Axe Fx II, DAW, and Headphones. How do I get a good sound?

jetspeed747

jetspeed747

Inspired
Hi all,
Anyone have suggestions for getting good sound through my Audio Technica M50 Headphones while monitoring through Logic? I was using a Matrix GT800 and 2 TrueTone Cabs loaded with EV 12L's but the whole band is now on headphones through the Logic Pro 9. I understand I will have to rework my patches but is there anything else I should be looking at? Setting in Axe Fx II when switching to this setup? I'd appreciate anything you can add because the sound is really terrible right now.
 
It all really depends on the frequency response of the headphones. Look in your headphone manual for the frequency plot. They may be exaggerating certain frequencies. If you can visualize the graph you can adjust those potential problem frequencies.


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much discussion -- bottom line is that the maker used beyerdynamic 770s (or 880? i cant recall) and it depends on the ohmage. Get the low ohmage ones (80 or something like that) and you should be good to go. 16 is too low, 200 is too high...

BLah blah...those are good ones...lol...
 
what does your favorite music sound like through those headphones, without any eq adjustments?
 
They are actually really good headphones when I'm listening to my favorite music. I'm noticing that my patches just don't seem to have any dynamics or dimension. I have been reworking these patches to include the use of far field ir's and the sound is getting better but I can't seem to get the hight gain distortion and overall drive to sound realistic. It sounds very opaque and digital. I've tweaked and haven't found a solution.
 
Not sure if it will help but...

Because my headphones do not produce the same sound that I hear through my DAW, I will take a preset that I use and place a looper in it. I'll record a basic loop of the track that I want to record (picking dynamics, Open chords, muted power chords, etc.) and have it constantly loop. I'll then turn on the input monitor on the DAW so that I can hear what the DAW is hearing/recording. While this is going on, I'll tweak the sound with Axe-Edit or the front panel while it's constantly playing.

Kind of a time saver for me... but may be a horrible one for others.



Edit: Just read the original post and my response has little to no effect for answering the question. My apologies.... it's been a long week.
 
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As Shootgun said depends on rthe responce. Consider that in studio musician use closed back headphone for tracking. In my experience you can use you audio techinca to get the tone flavour, but for the dinamic part you must listen on some speakers.
I have pair of AGK K702 which are pretty good due to the flat responce, but I allways check the result on speakers, and slowly you understand what to tweak and what not.
There are no rules on this.
Try to compre to sound cans to speaker and you can just keep you M50 and spend your $$$ for something else!!!
 
It bears repeating: when you use headphones only (no speakers and no room volume), you break the acoustic feedback connection between your speakers and your guitar. You will lose some of your tone, dynamics and feel.

'Phones can still sound pretty good, but it'll never sound and play as well as it does with a speaker involved.
 
also weird things can happen, like if your headphone cable touches your guitar, suddenly you hear the resonance directly from the guitar and it can affect your perception.

hehe, that guy said "Shootgun" :)
 
To the OP,
it's very difficult to answer a generic question like "how do I get a good sound...". Good is a relative term. Good for you might really suck for me and a million others. A question worded to ask why your high gain presets, played thru a "Matrix GT800 and 2 TrueTone Cabs loaded with EV 12L's" doesn't sound the same when monitored thru "Audio Technica M50 Headphones" sourced thru Logic Pro 9 - might have got more definitive responses.

Headphones are like taking your studio monitors and attaching them to the side of your head. Move them further away from your ears and the experience changes. Even so-called FRFR phones are somewhat "tuned" for close-proximity listening. Cavity size, noise-cancelling, number of drivers, etc. all factor in.

My point is that NO set of phones is going to give you EXACTLY the sound you hear (feel?) when playing the equivalent preset thru a power amp + speakers. You have audio facets that do not translate to phones such as air movement, volume and room dynamics, plus other intangibles. Like others have suggested, compare what you hear in the phones - using known audio sources - and compare to what you hear thru the speakers.
Do the same with your presets and you will eventually get there. There is no silver bullet.
 
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s0c9 said:
To the OP,
it's very difficult to answer a generic question like "how do I get a good sound...". Good is a relative term. Good for you might really suck for me and a million others. A question worded to ask why your high gain presets, played thru a "Matrix GT800 and 2 TrueTone Cabs loaded with EV 12L's" doesn't sound the same when monitored thru "Audio Technica M50 Headphones" sourced thru Logic Pro 9 - might have got more definitive responses.

Headphones are like taking your studio monitors and attaching them to the side of your head. Move them further away from your ears and the experience changes. Even so-called FRFR phones are somewhat "tuned" for close-proximity listening. Cavity size, noise-cancelling, number of drivers, etc. all factor in.

My point is that NO set of phones is going to give you EXACTLY the sound you hear (feel?) when playing the equivalent preset thru a power amp + speakers. You have audio facets that do not translate to phones such as air movement, volume and room dynamics, plus other intangibles. Like others have suggested, compare what you hear in the phones - using known audio sources - and compare to what you hear thru the speakers.
Do the same with your presets and you will eventually get there. There is no silver bullet.
Click to expand...

Thank s0c9, I totally get what your saying and the science behind it. I probably should have worded things differently at the time of OP but didn't really know how to put it into words. Knowing there is no "silver bullet" is good because it lets me understand that I just have to keep tweaking away and experimenting as opposed to wondering if there is a definitive answer/guideline to accomplish the task. Having said this I'm still wondering, with regard to distortion, if I can get a better sound in terms of not so digital sounding? I have no problem with continuing to tweak to accomplish this but it would be nice to know from experienced users like yourself if this "digital", "opaque", sort of distortion is par for the course or not. Thanks to all for your input.
 
If I may be so bold as to speak for fellow forum member "luke":

Want to hear your Axe Fx in a truly FRFR environment, try the Audeze LCD-2 headphones.
 
As a guy that uses in-ear monitors, let me tell you straight away that it's going to sound strange in ways you can't put your finger on. I drove myself crazy trying to dial my patches for me ears and I realized that it's fundamentally different. The effect of having a cab in the room is that you can feel the cab more than you think. When you completely isolate the guitar sound, now you're actually hearing the tone rather than the tone as it bounces around in the room. Do not expect to ever be able to dial it in to sound precisely like that because that's a very deep rabbit hole with a lot of frustration.

What you should be trying to dial in is a mic'd cab sound in studio monitors. What would that cab sound like if you mic'd it, then went to a control room and listened through those headphones? THAT'S the real sound of that rig and THAT'S what you'll be able to recreate in the Axe FX. To get over this issue, I did 2 things: First, I reset every patch and started from scratch with basic knobs. I didn't touch any of the advanced stuff. I even went to some of the stock patches and suddenly those sounded pretty damned good with some subtle tweaking of basic parameters. Second, I realized I would need different patches in a live band setting than I needed in the studio in order to blend in with the band members. What I use live simply didn't translate well when every instrument was isolated and really tweaked.

I would encourage you to take a deep breath, set the amp model you're using to default and tweak from a different perspective. Also, take ear breaks every 30 mins or so. Go watch TV, grab a coke from the gas station, or something. Your ear has an unbelievable ability to hone in on whatever it is you're trying to pay attention to and exaggerate it. So, if you're trying your damnedest to dial out fizz, your ear will hone in on that fizz so you can hear it clearly. Take a break, come back to it WITHOUT trying to hear the fizz and you'll be surprised with how dark the patch got while you were trimming the highs.
 
Sidivan said:
As a guy that uses in-ear monitors, let me tell you straight away that it's going to sound strange in ways you can't put your finger on. I drove myself crazy trying to dial my patches for me ears and I realized that it's fundamentally different. The effect of having a cab in the room is that you can feel the cab more than you think. When you completely isolate the guitar sound, now you're actually hearing the tone rather than the tone as it bounces around in the room. Do not expect to ever be able to dial it in to sound precisely like that because that's a very deep rabbit hole with a lot of frustration.

What you should be trying to dial in is a mic'd cab sound in studio monitors. What would that cab sound like if you mic'd it, then went to a control room and listened through those headphones? THAT'S the real sound of that rig and THAT'S what you'll be able to recreate in the Axe FX. To get over this issue, I did 2 things: First, I reset every patch and started from scratch with basic knobs. I didn't touch any of the advanced stuff. I even went to some of the stock patches and suddenly those sounded pretty damned good with some subtle tweaking of basic parameters. Second, I realized I would need different patches in a live band setting than I needed in the studio in order to blend in with the band members. What I use live simply didn't translate well when every instrument was isolated and really tweaked.

I would encourage you to take a deep breath, set the amp model you're using to default and tweak from a different perspective. Also, take ear breaks every 30 mins or so. Go watch TV, grab a coke from the gas station, or something. Your ear has an unbelievable ability to hone in on whatever it is you're trying to pay attention to and exaggerate it. So, if you're trying your damnedest to dial out fizz, your ear will hone in on that fizz so you can hear it clearly. Take a break, come back to it WITHOUT trying to hear the fizz and you'll be surprised with how dark the patch got while you were trimming the highs.
Click to expand...

Awesome! This is exactly what I was looking for. I'm using Sure SE535 iem now and with the whole band playing on headphones during rehearsal in the studio. I'm definitely going to try your suggestions. Thanks again.
 
Sidivan said:
As a guy that uses in-ear monitors, let me tell you straight away that it's going to sound strange in ways you can't put your finger on. I drove myself crazy trying to dial my patches for me ears and I realized that it's fundamentally different. The effect of having a cab in the room is that you can feel the cab more than you think. When you completely isolate the guitar sound, now you're actually hearing the tone rather than the tone as it bounces around in the room. Do not expect to ever be able to dial it in to sound precisely like that because that's a very deep rabbit hole with a lot of frustration.

What you should be trying to dial in is a mic'd cab sound in studio monitors. What would that cab sound like if you mic'd it, then went to a control room and listened through those headphones? THAT'S the real sound of that rig and THAT'S what you'll be able to recreate in the Axe FX. To get over this issue, I did 2 things: First, I reset every patch and started from scratch with basic knobs. I didn't touch any of the advanced stuff. I even went to some of the stock patches and suddenly those sounded pretty damned good with some subtle tweaking of basic parameters. Second, I realized I would need different patches in a live band setting than I needed in the studio in order to blend in with the band members. What I use live simply didn't translate well when every instrument was isolated and really tweaked.

I would encourage you to take a deep breath, set the amp model you're using to default and tweak from a different perspective. Also, take ear breaks every 30 mins or so. Go watch TV, grab a coke from the gas station, or something. Your ear has an unbelievable ability to hone in on whatever it is you're trying to pay attention to and exaggerate it. So, if you're trying your damnedest to dial out fizz, your ear will hone in on that fizz so you can hear it clearly. Take a break, come back to it WITHOUT trying to hear the fizz and you'll be surprised with how dark the patch got while you were trimming the highs.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to post this. It could save hours if not years for some. I'll be honest it probably took me 10 years of dialing in Boogie's to figure out my ear was playing tricks on me.
 
I think one of the challenges is we have been listening to and playing in front of "real amps" for so long. It's only natural to want to hear our guitar the same way no matter what gear we use.

But once I let go of the "in the room" sound and realized that the axe is creating a sound that you'd hear from the control room of a studio, it all made sense and making my tones became so much easier. Also, using full range speakers instead of guitar cabs, I can hear almost exactly what the audience is hearing, making sure it's good.

So many are concerned only with what their cab sounds like and assume it sounds good from the audience, but it could be totally different!
 
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