Headrush Prime

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Ok, so I profiled/captured/amp cloned the AF3 amp I was comparing above.
Yes, that smokes the stock amp model.
I'd say the cloning is on par with the Kemper, possibly a little better-doesn't have that weird lower mid thing going like the Kemper did. Maybe not quite as good as the Tonex. There is a little missing in the upper frequencies but not much.
 
I don’t know about you all but I don’t like playing captures. This year of captures is for the birds. I’d rather play a real nice and accurate amp model like in the fractal stuff any day.

I feel like when you adjust a capture you instantly get further away from what was actually captured. The captures on the quad cortex (that I have since sold) were far less inspiring than I expected.
 
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I captured my real Marshall 1987X on the Headrush.
Ok, now there is a tone on the machine that sounds and feels inspiring...like on the AF3.

Somewhere here on this forum a while ago I stated that I wouldn't want to see Cliff add capturing to the Fractal gear.
My previous experience with capturing was a Kemper stage. It was not a good experience. I could do an amp DI 10 times and get 10 different results. To me the Kemper was just very inconsistent.

In recent weeks I have been using the Tonex software and now this Headrush. The Tonex works great and I think much better than the Kemper. Only downfall to the Tonex is that it takes much more time to do it but the accuracy is better.
The Headrush so far is not maybe as accurate as the Tonex but better than the Kemper. The time to do a capture is very short, much like the Kemper but you don't have to do the refining process.

Today, I would say, "Sure, why not add capturing to the AF3".
 
Kfletch said:
I don’t know about you all but I don’t like playing captures. This year of captures is for the birds. I’d rather play a real nice and accurate amp model like in the fractal stuff any day.
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If Fractal is going to insist on the cab selection process being an IR hunt with no method of making it less time consuming...

Then I'd rather hunt for captures than IRs.
Especially for amps I've never played before.
 
usersnoozer said:
If Fractal is going to insist on the cab selection process being an IR hunt with no method of making it less time consuming...

Then I'd rather hunt for captures than IRs.
Especially for amps I've never played before.
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IR hunting is the biggest (and for me the only) major drawback to Fractal. I just find something "good enough" and never change it, though I do wish I had a"better" IR for my usage at times. But how to audition thousands of IRs with any sense of accuracy is beyond me.
 
Michael R said:
Ok, so I profiled/captured/amp cloned the AF3 amp I was comparing above.
Yes, that smokes the stock amp model.
I'd say the cloning is on par with the Kemper, possibly a little better-doesn't have that weird lower mid thing going like the Kemper did. Maybe not quite as good as the Tonex. There is a little missing in the upper frequencies but not much.
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This I what I wanted to hear! thanks. btw, did it take 2 minutes or less to complete the cloning?
 
Musikron said:
how to audition thousands of IRs with any sense of accuracy is beyond me.
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imo the answer is that you don't audition 1,000s of IRs - 1st you get a sense of what the basic speakers / cabs / mic's and mic positions sound like (so some learning / study required on this but once you know it you know it so a 1 time time investment). Then, having build this basic knowledge, when making a preset you can go to the subset of IRs that matches what your looking for (ie: I want a 412 greenback sound with 57/121 mic mix). This will get you down to waay less than a shitload of IRs to audition. Put on top of that a tool to graphically move mics around (Mikko or Fractal's expected new features) and it's even faster - but even the mic positions can be learned to know your preferences. To just randomly audition 1000s of IRs willy nilly is insanity (and then auditioning dozens of IC curves for each IR is double insanity but that's another topic) . Here's some good vids that showcase getting to know what stuff sounds like:







 
sprint said:
imo the answer is that you don't audition 1,000s of IRs - 1st you get a sense of what the basic speakers / cabs / mic's and mic positions sound like (so some learning / study required on this but once you know it you know it so a 1 time time investment). Then, having build this basic knowledge, when making a preset you can go to the subset of IRs that matches what your looking for (ie: I want a 412 greenback sound with 57/121 mic mix). This will get you down to waay less than a shitload of IRs to audition. Put on top of that a tool to graphically move mics around (Mikko or Fractal's expected new features) and it's even faster - but even the mic positions can be learned to know your preferences. To just randomly audition 1000s of IRs willy nilly is insanity (and then auditioning dozens of IC curves for each IR is double insanity but that's another topic) . Here's some good vids that showcase getting to know what stuff sounds like:




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By responding with over six hours of videos, you're proving the point.

I just want Fractal to give me a starting point in the cab hunt by highlighting the factory cab(s) in the cabinet picker for a given amp model (if a factory cab exists for it).
 
usersnoozer said:
By responding with over six hours of videos, you're proving the point.
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I guess your being a little facetious The speakers video can be used as a reference where someone looking to understand some given cab sounds can go to a speaker of interest and hear what it sounds like. This kind of research would likely stem from having heard some sort of reference sound in recorded or live music and wanting to use it - so the narrowing starts there: ie: I want to sound like Brian May - what's he using?: AC30, Celestion Blue, Vox 212, 421 ... - that narrows it quite a bit right there before any further investigation- no need to be auditioning 1000s of IRs - actually I don't think anyone does - I suspect maybe peeps just like to say that cuz they don't want to audition any IRs or do minimal related research lol (for this case, I agree that highlighting a "proposed" cab for each Fractal amp would be helpful but even then minimal googling on any given amp could yield common cab/mic choices - I'd have a hard time believing anyone's really gonna start plowing thru factory cab auditions from 1 to 2000 for their given amp selection).
 
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sprint said:
imo the answer is that you don't audition 1,000s of IRs - 1st you get a sense of what the basic speakers / cabs / mic's and mic positions sound like
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I've got that part. The issue is more complex than knowing what the difference between a v30 and cream back.
In my studio, I can take the same guitar, amp and settings, player, cab and microphone, and wind up with drastically different sounds due to gain staging, eq, and mic placement. In the fractal, all the little moves and changes I make myself to get the tone I want are basically "baked in" to the IR already. Which means instead of moving a mic slightly to bring out some body in a sound, I now get to audition a bunch of IRs until my brain can no longer make any sense of what my ears are telling it.

After writing this out, I think I'm going to experiment with the preamp controls in the cab block. I've always just done high and low cuts and called it "good enough". But getting that last 20% of what I'm trying to achieve has been troublesome. The IRs I've selected are "close", but if I were working in a real life environment and the time was allowed for it, I would further refine the sound to where I was completely happy with it.
 
usersnoozer said:
By responding with over six hours of videos, you're proving the point.

I just want Fractal to give me a starting point in the cab hunt by highlighting the factory cab(s) in the cabinet picker for a given amp model (if a factory cab exists for it).
Click to expand...
I agree. Have you all seen the thread “what is cliff doing now”? It sounds like Cliff and Fractal are working on a major overhaul of the Cab block to allow selection of a cab and can select and position microphones rather than auditioning IRs.

The cab block was the best thing about the QC that I had (I sold it after getting FM9). But it sounds like fractal is working on an answer (and even improvement upon the competition with novel IR alignment to prevent phase issues).

If I could figure out how to hyperlink that thread here I will.
 
Kfletch said:
I agree. Have you all seen the thread “what is cliff doing now”? It sounds like Cliff and Fractal are working on a major overhaul of the Cab block to allow selection of a cab and can select and position microphones rather than auditioning IRs.

The cab block was the best thing about the QC that I had (I sold it after getting FM9). But it sounds like fractal is working on an answer (and even improvement upon the competition with novel IR alignment to prevent phase issues).

If I could figure out how to hyperlink that thread here I will.
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Yes they are and it will be amazing!

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/whats-cliff-doing-now.192448/page-2#post-2393552

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/whats-cliff-doing-now.192448/page-7#post-2393957
 
sprint said:
imo the answer is that you don't audition 1,000s of IRs - 1st you get a sense of what the basic speakers / cabs / mic's and mic positions sound like (so some learning / study required on this but once you know it you know it so a 1 time time investment). Then, having build this basic knowledge, when making a preset you can go to the subset of IRs that matches what your looking for (ie: I want a 412 greenback sound with 57/121 mic mix). This will get you down to waay less than a shitload of IRs to audition.
Click to expand...

That's basically what I did. There are only a handful of speakers I've really liked IRL, and there are a couple of very common standouts. And, it turns out that most of the guitar sounds I've really loved live or in the studio were recorded just with an SM57, except for the ones that were recorded before it came out in 1965.

That takes it down to like 15-20 factory IRs.

And you've got several varieties of EQ.

I'm glad there are so many of them, because the handful that I like are in there. But, I haven't listened to 97% of them and don't plan on it.
 
marsonic said:
That's basically what I did. There are only a handful of speakers I've really liked IRL, and there are a couple of very common standouts. And, it turns out that most of the guitar sounds I've really loved live or in the studio were recorded just with an SM57, except for the ones that were recorded before it came out in 1965.

That takes it down to like 15-20 factory IRs.

And you've got several varieties of EQ.

I'm glad there are so many of them, because the handful that I like are in there. But, I haven't listened to 97% of them and don't plan on it.
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exactly - yur not supposed to listen to 97% of them. IR libraries are huge seas of possibilities - the only practical way to approach them is to know roughly what you want going in (ie a 412 w V30s mic'd with a 57), then use the tools to navigate from there (like irl), preferably with dynamic graphic "mic moving" tools best to get the rest of the way as opposed to loadafile n listen, loadafile n listen ... (the latter method making it more essential to know what you want going in).
 
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