Cutting Cab High's and Low's??

These cuts are so important that I would put it in the Axe FX quick start manual, right on the top.

It took me maybe a year to find out why is the sound from my beloved and praised new Axe FX so bad while jamming with my mates. I couldn't understand it, with headphones before it sounded all great and then live only boomy and shrill. All I've seen was their pitiful look like "aha, so that's that FX you told us about, that you paid so much for...aha, ok...". Until I read somewhere in this forum, like some by the way info, that some do this cuts for good reason. In my eyes, it's the tweak #1. It is just not mentioned enough.

We're not all pro sound engineers that know their stuff from the first day with this device. That's why I would suggest having quick start settings in the manual if one is building his or her own preset (which many acctually like to do). It should be clear right there, before having to spend hours and hours through the threads searching for some solution and hoping for good luck.

If I had to write these starter settings, it would be something like: Cab block (IR), low cut 75-100 Hz and high cut 8000 and from there tweak on.
 
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Danny Danzi said:
Totally with you. Here's another scenario to maybe illustrate my point.

I get what you're saying about being up close to the cab, but that isn't the final result we hear with IR's. The thing to think about here is this...

In real life you buy a new cab for your head, you of course have to adjust the head for the cab. With IR's, the user is not only sculpting the amp, but the cab too to remove nastiness that isn't normally in a cab. If it weren't so easy to just press an arrow and load another IR and each one cost $500-$800 like a real.cab, there would be an uproar.

Yet in the modeling world, it's acceptable to spend $20 or whatever on a cab pack and only have 2 cabs that actually work for you out of 50. I consider that a flaw in the system somewhere.

Science to the side, I'm looking at reality. I don't think anyone feels like sculpting every aspect all the time. Seriously....some of the tweaking we have to do is intense. Case in point, find a cab that sounds bad. You either tweak with cab lab, an XL+, go through all 259 amps to see what may work.with that cab, or you press the arrow and load another impulse. I really think that's bogus.

Having cabs that behave a little better without the need to massively tweak would be something I feel is necessity.

I know tone is and always will be subjective. However, we live in a world where things are auto-done for us. What's wrong with actually making these things sound good out of the box while having more than 2 that actually work for people, know what I mean?

As much as I'm a tone tweaker, it sure is nice to just fire something up, twist a little knob or two and go. Some IR's just do not compliment our amps in the least. Like so bad it makes you wonder what the guy that shot them was thinking.
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I couldn't agree with you more on this subject. It's a way of thinking I've only come around too very recently though and we have to remember there's an equal number of people, maybe even more who like it how it is. They like doing their own mixes and unlike me they probably know how to do it well.

My personal preference is now on smaller IR packs that are already mixed. Less to pick from but more focused on quality and usability.
Gimme 10-15 very usable IRs for 10 American pounds and lets call it quits for that cab.
 
Many 2 way boxes (FRFR) have inherent problems by design. Not saying they are bad, just physical laws that can't change.
Many issues occur in and around crossover bandpass frequency (typical 1.6k for most)
Coaxials do a better job than horn/driver mounted systems on flat baffles. IMHO. An IR taken from a standard guitar speaker cabinet, processed through any driver/horn wedge will have inherent problems. Electrical and physical.
I went back to a traditional cabinet for these reasons, sometimes using an IR as a "tuned filter" for certain desired resonances.
The 3 dB peak at bandpass is going to be there on powered wedges. Subtractive, or additive, depending on filter order. Bad place for guitars to be getting weird in. Maybe Atomic designed active filters and cabinet porting, tailored to guitar response curves. I imagine the CLR's are not as good for a vocal wedge either. Try the inverse. If your using a wedge that is designed around vocal responses, use your ears to tune it to emulate a guitar cab. I measured my old FRFR, and filtered accordingly, and had pretty good results.
 
Very good topic!

Ownhammer V4 midfield IR's are my fav currently in this regard (the ones labelled as MID).

Can you also please share the IR's you know which require minimum to no effort not to sound boomy and harsh?
 
I play both matrix/Mesa 4x12 cab, and FRFR. Surprisingly every IR I play no matter what it is, the cab high and low needs to be adjusted. I bought cab pac 7 (which is my cab) and I usually adjust the lows as high as 160-180 to match the lows of my real Mesa cab, and adjust the highs to usually 5k-7k depending on tone I'm looking for. Once I do that my cab sound on stage is almost identical to the IR sound coming over the PA and they sound killer together.
 
Must agree with Yek. No golden rule. Use your ears and adjust to the environment and music style you play.
That said...I play a lot of different music and one general thing is a cut around 80-125 (sometimes more) for 95% of my presets.

Rock On :)
 
Just to throw my two cents in on the subject.

For high-gain stuff: low cut (60 to 140Hz), high cut (6 to 10kHz), 12dB/oct slope

For clean stuff: low cut (80 to 130Hz), high cut (Sometimes nothing. Sometimes a gentle roll off to bring in some warmth.), 6dB/oct slope
 
So come back to my initial thoughts. A high profile dude here who plays guitar for a living uses the Atomic CLR's x 2 and is adamant no cutting required on his patches. So whilst we edit dependant on our monitoring solution, or even if we ditch the IR and run a real cab, we are probably sending the IR to the FOH mixer. I suspect we've mostly got NFI what's really going on out front. Especially so when we're playing a festival vibe, quick changeovers. Our last gig I got a one minute sound check on my guitar tone!
I want IR's in the factory cabs that are somewhat edited to sound decent with the vast selection of FRFR solutions we are likely to use.

At the moment I'm editing away all my patches to sound good with my EV speaker and listening to desk FOH recordings to make changes. Thankfully it sounds pretty awesome. Is this good luck or good management. The other guitarist in the band with an AX-8 by his own admission has no clue what to do. I'm helping him but on his own he may take many months to sort it out. Already he is thinking about giving up on Fractal and going back to a head, cab and pedals/multiFX.
 
way overthinking this stuff. it's so easy to get great tone in your monitoring solution and FOH. i prefer to do cuts but the way you eq may make them unnecessary. if you tend to eq bright you might like cuts in the highs, same for if you add low end. if you eq with less highs or lows cuts may be unnecessary. there are no rules, just what works for you. i've rocked my Axe in pretty much every possible scenario/venue and it always shines.

also, I feel like if you know what speakers/mic positions you like in the real world, it's pretty easy to sort through ir's. i almost always gravitate to ir's that mirror what i would do on a real cab.
 
Jason King said:
So come back to my initial thoughts. A high profile dude here who plays guitar for a living uses the Atomic CLR's x 2 and is adamant no cutting required on his patches. So whilst we edit dependant on our monitoring solution, or even if we ditch the IR and run a real cab, we are probably sending the IR to the FOH mixer. I suspect we've mostly got NFI what's really going on out front. Especially so when we're playing a festival vibe, quick changeovers. Our last gig I got a one minute sound check on my guitar tone!
I want IR's in the factory cabs that are somewhat edited to sound decent with the vast selection of FRFR solutions we are likely to use.

At the moment I'm editing away all my patches to sound good with my EV speaker and listening to desk FOH recordings to make changes. Thankfully it sounds pretty awesome. Is this good luck or good management. The other guitarist in the band with an AX-8 by his own admission has no clue what to do. I'm helping him but on his own he may take many months to sort it out. Already he is thinking about giving up on Fractal and going back to a head, cab and pedals/multiFX.
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He may just compensate by turning the presence way down on his amp. There is no way to know what you are going to consider a good tone out of the box. There are some tones where I cut the highs at 4.5 kHz and there are some tones that I cut at 15 kHz.
I would much rather just change the high cut rather than go through a bunch of IRs trying to find one that works for what I'm going for.
There are just way to many tones out there for what you want to be feasible! It would require thousands of IRs.
 
Wouldn't it be nice if an IR of a Jenson P10R simply sounded like any other IR of a Jenson P10R, or a Celestion G12H(55) simply sounded like a Celestion G12H(55).
 
guitarmike said:
Wouldn't it be nice if an IR of a Jenson P10R simply sounded like any other IR of a Jenson P10R, or a Celestion G12H(55) simply sounded like a Celestion G12H(55).
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no because people prefer one persons way of mic'img/capturing over another. variety being the spice of life and all....
 
I'm with you Danny, in respect of your big experience.
But my 0.2 is that a guitar tone can have so many p.o.v
Two of these are the pov of the player and the pov of the foh guy: these are never the same!
AND there are many scenarios too.
One scenario is a guitar player in a room facing his amp/cab gear; another is a player on stage with the edge monitor on the floor, stage fills one the sides, just some kickintheass frome the real cabs and the overall PA sound; and another scenario is the player in the studio (no cabs in the room) with the headphones and the tone from the mixing desk.
All these pov and scenarios are at the base of the philosophy of the "RAW" IRs so you can start from 0 to sculpting your pov and scenario.
That said... i'm with you again thinking: WHY not selling IRs pack with some kind of label like "ROOM pack" or "LIVE pack" or "STUDIO pack"?
 
GuttaLaser said:
I'm with you Danny, in respect of your big experience.
But my 0.2 is that a guitar tone can have so many p.o.v
Two of these are the pov of the player and the pov of the foh guy: these are never the same!
AND there are many scenarios too.
One scenario is a guitar player in a room facing his amp/cab gear; another is a player on stage with the edge monitor on the floor, stage fills one the sides, just some kickintheass frome the real cabs and the overall PA sound; and another scenario is the player in the studio (no cabs in the room) with the headphones and the tone from the mixing desk.
All these pov and scenarios are at the base of the philosophy of the "RAW" IRs so you can start from 0 to sculpting your pov and scenario.
That said... i'm with you again thinking: WHY not selling IRs pack with some kind of label like "ROOM pack" or "LIVE pack" or "STUDIO pack"?
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I'm with you too! (As well as everyone else in this thread.) I think we got some awesome pros and cons on the subject to where we may have planted a few seeds.

I want to try something with you guys. When I get a chance later on, I'm going to share a cab IR with you. I'm curious to see how it translates for you guys in both studio and live situations. If it works, maybe I'll try doing a cab pack. I'll be back in a few hours.
 
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READ BEFORE YOU CLICK:

Ok, some of you may have seen this already, but I still think it could help a few of you.

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/video-the-power-of-a-cab-block.113570/

The downside, you gotta have at least an AXEFX MKII to do tweaks like this unless you have software that allows you to tweak cabs. The only thing I didn't do was share the cab I created from this video. I'm curious to find out how it may translate for you guys if you try it in the studio, live or through your CLR rig etc.

What the video does, is show you how to take a stock cab and edit it within the XL+. To me, this was one cab I thought just sounded bad with every amp I tried. So I attempted to modify it to my liking. The video shows you how you can just change different amps with the same cab, which in my opinion is sort of what we are in search of, right? So if you've seen my video, sorry for bringing it up. If you haven't, it may show you a thing or two or at least make you think differently.

The cab is shared below via attachment.

Cons: I believe this modified cab will fail miserably if you use it with a real guitar cab. It's too raspy for me through my 25 watt Greenback cab.

Pros: I think it sounds killer through my studio monitors and sounded really good FOH. I don't have any of those CLR monitors you guys use....I'm still sold on real cabs for my personal use. But I'm curious to hear how this particular cab may work for you. Sorry if it sucks....or lets anyone down. I just wanted to see if it helped at all to have all the "stuff" already taken out that we seem to be complaining about.

Is something like this too high endy and raspy, too much bottom? Is it useful at all to you? This is a modified cab of our stock 1x8 tweed cab, which in my opinion, was not anything I would personally ever use. However, after the tweak, I've used this quite a bit. Let me know your thoughts. :)
 

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  • DANNY TWEED1x8.syx
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Once again I must fully agree with Danny. I was having a very tough time getting a sound that I like with almost any cab until I started watching his videos. Especially when using high gain. Cutting some sizzle off the top, and a little whoof off the bottom did the trick for me. I own most of the cab packs and still I have yet to find a cab that I have not had to modify at least a little. Thanks again Danny.
 
Andrew Sullivan said:
Once again I must fully agree with Danny. I was having a very tough time getting a sound that I like with almost any cab until I started watching his videos. Especially when using high gain. Cutting some sizzle off the top, and a little whoof off the bottom did the trick for me. I own most of the cab packs and still I have yet to find a cab that I have not had to modify at least a little. Thanks again Danny.
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You're very welcome. Did you happen to download and try the cab I posted a few posts up from this one? Glad the videos have helped you. :)
 
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