axe fx sounds muddy

i appreciate the video man. i think the muddiness is in my monitors. your sound is clearer than mine with i think that that might be because your playng a strat and im using a les paul. but your vid through my monitors is still muffled.
 
7stringtim said:
i appreciate the video man. i think the muddiness is in my monitors. your sound is clearer than mine with i think that that might be because your playng a strat and im using a les paul. but your vid through my monitors is still muffled.
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Your not using the high cut on the back of the Krks Are you ?
I wouldn't be too quick to knock the Krks because I have the rp6 and they work really well.You have the 5" which would obviously mean a significant difference In low end to myself but they're not half bad really.
 
Do the KRK's sound okay with normal music? Mine had an issue where the tweeter power amp would cut out randomly.
 
Can you just run some regular music through the axe fx and see how that sounds? use something you know pretty well and see if that sounds muddy. At least you'll know if its something like a bad cable or connection. If its actually the axe fx, try using a balanced amp like the HBE and find a suitable IR first thats as close to what you want as possible, then tweak the tone controls etc.
 
7stringtim said:
No I have the highs all the way up and lows all the way down
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Try the high and low both set at 0.
Maybe also turn them up a bit louder! I find my unit comes alive with a bit of volume.

Was there a reason to set them both at their opposite extreme's?
 
7stringtim said:
i appreciate the video man. i think the muddiness is in my monitors. your sound is clearer than mine with i think that that might be because your playng a strat and im using a les paul. but your vid through my monitors is still muffled.
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You're welcome, happy to help. Sorry I couldn't get you closer to what you're hearing in your head.

:)
 
7stringtim said:
im using a les paul studio in to the axe fx in to my scarlett interface out through krk rocket 5
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I use KRK Rockit 6 monitors.
My chain is AXE FX II > Mackie mixer> KRK Monitors.
Mixer is analog and everything is set flat. Its pretty transparent.

No issues with mud except with presets which need to be adjusted for use with humbuckers, or amps which are somewhat inherently bass heavy (Fenders).
I had to learn to use the input trim, the bass, mid, treble controls, and low cut with different guitars.

You have a Les Paul which usually has some more natural low end.
I have all humbucker guitars, but the DGT splits of course.
I realized the Fender stock presets especially were voiced for single coils it seems.

I guess my advice- mess around with the settings on amp.
I am not a big tweaker but needed to learn. :)
 
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Thre's great advice throughout this thread, so I don't have a lot to add, but I'd start by setting your monitors to flat, you're just going to be fighting it with extreme monitor settings. Also, it's been said a million times on the forum, but the cab IR makes such a huge difference. Myself, I tend toward the 4x12 Cali for almost all my high gain patches. I've personally not had great luck with the HBE, even though I hear great patches from others. My go tos are the CAE3+, Thorendal Modern, and the USA Lead 2. Too, I wouldn't dive into the deep parameters too soon, you should be able to get a good sound using the same controls you'd find on a normal amp. Finally, have you tried dialing in a clean sound? That might help in determining if the problem is in the unit, or in another part of your system..
 
7stringtim said:
So I'm looking over my monitoring setup and I noticed that I'm using a unbalanced speaker cable in a balanced out put jack. Do you think that is the culprit?
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Yes. You should never use a speaker cable for line level or instrument level signals. It doesn't need to be a balanced cable but it should be a standard 1/4" cable.
 
I recently uploaded the updated/revamped presets and the same thing happened to me, everything went to mud. I panicked and visited the forum to see if anyone else had experienced the same issue reading everything I could including this whole thread. Followed all advice to no avail, with tears starting to well up in my eyes and a broken heart I gave up hope only to notice that I had my expression pedal set on full wah... Oops, sometimes it's not as complicated as it seems!
 
Most of the muddiness pitfalls I've come across have to do with phase issues. The first thing I did was I was testing out two different interfaces to see which I liked best. In the software I would mute one set and solo the other and vice versa. However one time I accidentally left both engaged. So I was listening to both and one must have been slightly delayed. So it had a comb filter effect. So just double check things like that, that you normally wouldn't even think to check.

I didn't look at the patch, but if you're doing a stereo cab, make sure one isn't delayed at all. That will give you the same effect.

I will agree with the others that say KRK's are very boomy compared to other monitors.

Another thing thing I've found is that pretty much all of the presets and amp/cabs are very boomy for me. I'm guessing they are meant to be used for live playing first and getting a good recording sound direct is somewhat of an afterthought. I didn't find very many of the cabs that sounded record-ready right out of the box. So I made my own and still use a pretty drastic eq to get the sound I want.

One thing you might want to do is record your guitar though a completely blank patch so we can hear what your guitar sounds like raw.
 
The Axe takes time to get used to. If there is something you are missing regarding a parameter setting, it will take time to find. Don't expect the Axe to sound perfect out of the box. it's far from a plug and play device. It took me months/years to get the tone I wanted. But it's worth it in the end. Expect to spend a lot of time learning and modeling.
 
FractalAudio said:
Yes. You should never use a speaker cable for line level or instrument level signals. It doesn't need to be a balanced cable but it should be a standard 1/4" cable.
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I think this might be the source of your trouble here. I had the same issue using the AxeFx > speaker cable > power amp > speaker cable > guitar cab. When I realized the mistake and switched the speaker cable between the Axe and power amp to a standard 1/4" instrument cable the sound just opened up so much more, made a huge difference.
 
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