adjusting tone in a band mix

so i did a little research on fletcher-munson and what i got was at high volumes everything almost equals out with maybe the highs and lows a little louder. is this correct? if so it must be on the sound guy to fix the mix out front. seems like i should be able to use my good tone i made at low volume since i am using in-ear monitor system for live gigs. am i still missing something? should i just make patches for loud voulmes and not put it on foh to adjust my sound?
If you check out the equal loudness curves, you will notice that the difference can be pretty drastic. I recommend using the Global EQ to deal with Fletcher Munson. You can set a different Global EQ for out1 (to FoH) and out2 (to your stage monitors).

Don't rely on the sound guy to fix your EQing.
 
so i did a little research on fletcher-munson and what i got was at high volumes everything almost equals out with maybe the highs and lows a little louder. is this correct?
I think you're looking at the curves backwards. The Fletcher-Munson curves are equal-loudness curves. The curves show that, at high volume, the highs and lows have to be a bit louder than the mids for all frequencies to sound equally loud. At lower volumes, highs and lows need to be way louder than the mids in order to sound like everything is at equal volume.

It's up to you to fix your tone before it hits FOH, because there's no guarantee that the desk will be able to EQ at the right frequencies. Many desks have only a fixed high shelf, fixed low shelf, and maybe sweepable mids.
 
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I've been having some issues with my live tone. This especially became apparent when one of my bands added a second guitarist, and he's using a conventional tube combo amp and analog pedal board. My Axe-Fx through a FRFR powered speaker sounded kind of thin and biting on the high end compared to his rig. I just went through all my presets and boosted the mids with the 3-band passive EQ in the amp block. I'm liking it better already in my living room at gig volumes. Looking forward to seeing how is sits with the rest of the band. Thanks for the info, all. :encouragement:
 
I'm old-school when it comes to setting the Axe-Fx up for a good live tone. I treat it like an actual tube amp. Basically that means that whatever amp model that I'm working with, I just mess with the knobs that the physical amp has.

So, turn the knobs (Bass, Middle, Treble, ect.) while jamming with you band until it sounds good.

And whatever you do, don't worry about where the knobs end up. Use your ears, not your eyes.
 
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Have have been listening to some guitar stems and some of them sound almost awful. Are the stem usually what is on the track after they have been produced or are the original recorded tone?
 
Have have been listening to some guitar stems and some of them sound almost awful. Are the stem usually what is on the track after they have been produced or are the original recorded tone?

The guitar stems are the guitar tracks in isolation and they are post-production. This is why they may sound awful without context of the full mix. Mixing is about fitting instruments together to create one cohesive sound. This is why I always process guitars to fit the arrangement. Always be mindful of the symmetry of your mix.
 
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Have have been listening to some guitar stems and some of them sound almost awful. Are the stem usually what is on the track after they have been produced or are the original recorded tone?

If they come from games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, they are fully produced. The games just mix pre-produced tracks together.

Note that a lot of original masters don't have stems. In other words when the records were made, the mix was done on the fly to 2 track. So for the games, the stems, if from the original multitrack, are sometimes re-created. Meaning you are hearing what the game producers did to create the post production track in isolation.

In these cases, the original post production track in isolation does not exist.

It seems pretty wild in retrospect, but after they mixed something like Led Zeppelin II, they zeroed out the board and unpatched all the outboard gear, and didn't really care about preserving the mix.
 
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