Curious what any of our recording enthusiasts may have to say on this. I’m relatively new to home recording, but HAVE done a few things so far that have come out pretty decent. They could be better and I’ve been reading and learning a LOT lately, so that I can get better, but I have a specific question. I learned about gain staging – i.e. ensuring that the input/gain level of the waveform is fairly level from track to track, using a VU meter plugin.
I’ve kinda been conditioned, from the suggestions of others, to only record my dry signal, then import the Line6 Pod Farm software I’m using as a plugin to get my amp and fx tone, rather than recording the wet signal from the software. Problem is that my pick response and resulting gain levels are much more uneven dry than they come across wet, which makes gain staging the dry signal difficult, because it’s a pretty low level, and as I up the gain, to get it in the ballpark, parts of it go WAY over in the VU meter.
So I feel like I totally COULD just record the wet signal instead and likely have a more even signal to gain stage. Either that or be WAY more conscientious about making sure that I pick everything as evenly as possible. But to me, that kinda takes some of the “human-ness” out of it.
I’m probably over-thinking all this, as I’m trying to incorporate all the new things I’m learning. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.