# Let's Play Name That Effect (There's a lesson in here...)



## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

Pretty simple. Name the effect. Stupidly simple clip meant to highlight the effect. I'll let you guys and gals run with it for a bit before I pontificate on the effect. :smile:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/870088/sounds/name-that-effect.mp3

From 0:00 - 0:21 it's no effect. From 0:22 - end it's the effect. Only change was to stomp on the on switch on the effect. Signal chain is guitar -> effect -> amp in -> DI'ed to my DAW.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

My guess is compressor or noise gate. but it could be just about anything with low settings to suck the life out of your tone


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## keithb7 (Dec 28, 2006)

I'll guess compression.


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## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

My guess is compression as well.


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

Interesting you guys think compression. There might be two lessons here...


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## dino (Jan 6, 2009)

*Its Reverb*

It sounds like a slight reverb to me


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## bobb (Jan 4, 2007)

The first part definitely sounded better than the second. Here is my guess:


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## Fader (Mar 10, 2009)

It sounds like it's way too subtle to be effective and I'm never going to get back those 3 minutes I just wasted.:smile:


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

dino said:


> It sounds like a slight reverb to me


There is a little reverb on the mix. Just a touch. Otherwise it's alarmingly dry when recording direct. But that's not it...


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

That my friends was a buffer

And not a fancy, expensive buffer either. It was made out of what would otherwise have been a junk transistor. It's Jack Orman's Leak Transistor Buffer. I put it together last night out of $3 worth of parts. If you look at the waveform of that audio clip you'll see that the second part, while slightly attenuated, isn't compressed. The attenuation is due to the fact that I didn't have any trimming resistors on hand last night so I had to eyeball unity gain while swapping in fixed resistors. I gave up around 90%. I'll put a trimmer in there tonight.

The missing part in my signal chain description is just how much cable my guitar signal runs through. And just how significant that cable gets over the length of it. I usually run a 20' cable in front of my board. And there's the cable on my board, a few feet at least since I organize my board for convenience, not to keep cable runs short. And finally there's another 20' run from my board to the amp. All of it's cable in excellent shape with an average F/foot rating.

The difference between the clips is lost high end content in my signal. The buffer presents a reasonably high impedence load and puts the signal out across a fairly low impedence load. To my guitar's pickups it looks a lot like my amplifier -- just 25' closer to me.  And the result is I get back lots of top end that is usually missing. How nice.

The other interesting part of this question is why some people thought this is was compression -- at least: I find that interesting. A compressor on a board, when engaged, does two things for you: it compressors your signal, but it also buffers it. So the combined effect of switching on a compressor on your pedal board is a compressed signal with more high end content preserved. You'll hear people talk about leaving compressors on all the time, but with little to no compression dialed in. These guys are just taking advantage of its buffer to keep around some otherwise lost high end.

If I were to compress that audio clip DAW-side the first part wouldn't get brighter. It'd get more compressed, but you wouldn't get that snappy top end restored because that's not what a compression algorithm does. That content was already gone when the signal was captured in the DAW, I'm just compressing the darker signal now which does nothing for high end, it only operates on the dynamics of the signal.

So the lesson here for me? Buffers are your friends. This guy is getting boxed up and it'll sit between the last pedal on my board and the cable run back to my amplifer.

I guess the other lesson is board-based compressors do more than compress your signal. They buffer it too.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

But the 2nd half of the clip is with the buffer on, or off? To me, the first half of the clip sounds way better than the 2nd half. Maybe its just an effect of the recording process, or that our eyes perceive volume levels differently.


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

bagpipe said:


> But the 2nd half of the clip is with the buffer on, or off? To me, the first half of the clip sounds way better than the 2nd half. Maybe its just an effect of the recording process, or that our eyes perceive volume levels differently.


2nd half is buffer on. I'll re-do the clip with the volume attenuation is taken care of. I much prefer the high end content in the second half of the clip.


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

> So the lesson here for me? Buffers are your friends. This guy is getting boxed up and it'll sit between the last pedal on my board and the cable run back to my amplifer


My friend? With friends like that who needs solid state amps? 
that buffer killed your tone completely. I would never use it.


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

Some perspective on why I'm happy to have high end content back in my guitar signal might help. I've always thought my amp was very dark. Here are the settings used for that clip:



Bass way down, mids up and treble way up. There's no place left to go there. But really it's not the amps fault all my guitars sound dark through it. It's the very long signal path before the guitar signal gets to the amp. It's still possible to roll back the treble and stop the bass cut to get a signal with the buffer that sounds like the unbuffered signal. But now there's a broader range of sounds available with the buffer in place. There's treble headroom to spare. That first signal records dark and has always required EQ notches in the upper bands to sit right in the mix, that second signal...well, having recorded and mixed enough of my guitar now I can say I'm not going to have to touch that to get it sit in its own space.


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## 4345567 (Jun 26, 2008)

__________


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2009)

I've strayed from the original intent of this thread. It wasn't meant to be a better/worse comparison but a highlight of just how much high end content is lost of a pedalboard setup with long cable runs. The first piece of the clip necessarily has to sound good because that's my standard clean sound when recording and I know I sound f'in fantastic.  But look a the EQ wrangling that has to happen to achieve that sound. The low end has be removed at the amp in gobs. The high end boosted equally so.

Tonight I'll record the same clip, with the buffer, but go for a sound similar to the original, unbuffered part of the clip you've all heard. The EQ on the amp will end up very near, if not totally, flat because all of the guitar signal will make it to the amp.

I've fixed the attenuation issue as well.


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## Guest (Apr 12, 2009)

iaresee said:


> I've fixed the attenuation issue as well.


No, I haven't. I can't push it to unity gain. It starts to crap out. I'm going to put together a Super Buffer instead tonight and revisit this tomorrow.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2009)

I'm back. Better buffer design. Operating at a higher voltage. No volume drop.

First clip is position 2 on the PRS, no buffer. Second clip is position 2 on the PRS, buffer. Third clip is position 5 on the PRS (neck 'bucker), no buffer. Fourth clip is position 5 on the PRS, buffer.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/870088/sounds/name-that-effect-pt2.mp3

Amp settings were the same as last time.

Have at it.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

This demo definitely is better than the last one. The 2nd and 4th clips definitely show an increase in treble and, umm..."airiness," without the mega tone-suck of the last clip.

One thing is still niggling me though. On the first two clips especially, when the buffer is engaged, it adds more treble content, but that also seems to make the guitar sound thinner. It's almost as if the treble is prevalent at the expense of the mids, which is not the ideal situation. But, then again, I listen to and play loud music, so my poor ears may just be out of it.


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## Salokin (Nov 10, 2008)

Where is the best place for a buffer in a signal chain?
I can' t put it at the begining because of My Sun face and my Solidgold 
Formula 69.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2009)

This one, once it's done, will go last before the long cable run back to the amp. The pedals see an amp-like load that way. And then you get the low impedence/high impedence mismatch over the long run back to the amp.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2009)

hollowbody said:


> This demo definitely is better than the last one. The 2nd and 4th clips definitely show an increase in treble and, umm..."airiness," without the mega tone-suck of the last clip.


It's certainly moving the right direction. The treble is too much in the 2nd position but it does good things for the neck pickup, which has always sounded woofy when I record direct. I'll get to try it out in-the-room with a speaker instead of the recording out this afternoon.



> One thing is still niggling me though. On the first two clips especially, when the buffer is engaged, it adds more treble content, but that also seems to make the guitar sound thinner. It's almost as if the treble is prevalent at the expense of the mids, which is not the ideal situation. But, then again, I listen to and play loud music, so my poor ears may just be out of it.


I haven't actually got a good explanation for it. And I noticed it to. I got the leaky AC128 from Jack Orman and his claim was the dozen or so he tested all showed a perfetly linear response across a really wide frequency band. Could be his lot wasn't all linear -- that would explain it nicely. I'm waiting for a chance to borrow the signal generator from work to figure it out for myself. There's also a headroom issue on the other buffer design -- I could make it sound pretty...odd...with a hot signal.


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