Amp in a Room vs Studio Recorded Tones

On that note, I don't know anyone who would confuse a recording of a live show with an actual, live concert. Amp in the room is about experiencing the direct sound of an amp in person rather than through a filter. It's the difference between touring China or Japan over the internet and physically being there, soaking up the sights and sounds first-hand.
At a concert what you are hearing is essentially an IR. Albeit a live IR but an IR nonetheless. It’s a mic’d Cab. It’d be the same thing as Fractal Audio doing a Tone Match and running that tone direct to FOH. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You are not hearing the actual “amp in the room” you are hearing the amp that’s in the room that’s being mic’d then sent to the FOH. That’s is a HUGE difference, & what is being discussed and has been discussed repeatedly on the forum.
Unless you are at a tiny venu and the band is not mic’d aside from the vocals you’re not hearing amp in the room. If they are mic’d then you’d hear some amp but not solely amp in the room. You’d be hearing amp in the room, (from stage volume) PLUS mic’d Cab (live IR basically) to FOH. And hopefully for the sound guy, mostly the Mic’d Cab & not stage vol.
Basically the discussion boils down to the sonic difference between these two sounds:
1. An Amp & Cab being cranked up & played Straight to your cranium vs.
2. The sound of An Amp & Cab mic’d thru FOH/ Recording Studio *
And which tone you prefer.
*Obviously there’s a little more to it due to the fact you can combine IR’s etc.. but you get the point.
 
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You totally missed my point.. At a concert what you are hearing is essentially an IR. Albeit a live IR but an IR nonetheless. It’s a mic’d Cab. It’d be the same thing as Fractal Audio doing a Tone Match and running that tone direct to FOH. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You are not hearing the actual “amp in the room” you are hearing the amp that’s in the room that’s being mic’d then sent to the FOH.

As mentioned in post #98, I'm not suggesting that guitars at a live show sound the same as sitting in a room with an amp and cab, so I don't see the point in making a direct comparison. The point here is that a mic'd amp doesn't sound like an unmic'd amp. If you want the sound of a unmic'd amp(ie. amp in the room), you should use a real guitar cab.
 
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As mentioned in post #98, I'm not suggesting that guitars at a live show sound the same as sitting in a room with an amp and cab, so I don't see the point in making a direct comparison. The point here is that a mic'd amp doesn't sound like an unmic'd amp. If you want the sound of an unmic'd amp(ie. amp in the room), you should use a real guitar cab.
Ahh, I totally missed that post! I apologize for my confusion.
 
I was just sitting here thinking how long it’s been since I’ve actually played an Amp in a room.. has to be over 10 years now I bet.
Wow!
Almost kinda makes me want to go get a nice amp just to have again..


.... bhaaaaaaaa
 
I was just sitting here thinking how long it’s been since I’ve actually played an Amp in a room.. has to be over 10 years now I bet.
Wow!
Almost kinda makes me want to go get a nice amp just to have again..


.... bhaaaaaaaa
As I mentioned in another thread, I showed up to band rehearsal with $2,500 worth of Axe and K12 and a new guitarist showed up with a $600 AC15. It was no comparison head to head so went and bought myself one. Within the context of the other instruments and with its onboard effects the Axe does offer some advantages but for just having fun playing I really love the real amp. One or two commented that they had the same issue with Vox sounds in the Axe II so it may just be this amp model. If so, hopefully it will be updated.
 
So what I've concluded thus far in this thread is the sonic differences between micd and unmicd cab sound through various situations lol. My solution? Continue what I'm doing and use a "real" cab still with Fractal grown cab IR's pumping through that damn sucker. Get the best of both worlds right? What if I want to send this stage tone to FOH? Throw a JDX48 between the two and slam that bitch in the board.
 
I dunno, I think I still take either the KW153’s or the KW152’s I had & set em up as side fills over an amp any day. Actually if I was buying a FRFR high power set up right now, I’d be buying the Presonus StudioLive 315AI’s or maybe the 312’s although I’ve always much preferred 15’s in a PA. 2,000w/ea coaxial.. Seems to me, that’s where ya want to be, a total no brainer. Those will move some air, the KW’s moved some and they were, if I remember 1,000w/ea. But with the AI’s coax design, a much better stereo field. I honestly don’t think there’s any other high powered, self powered FRFR Speaker I’d even consider buying right now, until you get into 10k+ per Speaker super high end stuff & I don’t even know if they make self powered units at level.
Run em as side fills you can also run a full FOH mix back thru for everyone if ya want & everybody very happy.
 
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I dunno, I think I still take either the KW153’s or the KW152’s I had & set em up as side fills over an amp any day. Actually if I was buying a FRFR high power set up right now, I’d be buying the Presonus StudioLive 315AI’s or maybe the 312’s although I’ve always much preferred 15’s in a PA. 2,000w/ea coaxial.. Seems to me, that’s where ya want to be, a total no brainer. Those will move some air, the KW’s moved some and they were, if I remember 1,000w/ea. But with the AI’s coax design, a much better stereo field. I honestly don’t think there’s any other high powered, self powered FRFR Speaker I’d even consider buying right now, until you get into 10k+ per Speaker super high end stuff & I don’t even know if they make self powered units at level.
Run em as side fills you can also run a full FOH mix back thru for everyone if ya want & everybody very happy.
I bet those KW153s would be beastly with the Axe. They would certainly flap your pants like a 4x12.
 
I bet those KW153s would be beastly with the Axe. They would certainly flap your pants like a 4x12.
I like my Xitone and Matrix combination better.

We have them for mains... They are nice, but coaxial works better, IMO.
 
I bet those KW153s would be beastly with the Axe. They would certainly flap your pants like a 4x12.
They were a little big for what I needed, I also had an 8,500w PA for basically playing bars, so power was never an issue. So, 4x15’s with the mains & 2x18’s subs and then floor monitors & then it got to be a bit much with another, basically self-powered mains as side-fills so I went down to the KW152’s with the single 15’s. Much lighter, and actually sounded better for what how I was using them. (I had them right behind the mains up on stands at about ear level firing across the stage, kinda pointed at the kick drum/center stage. Every single thing always got mic’d or had a direct line, and I’d run a FOH Mix back thru those so the band could hear the same exact mix as out front. It was a beautiful thing.)Everything sounded beastly with that setup in the places we were playing! Lmao. So loud but so clean & pure, you couldn’t even tell how loud it really was, till you left. I pay for it now though.
 
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It seems to me that there are two impossibilities (for now) and chasing either of them will not yield anything fruitful or satisfying. FRFR does not sound like amp in the room because at its heart it will always reproduce the sound of a cab being miked up close. And placing that mic further from the speaker is a crapshoot because the tiniest variation in mic placement will produce a different sound. That is why mic placement is an artform.

On the other hand trying to chase a favorite studio or live tone with amp in the room is pointless as said tones are recorded up close with mics, into mixing desk, with shitloads of added effects and compression. All of which color the sound and can never be recreated with amp in the room. Trying to find the right set of gear to do so is pointless and will only lead you down the Dark Side of the TGP. And that's excluding the fact even if you do find a satisfying amp in the room tone, when you perform live some sound guy will stick a mic in front of it, run it into a mixing desk, add some effects, compression, and it will sound completely different then what you originally had in mind again.

I'm with the Tom Morello school of thought. Chasing the perfect tone is pointless. Accept what you currently have and instead focus on making music. Infinitely more satisfying if you ask me.

How many people ever really hear an accurate representation of that actual cab in a given room though ?? For that matter, two different people are likely to have different hearing thresholds, so what one person hears can be different than what someone right next to them might hear if their thresholds are different (Doctor of Audiology for my day job, so I see plenty of variability in hearing thresholds lol)

If anything can be a bad thing. Because I have lost count of the times when I was standing not that far from my tube amp and thinking 'Yeah! I'm really rocking it tonight! This is it! Tonewise I am in the zone!' Only to be told by the rest of the band that I need to turn it down because their ears are bleeding. Either from too much volume, or too much treble. Bands are destroyed this way over volume wars.
 
It seems to me that there are two impossibilities (for now) and chasing either of them will not yield anything fruitful or satisfying. FRFR does not sound like amp in the room because at its heart it will always reproduce the sound of a cab being miked up close. And placing that mic further from the speaker is a crapshoot because the tiniest variation in mic placement will produce a different sound. That is why mic placement is an artform.

On the other hand trying to chase a favorite studio or live tone with amp in the room is pointless as said tones are recorded up close with mics, into mixing desk, with shitloads of added effects and compression. All of which color the sound and can never be recreated with amp in the room. Trying to find the right set of gear to do so is pointless and will only lead you down the Dark Side of the TGP. And that's excluding the fact even if you do find a satisfying amp in the room tone, when you perform live some sound guy will stick a mic in front of it, run it into a mixing desk, add some effects, compression, and it will sound completely different then what you originally had in mind again.

I'm with the Tom Morello school of thought. Chasing the perfect tone is pointless. Accept what you currently have and instead focus on making music. Infinitely more satisfying if you ask me.



If anything can be a bad thing. Because I have lost count of the times when I was standing not that far from my tube amp and thinking 'Yeah! I'm really rocking it tonight! This is it! Tonewise I am in the zone!' Only to be told by the rest of the band that I need to turn it down because their ears are bleeding. Either from too much volume, or too much treble. Bands are destroyed this way over volume wars.
That’s the laser beam effect of a guitar cab. And likewise, regarding stage volume, when someone is too loud & can not be brought up in the FOH Mix, they may be blistering loud right in front of their amp but totally gone, like they’re not even playing 10 feet to the other side.
 
On the other hand trying to chase a favorite studio or live tone with amp in the room is pointless
Well contrary to popular belief (real amp or amps in room need cab sims off), even if you're using a real cab, enable cab sims. Hell,even if that cab sim is a Tmatched IR of a studio tone, run that bitch through your cab and you kind of get the best of both worlds. That's the beauty of the fn AxeFx!!!
 
I haven't read every post in this thread, but to use an analogy, this is I how I've approached and experienced the real guitar cab vs. FRFR debate:

- Standing in a room with a literal, roaring lion (axe fx + neutral power amp + guitar cab)
vs.
- Standing in a room with a FRFR speaker playing a very loud, high fidelity recording of a roaring lion (axe fx + cab IR + active FRFR speaker)

They both will sound great, but they are fundamentally different. The second example requires a microphone to capture the sound which by its very nature is filtering out some frequencies of the sound source. With microphones used for guitars, this is even more the case since microphones with particular tonal characteristics are used for guitar recording. If you play a great sounding guitar recording in a room and crank it, it will sound great, yes, but you're only allowing those recorded frequencies to interact with the room. Playing a real cab in a room will have a better "amp in the room" sound because it's not being filtered by microphones.

This is why I always prefer to use both live cabs on stage and cab IRs for FOH. It just makes everything in the small/medium venues that I play in sound a little more alive.
 
This is an interesting conversation, so I'm going to throw a question out there, just to get peoples opinions and reactions.

If you take a XiTone powered wedge that has the Matrix Amp Module (that is the same power amp as their GT series), and you pull the Eminence 'PA Speaker' and put a Celestion V30 in there....do you consider it 'Amp in the Room'?
 
Well contrary to popular belief (real amp or amps in room need cab sims off), even if you're using a real cab, enable cab sims. Hell,even if that cab sim is a Tmatched IR of a studio tone, run that bitch through your cab and you kind of get the best of both worlds. That's the beauty of the fn AxeFx!!!
If you like that, more power to you... But I don't think most people here would recommend that.
 
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