Further proof that Fractal blows everything else out of the water

[vangrieg]

I wasn't cataloging them in my head, but I can't image "Roxane", "Message in a Bottle" or "Walking on the Moon" without guitars. The bass is obviously important in those songs, but they'd sound empty without the guitar.

Well, if you just take guitar out of these songs, they'll be empty, but in many cases it could be something other than a guitar, I think.

It's somewhat akin to when you listen to isolated tracks performed by great drummers - there are ghost notes, dynamics, all that stuff that you can easily miss when you listen to the whole mix. They are essential, yes, in that they differentiate great mix from a good or a mediocre one, but they're there in the background, kind of hidden.

So I guess that's what I meant with regard to relative importance of guitars in different genres.

 

[vangrieg]

does that exclude Boston, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and those kinds of bands?

No. But it increasingly true about modern music.

 

[B:ASSMASTER]

Thinking about how relatively unimportant guitars are in the overall mix in most cases, and the fact that we are such a low priority for FOH, and the fact that very very few people in the audience actually care unless you are a special kind of band built around a famous guitarist, it is insane how much we spend on gear and how we care about it.

I'd like you to say that about Jimmy Page, Slash, Eddie Van Halen, or David Gilmour.

 

[vangrieg]

I'd like you to say that about Jimmy Page, Slash, Eddie Van Halen, or David Gilmore.

Note that I use present tense.

 

[B:ASSMASTER]

No. But it increasingly true about modern music.

Deftones, Periphery, Avenged Sevenfold, ect.?

 

[vangrieg]

Deftones, Periphery, Avenged Sevenfold, ect.?

Eh, isn't that all high gain music?

 

[Andromalius]

Note that I use present tense.

I disagree with that assessment, plugging different guitars in the axe fx gives me entirely different tones. Most of my gutars are pretty different from each other and it can go as far as making some patches unusable. My personal experience would lead me to think that the most important factor after the cab and microphone is the pickup.

 

[vangrieg]

I disagree with that assessment, plugging different guitars in the axe fx gives me entirely different

I never said anything to the contrary.

 

[B:ASSMASTER]

Eh, isn't that all high gain music?

Didn't realize that you were excluding high gain when you said, "No. But it increasingly true about modern music."

Non-high gain? Okay. Foo Fighters, Steven Wilson, Muse, Foxy Shazam, Karnivool, ect...

 

[vangrieg]

Didn't realize that you were excluding high gain when you said,

I suggest then that you re-read what exactly I said.

 

[vangrieg]

Foo Fighters, Steven Wilson, Muse, Foxy Shazam, Karnivool

Foo fighters and Muse are quite high gain. Not edge of breakup for sure.

 

[Brownmatthall]

Foo fighters and Muse are quite high gain. Not edge of breakup for sure.

No way on the foo fighters, definitely mid gain territory. Muse is all over the spectrum though it would literally depend on the song you pick

 

[vangrieg]

definitely mid gain territory

Okay

 

[Geezerjohn]

You are correct. I messed that up didn't I? I will blame dyslexia.

It's all in how you look at it.

 

[favance]

A better test between the three should be based on dynamics as this is the secret of most great guitarists...playing everything super distorted and overdriven does not convey the true nature of an amp and guitar in the hands of a master guitarist. All are part of the equation!

 

[SteveW]

Clean tones are likely harder to achieve, but they don't show off the equipment capabilities as much as the built tones you describe...

FWIW, the master (rock) guitar players use the built, overdriven, super distorted tones way more often than not...and most amps out there today are built to do just that, with exceptions of course.

I don't think the amp modeling/ profiling companies out there could sell their products if they were all about clean, no-effect tones.

 

[Rex]

The reason I'm even commenting on this is because there is a profound lack of knowledge about these sort of things in the community. The more people that understand these things, the better for everyone.

This.

When people compare one tone to another, they almost always think in terms of EQ: "This tone is brighter/has more bottom/screams more/honks more than that tone." They rarely address (or are even consciously aware of) things like the character of the distortion or the way that character responds to transients or sustained notes. That's where the real magic lies. And it's the trickiest part of modeling. And as Cliff said, those subtleties are smeared when you crank the gain above a certain point, and all you're left with is hard clipping.

 

[Feared]

And he turned power amp modeling off in the AX-8. If he had turned it on and used a proper IR it probably would've sounded even better.

Ola is a great player, does great videos and has a great ear for metal tones. However I have a problem with tests like these. They are really only testing a unit's ability to match the EQ which isn't really that great a measure of how well a modeler works. When there's that much gain and you boost with a Tube Screamer the input EQ is basically a bandpass filter and all you're hearing is the output EQ. Pretty much all distortion algorithms sound the same with this much gain. You could use a simple hard clipper, i.e if x>k then x = k.

The real tests of a modeler are things like edge-of-breakup, what's the distortion texture like, what does the distortion sound like as the notes decay, does it clean up the same when you roll off the volume, do the tone controls behave accurately, etc., etc. These are the things that we've literally spent a decade perfecting. Getting the EQ right is easy, the hard part is getting the distortion characteristics. Tube amps have complex, multi-band distortion and (in my obviously biased opinion) nothing matches our algorithms in that regard.

He turned the power amp modeling off on the Helix as well and I don't think this was fair to the Helix.

Well the problem is that I can't make a cab impulse response without the use of a power amp, so to be fair for the comparison video I made it like this, it would be this way or a completely different sounding test. And I know if I would've done it that way people would say that both helix and AX8 would sound so much different from the rest. There is no good or fair way of making a comparison without having people tell you how you did it wrong. The idea with the video was to get as close to the real amp and cabinet as I could, and I think I came close, even if it's not the approach or way "you" want the AX8 to be showcased.

Of course I wish I had the possibility to make an IR of just the cab and microphone but I didn't so hence the way I did it in the video.

 

[FractalAudio]

Well the problem is that I can't make a cab impulse response without the use of a power amp, so to be fair for the comparison video I made it like this, it would be this way or a completely different sounding test. And I know if I would've done it that way people would say that both helix and AX8 would sound so much different from the rest. There is no good or fair way of making a comparison without having people tell you how you did it wrong. The idea with the video was to get as close to the real amp and cabinet as I could, and I think I came close, even if it's not the approach or way "you" want the AX8 to be showcased.

Of course I wish I had the possibility to make an IR of just the cab and microphone but I didn't so hence the way I did it in the video.

If you have an Axe-Fx II you can make an "uncolored" IR with a tube power amp using the Mic+DI method. You can also do it with other products (like Voxengo) in a similar manner. Record both the signal from the mic and the signal from the DI box and use the DI signal as the deconvolution reference signal (as opposed to the generator sweep).

 

[vangrieg]

I know if I would've done it that way people would say that both helix and AX8 would sound so much different from the rest.

Well, they DID sound different from "the rest", discarding the Kemper, which was way off.