My Live tone FRFR vs Cabs

badmagick

badmagick

Inspired
I‘ve seen a lot of “amp-in-the-room” vs frfr posts but this feels like a different enough question and was inspired by another post in this forum topic. I just didn’t want to hijack the other thread.
When I set some of my tones, I had an a/b switch and used my Dual Rec with 4x12’s side by side with my powered 1x12 xitones. The sound was right there for me. My 4x12’s (celestion v30’s) reside in “live-in” road cases where you just remove the front. Guessing the road case may have something to do with it since you are not getting the vibration of the entire cab at close proximity (which should have a lot to with that amp-in-the-room feel right?).
Also, my tone through the frfr did not sound like a mic’d cab. It sounds like my cab. Only better because I don’t have to bend down in front of my beaming 4x12 to hear what I really sound like.
Is there anyone else that feels this way or has had similar experience?
 
IMO, the real underlying issue that causes these debates is threefold:

1) Tons of people have bought into cheap re-badged PA monitor cabinets (labelled as "FRFR") that aren't terribly accurate or linear. Thus, what they are hearing isn't a good representation of what the modeller is creating.

2) Volume. Part of the "amp-in-the-room" effect is the volume level where we tend to run tube amps. Set them the same, and the room resonances all come into play just like they do with a regular old amp.

3) Speaker placement. When you use a wedge cabinet, you point it directly back at yourself. Most guys running half-stack or combos have them pointed at the back of their knees. As a result the "regular amp" guys have them turned up a lot louder than they realize, leading right back to #2, above. This also reduces the amount of high frequencies that they hear from the cabinet, leading to a belief that there is more bottom end from the regular old amp. The amount coming out is the same, but their legs can't hear it.

In the end, if you use a really good monitor cabinet, the sound it puts out will be a near-perfect match for the sound right in front of a regular old amp. The difference isn't between the modeller and the amp.
 
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There will definitely be a range of opinions on this, based on a range of different amps, different rooms, and different listeners. The science of all that has been discussed elsewhere. As for this thread It's good to hear that you are happy! I also very much enjoy the sound of high end FRFR wedges or cabs.
 
Plenty of newer/younger guitar players will have the same experience because its the only way they will have heard a guitar. I think the days of people having 4x12's, either at home, or that they used in bands, are rather decreasing. For one thing, look at the cost of entry for a nicer 100 or 50 watt amp and a matching cab..... thousands of dollars in many cases

Far different than it was back in my day when everyone in high school had a 4x12 and usually a 50 or 100 watt amp because that is all there was out there.... older Marshall, Peavey etc were readily cheap. I had a Bassman I got for a few hundred bucks, I think I paid $400 for a JCM800, my 4x12 cab was all beat up but I think it was $100.....

That was high school.... come home from school, crank the amp til parents got home. That was "amp in room" because it was.....

These days, I dont think many kids have a 4x12 in their bedroom. Older guys who were kids when I was still do in some cases, but those are also the ones who complain in "amp in room" threads. Doesn't sound like they are used to, and they are also used to big amps on stage etc, because that is what we used to do.

Even pre-virus you just don't see many bands at small gigs with 100 watt amps, too loud for most venues, and I don't think many younger kids are even that into wanting to sound like classic 70s rock, EVH etc..... lots of new and different guitar styles these days...

A 'bitchin" Trans Am or Camero isn't considered cool, we don't use aqua net with teased hair or wear spandex, and we largely don't use 100 watt Marshall's. Changing times, and with them, changing taste and points of reference.

A whole generation isn't going to have any idea what VHS or rotary phones were like to use, going to the library to research papers, or the sound of an insanely loud amp in a small room lol
 
I personally haven’t missed my 4x12’s. Still have them and the head (which I use mostly as a reference tone -plus I just can’t bring myself to sell them). I do rent em out for other’s backline every so often.
I’ll have to set up the head and big cab again to a/b for a reality check. Something to do while there’s no gigs.
 
@FullThrottle64 pretty much nailed it.

Personally, I've come to look at AITR as a MacGuffin. It moves the digital vs tube debate forward but no single
person can explain what it means in a way that most would agree with them.
Can't be SPL cause, well, SPL is SPL regardless the source.
Can't be feel because no-one's come up with a good description of what THAT even means.
An noted in #3 above - SPEAKER PLACEMENT is so critical - all else being of equal quality.
 
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It's definitely not a MacGuffin...

It's really simple. And it has been explained many times in a way that nearly everyone agrees upon.

When playing/listening to an amp, you are hearing that amp as it sounds in the room. When playing through a FRFR monitor, with an IR, you are hearing the sound of a mic'd speaker cabinet as played through a studio monitor. It's not the same and never will be. Go to any recording studio and set your amp up in the studio, mic it, and listen to it in the control room. Then walk into the room with your amp and listen to that. It's not the same aural experience.

I love open-backed Fender combo amps. A closed back FRFR monitor using IR's is never going to sound like an open-backed combo amp - and this includes Far Field IRs. Physics wins.
 
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I gave up trying to make my AxeFX III/CLR sound like my ReadPlate Blues Machine 66 with an open-backed 1x12 cabinet. I view each as different solutions that sound great and seve different purposes. But the CRL "in the room" does not sound like the amp "in the room" and never will.
 
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@ethomas1013

Hah! Remember the game show Match Game?

Gene: With all of the Bidet talk recently, at least our opinions are __________.

matchgame_wide-a355c28d2c4dcc727ba1e9d643bd185d33985255.jpg


FRESH?
 
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ethomas1013 said:
I love open-backed Fender combo amps. A closed back FRFR monitor using IR's is never going to sound like an open-backed combo amp - and this includes Far Field IRs. Physics wins.
Click to expand...
I can definitely see this. My intent wasn’t to broad-brush.
I should have said...
For my particular application, where my 4x12 is in a live-in road case, at gig volume, my xitone sounds, to me, just like standing in front of my 4x12 (not mic’d).
Was just curious if anyone had a similar experience.
And I say “similar” because I realize setups will be different.
 
badmagick said:
And I say “similar” because I realize setups will be different.
Click to expand...

Not the same but was the best AITR solution at the time. Pair of small Genelec 8010's about 16-18" apart and a foot off the floor.
Sounded about as close to having a small combo amp as I could get. Much better than having them on a desktop.
They're rear ported so I played around with a corner boundary to get just the right low end punch.
 
My amp in the room as a teenager was a Fender Bassman (Blonde), then replaced by a full Marshall Jubilee stack - can't imagine how loud that must have been, were people more tolerant then?

Honestly - my amp in the room sound now is the best I've ever had, is it exactly the same? At the same volumes absolutely close enough that I could never tell the difference.

Coopers class, decent FRFR and keeping the compression down have all worked for me,

I now have a sound which is genuinely at the worst as good as I had back in the day and 99% of the time significantly better, but at any volume I want.

The Woodshedding series on Youtube has some good pointers too, around where to adjust frequencies - worth a look
 
ethomas1013 said:
I gave up trying to make my AxeFX III/CLR sound like my ReadPlate Blues Machine 66 with an open-backed 1x12 cabinet. I view each as different solutions that sound great and seve different purposes. But the CRL "in the room" does not sound like the amp "in the room" and never will.
Click to expand...
Totally agree, I have two CLRs that have now been "relegated" to PA speakers, when playing with other un-mic'd instruments nothing beats a good ol' 2x12 for me.
I can come close with various tricks but it's always a compromise.

When I played with just the CLRs my guitar always sounded like a "recorded track" to me, compared to the liveliness of the other instruments.
 
DLC86 said:
When I played with just the CLRs my guitar always sounded like a "recorded track" to me.
Click to expand...

Here's where it gets kinda weird for me. The tone I aim to get with my amps is the tones coming out of my monitors
when listening to Shawn Lane, Holdsworth, Henderson, Petrucci, etc.

That's my AITR these days.

I definitely remember what it's like standing in front of a Mesa DC5 and 4x12 in a large room though.
It's just not a point of reference or requirement anymore.
 
Donnie B. said:
Here's where it gets kinda weird for me. The tone I aim to get with my amps is the tones coming out of my monitors
when listening to Shawn Lane, Holdsworth, Henderson, Petrucci, etc.

That's my AITR these days.

I definitely remember what it's like standing in front of a Mesa DC5 and 4x12 in a large room though.
It's just not a point of reference or requirement anymore.
Click to expand...
Sure, if the goal is to reproduce a tone just like you hear it on a record there's no better solution than IRs and FRFR.
But that simply doesn't work for me when playing with a live band in a small environment.
It might work on a big stage where everything goes thru PA and monitors though (which sadly never happens for me these days)
 
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