Rocksmith - a great game for learning guitar or learning some songs and jamming along with for experienced players. After getting fed up with lag I found out the best way to play the game. It will take a little investment but will provide lag free gameplay. You will need a guitar signal splitter and a guitar amp or processor (such as a Line6 POD or a Fractal Axe-FX)
I'm the type of person that likes to get the most out of any experience. I heard about Rocksmith when the first game came out and I also read a lot about its shortcomings. Recently a new version came out (Rocksmith 2014) so I once again read reviews and apparently the developers addressed a lot of the problems with the first game, but there still is one glaring problem, input lag. If you are playing the game through HDMI or through a sound card on PC you will most likely experince a lag between when you play a note and when you will get audio feedback from the game. For some people it might be acceptable but it was annoying for me. I gave the game a shot with simply plugging my guitar into my pc with the rocksmith USB cable but was disappointed. I have a $1,000 mackie firewire mixer and the lag was still noticeable, even using the fastest setting I could use and still have the audio decent, so I decided to dig deeper and find a solution, and I have. I found the best solution is to split your guitar signal and set the guitar volume in the game to 0%. So you send one output to the game and send another to a guitar amp or a guitar processor. I tested 3 units of varying cost and found 2 of them to be adequate and one to be garbage for this game. The units I tested are:
Morley ABC
Rock / Splitter RS-1
and the Lehle P-Split II
The first unit I tried was the Morley. The only advantage it has over the other 2 units is it splits to either 3 amps/processors or 3 guitars. I tried the both ways (one guitar to 3 outputs or 1 output to 3 guitars) with the rocksmith cable and both ways sounded like garbage. My theory is the USB nature of the Rocksmith cable introduces a ton of noise. The other two units I review isolate the outputs but this one is bidirectional, I suspect that is where the problem is, the USB Rocksmith cable introduces a ton of noise and this unit can split both ways so does not isolate the signals. It was simply unusable. It sounded awful. This might be a decent unit for splitting a guitar signal to a few amps, but it is unacceptable for Rocksmith. It costs around $100 so it was in the middle of the three units I tried. I promptly returned it and ordered a few other units.
Next up was the Rock / Splitter RS-1. This unit makes it simple. It has an input for your guitar and an output for the rocksmith cable and another output for your guitar amp/processor. I was impressed with how quiet my guitar processor was using this unit, especially compared to the Morley. I sensed a very slight loss of signal/tone, but the sound was nice and did not introduce extra noise like the Morley unit. You can tell the people that make this are gearing it toward use with the game. It's a solid unit. One small disadvantage compared to the other units is it comes with an AC adapter you need to plug in for it to work. It is available for around $70 shipped from this site and I recommend it if you are looking for a nice budget splitter to use with Rocksmith:
The last unit I tested was a Lehle P-Split II. Comparing this to the RS-1 directly I thought this unit had a slightly better sound. It also feels more substantial when compared to the RS-1. It's a lot heavier so I know it has a better quality components and transformer and this is a tried and true piece of equipment I'm certain is used in studios so if I ever want to split a guitar signal for another purpose other than Rocksmith this will fit the bill. It does not require any power so that's another Plus. It does retail for $100 more than the RS-1 though. You can find coupons for guitar center/musician's friend to bring it down to around $150, which is what I did and I'm satisfied with the unit for that. Here is a link to it on Guitar Center
So wrapping up, avoid the Morley unit for this game. It introduces a ton of noise and does not work at all for Rocksmith, unless you like a terrible sounding guitar in your game. If you are on a budget and are just looking for something to split your guitar signal for Rocksmith the Rock/Splitter RS-1 comes highly recommended for $70 shipped. If you are looking for a bit more quality and a unit to split guitar signals for multiple amps or recording direct I recommned the Lehle P-Split unit.
There are other units out there that provide a similar function, but these are the only 3 I tested and I'm very satisfied with the RS-1 and P-splitter. I hope this overview can help people.
One last note, if you use the P-Split use the ISO out for the Rocksmith cable, and the DIR out for your guitar amp or processor. I tried switching those and got some extra noise, so that is the best configuration.
Rock on.
Tim
Image sources in order (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
No comments:
Post a Comment