Help me understand: high frequencies

I

iceman

Member
I'm a FRFR guy. Just got a Verve 12ma a few days ago and was using an Atomic wedge before that. All the tones I go for are "in the room" type tones. As such, I rarely use mic sims and have recently been employing the parametric eq hi/low blocking trick to simultaneously tighten the low end and remove annoying high end. But I'm wondering why this is necessary in the first place. I'm referring to the filtering out of the high end specifically. If the signal is routed through a simulated guitar cab in the axefx which would itself block high end that guitar speakers don't reproduce, then why is further blocking necessary to achieve a guitar cab-like tone? Shouldn't that cab-like tone come straight out of the Verve without needing MORE high end filtering by way of a parametric eq block in the routing?

Just trying to understand. Thanks!
 
It is extremely common for recorded electric guitar to be band-limited in postprocessing, even though the (physical) guitar speaker does its own band-limiting. As was pointed out above, close-mic'ing can (but does not always) result in a much brighter sound than you would hear when you're playing through the same cab. So it should come as no surprise that reduction of high frequencies beyond what the cab sim does on its own may be desirable at times.

FWIW, when I use my own IRs, I don't need to do any band-limiting for live use with the other instrumentation I normally work with. That could change, however, depending on the context in which I find myself. When you find this sort of thing necessary, in most cases you'd have the same experience if you were using a physical amp/cab under the same conditions. There's nothing "wrong" here, it's a matter of using the available tools to get the desired result.
 
Now here's an interesting question I have...

The IRs are usually recorded in one position, a close-mic'd one to be precise, so that the sound captured is almost exactly what the speaker itself reproduces, purely, with no interaction from the air or other surfaces. If this is the case, when this captured sound is projected into a real room, out of speakers designed to accurately represent the signal being fed to them, why aren't the sounds virtually identical? Sonic character of the microphone itself notwithstanding, I would think the two sounds to be virtually indistinguishable.

Just to be clear, I'm in no way suggesting that the Axe, or even IRs, have any kind of shortcoming; my logic simply leads me to think that the sounds should be the same, and any other difference would amount to largely difference in perception or perspective.
 
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It isn't the same because the IR is only capturing the sound at one specific position. A real cabinet you hear everything at one and many times multiple speakers with all their sounds coloring and phase canceling and all that jazz. It's very different actually.
 
FreaqyFrequency said:
The IRs are usually recorded in one position, a close-mic'd one to be precise, so that the sound captured is almost exactly what the speaker itself reproduces, purely, with no interaction from the air or other surfaces.
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No. The sound of a close-mic'ed speaker is not only not "almost exactly what the speaker itself reproduces," it is quite different, particularly at high frequencies, than the speaker would sound in a perfectly anechoic environment at a normal listening distance. In order to capture only the sound of the speaker, as you would hear it while playing (without room reflections, which are provided by your actual playing environment), you must place a microphone that will cause no coloration in a position that is representative of where your head would be while playing.

If this is the case,
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See above. It is not the case.
 
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Thanks Jay, that makes perfect sense. The number of variables seems slightly intimidating at first, but your description is perfectly clear.
 
Well !
I bought the redwirez big box ir -collection . In there you can find IR´s being made at different distanses and postions (They are also made with different cabs , speakers and mic´s )
. I bet you can find one (among them) where you do not have to eq a single dB .

Basicly , because the mic is put at the spot where your favorite sound exists.


Thomas
 
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