-= Rocksmith Setup with guitar/bass AMP, full volume control, full recording, mixed signal output to speakers or headphones =-

[Rodman]

 

ok...

finally i drew a diagram of my setup; i got asked a lot about using real amp and how to get that mixed with the Rocksmith sound, so here is how i do it

 

Guitar or Bass is connected to Input  of the
Bigshot ABY (100€)
-- Output A - RS Cable to USB of PC
-- Output B goes to Input of a
Cheap ABY Switch (30€)
-- Output A - Input of Line 6 Spider IV Guitar Amp (110€) with Line6 FBV Express MKII Floorboard (100€) or a Bass Amp with LineOut (!) (100€) - as i am using the bass amp rarely cause the Z24 has bass amp modulation i switch between guitar and bass manually by plugging when needed or i already did set it up with switches i don´´t remember lol - lineout of amp goes to Digitech Trio+ Pedal with Footswitch (300€) - all in one Band Creator, you play a guitar sequence, it plays bass and drums, best pedal on earth - that goes to Input 1 of...
-- Output B goes straight to Input 2 of...

... ZOOM R24 hardware mixer/recorder (used 220€) - LineOut to LineIn of
Audiocard of PC - Lineout goes to
Audio Receiver - to
-- 5.1 Audio Speakers or
-- Headphones

 

Why?
1) I don´t like the RS tones and i don´t like any any any lag - i have my amptones mixed in perfectly and can use the footswitch of the amp for switching amp modes, volume control and Wah. The Guitar Tone in RS is muted (mixer) and as the tone of the amp goes to linein of Pc after the Mixer I have one Output signal to my speakers
2) Full and absolute volume Control: I don´t like unmatching volumes. Guitar Volume can be instantly controlled by the volumeswitches on the Zoom and/or the foot pedal of the amp. If songvolume is too low/high, that can be instantly controlled over the audio receivers switch. I never have to enter any damn menu or use my mouse for that.
3) i can always and instantly record my played guitar playing by just pressing record on input 1 on the Zoom for Amp audio od pressing record on input 2 on Zoom for the dry un-amped signal, or record the mixed signal with RS - audio by pressing record on the PC.
4) Absolutely no setupchange required when playing disconnected just over the amp. I always just turn power on, plug the instrumentcable into guitar and play.
5) I am a fan of Hardware-Recording. i tried with multiple Software DAWs but that makes it all very complicated for me. So i ended up with the Zoom R24 that features unlimited projects, 24 track recording, amps and effects for guitar, bass and voice, a drum computer and mastering. I have got my also my keyboard, a vocal mic, a instrument mic for cajones/flutes/harp/ocarinas or whatever of the instruments i can play even less than guitar to have a lot of fun with my kids or alone. It´s also connected to my PC via USB so i can quickly import eg Ultimate Guitar background tracks to record my guitar line over that, or just a drumtrack or vice versa.
6) If i need to me quiet i can have all of the above via headphones by plugging those into the Audio Receiver, no setup needed
7) For what it does it´s relatively cheap, given the fact that you already own headphones and speakers and a PC with line-in and your instrument(s) the above was about 1k€ for me, you can pass on the Trio+, go for a ZoomR8 or R16 and only a bass or guitar amp with line-out (!) and pass on the floorboard and will be at 400-500$/€

 

 

That´s my setup grown over 9 years of RS, if anybody needs setup help (also the windows soundcard settings to get the mix sent to lineout) or tips or has a tip for improvement just shout.

Rod.

 

[ToshiroKarai]

You can make it cheaper with other pedals that have stereo output and even reccord in estereo. Btw, I would recommend using direct box with low impedance and XLR cable on your Zoom mixer, that is the conventional when connecting in line, the DI also has parallel output that you can connect your Realtone Cable to your PC and unballanced output to connect to your amp.

Other option is using your Zoom as a interface, and use RSAsio mod, I don't know how much lattency it will get, but its better to use the output of your mixer in this situation than the speaker out from your PC.

In the country that I live a new Realtone cable costs 60 euros, so I use an old Zoom G2.1Nu that doesnt have support on RSAsio mod (maybe it could work if I installed Asio4all drivers), so I just either play on disconnected mode and use my amp to play along with RS tabs or deal with some lattency with nocablemod

[Rodman]

7 hours ago, ToshiroKarai said:

You can make it cheaper with other pedals that have stereo output and even reccord in estereo. Btw, I would recommend using direct box with low impedance and XLR cable on your Zoom mixer, that is the conventional when connecting in line, the DI also has parallel output that you can connect your Realtone Cable to your PC and unballanced output to connect to your amp.

Other option is using your Zoom as a interface, and use RSAsio mod, I don't know how much lattency it will get, but its better to use the output of your mixer in this situation than the speaker out from your PC.

In the country that I live a new Realtone cable costs 60 euros, so I use an old Zoom G2.1Nu that doesnt have support on RSAsio mod (maybe it could work if I installed Asio4all drivers), so I just either play on disconnected mode and use my amp to play along with RS tabs or deal with some lattency with nocablemod

Thx! Well i have done quite a lot of research back then which ABY will fit best and i am very very happy with the bigshot - it´s passive (power is only needed if you want the leds to show what´s active), it features True-bypass with On-board transformation to eliminate hum & buzz and an 180° polarity reverse option to phase-match amps and is especially been designed as  amp selector - i get very very clear audio with that, and no other recognition in RS than plugging in the (not so great) RS cable directly.
For the guitar input to Zoom - Input 1 features high impendance input

maybe that´s why i am well-off and satisfied with the result. For the DI box option:

Tempting to optimise it is always... yes that´s an rather expensive one, but with unballanced through and XLR out it will be 130€ at least ... and the main problem... in my setup i cannot use the DI box instead of the Bigshot as my amp will need high impendance unballanced signal ... so i would have to transform to unballanced low imp (practically mic level) after the Trio+... there the cheapest good singleinput - single XLR output DI will do - but do you think i will gain any advantage? (stereo guitar signal i don´t care)

 

The option with Zoom as interface - so putting the PC-out into the Zoom and go from there to the Receiver - was an option, and might again be, of course - the pro is that would eliminate potential and probale worsening of the signal from Pc through line-in - line out (if that can even be managed without any processing - not the case if you go digital out which i don´t) and will get rid of the painful windows sound setup (audio exclusivity for RS and still having the line-in signal put through and recordable in OBS - gone through multiple audio cards and drivers), on the negative side it will occupy one Input on the Zoom permanently and will take away the possibility of recording on the PC (though i could line-out to the pc also maybe from mic-out of the Zoom as that is volume-controllable and can be put out simultanuously with the stereo-out).... that´s tempting if i ever again gave to setup the windows audio system and fail (eg when upgrading from W10 to 11)

For your situation - why would you need RSAsio mod to get the amp signal mixed in???

 

Rock! Rod.

[ToshiroKarai]

Im jealous, your ABY box should be premium and very good, I still don't need one as I only have one small guitar amp and another small bass amp at home. Which amp do you use?

I use a NUX DI from China, it has 1 input, 1 parallel output, 1 balanced XLR output, 1 unbalanced output, it has 3 outs, the difference between parallel and unbalanced is that the unballanced goes to transformer and could get its db reduced, maybe they did it when you forget your XLR and need to borrow another cable to play in the gig, it handles fine when going to my transistor Marshall MG30cfx (small amp for practicing), the XLR I use when I connect my Bass to the mixer in the church, it has active pickups (ibanez gio crap) and clips the signal easily, so I have to use the balanced and -20db when I connect to the mixer.

This channel has great tips for reccording, if you don't need one, don't waste your money, Im also jealous because in Europe your money is 1:1, for me an euro is 7:1 BR$, our minimum wage on Brazil is 200€ . In example, if you buy a Behringer pedal for 20 money units, for us its like 300 money units. In my situation my Bass signal is really really high impedance and I use 8 meters cable, I need to have low noise signal, my long cable will be a radio antenna.

In my Rocksmith situation, as I said, the realtone cable is quite expensive, instead 20 money, it is like 300 for me, I tried connecting my old Zoom multiefx, but its legacy now, it was bought in 2010, for windows 7, it doesnt have new drivers, the audio gets harsh and had some ripple before I learnt how to reduce in my Zoom the reccording gain and how to use Asio4all drivers (newer generic drivers are better than old focused drivers XD), so I just went to Rocksmith menu "Path/Input", changed the input from Realtone input to disconnected mode, and played my guitar into a Tube Screamer clone, to my Marshall and was happy to play Wasted Years along with RS tabs, they are easy to loop on practice mode, I know that could just not buy the game and the DLCs and just watch a RS video on youtube and play along.

When I didn't know how to reduce the input dB reccord on my zoom g2.1nu, I knew that I as playing bad and I had some lattency on buffer, but the game still scored me 80% . The bass was capturing fine, the Bass RS versions are quite easy, you can score 95% 

Anyway, now that I learnt how to configure the RSasio and Nocablemod (lets you use any driver to play RS), I just plug on my zoom input, USB into PC, asio4all and customforge to play CDLC, I turn off the monitoring audio on my zoom, plug my P10 to P2 and play with headphones, no more clipping the signal from my instrument input to the game, I control the volume output to my headphones in game, if I use the PC audio, it has some lattency.

I still have no idea how to reccord my audio to stream playing bass (because I score better than guitar )

 

21 hours ago, Rodman said:

Thx! Well i have done quite a lot of research back then which ABY will fit best and i am very very happy with the bigshot - it´s passive (power is only needed if you want the leds to show what´s active), it features True-bypass with On-board transformation to eliminate hum & buzz and an 180° polarity reverse option to phase-match amps and is especially been designed as  amp selector - i get very very clear audio with that, and no other recognition in RS than plugging in the (not so great) RS cable directly.
For the guitar input to Zoom - Input 1 features high impendance input

maybe that´s why i am well-off and satisfied with the result. For the DI box option:

Tempting to optimise it is always... yes that´s an rather expensive one, but with unballanced through and XLR out it will be 130€ at least ... and the main problem... in my setup i cannot use the DI box instead of the Bigshot as my amp will need high impendance unballanced signal ... so i would have to transform to unballanced low imp (practically mic level) after the Trio+... there the cheapest good singleinput - single XLR output DI will do - but do you think i will gain any advantage? (stereo guitar signal i don´t care)

The option with Zoom as interface - so putting the PC-out into the Zoom and go from there to the Receiver - was an option, and might again be, of course - the pro is that would eliminate potential and probale worsening of the signal from Pc through line-in - line out (if that can even be managed without any processing - not the case if you go digital out which i don´t) and will get rid of the painful windows sound setup (audio exclusivity for RS and still having the line-in signal put through and recordable in OBS - gone through multiple audio cards and drivers), on the negative side it will occupy one Input on the Zoom permanently and will take away the possibility of recording on the PC (though i could line-out to the pc also maybe from mic-out of the Zoom as that is volume-controllable and can be put out simultanuously with the stereo-out).... that´s tempting if i ever again gave to setup the windows audio system and fail (eg when upgrading from W10 to 11)

For your situation - why would you need RSAsio mod to get the amp signal mixed in???

Rock! Rod.

, if I turn off the exclusive mode, the lattency is very high and unplayable

[ToshiroKarai]

no kidding, the realtone cable costs 11x on amazon what I paid for RS on steam

[Rodman]

2 hours ago, ToshiroKarai said:

Im jealous, your ABY box should be premium and very good, I still don't need one as I only have one small guitar amp and another small bass amp at home. Which amp do you use?

I use a NUX DI from China, it has 1 input, 1 parallel output, 1 balanced XLR output, 1 unbalanced output, it has 3 outs, the difference between parallel and unbalanced is that the unballanced goes to transformer and could get its db reduced, maybe they did it when you forget your XLR and need to borrow another cable to play in the gig, it handles fine when going to my transistor Marshall MG30cfx (small amp for practicing), the XLR I use when I connect my Bass to the mixer in the church, it has active pickups (ibanez gio crap) and clips the signal easily, so I have to use the balanced and -20db when I connect to the mixer.

This channel has great tips for reccording, if you don't need one, don't waste your money, Im also jealous because in Europe your money is 1:1, for me an euro is 7:1 BR$, our minimum wage on Brazil is 200€ . In example, if you buy a Behringer pedal for 20 money units, for us its like 300 money units. In my situation my Bass signal is really really high impedance and I use 8 meters cable, I need to have low noise signal, my long cable will be a radio antenna.

In my Rocksmith situation, as I said, the realtone cable is quite expensive, instead 20 money, it is like 300 for me, I tried connecting my old Zoom multiefx, but its legacy now, it was bought in 2010, for windows 7, it doesnt have new drivers, the audio gets harsh and had some ripple before I learnt how to reduce in my Zoom the reccording gain and how to use Asio4all drivers (newer generic drivers are better than old focused drivers XD), so I just went to Rocksmith menu "Path/Input", changed the input from Realtone input to disconnected mode, and played my guitar into a Tube Screamer clone, to my Marshall and was happy to play Wasted Years along with RS tabs, they are easy to loop on practice mode, I know that could just not buy the game and the DLCs and just watch a RS video on youtube and play along.

When I didn't know how to reduce the input dB reccord on my zoom g2.1nu, I knew that I as playing bad and I had some lattency on buffer, but the game still scored me 80% . The bass was capturing fine, the Bass RS versions are quite easy, you can score 95% 

Anyway, now that I learnt how to configure the RSasio and Nocablemod (lets you use any driver to play RS), I just plug on my zoom input, USB into PC, asio4all and customforge to play CDLC, I turn off the monitoring audio on my zoom, plug my P10 to P2 and play with headphones, no more clipping the signal from my instrument input to the game, I control the volume output to my headphones in game, if I use the PC audio, it has some lattency.

I still have no idea how to reccord my audio to stream playing bass (because I score better than guitar )

, if I turn off the exclusive mode, the lattency is very high and unplayable

What i never understood and you can help me with - why do you need asio4all?

Does it reduce latency or does it feature other possibilities than the standard audio driver?

Is it instead or plus the original audiodriver?

 

[ToshiroKarai]

37 minutes ago, Rodman said:

What i never understood and you can help me with - why do you need asio4all?

Does it reduce latency or does it feature other possibilities than the standard audio driver?

Is it instead or plus the original audiodriver?

because RSasio doesn't support the drivers from my multiefx "ZOOM G Series ASIO Driver", on the zoom website show as 2020 because it had maintenance, but the drivers are actually from 2013 , the audio does some hiss even on virtual amps with the standard driver. Last month a friend bought a Behringer interface which uses asio4all, so I just had the idea and tried the 4all generic drive to test some virtual amps like Amped Roots, it was simply click and select the USB audio and worked without any latency, the buffer was as high as 512, I just left the buffer on auto and Hz on auto, well it worked and it frightens me as how Amped free amp sounds amazing, I was almost selling for cheap that old multiefx, but now I have better use, it even works with Reaper

Loading and using IRs is like sorcery, my poor quality audio became magically good with those new digital stuff 

[Mineria]

A cheap splitter box is fine, the more expensive stuff is a waste if it's only used up against RS.
Unfortunately, I can't find the inexpensive Silverblade HX3 anywhere, closest thing is probably the Palmer GA 03 which costs a tad more:
Palmer GA 03 | Signal Splitter & Switcher | Palmer (palmer-germany.com)
 

@ToshiroKarai
I think he asks since Asio4All is known to be worse than ASIO drivers tailored for a specific piece of hardware.

An ASIO buffer up at 512 adds noticeable latency, you might have learned to live with it, but it is there.
 would at least try to get it down to 128, if you don't get any pops and crackle it should do fine.
Upping the audio format also reduces latency to some degree, but same as lowering the buffer, it will cost more CPU resources.