Dyna-cab, general consensus is that they're "better" than legacy?

Aeser

Aeser

Inspired
I only recently even realized I had dyna-cabs and had been diving into them, it's funny because before axe fx i used native instruments guitar rig where you could do this where you could drag the "mic" around to wherever you wanted in relation to the "speaker" and when i first got the axe fx i thought it was odd they why they did it by comparison here the IR's are just a static mic with this cab, sometimes on the grill, sometimes behind it, or whatnot, but under align and air you could dial in more room sound and make the mic's further from the speakers and such which was very odd to me.

Now with dyna-cab's it's like back to the way I had been used to doing it only you can select up to 4 completely different speakers and 4 mic "types" for each speaker "cab" and up to 2 cab's so up to 8 speakers mic'd and panned and whatnot however you like.

At first listen I feel like they sound better (and there's so many FEWER of them which i actually kind of see as a good thing rather than paging through thousands of cab IR's with different mic's and such to find just the right one for this amp model, whereas you have a good selection of awesome cabs but can tweak the hell out of them.

I know even within the legacy cab IR's there were the Normal, HiRes, UltraRes, and FullRes ones, and then Dyna-Cab which seems to be a different type of IR capturing altogether whereas the other "Legacy" ones just had to do with how much information each contained in them correct?

It's weird though the legacy ones still sound so good in a way to me sometimes I don't know if my ears or brain is playing tricks on me i can't figure out if i prefer the dyna-cab's, and then other times i;m like certain that i do. I don't get it and wondered what others here thought regarding them?

Thanks!
 
To me dynacabs aren’t « better », they sound different. They are more bright and trebly globally. I still use the legacy irs more than dynacabs. For metal music, I prefer the legacy ones, they sound bigger and fuller to me. After a lot of time I’ve found some cool combinations with dynacabs and I like them too now. Sometimes I play with the dyna, sometimes with legacy… yes « different » sound. Depends the song you play. Both are useable
 
Agree with the above... anything in the Axe FX is an option. Better or best is whatever sounds best to you. It might be a Dyna-Cab set to your liking. It might be a legacy or third-party cab. Try them all and use whatever you like.
 
I use both. I've kept the legacy cabs in place on nearly all the presets that I had created prior to the Dyna-Cab release, because I'm happy with those sounds. For new presets I've been mostly using Dyna-Cabs, although there have been cases where I simply went with legacy cabs I was already familiar with. Leon's LT TV Mix 2 covers a lot of bases for me.

I often spend as much time moving mics around in the Dyna-Cab UI as I would just picking one or two of my go-to legacy cabs. I never really had a problem picking legacy cabs because I found a handful I like and I tend to just go straight to them instead of sifting through thousands of choices.
 
imo, the dialing in process for included DCs, as well their integration with the amp block, is better in every way. Icing on the cake would be 3rd pty DC packs and premixing via Cablab 4.
 
From an IR resolution perspective ,

UltraRes aka Legacy Cabs is much better

Since it can capture more info about the cab being captured (UltraRes being 8k samples VS Dyna-cabs being Normal Res 2k samples)

Whether that extra detail in the IR sounds better is up to the user.

Dyna-cabs is just a more user friendly and intuitive (according to traditional methods) way to go through IR’s.

You’re still fundamentally sifting through IR’s at the end of the day.

Dyna-Cab Or Legacy…

Which one sounds better?

It’s up to the user.


On a personal note , it’s just another way to add more/less BMT instead of using the BMT knobs on the amp block (yes I know they react differently)
 
Technically a legacy IR is better. When you move the mic around on a dyna cab, an IR is calculated every time. Only, the DC IR is shorter than an ultrares IR, so it holds less information. Some people like the sound of shorter IRs, but while it is ready to make an IR shorter, it is impossible to make it longer.

I also prefer the workflow with DC compared to going through many IRs. In reality though, I never did that. I always knew which cabs I wanted and bought them from good IR makers. Then I just chose one of their mixes feeling assured that they had made healthy IRs because they have much more experience than me. As long as I know, I have a healthy IR in the territory I want, I never worry about the IR again.

I made a blind test thread where I used both DC and legacy IR and asked people to choose the 'better' one. In the end, nobody could decide which was better but raved on about how it was not an apples to apples comparison. This is true, but if you cannot tell me, which one is better, then maybe, it is not really better at all, which was the whole point of my thread.
 
I'm clearly subjective but I can only tell that I've had the best session ever with the new feature - DC. Among all the IRs that are in the unit and all the IR packs that I've bought, nothing comes even nearly close to my first experiment with the DC.
 
Dyna Cabs definitely make it easier to find the sound you're looking for. To my ears, neither is 'better' just different. Dyna Cabs seem to a have wider, more spacious sound with less mids resulting in bit more 'clarity' while the Legacy IRs seem to cut through the mix a bit better with the mids. If you've whittled your 'go-to' IRs down to a handful, it's a toss up to what you want.

I really like Dyna Cabs playing alone and believe they sound and feel great but I still use Legacy IRs for my live presets. Waiting for things to slow down a bit so I can take some more time and play around with the Preamps to dial the DCs in.
 
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IMO the Dyna-Cabs are better than most of the factory IRs, which can be a bit all over the place, especially when there's a lot of different vendors for them. Dyna-Cabs are way more consistent in behavior and sound.

Dyna-cabs are perhaps not better than 3rd party IRs though. Many end up loving e.g York Audio's mixes, he has a great ear for these things. By comparison to do the same thing with Dyna-Cabs means you need to put in more personal work, but the sounds are there.

I think the Dyna-Cabs make it really easy to play with your cab sound and that makes all the difference. No more "mystery IR A-E" rolling until you like what you get or move to the next cab. Also retaining the mic type/position when changing cabs is a huge boon because it's easy to test the mics and cabs at the same position, even if each mic requires a bit different positioning.

One problem with the Dyna-Cabs is the default starting position of dead center. This generally sounds awful for the dynamic mics so no matter what you need to move them. Making use of the library function becomes pretty essential and these defaults might put newbie users off when it doesn't sound great right away, same as that "1x4 Pig" cab as default in the Legacy cabs.

Also, don't sleep on the Align tab with Dyna-Cabs. With regular IRs you basically never need it, but with Dyna-Cabs always being in phase they can sound a bit "dry" and adding just a little bit of phase difference can smooth them out in a pleasing way.
 
ok!, as in the numerous other threads on this same topic, this is my queue to speil...

ApocalypticKatana said:
Dyna-cabs is just a more user friendly and intuitive (according to traditional methods) way to go through IR’s.
Click to expand...
nope - not just another way to search IRs - the automated speaker curve integration using ICs from the actual cabs makes DCs unique from the legacy process, and objectively better in terms of accuracy (as well as selection efficiency, and integration, as mentioned above). This automated and more accurate speaker curve integration is the groundbreaking aspect of DCs. And again, seems really weird to me that few if any here seem to acknowledge the importance of this new feature and/or state much credit to Fractal for belng the only one (at least to my knowledge of modelling products) to determime a way to do it, and offer it to customers (I am used to explosions of applause here for much less, but on this auto-IC aspect using real ICs taken from the actual captured cabs (raising the bar to a new level for amp/cab modelling imo), I've heard mostly crickets).
 
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Not a consensus they’re better over all, but everyone seems to agree the interface is better. I have a few favorite IR’s that I run in Ultrares, I like them a lot, and I’m still using them. Just like I’m only using a handful of the amps and effects despite having 100’s of options.
 
To expand on the above, well made point, a lot of our favorite IRs are mic blends, and that is an art unto itself.
It's why they sound so different and generally much darker - versus where you initially start with dyna-cabs.
Some of those IRs have shelving baked in too, depends on the vendor / person.
 
Karl Houseknecht said:
This ^ x 1000.

I start all of mine off at 5, the halfway point. Sometimes it's just a little bit to either side and maybe a little bit back and you're done. Finish up with hi and low cuts. Add in some mid with the preamp.
Click to expand...
Do you use the default distance of 0, or start that at 5 too?
 
To be honest, I don't understand what's so difficult to understand about Dyna Cabs and the difference to the old method of fixed IRs.

If you think about whether or not Dyna Cabs sound better than IRs, there's a fundamental misunderstanding about … probably all of it.

My guess is, that some people here have lost the connection to the real thing: a miced cab.

I'm not blaming anybody! I'm just wondering how this can be, since it's being asked here on a very regular basis.

Here's my summary of the topic. And no, I don't even own one of the newer generation devices, I'm still on my II. But understanding that stuff is really supposed to be easy!
 
I have conflicted feelings about it.
I think the interface for DC is substantially better than having to cycle through countless IR files.
However, there's elements baked into the DC offerings that I feel it's excessively difficult to counter in order to get any of them to do certain things that are manageable with a lot of the legacy IRs available.
 
sprint said:
ok!, as in the numerous other threads on this same topic, this is my queue to speil...


nope - not just another way to search IRs - the automated speaker curve integration using ICs from the actual cabs makes DCs unique from the legacy process, and objectively better in terms of accuracy (as well as selection efficiency, and integration, as mentioned above). This automated and more accurate speaker curve integration is the groundbreaking aspect of DCs. And again, seems really weird to me that few if any here seem to acknowledge the importance of this new feature and/or state much credit to Fractal for belng the only one (at least to my knowledge of modelling products) to determime a way to do it, and offer it to customers (I am used to explosions of applause here for much less, but on this auto-IC aspect using real ICs taken from the actual captured cabs (raising the bar to a new level for amp/cab modelling imo), I've heard mostly crickets).
Click to expand...
The automatic speaker curves and DC need IMHO a reconstruction from ground of patches, which is the reason I will wait for integrating definitively the new FW after the summer when I'll have more time and maybe the choice of DC IR models will be larger.
 
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