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Rocksmith Cable vs Line In


bullbuchanan

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I've been doing a ton of research on the nuances of sound configuration in this game. It's fairly upsetting that I have $1000 worth of hi end recording gear and a PS audio amp at near-zero latency for other purposes, and yet it performs worse than my realtek onboard sound card...

I'm currently running line-in. Would I see any sound quality improvement if I were to get a rocksmith cable? Google left me empty trying to find any comparisons. It would be totally useless to me otherwise.

I found some advice for the configuration settings (how to mute) that drastically reduced the static I get, but it still sounds rather poor, especially using the orange amp / most distortion amps in the game. I tend to get dropouts as the strings quiet down and distortion sounds like tit has static in it, as well as high or loud notes appearing to be unintentionally distorted. Increasing Latency buffer/max output doesnt really seem to improve it. It's worth noting that i'm using a very cheap ($2) 3.5mm adapter as my comp doesnt have a built in 1/4 jack.


I' run everything on a pretty powerful new gaming desktop (i7 4770k, MSI Z87-GD65 MB, etc.) Does anyone know what the requirements are for using the "Win32lowlatencymode" are? Ubi doesnt have any specs on it, and my sound is completely garbled with it on at any buffer settings, but I'm curious if there's something I could get to improve the performance there.

Anyone out there getting crystal clear sound, or are the in game amps just bad?

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If your note recognition is fine, use an ABY splitter, mute the in-game guitar sound and play through your amps.

I actually don't have a real amp, otherwise I'd definitely give that a go. I use amplitube software as my amp. I'd probably get into a whole lag matching mess if I tried to run two pieces of audio software at once.

 

As a side note- note recognition is fine and the game is 100% playable with low lag and passable sound quality. I'm just looking to see if an investment would make the game sound better. I'm running my Audio Technica headphones directly into my onboard sound as well, as the game can't handle my usb amp.

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@@bullbuchanan If you have 1000$ worth of equipement and you are using a line input, you should seriously rethink what you are doing.

 

Guitar DOES NOT ouput a line level at all but are way closer to the MIC input level but you can't use a MIC input level because of impedance issue which would simply kill the signal. Line level can be used but will have way higher SNR ratio than what would usually be expected and there's still a mismatch in impedance which cause lots of issue that won't help Rocksmith work properly.

 

So of course a cable that will have an ADC which is optimized to work with a guitar or bass signal will perform better than a line input. There's no question about it, it's physics. Getting a crystal clear sound with a guitar on a line input is impossible.

 

Note that with the recent Microphone mode, using any kind of USB input is now very easy and will probably offer way better result than going through the line input but that will disable the ingame tone.

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@@bullbuchanan If you have 1000$ worth of equipement and you are using a line input, you should seriously rethink what you are doing.

 

Guitar DOES NOT ouput a line level at all but are way closer to the MIC input level but you can't use a MIC input level because of impedance issue which would simply kill the signal. Line level can be used but will have way higher SNR ratio than what would usually be expected and there's still a mismatch in impedance which cause lots of issue that won't help Rocksmith work properly.

 

So of course a cable that will have an ADC which is optimized to work with a guitar or bass signal will perform better than a line input. There's no question about it, it's physics. Getting a crystal clear sound with a guitar on a line input is impossible.

 

Note that with the recent Microphone mode, using any kind of USB input is now very easy and will probably offer way better result than going through the line input but that will disable the ingame tone.

Thanks for the response. I'm very aware that my current setup is horrible. My audio interface doesn't support 16 bit and neither does my headphone amp, so that led to me trying the line in jack, because I've heard people complaining about sound quality out of the rocksmith cable, but was uncertain if that was just configuration errors.

 

I was hoping to find someone that had tried both methods (RTC vs line in to see if there is an audible improvement - even considering the RTC seems to have latency and noise issues in the game that lead to some folks opting for a real amp instead. If I drop $50 on a cable that's equal to my free line -in jack I'd be pretty upset.

 

If I can't get my answer that's fine - I wasn't really expecting it. Just a shot.

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Would I see any sound quality improvement if I were to get a rocksmith cable? 

 

Yes, tried both, and more.

You should get a rocksmith cable.

Or if you want to spend more money, something like this is better for use with Amplitude etc.

I's save up  for  an RS cable, an isolated ABY box and a cheap modelling amp.

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Would I see any sound quality improvement if I were to get a rocksmith cable? 

 

Yes. You should get a rocksmith cable. Or if you want to spend more money, something like this.

 

Alright, thanks. I'll look into getting one then. I've already got a steinberg UR44, so the Scarlett would be a rocksmith only tool

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@@bullbuchanan I've never heard of anyone having noise issue with the RTC. People that use a ABY pedal not properly grounded can have noise issue but that's not the RTC's fault and people that use their amp mostly do because they hate the tone simulation inside RS, not because the RTC is bad in itself.

 

When it comes to latency i don't have any issue and you can easily bring it down to 20ms if you have a decent PC which isn't that much. I know some people are more sensible than other their so it's debattable at which point it's the "best" but i'm fine with the 25ms of latency that i have on my system.

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Indeed, 20ms is a bit much for me ;)

 

I actually don't have a real amp, otherwise I'd definitely give that a go. I use amplitube software as my amp. I'd probably get into a whole lag matching mess if I tried to run two pieces of audio software at once.

I have no issues using a software amp sim in parallel of rocksmith, but each has it's own piece of gear : RS got the dedicated cable, and the amp sim is fed by my audio interface which feature a good hi-z input. I don't need an aby because I have an insert on the interface, but most of this don't have that feature so you will probably need one.

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Indeed, 20ms is a bit much for me ;)

 

I actually don't have a real amp, otherwise I'd definitely give that a go. I use amplitube software as my amp. I'd probably get into a whole lag matching mess if I tried to run two pieces of audio software at once.

I have no issues using a software amp sim in parallel of rocksmith, but each has it's own piece of gear : RS got the dedicated cable, and the amp sim is fed by my audio interface which feature a good hi-z input. I don't need an aby because I have an insert on the interface, but most of this don't have that feature so you will probably need one.

 

I'm quite curious as to how you do this.

 

Do you have the Exclusive Mode turned off? Is that the only way to do this? I was looking at using a multi client ASIO driver but I just realised that Rocksmith doesn't support ASIO or even allow to change audio drivers.

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Exclusive Mode=1. The trick is that my audio interface - Audient iD22, not the most expensive piece of gear you could acquire, nor the cheapest - is multiclient.  It supports ASIO + Windows simultaneously (the latter only on main out, that being said that's all i need). I don't think it's an uncommon feature, though...

 

So basically : you use your audio interface (with smallest buffer size of course) with amplitube ou Guitar rig or whatever, in ASIO at 48Khz, and in parallel you use Rocksmith on the windows WDM drivers. The only trick is for the output to go on you audio interface, so you can listen everybody on the same speakers. I assume if your interface don't feature possibility to hear ASIO + system sounds simultaneously, you may as well connect your rear computer output to your audio interface (assuming you have enough free inputs). Or using an external mixer, to get the same result...

 

In the end of the day, it's basically the same thing that having your computer and a Pod connected to a console going to your monitors. Two separated things, done by the same machine though.

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I have no issues using a software amp sim in parallel of rocksmith, but each has it's own piece of gear : RS got the dedicated cable, and the amp sim is fed by my audio interface which feature a good hi-z input. I don't need an aby because I have an insert on the interface, but most of this don't have that feature so you will probably need one.
 
I do a similar thing.
 
I use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 w/ASIO, a rocksmith cable and some powered studio monitors fed from both my my line out and Scarlett 2i2.
feature.jpg
 
When I want to also play through my amp I use a Radial Bones ABY amp switch, and can feed my amp back into the second inst input on the Scarlett if needed.
http://www.tonebone.com/images/twincity/twincity-34-lrg.jpg

 

I also just added a Line6 Relay G10, but that's me being lazy. Total latency is barely noticeable to me.
http://l6c-acdn2.line6.net/data/6/0a06433910a205698846f06f45/image/png/file_r17551.png
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I use almost the exact setup as above, except I don't use an any switch at all. just RTC into my line 6 wireless, focus rite 212 is my audio interface, mainly for recording and garageband. Then out through powered monitors. I have no noticeable lag or static. Only static is coming from my LP Studios crappy output jack.

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