All of us who have done a few live gigs are used to plugging into a D.I. box, but may not quite be aware of why. Without getting too technical about it, the main reason is is turning an high impedence/unbalanced signal into a low impedence/balanced one. Balanced in the sense that you can have long cable runs without losing signal and getting noise issues.
A good D.I. will also have a ground lift switch that can get rid of hum that often happens in locations with less than adequate electrical systems. Oh yeah, we’ve all been there.
What often doesn’t get mentioned though is how incredibly useful they are in the home studio (or professional recording studios for that matter). Especially when it comes to recording electric guitar and bass.
RECORD BOTH YOUR AMP AND THE CLEAN GUITAR
The ability to record both the clean guitar signal as well as the 57 on your guitar amp is the obvious reason why they’re cool. It does sometimes happen that you’re well into mixing a song and realize that the amp sound you captured wasn’t quite right for the song.
Or there might be some weird noises in your amp that you haven’t noticed. Some power issues, a microphonic tube, bad microphone cable – a lot of stuff that can happen, and sometimes you don’t notice it until you get that track by itself when you’re mixing.
That’s when it can be great to have that clean guitar track. If the performance was good, you can get away with reamping that track, whether it be through that amp, another amp, through plugins or modellers or whatever it might be. Say, if you’re on a deadline, re-recording might not be an option.
Or you might just want to experiment with some sounds to see if you can come up with something unique. The possibilities are near endless.
And it’s much better than to have to start calling people and postponing a release or making players do it all over again when the performance was good to begin with. Or…having to do some ghost playing and hope the guitar player doesn’t notice – and yep, that has happened way more times than you think over the years.
EDITING HELP
A recorded D.I. track can also be an invaluable tool for editing time. If it’s a distorted guitar that needs some time alignment, the D.I. track is fantastic as a visual guide. Line the two tracks up before you start editing and group them together. That alone can save you hours of guessing where the actual transients are, as those are near impossible to spot on a distorted and saturated amp track.
Not only that, but if there are glaring tuning issues or stuff like that, you can actually fix that using something like Melodyne before reamping. And if you’re really adventurous, convert to midi and layer in some synth sounds together with your guitar part.
So…a D.I. can also be a mixing tool as well as that box you plug in to on stage on your gig.
Do keep in mind though, they’re not all alike. Quality wise in particular. A good quality D.I. box costs a bit of money, but it’s generally worth it. The cheapo Behringers and similar brands do not sound anywhere near as good as the higher quality stuff. Avoid the $20 ones like the plague. Seriously.
For good quality I would recommend the boxes from Radial, Countryman, BSS and Klark Teknik. High quality gear that’s built to last for ages.
Myself I use a Radial JDI which is a passive DI and has big heavy transformers in it. Sounds absolutely amazing, especially on bass guitar. Something about that weight to the sound that those transformers add which is just so incredibly pleasing to the ear.
Hope you found this little piece useful, and do check out some of the other posts on the site!