shasha
Fractal Fanatic
So last night I decided to go ahead and fire up Cab Lab and check it out. I started with the stock Top Boost preset (AC30) and used a couple of the Silver IR's from one of the Fractal IR packs.
Anyway I've done this cab mixing thing in the past to great effect using IR-Lab which is more of an offline tool. You'd record a cut without a cab and then load that into the program. I hated it at first, but there is something to be said for dialing it in in real time. This is something that Cab Lab does not do as elegantly.
But I am convinced that there is more to the cabinet block than what was going on in IR-Lab. So while it gave you a pretty close approximation it wasn't exact. I will say that it never really bothered me.
Long story short it really comes down to two different workflows that work. What I noticed with Cab Lab really quickly was that it's fast. It's ridiculously fast to get from mix to AxeFXII. I thought that it would be cumbersome or counter-intuitive given what I am used to, but using the scratchpad made it ridiculously fast. And if I wanted to be able to dial in with a clip I could just use the looper. Where it really shines though is that I can get instant gratification from any changes by just sending it straight to the scratchpad. For me this is ideal because for as much as it is about the tone it's also about the response to the dynamics of my playing. It's almost like a feedback loop between what I hear and what I am playing that having to dial it in with a clip and then export and then load up into the AxeFXII into a user slot made it more tedious.
And the scratchpad is brilliant. Being able to A/B mixes that fast is the shiznit. I know that some people would prefer to hear the mixer's results in real time, but that would require it to send an IR every time you touch something and that isn't realistic or even ideal. I wasn't really sure about how I would feel about using it, but after about 3 minutes I knew that I was sold.
Anyway I've done this cab mixing thing in the past to great effect using IR-Lab which is more of an offline tool. You'd record a cut without a cab and then load that into the program. I hated it at first, but there is something to be said for dialing it in in real time. This is something that Cab Lab does not do as elegantly.
But I am convinced that there is more to the cabinet block than what was going on in IR-Lab. So while it gave you a pretty close approximation it wasn't exact. I will say that it never really bothered me.
Long story short it really comes down to two different workflows that work. What I noticed with Cab Lab really quickly was that it's fast. It's ridiculously fast to get from mix to AxeFXII. I thought that it would be cumbersome or counter-intuitive given what I am used to, but using the scratchpad made it ridiculously fast. And if I wanted to be able to dial in with a clip I could just use the looper. Where it really shines though is that I can get instant gratification from any changes by just sending it straight to the scratchpad. For me this is ideal because for as much as it is about the tone it's also about the response to the dynamics of my playing. It's almost like a feedback loop between what I hear and what I am playing that having to dial it in with a clip and then export and then load up into the AxeFXII into a user slot made it more tedious.
And the scratchpad is brilliant. Being able to A/B mixes that fast is the shiznit. I know that some people would prefer to hear the mixer's results in real time, but that would require it to send an IR every time you touch something and that isn't realistic or even ideal. I wasn't really sure about how I would feel about using it, but after about 3 minutes I knew that I was sold.
