50db? I would think my guitar is louder than that acoustically. I wouldn't want to dial in any tones for live use if I can still hear my strings at all.
I guess you could record and listen back, but still 50db sounds very low for your example of creating patches for use live at a festival.
Exactly, and its a case of where a little bit of knowledge can be rather dangerous without fully understanding the implications, or more so, lack there of.
Most people are likely not dialing in patches at 40 or 50dB, unless they are playing at really late night, someone watching tv in the same room volume. Its just like with a hardware amp, sure maybe you might set the volume to 1 or less if your trying to play it really, really quiet, but I don't think anyone expects those settings to translate to any practical settings.
Realistically, I think people are probably playing around 70 or 80 dB, if not louder, even at home, and by that intensity level the response curves are pretty darn flat within the range of the guitar. In fact, most mix and mastering engineers prefer to monitor at about 78 dB as its a safe level, limits ear fatigure and gives a pretty accurate representation over most of the spectrum.
Besides that, the frequenices which can be problematic are outside the typical guitar range anyways....I don't know about everyone else, but I usually high and low pass at around 100 Hz and 6 kHz....
So yeah, if your trying to master an electronic dance music track with a ton of 30 Hz subbass, you probably don't want to try to make an accurate judge of how that is going on a 110dB system by listening it to at 40dB in your bedroom late a night. But, at 70dB your still able to pretty accurately judge guitar tones.
I think the real issue is that people simply don't understand the differences between dialing in tones play alone, vs how it sounds in a full band mix. It doesn't matter if your playing at 70 or 100 dB at home, if your hearing ONLY your guitar, it will sound different than it does in a mix.
On top of all that, the idea that you should pre-eq your signal to account for what you think will be some percieved intensity differences simply doesn't work in the real world. Its been tried countless times over the decades and just is more trouble than it solves. Again, Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Munson first published this stuff nearly 100 years ago. This is not NEW knowledge in any way, its simply that in the past few years one guitar player reads something on forum then repeats it, so on and so forth, and suddenly its this new magical idea of "why your guitar doesn't sound good in a mix..... blame FM".
Having worked as a FOH engineer I can tell you nothing made my job harder than when someone tried to do my job for me. I know the system I'm sending you through, I know how it sounds with a full house, and I know how it sounds at sound check in an empty venue. I know the room acoustics, and we've likely already tried to correct a lot of know issues.
To think you can just show up, hit a magic button to enhance or minimize the highs and lows so its going to sound the same as it did when you were at home as it is coming through the FOH system isn't realistic.
Its just like when we'd do sound check, someone thought their guitar sounded to harsh, so before the set they went and turned down the treble and presence on their amp (without telling anyone) and then what do you know, when we have a full venue and radically different acoustics, they were buried in the mix.... because they thought they knew better.
Simply send us a decent signal and we will make sure it sounds as good as possible both in the band mix, and in the venue! simple as that =)
Think about this another way..... imagine your favorite CD...... you know the tones pretty well right ? Let's say its GnR AFD... favorite of mine. Does it sound radically different when you hear it at different volumes ? Did Slash's tone sound terrible when you heard it played through a big system at a bar or club, and like a different band than when you listened to it at home ? Or on headphones, or on a computer speaker ? Sure didn't when I heard it.....
The stems sounded different than the band mix of course, but that is another thread lol.
Point is, this stuff simply isn't that big of deal in the real world, its very old knowledge, and there is no magic bullet that is going to make your 40dB at home tones played solo sound great in a 115dB full band mix just by pressing a button, and some 90 year old average graphs aren't a treasure map.
Your simply going to make things worse if you look at a graph you don't fully understand and just go " I'll add 15 dB to all these frequencies to account for playing loud" Won't work.
Really the most ironic thing about all this though is that everyone always ignores the possiblity their own auditory perception may be significantly impaired. As mentioned, my day job is working as an audiologist, and pretty much 9 out of 10 musicians I test have at least a moderate amount of high frequency threshold shift, usually centered around 3-4 kHz, sometimes coming back up, more often sloping off. Furthermore, things like wax impaction, sinus issues, Eustachian tube dysfunction, infection etc can easily have a 15-20 air-bone gap in the low frequencies, not to mention factors like abnormal loudness growth, reduced temporal and frequency resolution et al...
Yet despite all that, you see people always sweating all this little details, like " Hmmm, this monitor response curve of brand A is 2dB different than B above 8kHz..... what should I buy" when its like HELLO..... did you actually not realize you haven't had decent higher frequency hearing above 3000 Hz since the mid 1980's and that you auditory thresholds at 8 khz at 90 dB HL, meaning that your not even going to be able to perceive any differences between the two brands?
Single biggest variable in terms of tone, each individuals unique auditory perception, yet also the most ignored. Maybe worry less about if your non true bypass pedal is sucking tone, or if two guitar cables sound different, and instead find out if the way you hear the world is remotely similar to how people do....
Its like a guy with say 20/80 vision.... maybe that is all they know, and they look at trees and see green shapes, and to them, that is normal. That is what trees look like, but to people who can see 20/20 they actually can make out each leave. Totally different though both think they are normal....
So maybe that guy with massive high frequency loss that thinks everything is muffled until you crank the treble and turn it up super loud actually has a tone that the rest of the normal hearing world thinks is ice pick city ??
Get your ear checked guys! Stepping off soap-box now lol
