FOH

Pardon my ignorance, but has Fractal Audio ever stated their design choice was to go for a mic'd guitar tone?
 
chris said:
i think people who love a real cab should just mic the thing like normal. running a cab sim to the PA will be a different tone anyway, and way more work to constantly balance levels and effects and this and that. just focus on one tone - your real cab - and put a mic on it. it's worked for years and years, and sound guys know exactly what to do with it.
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Mic'd cab tone can sound totally different than "cab in room" tone though. When I was doing a bit of recording guys always had an issue going from how they heard their rig standing right in front of it to adapting to how it was mic'd when they heard the control room playback.

Heck, even when I mic'd cabs the tone always seemed to change gig after gig, not matter how close you tried to replicate the positioning of the mic

With an IR your always getting the exact same tone night after night
 
Scary said:
Pardon my ignorance, but has Fractal Audio ever stated their design choice was to go for a mic'd guitar tone?
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Ummm, how can an IR be anything but a mic'd guitar cabinet ?

How to you capture an impulse response without using a microphone, which therefore makes it the sound of a mic'd cab ?

Do you have any recorded music, either on cd, vinyl, mp3, et al., that isn't the sound of a mic'd guitar ?

Unless your favorite artist invites you over to stand in the room while he/she plays their guitar, your hearing the sound of a mic'd cab
 
Who knows? I just wondered if that was common knowledge or just some crap and user like yourself spewed.
 
lqdsnddist said:
Mic'd cab tone can sound totally different than "cab in room" tone though. When I was doing a bit of recording guys always had an issue going from how they heard their rig standing right in front of it to adapting to how it was mic'd when they heard the control room playback.

Heck, even when I mic'd cabs the tone always seemed to change gig after gig, not matter how close you tried to replicate the positioning of the mic

With an IR your always getting the exact same tone night after night
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i agree. i'm saying that if someone doesn't really care what the IR sounds like anyway and mostly cares about the on-stage tone, then why even work at all splitting the tone with/without cab, choosing IRs, etc? just mic your real cab and you'll probably have the same amount of variance as "some ol' IR", but the sound guy might have better knowledge or control over a real mic. just another way to look at it.
 
chris said:
i think people who love a real cab should just mic the thing like normal. running a cab sim to the PA will be a different tone anyway, and way more work to constantly balance levels and effects and this and that. just focus on one tone - your real cab - and put a mic on it. it's worked for years and years, and sound guys know exactly what to do with it.
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I was micing my guitar cab, then decided to really dig in and see if it was possible to get close on both guitar cab and FOH. I didn't want to mic the cab if I didn't have to. We are really talking mostly eq. So I read a few tutorials from people who had similar setups as me. In the end you can listen to my 4 x 12 guitar cab and my FOH and can hardly tell the difference. The key for me was to get the hi frequency drivers tamed. Now the big problem is what tone you want in what direction. Off axis is going to sound totally different in both the guitar cab and FOH. So my final touches were to walk around the room, while playing, to get the tone from different angles, and finding that happy medium.
In the end I run the entire chain, including cab sim to channel 2 with a loop for channel 1 and an eq after the loop, specific for channel 1. I kept tweaking the eq until I achieved similar tones. It was a lot of work. But in the end it was worth it.
However this whole stage cab, FOH issue will never be resolved for everyone, because we all have different ears and may or may not be happy with the end result..
 
Lastnight I run both my Q12 via cab sim (IR of my cab) and a real guitar cab - I put a GEQ block after the cab sim, I switched from real to FRFR making tonal adjustments with the GEQ and tones in the cab sim block.
I must admit I got it quite close.
The Q12 still had a slight 'boxy' sound to it though I put that down to the closed back cab sound as my guitar cab is open back it does not have a boxy sound.

This was done at a low 'house' volume so it will be interesting to see how the tone changes with an increase of volume, normally with my guitar cab I rarely need to change the tone, maybe add a little mote top end, I wonder if the Q12 will act the same.

One thing with the Axe Edit though was that every time I pressed save for the cab block after making adjustments it just came up with the name 'cab' not allowing me to save over my settings - so everytime I saved it would add to my presets - I now have about 20 settings all called 'cab' as it would add to the list and not save over?
 
chris said:
It's interesting that many here feel the opposite and don't care about their FOH tone and just need a killer on stage tone. Many ways to play music :)
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True Chris, but my audiences are listening to the FOH, not the monitors. My performances are for them, not for me. I care about what they are hearing far more than what I am listening to.
 
andyp13 said:
One thing with the Axe Edit though was that every time I pressed save for the cab block after making adjustments it just came up with the name 'cab' not allowing me to save over my settings - so everytime I saved it would add to my presets - I now have about 20 settings all called 'cab' as it would add to the list and not save over?
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Maybe you were saving preset as? When you adjust the cab block, or any block in the preset, your changes automatically save to the block. Then when you save the preset it becomes permanent. If you don't save the preset all your work will be lost. The same applies if you change presets without saving. that way you can play with a preset until you destroy it, but never lose the original until you hit save.
 
Geezerjohn said:
True Chris, but my audiences are listening to the FOH, not the monitors. My performances are for them, not for me. I care about what they are hearing far more than what I am listening to.
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Spoken like a pro! And with bigger shows, the sound engineers don't want to hear sound coming from the stage, so it makes the FOH tone that much more important. It's funny, we play a street dance and I use a stage cab. We play a concert and there's nothing on stage. My sound is always in my ears anyway.
 
Geezerjohn said:
True Chris, but my audiences are listening to the FOH, not the monitors. My performances are for them, not for me. I care about what they are hearing far more than what I am listening to.
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i agree with you, and this is how i approach it and why i go full FRFR. i'm just commenting on seeing some say "i don't care what FOH sounds like."
 
chris said:
i agree with you, and this is how i approach it and why i go full FRFR. i'm just commenting on seeing some say "i don't care what FOH sounds like."
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A musician saying "I don't care what FOH sounds like" just seems odd to me Chris. That would be like a painter saying "I don't care what it looks like". As a musician, if you are not performing, what is the point of music? Personally, I think any musician who is not recording and performing, leaves no legacy, in other words, leaves nothing of any value when they are gone. Their effort to learn how to make music is for nothing. If Monet never painted, would he be known to us now? I am thankful I have recordings of the music I have created, and thankful for the opportunity to play music for people. Like you, I care very much how it sounds to my audiences. They took time out from their lives to listen to the music I create. The very least I can do is give them my best.
 
andyp13 said:
Lastnight I run both my Q12 via cab sim (IR of my cab) and a real guitar cab - I put a GEQ block after the cab sim, I switched from real to FRFR making tonal adjustments with the GEQ and tones in the cab sim block.
I must admit I got it quite close.
The Q12 still had a slight 'boxy' sound to it though I put that down to the closed back cab sound as my guitar cab is open back it does not have a boxy sound.
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Open-back? Now we're getting somewhere.

Two components to your perception of your sound:
1. Your actual tone
2. The reaction of the cab with the room

An open-back cab reacts with the room in a huge way. Tone-wise, yes, you might be able to nail your cab's tone 100%. But a closed-back Q12 will never react with the room in the same way as an open-back cab. It's physics. So even though you might get the tone perfect, you'll still perceive your sound as missing something.

If FOH were to take a direct signal that uses an accurate IR of an open-back cab, it would be virtually identical to what they would get if they were to mic that actual open-back cab. This is because it's not possible for FOH to capture the cab/room interaction using a mic; it's something only the musician will perceive on the stage, and seems to be what you're trying to re-create.

From your description, it seems your approach is to compensate for the perceptual holes by using EQ. Nothing wrong with that if that's what it takes to get the stage sound you're after. Just be aware that the more you correct for your how you perceive your sound on stage, the more you color what you send to FOH, possibly resulting in your FOH sounding quite different from how you might have expected. One way to avoid this is to use Output 1 for your FRFR, and use the global Output 1 EQ (rather than a GEQ block) to compensate your stage sound; use Output 2 for FOH, leave its EQ flat, and echo it from Output 1.

Alternately, Xitone makes open-back FRFR... ;)
 
Saying that a closed back cab (q12) sounds more "boxy" than an open back cab is pretty accurate I'd say. I agree that the open back cab is a huge difference. It's almost like having a 2nd q12 facing the exact opposite way of your main q12. You hear way more bounce off the walls, which hits your ears at a slightly different time, making things sound more full and "3D" because of natural room reflections/reverb.
 
Geezerjohn said:
A musician saying "I don't care what FOH sounds like" just seems odd to me Chris. That would be like a painter saying "I don't care what it looks like". As a musician, if you are not performing, what is the point of music? Personally, I think any musician who is not recording and performing, leaves no legacy, in other words, leaves nothing of any value when they are gone. Their effort to learn how to make music is for nothing. If Monet never painted, would he be known to us now? I am thankful I have recordings of the music I have created, and thankful for the opportunity to play music for people. Like you, I care very much how it sounds to my audiences. They took time out from their lives to listen to the music I create. The very least I can do is give them my best.
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I think most musicians have little to no control over the FOH sound, and most audience members couldn't tell much difference between a shit tone and the best tone on earth...

So, you can extrapolate a bit: if my tone on stage is good, I play better... And the FOH has a better chance of sounding good if I am getting a good stage tone. If it is out of my hands once the signal leaves my rig, then I'd prefer to at least have a tone that I love.

Not quite the same as "I don't care about FOH" but I think you get my point?

As far as the whole artist topic, I have a different view... I write and perform music first for myself, and then I hope that since it appeals to me that others will also enjoy it.

But if I don't enjoy performing it live because my tone is merely acceptable and not inspiring to me, then the audience is being shortchanged on the real art.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents... Everyone has their own motivation and methods. :)
 
I was just sampling a Mesa 4 x 12 closed back cab loaded with Creambacks and a Mesa 2 x 12 open back cab loaded with Black Shadows side by side. The open back was not quite as tight, but produced more bottom end and filled up the room more balanced. The closed back did what it should and projected the sound straight out the front, but caused a very different off axis tone. The open back cab was more rounded, more punchier and better balanced walking around in the room.
I'm sure this applies to most FRFR cabs as well.
 
All this being said regarding open back cabinets makes me think - so I have 2 open back 1x12 cabinets, can I get FRFR speakers for them? Anyone have any recommendations ?
 
chris said:
Saying that a closed back cab (q12) sounds more "boxy" than an open back cab is pretty accurate I'd say. I agree that the open back cab is a huge difference. It's almost like having a 2nd q12 facing the exact opposite way of your main q12. You hear way more bounce off the walls, which hits your ears at a slightly different time, making things sound more full and "3D" because of natural room reflections/reverb.
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I think this is where @andyp13 is coming from and I can relate with it entirely. Just going on his video clips, that style of bar/bistro type room is where I've played a lot of gigs ... although unlike his sensible size band for such venues, I'm in a 6 piece band, 2 lead singers, 3 musicians.....and a drummer (can't beat the old ones lol).

If you were to all go DI with the drummer on an electronic kit and use IEMs then yes you could swing it all together via a decent PA - but if you have any type of backline going (or even powered wedges facing you) then if you can hear it half the audience will hear it too ... and you can't really go too loud in these sort of places without things getting blargy.

It's a sort of small room mojo thing to have your open back 1x12 or 2x12 cab or combo pretty much carrying the room from the backline and maybe just a little extra bled into the PA. Seeing bands playing like this in pubs and clubs is what i grew up on and when the balance is right I think it gives much more good vibes than trying to treat a sticky carpet club room like a theatre size room where a PA is worked a lot harder.

Having said all that, when you play the big places then by all means use the AxeFX or AX8 to it's full potential ...... the thing is you have loads of preset slots ....... so set things up to cater for different type venues and monitoring styles if you want to. There are no restrictions or rules .... the FAS gear will accommodate for all the different ways.
 
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