From (good) bedroom tone to (weak) live sound...

Thanks guys ! yesterday was my first opportunity to test your ideas and suggestions at band level. I namely got inspiration from Clarky's thread about preset building (best thread I am aware of) and Phantomofalfred suggestion about standard EQ settings to go from low to high level ... And ...Miracle! It worked perfectly well, with only minor tweaking ! I have received compliments from my band mates on the quality of my sounds and they even asked some questions on how this had been made! All the credit goes to you. Thanks !:p
 
Today i had the chance to play loud,

and to check the EQ settings that Phantomofalfred suggested here. Wow, ...very very nice sounding now.
Also done some minor tweak in the amp section, but in all i could not be happier now.

So i like to thank Phantomofalfred specially.

Frank
 
On the other hand , the whole mix will change in perception along with the guitar. That means the guitar hasn't changef in comparison to the mix. I think that is why it works fine without compensating.



widrace said:
IMO…
in many commercial recordings sounds just fine whether you’re just listening to your TV at 60db or blasting out with a high-power playback system at 120db. Achieving this wide-range ability is the goal and it only comes from learning and hard work. It’s also what separates the men from the boys. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a FOH guy, a studio mix guy, a guitar player or whatever. The pro’s do it everyday.

To start, get the patch working at low volume. All the problems like mud from too much gain - those things are heard easily there. Being conscious of the curves, sculpt the frequency spectrum allowing for what is to come (or not) with increased volume. Approach it in a manner such that if a known frequency region will be boosted with increased volume; you should pre-bias that region to the thin side at lesser volume, etc. You’re done when you’ve properly compensated for volume changes across the frequency spectrum. Try listening to your favorite tracks at the volume extremes for some insight. As volume is increased listen close to what is going on in different frequency regions. Determine what causes your guitar to go south while your favorite track is getting on just fine.

When you get this right all kinds of problems disappear too. The needed cut is there at any volume and you blend in right. As your EQ skills improve, so will the volume range the patch can more. The more you work at it the wider your tolerance window is going to be.

Edit: This only applies to quality FRFR
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IMHO and IME it's just a thing you have to learn. Learning means: doing things several times, recognizing errors and adjust accordingly.

Example: you dial in a great high gain tone whilst playing alone and on low volume. Fast forward, playing at band rehearsal, it's all a muddy mess with too much low and high end. So you back down on those and the gain, and add mids. Works. Yeah! Now back at home you compare both patch versions. -> Learning process started.

Once you have done this a few times, you can create amp sounds at home that will work at least decently in a band setting, so that you can get through a gig or rehearsal without bothering your bandmates, and only fine tuning is needed to get a decent sound to a great sound :)
 
Does anybody know how we could get a tonematch of a loudness corrective eq?

That would help a lot. Placing it at the end of every chain as a global block to add a kind of loudness when we are tweaking at bedroom levels and when we go live we could just turn it off globally to kill the added loudness, because then it's replaced by natural loudness.
Of course there is no perfect curve existing for different low/loud bedroom volumes/ stage volumes, but it would be better than tweaking with no help at all.

Besides fletcher munson eqing, there is also a bit of compression happening when we crank up the volume, our ears compress the sound.
That's nothing that an eq can do, but we have compblocks if needed.

Best thing would be if Cliff adds a loudness corrective eq +comp to the global area.....guess he's pretty much to do already.
 
FM Curve is a reality no matter how you EQ your patch. This tip i posted above is just meant to put you in the ballpark. it aint perfect. You will always have to adjust for the volume, as well as the space that you are performing in.
Try building some patches at low "bedroom" levels with the EQ i mentioned above. Then go to a loud PA, turn off the pre-eq block and see if it does not at least get you acceptably close to the original bedroom sound right off the bat. From there you can further tweek, but at least this gets you close. The problem for me anyway is the endless tweaking and not enough playing. I like getting tips like the ones above because it shortens the time we spend tweaking and gets us back to playing. One could go mad trying to make everything perfect. ;) I know i have.
Im seeing that lots of people have put a lot of thought into the FM problem. Perhaps from research, we could design a dynamic EQ that would compensate volume changes without extra tweaking. That would be pretty awsome to have.
 
phantomofalfred said:
...turn off the pre-eq block...
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PEQ? or is the eq curve you listed pre amp block? Seems like it should be post cab in a FRFR setup, right?
Also, are you using a PEQ or GEQ? The II only allows for a 12db cut in both of those blocks. So cutting 12.8 I'm not getting.
I understand these are just starting points to get us in the ball park, Im just trying to understand exactly how you go about applying this EQ curve.
Thanks in advance for any help Phantomofalfred.
 
Once you're happy with you're bedroom preset, dial down the gain a bit, slap a peq, hi pass @80hz, low pass @ 10k, and boost a wide band at between 500 to 1k by about 2 db. That should counter the Fletcher Munson effect somewhat. You can also dial down the treble or presence from your amp model to make it chunkier... But you definitely need to tweak this at louder volumes to hit the sweet spot!
 
Can someone explain why this needs to be done on the axe fx 2 and not so much on a regular amp. I have poeple saying to me "cant hear ya" etc. does this mean that axe.fx syatems still has far to go, I dont mean to be contraversial you know....
 
NMG said:
Can someone explain why this needs to be done on the axe fx 2 and not so much on a regular amp.
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Because the Axe has a master volume on the output that allows you to vary the volume without affecting the tone of the patch.
 
NMG said:
Can someone explain why this needs to be done on the axe fx 2 and not so much on a regular amp. I have poeple saying to me "cant hear ya" etc. does this mean that axe.fx syatems still has far to go, I dont mean to be contraversial you know....
Click to expand...
You have to do it with a real amp too. If you set your amp up to sound good in your bedroom (real good), it will not translate to a live volume well at all. It wont cut thru the mix and the bass will get flubby.
 
^^^^This is true, went through this with my mesa roadking^^^^

Does anyone know if these eq settings work well with a power amp and cab for getting good live tones?
 
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