Munscio

Hi. I've been obsessed with round-trip latency for a long time. As a guitar player I concluded that I'm happy with anything less than 6ms round-trip latency. Between 6 and 13ms, I could not hear at all. However, the difference in feel on the instrument is very noticeable!!! Above that, it's pretty unusable... When it comes to computers (Core Audio/Asio) things are not what manufacturers say. Check this long thread in GearSpace https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/618474-audio-interface-low-latency-performance-data-base.html Hope that helps Danny Bullo

Good point. But computer based system gives you access to antire universe os vsts. I only use computers live. 3ms total latency is the SAME as hardware. Absolutely imperceptible. Munscio

Hi. In my opinion , hardware processors are 100% obsolete. If you know what you are doing, you can get around the SAME round-trip latency in a computer. There is a huge thread about it here: https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/618474-audio-interface-low-latency-performance-data-base.html A well configured machine and a GOOD audio interface can give you around 3.5/4ms of round-trip latency, super stable. Almost the same as any hardware mixer or hardware processor such as Axe FX. Check the Zoom UAC-2 and RME BabyFace pro Regards, Munscio

Hi. I just saw this post. I've been obsessed with sustain for years. Here is what I've learned: We are talking about "NATURAL" sustain here so forget about sustainers, compressors, etc. Sustain in guitars is a "subtractive" thing. It means that the "theoretical" perfect guitar on paper has the most possible sustain, then everything that is "not so perfect" starts to rob sustain. Read on. On paper, the guitar with the most sustain would be a 1 piece guitar made of a very dense, solid, and still material, such as steel or concrete. That makes the energy STAY in the strings as opposed to being TRANSMITTED to the body, bridge, frets, etc. Solid dense materials WILL not sympathetically vibrate with strings. On the other hand, a soft, flexible, and loose material WILL sympathetically vibrate with strings, robbing sustain. So, contrary to what most people think about resonance, it is the sustain enemy! You pluck a string and transmit your energy to the vibrating string. Then, it is ALL about The Conservation of energy The guitar with MOST sustain keeps the energy ONLY in the strings. It DOES NOT transmit the energy to the body, bridge, etc. The result: the MOST sustain (energy IN the strings) and the LEAST acoustic volume (Energy NOT in the guitar materials). For example A 1 piece steel guitar. The guitar with the LEAST sustain keeps almost NO energy in the strings. it DOES transmit almost all energy into the body, bridge, etc. The result: the LEAST sustain (energy NOT IN the strings) and the MOST acoustic volume (Energy IN the guitar materials). For example a BANJO. This is why electric guitars have MORE Sustain than acoustic ones. Electrics have a solid body and are not meant to sound loud acoustically. Acoustic guitars are designed to have acoustic volume so the top is supposed to move/vibrate. There is a trade-off in volume/sustain in acoustic instruments! So in real life, we don't have steel or concrete 1 piece electric guitars! They are made out of different woods with different degrees of hardness, glue, moving parts such as tremolos or bridges with saddles, frets, etc. So all we can do to MAXIMIZE sustain is to start a very solid guitar (ex: a good solid/heavy Les Paul) and then pay attention to details to ENSURE most of the energy STAYS in the strings and is NOT transmitted to the guitar materials. Make sure: Bridge: Make sure it is SOLID good material and does not move. I avoid die-cast and prefer "real" metal bridges. Use Teflon tape in the posts/threads to avoid any movement. Make sure the Saddles springs do not rattle. Make sure the Saddles do not move in the channel. Make sure the saddle grooves are properly cut/filed. Nut: Make sure it is properly cut to avoid buzz on the open strings. Have one made out of good solid material NOTE: Nuts ONLY affect open strings and have ZERO impact on fretted notes. Still, we want a good one to have good action, proper intonation, and nice sounding open strings! Break angle: You NEED some angle after the nut and bridge. Otherwise, the string does not have enough force to "sit" at the 2 points where it is supposed to rest. Floyd rose/Locking nuts are exceptions as the string ends in those points. They are firmly attached there, so no problem there! NOTE: How much break angel? just enough so that the string vibrates freely. You will know if there is not enough angle. The guitar will simply not sound right. Fretwork: Frets MUST be leveled and crowned. otherwise, you will get fret buzz and it will KILL your sustain! The string energy will be "captured" by the frets and will make fret noise, as opposed to staying IN the strings. Action, assuming you have good fretwork: HIGHER action may have more sustain as the vibrating strings WILL NOT touch the frets at all! LOWER action may have less sustain as the vibrating string MAY touch the frets, even if "just a little" during the note attack. Setup: Obviously the better the setup, the better everything else is, including sustain. Pickup height: Do not have the pickups ridiculously close to the strings! In my experience, if the pickup distance is right, the effect on sustain is negligible. Everything else: Make sure there are no unnecessary rattles or movement in screws, tuners, strap pins, pickup rings, loose frets, string trees, stop tails, etc. Also, consider: Gadgets: There are things like Fender FatFinger that promise you more sustain. It adds mass to the headstock. Some people swear by heavy tuners and bridges. Those things MAY help ONLY if the other aspects discussed here are not taken care of. It won't do anything to a guitar that is already rigid enough with no moving parts and a good setup/fretwork. Experiment: Use your judgment. See a lousy tunning machine that moves? Change it! Have a dirty worn tune-o-matic bridge that rattles? Get a new one! Be reasonable: You will NOT get good sustain in a guitar that has a FLEXIBLE neck, regardless of how still the other materials are. Similarly, you will not get sustain out of a $5000 guitar that has a terrible fretwork or worn-out bridge that rattles and has the saddle grooved deformed. Conclusion: I think good sustain can be achieved with any guitar as long as the construction is good enough, has good solid materials, and you check the points above. Final Note: Personally I do not really care to have long 40-second notes! If you want that, get a sustainer! The reason I LOVE good natural sustain is that I feel the guitar reacts better to my playing. Tapping and legato feel smoother as the string tends to "vibrate easier". I feel you need to use less energy to play. I hope this helps. Regards, Munscio

Thanks @Anderton. It's a keeper. Check the audio samples. With 1, as is intended to be used, does not color sound at all and cuts transients as expected, as shown in the waveform. Last question: do you think that JFET preamps/buffers/DIs and input stage of tube amp react similar to the transient tamer, cutting those transients? Regards, Munscio

@Anderton i built the tamer in a regular cable and in this adapter: when I say I used 2 in series was the cable tamer AND the transient adaptar. Thanks @KuruPrionz. Yes, my electric guitar directly to the interface hi-z input, with aND without the tamer, as explained

@Anderton and all: Here are some interesting DATA to analyze. I played a simple chord striking hard. I wanted to analyze the results. Note that I set the gain just before clipping when using a REGULAR cable without the Transient Tamer, to capture all peaks, then never changed it. Spectrum analysis: 1) Original signal vs Transient Tamer: BLUE is Original. Green is transient Tamer I see the frequency response is almost identical. I see a few more peaks in the upper side of the spectrum. that can be because the original one is much more spiky. The audio samples sound pretty similar. I do not notice any high end roll-off. What do you think? 2) Original signal vs DOUBLE Transient Tamer: BLUE is Original. BROWN is Double transient Tamer I tested to see what happens when I put 2 transient tamers in series. The audio is a bit duller. We can see that the BROWN signal has less high frequencies. Do you think that can happen because the Transient Tamer may be adding some capacitance? Or maybe because I used 2 CABLES to make the double tamer and that created more capacitance as the resulting cable is much longer? 3) Transient Tamer vs DOUBLE Transient Tamer: Green is transient Tamer. BROWN is Double transient Tamer. Again, I wanted to see what happens if I put 2 transient tamers. Here I compare 1 vs 2 transient tamers in series to see the results, as the signals are more similar to each other (as both have peaks trimmed) compared to the original one (Spiky). Here is VERY clear that having 2 transient tamers in series makes the sound duller and looses high frequencies. Again, is it possible that the transient tamer adds capacitance and having 2 in series makes it more "visible"? Or again, just because i used 2 cables to make the double tamer? Waveform analysis: 1) Original Signal 2) Transient Tamer 3) Double Transient Tamers We can see that the transient tamer definitely works! Audio Samples: 1) Original Signal original wave.wav 2) Transient Tamer transient tamer.wav 3) Double Transient Tamers double transient tamer.wav Any input will be appreciated. Thanks! Muncio

Makes total sense if you analyze the natural ADSR envelop of the guitar....

Back in the "analog" days, I always believed one reason that cascading overdrives/ boosting before amp distortion feels so good was that 2nd distortion takes a signal ALREADY slightly distorted. That means that 2nd distortion distorts a signal that already has less spikes and has more overall level. IOW, it distorts "more useful" signal. The result is that without distorting "too much", it feels like it is distorting a LOT under you fingers, aka "spongy" touch sensitivity. (like a Metal Zone at 10!)....with the benefits a not too much gain - tone, noise, dynamic range, etc

I wouldn't take conclusions based on the final waveform. You are distorting it! Of course you will not see the original spikes! I'd a analyze the pure signal to see spikes, average level, overall frequency response, etc. Foe example, if raw signal was so spiky, it means you could limit it before amp sims (transient tamer) and with same amount of distortion you'd get more sustain as more average signal is feeding the distortion , as opposed to the spiky one....

I'd say in the passive world I'd adjust PU height based on what it sounds best: too close and you kill sustain and sounds boomy. Too far and signal is too weak. Just need to find the sweet spot. In the active world, as shows in the thread that KuruPrionz shared, there is something else In The game: too close and you will distort internal preamp. So a bit far away to what is recommended seems to be fine. Noise: at least in my studio, I don't have noise problem. Note that all my guitars are fully shielded. That helps EMI. You cannot get rid of hum in real single coils. I wonder how much quiet is an Active EMG compared to a good classic passive HB (PAF, super distortion, Duncan 59) in a very distorted patch... Unfortunately I haven't done that comparison side by side.... Munscio

I don't own active PUs ATM, but had them. I remember they sound very clean and a bit more "compressed" than regular passive one. Still, I ALWAYS thought in reality they sound very similar to "clean" passive PUs. It is the slight compression (that happens because of the higher output maybe soft-clipping amp front-end) What really makes player think they sound/feel different. Noise wise, yeah....they tend to be less susceptible to EMI, dimmers, neon lights, etc. Just my 2 cents. Munscio

Thumbs up for "The Singles" - The Complete Video Album.!!!!

😄😄😄 I think it's be cool to manufscture it as a female to male 1/4 plug with the LEDs inside... Craig, how do you think the "transient tamer" compresses/limits/clips compared to the real input stage of a tube amp? I'll try to compare it with the solid state that I have around, and check how each one behaves. Thanks

Many thanks Again. FYI I built the "transient tamer" with red LEDs. It is AWESOME! I don't have the recording at hand here, but it EXACTLY as expected. I did set the guitar level without it before clipping it. I recorded it hitting the guitar hard in different positions and pickups . Then I did the same with the modified cable. Exactly as in Craig's snapshots above. No more super fast transients. There are around 8-10 dB to win in gain -> LESS NOISE AND 'NATURAL' COMPRESSION == MORE NATURAL SUSTAIN. Also I could NOT detect any audible difference with or without, so that is great too. I DID not process the signal for the test, just straight into the interface. I WON'T TOUCH A MODELER WITHOUT IT FROM NOW ON. Thanks!