peculiar combination of a new body to care for and an old neck that has seen some rough moments - resulting in my almost healthy attitude towards her; treating with care, love and respect, but accepting the risk of dings and scratches, knowing those will be but letters in the story of our life-long adventure.

I had to let Tina go to spare her from a neglected existence as a dethroned queen who became third in the harem to a better place, where she may become a steady number two next to a Gibson LP and see the adventures she was meant for. In the process I also burned some cash to sate my lust and to cure my GAS for another beauty, Inez...

...but that will be the story for another post!

Stay tuned!

From Hungary with love,

BLC