So many questions...

[scott.thomason]

Sorry for the ambiguous title, but I have a grab-bag of questions.

I'm having a blast recording and mixing with Qtractor, I'm so glad that's the program I chose. Thanks @rncbc!

I'm working with a track containing a bass line I recorded from my acoustic guitar. I want to process the original signal one way, but I also want to route the signal to a separate track or bus and process that with an octave divider and other EQ etc. So that's the situation leading to all these questions. Some of them are specifically about Qtractor, some about plugins, and some about recording in general...

1. How "hot" of a signal should I send into the DAW from my audio interface (that my guitar is plugged into)? Right now I'm sending it in right around -20db, is that too low? What's a good rule of thumb?

2. I'm having a lot of trouble getting my bass line cleanly converted through an octave divider without tons of glitchy sounds. I've tried "Audio Divider (Suboctave Generator) from SWH, "gxoc_2" from Guitarix, and "MDA SubSynth" from drobilla.net, and they all seem to produce similar results, so I'm pretty sure it's me, not the plugins. I tried narrowing the frequencies, cutting out stuff below 70Hz and above about 1600Hz, but that didn't do much. What's the secret? Or should I just go invest in the latest real hardware sub-octave guitar pedal?

The rest of my questions are all about Qtractor...

3. Is there a way to send a signal, from a track or a bus, to multiple other tracks or buses so they can be processed further independently? It seems like when I use an Aux Send, it "steals" the signal at that point and sends it to the destination, but removes it from further processing in that track.

4. I'm just not understanding the difference between using an Aux Send and an Insert. They both create JACK ports. I know that in the case of an Aux Send, there's only output, no input, but other than that, how else do they differ? Oh...inserts do a send/return externally without involving any buses. Does the returned signal then proceed through the rest of the processing for that track and then get sent to the track's output bus?

5. Is there any reason why you can't take the sent output, and instead of processing it externally, just connect it to some other Qtractor JACK input port, maybe one that was created as an input bus?

6. When you create an Aux Send, you can route it to bus "(none)". What the heck...what happens then, and why would you want to do this?

7. When you create an Aux Send, you have to select a Send Bus, but none of the output or duplex buses I've defined show up in the dropdown? Why not?

8. What is the "Direct Access" dropdown in the Aux Send dialog? Does it have something to do with connecting the indicated control to some hardware device?

9. Is there something special about the Master bus?

Thank you in advance for any light you can shed on this for me!

[tavasti]

I'm working with a track containing a bass line I recorded from my acoustic guitar. I want to process the original signal one way, but I also want to route the signal to a separate track or bus and process that with an octave divider and other EQ etc. So that's the situation leading to all these questions. Some of them are specifically about Qtractor, some about plugins, and some about recording in general...

* How "hot" of a signal should I send into the DAW from my audio interface (that my guitar is plugged into)? Right now I'm sending it in right around -20db, is that too low? What's a good rule of thumb?

I would say 'as hot as you can get without going over 0db'. I generally try to test playing as loud as I can, and adjust that to be aroud -6 to -3 range. Edit: I mean peak values, not RMS.

*. I'm having a lot of trouble getting my bass line cleanly converted through an octave divider without tons of glitchy sounds. I've tried "Audio Divider (Suboctave Generator) from SWH, "gxoc_2" from Guitarix, and "MDA SubSynth" from drobilla.net, and they all seem to produce similar results, so I'm pretty sure it's me, not the plugins. I tried narrowing the frequencies, cutting out stuff below 70Hz and above about 1600Hz, but that didn't do much. What's the secret? Or should I just go invest in the latest real hardware sub-octave guitar pedal?

My experience is that software octavers are horrible, pedals range from bad to nearly tolerable. With all them, problem is doing the thing in real time, and that causes some trouble. I think I have gotten best results with pitching down in DAW. In case your daw does not have pitch adjusment with keeping tempo, do it externally with audacity.

For Qtractor stuff, cannot say anything, not familiar with it.

[Largos]

Sorry for the ambiguous title, but I have a grab-bag of questions.

I'm having a blast recording and mixing with Qtractor, I'm so glad that's the program I chose. Thanks @rncbc!

I'm working with a track containing a bass line I recorded from my acoustic guitar. I want to process the original signal one way, but I also want to route the signal to a separate track or bus and process that with an octave divider and other EQ etc. So that's the situation leading to all these questions. Some of them are specifically about Qtractor, some about plugins, and some about recording in general...

* How "hot" of a signal should I send into the DAW from my audio interface (that my guitar is plugged into)? Right now I'm sending it in right around -20db, is that too low? What's a good rule of thumb?

This is a good video on levels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHm931XQGk Contrary to what tavasti said, recording "as hot as you can get" is not good practice for the reasons explained in the video.

[scott.thomason]

* How "hot" of a signal should I send into the DAW from my audio interface (that my guitar is plugged into)? Right now I'm sending it in right around -20db, is that too low? What's a good rule of thumb?

This is a good video on levels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHm931XQGk Contrary to what tavasti said, recording "as hot as you can get" is not good practice for the reasons explained in the video.

Short form for those that don't like videos: the video explains that equipment dealing with analog signals is designed so that the best recording level is -18db, and that your peaks shouldn't exceed -12db.

Thanks @Largos!

[rncbc]

yep, too many questions

so please may I redirect you to https://www.rncbc.org forum perhaps? to have this discussion?

cheers & thanks

[hefxthoth]

* How "hot" of a signal should I send into the DAW from my audio interface (that my guitar is plugged into)? Right now I'm sending it in right around -20db, is that too low? What's a good rule of thumb?

This is a good video on levels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHm931XQGk Contrary to what tavasti said, recording "as hot as you can get" is not good practice for the reasons explained in the video.

Short form for those that don't like videos: the video explains that equipment dealing with analog signals is designed so that the best recording level is -18db, and that your peaks shouldn't exceed -12db.

Thanks @Largos!

6dB of dynamic range in a good sounding guitar is a bit difficult even post-processing. Gain staging at -18dBs RMS of input signal, the peaks values in a good interpretation should be between -10/-6 dBFS. Peaks shouldn't exceed -3 dBFS