Recording an Instrument Away from Your Computer
After the massive amount of time spent doing the deep dive on the Fender Tone Master Pro and not wanting to annoy readers with any comments on the utterly unimpressive Fender Highway acoustics, that every YouTuber on the planet appears to have received, I decided instead to talk about something pretty useful for the guitarist and bassist and that is a compact recorder with amp sims and basic effects that can be used when you are not where your computer, interface and DAW are.
The Nature of the Problem
As an audio professional, I have a number of field recorders from Zoom handhelds to their messenger bag types as well as options from Tascam. They are great for recording live sound, but while every one of them can accept an unbalanced line in, which can work ok for acoustic guitars, I wanted one device that would be usable for electric guitars, electric basses, acoustics with pickups and even acoustics without.
My purpose is not to make studio grade recordings, it’s to capture riffs, chord progressions and tempos, time signatures and also to give me a permanent record of what an instrument sounded like when I played it in a guitar shop. You see, auditory memory is actually pretty lousy. We remember words pretty well, but only keys and chords and pickup tones with a lot of practice and if you don’t do it regularly, the skill decomposes very quickly.
Let’s say I read or hear about this amazing instrument from some source that I don’t consider already bought and paid for. May be it’s from someone whose thoughts you have found to be in alignment with yours before. I want to go play the instrument, because I am loathe to buy anything that I have not tried. I’ve played two different iterations of the same guitar one after the other and one was great and one was a disaster. Guitars are expensive and while stores often have decent return policies, a return can be a real pain in the ass for everyone, because every store has been hit by the “buy on Friday afternoon, gig Friday night and all weekend and return on Monday” variety of asshole. “Free” rental types need a beating.
I want to be able to plug the instrument into something and hear what it sounded like with an amp and cab sim after the fact. In this way, I can test out the amps and cabs that the recording device has, find ones that are pretty close to my actual kit and work with those when shopping. If I go try out a 7 string and play test it through a Bogner amp. it could sound glorious but if I don’t own that amp, I could be setting myself up for lunchbag letdown. That’s not a great example, because I do have access to a Bogner micro that sounds amazing but I hope that you get the point. What I can do is find an amp and cab sim on one of these portable devices that is pretty much like the Bogner, and then take that tiny device to the music store, plug in and record, using only the shop’s guitar and my earbuds or over ear headphones. Perfect it is not, but ten days later, I will have an accurate reference at hand. While I may want to hear a Boucher acoustic completely uncoloured, I want to hear that 7 or 9 string the way I would actually play it.
And Here’s The Challenge
There are amp / cabinet simulators. The ikmultimedia iRig is a popular example, but if you ever misplace the cable from it to your iPhone, you are basically screwed because replacements are unobtanium unless you buy another one. Grrrr. Moreover, systems like this are basically like heroin. You get just enough kit included to get you interested, but anything that actually sounds decent means a bigger expense. You may also own the computer application such as Amplitude but when you go for the iOS version all the software that you already own and have paid for counts for NOTHING. I think that this is about nickel and diming valued customers that only results in anger on the customer’s part.
What Did I Find?
Well I own an old BOSS BR-80. Really old. It has a limited number of amp and cab sims and some decent BOSS effects. However the interface is very poor, in line with when the device was released and the subsequent replacement changed colours and not much else and has not been upgraded in ten years. The same is true for the devices from Tuscan. There are a few guitar trainers that allow you take an existing song and loop it and slow it down to learn it, which is very useful, but they don’t have amps or cabs or the ability to record you.
I cannot speak to any Android products, because I don’t own any, but iPhones and iPads come with GarageBand which is an excellent little DAW. If you want to get smacked monthly you can subscribe to Logic Pro for iPad. I don’t like this idea myself and I really don’t want to have to carry an iPad into a guitar shop to record my audition of a piece of gear so that doesn’t fit my use cases anyway. However, and even though GarageBand has some basic amp/cab sims and effects, they are not easily extensible, you still need to purchase an interface into the device. There are devices from ikmultimedia, like the iRig HD and the recently released iRig USB, but the real trick is finding one with the right cables to connect the little box to your device. I want to use my phone as the DAW application runner and the recorder, because I already own it, it has plenty of storage and because, somewhat sadly, it is always with me. I had ordered a Postive Grid RIFF unit, but returned it because its documentation was effectively non-existent and I had been made to understand that it could record internally. I was wrong about the device as you will see.
I cannot use my iRig HD with my phone because the original cable went missing and not even Amazon could find a USB Mini male to Lightning male cable. What I did find only passed charging information not data, and I became well known at Purolator dropping off returns to Amazon that neglected to mention that they could not transport data, or claimed that they could and did not. Plus I was pissed at ikmultimedia for the extortionist pricing to add sufficient amps and effects to Amplitube CS and decided not to buy from that company again.
Positive Grid RIFF
I am a very happy Positive Grid customer, so I sent a communication to them. I got an auto reply that said that they were very busy and that replies could take an extended period. Fortunately this did not prove to be true and Heyling from their support group provided me guidance on how a RIFF could be used with GarageBand on my iPhone or my iPad, that it had very basic sims included and that through a service that I had never heard of, built into GarageBand called IAA, I could actually set their BIAS FX 2 Mobile app to be a front end to GarageBand. She also assisted me in understanding that BIAS FX Mobile is a separate product from BIAS FX for the Mac or PC and that the licenses did not cross over. I give her credit in that she made the effort to provide me a license for BIAS FX Mobile 2 Elite upgrade, valued at $24.95 which after understanding, I would have paid for myself.
The RIFF is a small device about the size of an old pack of cigarettes. It has a USB Micro connection that goes to your device and comes with a cable to a Lightning port and to a standard USB port. There is no cable to USB-C but they recommend just buying an adapter. I have a little box full of adapters so that issue was solved. There is a ¼” unbalanced instrument in, and a ¼” unbalanced instrument out as well as a ⅛” headphone jack. The device, as pictured has a large easy to read display, a single master control wheel and a few LEDs to tell you where you are. It draws power from the device it is connected to and was detected and available to the iPhone and iPad without any hassle at all.
I plugged a Sire Strat into the RIFF and the RIFF into my phone. With GarageBand running, I was able to play through the RIFF to the GarageBand app, and record sounds easily. Hitting the play button routed the output back to the RIFF and into my headphones. Perfect and excellent sound.
FYI you can use the RIFF as your guitar interface to your computer and into your DAW. If you run Windows, you need a set of ASIO drivers, and if you use macOS, just plug it in and it shows up.
IAA
I then followed the process in GarageBand to activate an IAA application as the front end to GarageBand. I launched BIAS FX Mobile on the phone and then activated the IAA connection and I was able to use all the BIAS FX amps, cabs and effects into GarageBand. You have to hop between apps of course to start and stop recording, to make changes and such, but it works and I consider my challenge resolved. As the RIFF also costs less than the ikmultimedia gear, it makes more sense to me. As a side note, Amplitube CS also supports IAA if you already own a bunch of amps and effects for it.
My use case is to use the RIFF, GarageBand and BIAS FX 2 Mobile with my iPhone. I’ve repurposed an old small camera bag to hold the RIFF, its cables, a pair of BOSE over the ear headphones, and a guitar cable. However, I thought that I would try the configuration with the larger screen of the iPad Pro. I had some serious issues with distortion and opened a ticket with Positive Grid. Next day support was very good. While we were working towards a solution, I tried the install on a 10th gen iPad and all worked perfectly. I uninstalled and reinstalled both GarageBand and BIAS FX 2 Mobile on the iPad Pro and it too works great.
Despite the small screen, BIAS FX Mobile is very usable on the iPhone
I have a license for BIAS FX Mobile Elite which provides more than enough amps, cabs and pedals for my needs and only costs $24.95 CAD. And yes, you can make chains this rich.
Sample Recordings
I used the RIFF as the interface to my iPhone 12 Pro Max. I ran GarageBand iOS on the phone and used BIAS FX Mobile via IAA to provide amps and effects. The instruments went straight into the RIFF. For the first clip, I used the BIAS FX version of the Matchless DC30 on the edge of breakup. For the second clip I used the BIAS FX preset called Plexi Dirt. The third clip uses the BIAS FX preset called Natural Acoustic and the final used the Basic Bass preset. The instruments used were a Fender 60th Anniversary Jaguar for the first two clips, a PRS Angelus A60 for the third and a Fender ‘51 Reissue Precision Bass for the fourth. I had never used GarageBand on the phone with any intent until this section so I would do a better job next time I think.
My Conclusions
After trying many approaches, the fastest and overall least cumbersome and least complex is the Positive Grid RIFF. It has no mic input and no built in microphone so using it for an acoustic only instrument is a non-starter. You could use GarageBand with the iPhone microphones for that purpose, but if I am going to audition an acoustic guitar without a pickup, it’s more than likely high end, and for that purpose I will take my Zoom H6 field recorder. For electric guitar, electric bass and acoustic guitar with a pickup, the RIFF is a super interface and you won’t get your pocket picked if you want more amps, cabs and effects because the in app upgrade from BIAS FX Mobile Free Edition to the top line BIAS FX Mobile Elite Edition is $24.95 CAD in the app.
Now if Fender could put a better interface and recording capability into their awesome Mustang Micro headphone only amp, and deliver it for $150 they would own this space by the power of their marketing engine alone. They can do multi-effects as seen in the Presonus apps, and the Tone Master Pro, and they understand computational audio as executed by Fishman in the Acoustasonic and Highway instruments and they know how to do recording because they own Presonus.
I doubt that Fender will, and so I am moving ahead using my existing iPhone, GarageBand and my Positive Grid RIFF. And I can use either iPad for the same purpose if I wish, because my license for BIAS FX 2 Mobile works on all my devices. Highly recommended!
