Monitor But Don't Print Fx's?

[Bob Snelgrove]

I need to record a pedal steel track but the client wants it dry but I want to hear some reverb, etc while recording.  Is there a way to do that?

 

thx

 

bob

[Wookiee]

Yes @Bob Snelgrove all audio is stored raw. Just use a buss with a reverb plugin, use  a send from the track to the reverb, which feeds the master buss.

When you print the track for the client either just print the track not the master buss, mute the reverb buss prior to printing the master buss.

[Sock Monkey]

The engineers job is to capture a clean pure recording.  Listening very closely is critical at that point so you can make decisions about keeping or redoing a take. So best practices is no reverb for the engineer but no problem for the talent. 
 

edit: I can’t fix this because I was quoted but I thought the OP was the recording engineer not the talent. Read my post below. I see @Starship Krupa justifiably disagreeing. 

Edited February 4 by Sock Monkey

[Bob Snelgrove]

57 minutes ago, Sock Monkey said:

How can you evaluate the recording if you do that? The engineers job is to capture a clean pure recording.  Listening very closely is critical at that point so you can make decisions about keeping or redoing a take. The client is correct. 

To be more creative, I use a small delay and reverb as I do live. Playing dry is to sterile  .Best of both worlds; I get to hear my fx while performing and the engineer gets a pure signal to do as he pleases!

[Will.]

2 hours ago, Sock Monkey said:

How can you evaluate the recording if you do that? The engineers job is to capture a clean pure recording.  Listening very closely is critical at that point so you can make decisions about keeping or redoing a take. The client is correct. 

I believe he wants to monitor a wet signal while recording a dry take. 

Depending on the setup he has -- there are ways to send a dry signal to the artist in the booth and have a wet signal in the control room while monitoring. 

To guess each scenario without knowing the OP's setup wont do anyone justice. 

4 hours ago, Bob Snelgrove said:

I need to record a pedal steel track but the client wants it dry but I want to hear some reverb, etc while recording.  Is there a way to do that?

 

thx

 

bob

Kindly give more detail on your setup in order to get a direct and clean answer.  

[mettelus]

You can even simply use the track FX bin and disabled/remove the FX when exporting. No need to get too convoluted with things. As mentioned above, the wav file on disc is the recorded signal, so you can even drill into the project folder to get it, or even drag/drop (grab the clip by the top bar) the wav from the track view onto your desktop or such. Unless you bounce to tracks, the contents of the FX bin will not be printed to a track's audio data.

Stupid side comment I've made before (the above post gave me a chuckle)... in college we had an acoustic dead room (leave it to physicists to create such a thing), but an environment with zero reverb is so unnatural that it affects the listener dramatically. Just being in that room and talking to someone was the strangest feeling.

[msmcleod]

@Creative Sauce did a video on exactly this scenario.... the title is a slight misnomer,  it's actually recording while listening to effects, but it's recording the dry signal - not recording the effects as well.
 

 

[Bob Snelgrove]

2 hours ago, Will. said:

I believe he wants to monitor a wet signal while recording a dry take. 

Depending on the setup he has -- there are ways to send a dry signal to the artist in the booth and have a wet signal in the control room while monitoring. 

To guess each scenario without knowing the OP's setup wont do anyone justice. 

Kindly give more detail on your setup in order to get a direct and clean answer.  

Pedal steel into Tascam US-2x2 into Win PC,  Cakewalk Sonar (Producer 8)

[Michael Vogel]

@Bob Snelgrove notice you mentioned Sonar 8.

This forum is for Cakewalk Sonar (the subscription version) which is now owned by Bandlab.

Sonar 8 must be about 15 years out of date. Followed by 8.5, X1, X2, X3 then Platinum. Followed by 5 years of development by Bandlab.

the Free Cakewalk by Bandlab (still available) has been developed right up to recent months and has been superseded by Cakewalk Sonar by Bandlab.

Edited February 3 by Michael Vogel
Additional text

[Sock Monkey]

15 hours ago, Michael Vogel said:

Free Cakewalk by Bandlab (still available) has been developed right up to recent months and has been superseded by Cakewalk Sonar by Bandlab.

This is not exactly true. Cakewalk stopped development over a year ago. They have issued only a few minor updates that were for activation management and then  I think one or 2 other minor  fixes. Nothing wrong with using Sonar 8 if it meets your requirements. Especially audio. It was a very stable version. 

Sorry I didn’t realize that you were the player. 

Because of the limited monitoring capabilities of the Tascam 2x2 this makes it almost impossible to have 2 different headphone mixes. 
You have to share the headphone jack. 
This is easy with an interface that has either 4 outputs or 2 different headphone jacks.
Then it needs the ability to send different mixes to them. This usually involves a software mixer. My Focusrite 6i6 could have 3 cue mixes. My Zoom L8 has 4. 

What I used to do before I bought the 6i6 was when the client wanted reverb but I didn’t,  was to set up a second  headphone system for them using a mixer that had built in effects. 
I simply used a headphone splitter and I had my headphones and they had the same going to a channel of the mixer. This allowed them to add reverb and control their level. 
You would  be the one who would have the mixer and the client gets the dry mix 
 

The only possible way I can think of to have 2 mixes from a Daw involves using a 4x4 interface. Or panning the dry left and the wet right but then the wet would be mono. 

 

Edited February 3 by Sock Monkey

[Starship Krupa]

On 2/2/2025 at 8:18 AM, Bob Snelgrove said:

I need to record a pedal steel track but the client wants it dry but I want to hear some reverb, etc while recording.  Is there a way to do that?

Absolutely.

Simplest way is probably the one in the Creative Sauce video (the one that Mark linked to). Put your FX in the track FX bin, adjust to taste. When you have a good take, turn off the FX and export your track.

SONAR (and every other DAW I can think of) doesn't "print" FX when recording, so when you record something, the file created on the disk will be completely dry.

My guess is that the client has supplied a backing track for you to play along to, which you'll import into a SONAR project, then play your part and export your track minus the backing track?

[Starship Krupa]

On 2/2/2025 at 10:06 AM, Sock Monkey said:

edit: I can’t fix this because I was quoted but I thought the OP was the recording engineer not the talent.

Right, there's even a name for this process, "comfort reverb," to help the performer relax and deliver a more natural performance, rather than be confronted with a dry sound in the cans (revealing every detail).

[Bob Snelgrove]

57 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Absolutely.

Simplest way is probably the one in the Creative Sauce video (the one that Mark linked to). Put your FX in the track FX bin, adjust to taste. When you have a good take, turn off the FX and export your track.

SONAR (and every other DAW I can think of) doesn't "print" FX when recording, so when you record something, the file created on the disk will be completely dry.

My guess is that the client has supplied a backing track for you to play along to, which you'll import into a SONAR project, then play your part and export your track minus the backing track?

Exactly!  Thank all of you