DynaCab Pack Limited Public Beta

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My only thought so far:
In cab lab 3, if there are missing IR files when opening up a session, it would bring up a dialogue box allowing you to manually point to the right directory. In cab-lab 4, the files are just missing. It would be nice to have that feature.
 
I just bought the 1960TV, Double Verb, and AC20. I'm very excited to give these a try! I always set my IRs to 512 tirm length, and I'm curious to see if Cab Lab 4 will let you trim the length in future versions. Even if not, I love the fact that I'll be able to position mics much more freely, and that there are many more mics available! Complete and total awesomeness.
 
State of Epicicity said:
I just bought the 1960TV, Double Verb, and AC20. I'm very excited to give these a try! I always set my IRs to 512 tirm length, and I'm curious to see if Cab Lab 4 will let you trim the length in future versions. Even if not, I love the fact that I'll be able to position mics much more freely, and that there are many more mics available! Complete and total awesomeness.
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There is a trim option, but it is limited to auto trim and min phase. I am not sure what values those translate to, however. What is the result you get from trimming to 512, specifically?
 
Okay, first awesome thing, as I'm messing with it just reading the manual before even picking up my axe:

Now we know what speakers are in these cabs!!! That is awesome. There was some speculation, but now we know, and that's awesome (it bears repeating). For ultimate accuracy, you'd want to adjust Speaker Thump to match the ratio of the power of the amp / power of the cab * 5 (if I'm guessing correctly from the clues Cliff dropped). Of course, some combinations would cause fire, death, and destruction in the real world, like running a 5150 into a Champ 8" speaker and cranking it, but for situations that would make sense in the real world, knowing the actual speaker is totally radical. Now I can look up the speaker for the 4x12, which I read is a G12M, and from what I'm seeing, that's only available as a 25W version, so the cab is 100W (for the purpose of this loose reckoning. So, if I run a 50W Plexi model into this cab, for maximum accuracy, I of course choose the matching speaker impedance curve, then I set Speaker Thump to 2.50, which is the default setting, and that is the closest to completely accurate real world you're going to get modelling anything anywhere.

Now, of course, who cares about accuracy at that level? I don't think audio has rules, and one of the advantages of modelers is the ability to break the rules and constraints of reality, but Dude, how awesome is it to be able to start with reality? I love to set my presets to the closest I can get to reality just as a starting place, then go from there to tweak to my heart's content.

Anyway, that was a long-winded way to say, This is Totally Awesome!
 
jimmynorrisjr said:
There is a trim option, but it is limited to auto trim and min phase. I am not sure what values those translate to, however. What is the result you get from trimming to 512, specifically?
Click to expand...

Well, for me, one rule of reality I like to break is the removal of room reflections (perecptibly) in the sound of the mic'd cab. At 512, I keep some of the the low end (not all of it), but I also don't have any of the room sound that I don't want. I like it dry, like really, really dry. LIke, unnaturally dry. And I find 512 is a good compromise setting for that for me. A good test for trim length to find what I like for a particular IR is to play a note high up, maybe the 17th fret of the high E string, and just keeping hitting it with wild vibrato. That'll normally bring out any room sound in the cab, and I'll just start trimming the IR down until that sounds dry enough for me to enjoy it. And some IRs tend not to have so much obvious room sound, so I don't feel the need for it, but, for efficiency's sake, 512 is a good place for me to keep it.

The advantage for me of a future version of Cab Lab having a trim feature for each cab, similar to the cab block, is to mix and align cabs with the trim already done, because if I take all the time to perfect a mix at full length, then just trim it to 512 in the Axe-FX III, it will sound different. It's not the biggest change in the world, but it's there. Not the biggest deal in the world, because I can then readjust my BMT settings to compensate, but it would just be a cool thing!
 
It appears that you have to stay logged in to use the plugin?
Not liking that at all.
I bought three packs, downloaded and authorized to my PC and then logged off and when I go to load a cab it says it can't authorize.
I log back in to Cab Manager and things work.
I wouldn't have purchased these if I knew that was the case.
I understand needing to download and authorize online but to have to stay online to use the plugin is a no-go for me. My DAW stays offline unless I need to update something.
Please verify.
 
As a follow up,
I started the stand alone and logged in, used it for a bit, logged off and went to the plugin and it seems to be working with logging in every time. Going back to the stand alone without logging in works now also.
Maybe you have to log in to the stand alone first?
We'll see.
 
jimmynorrisjr said:
There is a trim option, but it is limited to auto trim and min phase. I am not sure what values those translate to, however. What is the result you get from trimming to 512, specifically?
Click to expand...

I realize I didn't address the other part of your question. Auto Trim and Minimum phase are different than trim length. I'll try to explain this as I understand it, but I could be wrong with some of my explanation, so someone else please correct anything I'm wrong about.

With trim length, you cut off the end of the IR at a particular length, which removes some bass but also mostly room sounds, but auto trim removes leading silence, the purpose for which someone else may be able to explain well. For Minimum Phase, you are essentially taking out any natural phase characteristics of your IR. For instance, you have and IR of a mic right up on the grill, and another ten feet away. If you were to mix both IRs together, starting at the same time, the far away mic would come in however many milliseconds after the close one, and that would be natural phase relationship of the two mics, creating natural reinforcement or cutting of different frequencies as a result. If you export an IR and apply Minimum Phase, you're creating an MPT, a minimum phase transfer, and when you overlap that IR with another MPT IR, they'll be in phase, regarldess of how they would've been if you had the mics their various positions and heard them live. You're artifically aligning the phase of those IRs, which is preferred by many, and, as Cliff has written, something that many studio engineers take great pains to do. I personally love the natural phase relationship of mics due to the their ability to cancel frequencies and, in the case of pick attack, make it sound like you have a lower resonant peak in your pickups. I just love that natural alignment as a great way to EQ tone. But it's all personal preference, and, like with every other part of audio, there are no artistic rules. It's just good to know many different methods in your toolkit and to be able to apply them to express what you want more effectively.
 
Purchase, installation and download was quick and smooth, the interface is great (love the skin options btw).
I tried it for a few minutes before going to sleep and everything seems to work fine.

I see a couple things missing compared to cab-lab 3: the smoothing parameter and the trim option per cab slot (atm it's only in the export section), hope these will be added in the future cuz they're handy.

But other than that, this is pretty much perfect in my eyes and still can't believe the app/plugin is free. Great job!

PS: I also have a few questions:
  • I see in the export tab just two options for the format, Normal and UltraRes. Is normal 2048 or 1024 samples?
  • DynaCab packs seem to be 2048 samples, since a PC doesn't have particular memory or CPU constraints like a modeler, any chance it could be extended to a longer sample lenght in the future?
  • What's the maximum lenght currently supported by cab-lab 4 for normal IRs?
 
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Not sure what happened to my three purchased cabs, as they came authorized to another computer, and order lookup had the wrong order number associated with them. So, I had to unauthorize before reauthorizing on my Win 10 PC, then finally they were happy (though the other computer name was still associated with them?). Once happy everything worked fine, except that USB audio died after a save IR mix to HW operation (did save multiple IR mixes to PC without issue).

Will investigate that later...

Powerful tool, especially great for the Cab slot limited FM3 folks!
 
Admin M@ said:
The x64 installs itself to both "C:\Program Files\Fractal Audio\Cab-Lab 4 Plugin" (for the uninstall application to reside) and also copies the vst3 file to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3".
Click to expand...
In my case, I can't find it anywhere in the VST 3 folder if I choose the default plugin installation path: C:\Program Files\Fractal Audio\Cab-Lab 4 Plugin. It appears that the copying isn't working in my case.

Changing it manually to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 fixes the problem and then it appears in the VST 3 folder.

I tried it multiple times and the outcome was always the same. Even Studio One 6.5 couldn't find it, although it scans the VST 3 folder on every startup. After specifying C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 as the installation path, Studio One 6.5 finds it immediately.

I'm using a Windows 11 (latest update) Desktop PC with an AMD Ryzen 9 CPU.
 
There was one think that could've been smoother during the purchase and installation process: when I placed my order around 10 pm, the order status screen read "awaiting payment" and the order email read "immediate download after completing payment" even though I had just entered my credit card. I thought there would be a small delay in me being able to download the packs, so I just waited while I began to read the manual. But the email never came that night. I remembered this being the case when I bought a Fractal Cab Pack some time ago. This time the "order status has changed" emails came around 5:00 am.

When I bought the cab pack before, I just waited until the next email came before downloading my cab pack, but this I thought after a few minutes that I should just enter my account and see if maybe the Dyna Cabs were actually available right away anyway, and, to my surprise, they were, so I then went to the cab manager, the rest of the process was smooth sailing.
 
Downloaded CabLab4 and installed. Purchased all 4 DynaCab units (via beta deal) and this is what I found . I have played ONLY with the stand alone, so all comments hereafter are referring to that component only. Computer is Windows 10 Pro with Axe FXIII MkII Turbo connected as audio interface. All I played with was DynaCab stuff (making a mix of the 4 cabs purchased).

Ultimately, I felt like this should just be a breakout box of Axe Edit. As laxu mentioned in another forums thread "More mics and axis adjustment doesn't really move the needle for me.". Yes, there is more to it than that and of course it is free, but here are some drawbacks I encountered that make me feel it would be better integrated with AxeEdit.

1. When it is open, you can not connect to your unit that CabLab is connected to.
2. Switching a scene or preset is in the "Settings" pop up menu, which is a bit cumbersome. And once you are there, you can not turn blocks on/off or change channels.
3. In setting it up to use SW Live mode, you click on a button to Bypass your cab block in the chosen preset. But you get no recognition that it has been bypassed, you just have to assume. The button (Do It) remains clickable.
4. Was a bit miffed (or too stupid to understand how to do so) that I can not pull the DynaCabs from my FXIII with their current settings. I would like to be able to bring those over so I can customize them in CabLab, possibly output a single IR and use that instead of 2 or 3 or 4 cabs which could save me some serious CPU in my presets.
5. Audible latency was present even when I chose the lowest latency setting (144 samples - 3ms) initially presented (it had defaulted to the Windows Audio ASIO). I then decided to try a different ASIO and tested each of the 5 that were shown to me (Direct Audio, ASIO4ALL, Windows Audio, Windows Audio (Exclusive Mode) and Windows Audio (Low Latency Mode). After going through them all, ASIO4ALL was the best choice and I was able to then select a latency setting of 64 samples -1.3ms. This resolved any latency I could discern. To be clear, I believe the 144 samples rate was giving me way more than 3ms because I am NOT that good.

I did enjoy the new layout and the extra mics, seems like solid and well built software that reacted quickly and accurately. As I said though, I would like to see it incorporated into AxeEdit because it solves 4 of the 5 problems I had with it (and the 5th prob is not CabLab's fault for the most part IMO). As it currently stands, if you want to change something in your testing scene/preset, you need to shut down cab lab (or disconnect from unit), open axe edit do the changes, disconnect unit from axeedit, reconnect to unit in cab lab. Unless of course you are a front panel sniffer, not sure if you can use FP to make changes while connected to CabLab. Now all this said, I was not taking advantage of all the other features that CabLab offers (exporting, importing, capture, conversion, etc.) in this testing, just playing with DynaCabs. Additionally I have no idea how difficult it would be to allow these programs (CabLab and AxeEdit) to connect simultaneously on a system, but that would be my preference even if they could not be melted together into a single program.

EDIT: My ignorance got the best of me for #5 above, that is not an issue and I apologize for misleading anyone into thinking this was a problem.
 
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Moondog Wily said:
4. Was a bit miffed (or too stupid to understand how to do so) that I can not pull the DynaCabs from my FXIII with their current settings. I would like to be able to bring those over so I can customize them in CabLab, possibly output a single IR and use that instead of 2 or 3 or 4 cabs which could save me some serious CPU in my presets.
Click to expand...
just chiming in to underline that this is not possible at all!
(and it would be fantastic, being an FM3 user..)
 
Installed CabLab 4 this morning to play with it a bit. I've only experimented with it functionally (i.e. no audio tests yet), but everything is working smoothly. Installation was easy, and the CabManager import was quick and easy after entering my FAS credentials. Importing normal WAV IRs works well too. I was able to connect to my Axe Fx III, and CL4 made the appropriate changes based on HW or SW mode. I really like the Zoom feature and how it allows you to individual control the three movement paths.

So far, everything looks good. No graphical hiccups or software hangups while loading or changing cabs or mics or by throwing WAV IRs into the mix. I'll have more time to actually use CL4 this weekend. I'm really interested in diving into the HW and SW control modes.
 
Riccardo Ros said:
just chiming in to underline that this is not possible at all!
(and it would be fantastic, being an FM3 user..)
Click to expand...
Hmmmm, this is what I was hoping for as well. Will it let you a/b the hardware version with the CabLab version so that you can
at least match the sound, and then export a single IR?
 
Feature suggestion: it would be really cool if, in Zoom view, we could select one of the Mic Position parameters--Angular, Center/Edge, or Distance--and then use an expression pedal to move the slider while playing.

My instinct is to assume someone has thought of this by now and maybe it's not possible to implement, but in case not....
 
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