Hello community,
just started using headphones for guitar playing instead of my Marshall tube amp and therefore recently delved into the plugin world. In the beginning, I was really disappointed by the tone quality I got, but have been reading and experimenting for countless hours now and finally see some improvements. Still, I want to ask you guys for advice on further optimizing tone quality.
I mainly play high-gain stuff with the factory presets from various NDSP plugins. I often experience a crackling/sputtering/breaking of some tones at certain frequencies, especially low-end and/or when palm-muted. So basically like if the input signal was just too hot / the mic got overloaded / the cab couldn’t handle it anymore (…). I don’t think its an overall clipping issue, feels more like finetuning of certain frequencies is needed in order to throw out the muddy garbage in the overall good tone.
Do you have suggestions, what steps to take? For example:
- cut high/low frequencies with post-EQ (if so, which and how? Dont know much about that…)
- use custom IRs instead of factory ones
- buy better interface?
- buy better headphones?
Setup: ESP LTD EC-1000 (with passive Seymor Duncan PU), AXE I/O One Interface, MacBook M1, AKG K240 Headphones.
General settings: Interface gain at 0, input & output gain in the NDSP plugin at 0 (as starting point). 44 or 48 khz sample rate, 256 buffer size and I always dial in a little bit of room effect.
Any advice would be really appreciated!!