Help! - Acoustic Tone Match Gone After Update

Fro

Fro

Experienced
I need some help troubleshooting this one. I know Cliff warned us that our sounds may change after the update, but I think there is more to this one than just a change in the amp modeling.

This is a tone match I did of my acoustic. I know it’s not the best sounding patch, but it does work for what I need live. I’ve attached the patch, plus a recording. The patch actually has the acoustic tone match set up to blend with a crunch amp. Expression pedal 2 brings in the crunch. I’m using an IR from Cab Pack 8 for the crunch sound. I’m also using an IR I found on the forum called Fish nyln04 that I’m mixing in with the acoustic tone match.

In the audio clip, I’m playing the patch with the previous firmware first, then I'm playing it after the update. Halfway through each pass, I bring in the crunch sound with the expression pedal. You can hear in the recording after the update that the tone match is dull sounding. I’m not sure if there is a setting I should be looking for somewhere, or if I just need to recreate the tone match. Just wondering if anyone has run into this before. I'm on an Axe Fx II Mk I. This was going from Quantum 1.06 to 2 Beta. Let me know what other info would help troubleshoot this. I have all my patches backed up, and I've gone back to 1.06 for now until I can either fix this, or decide to just redo it. I'm hesitant to redo in case it may turn out to be a bug.

Thanks in advance for the help. Really looking forward to using the new firmware. I spent some time with the new 1970 Plexi. Absolutely fabulous!

 

Attachments

  • Acoustic Strat 4.syx
    6.3 KB · Views: 5
The first clip is significantly louder than the second. Before trying anything, I'd bring up the volume of your current preset and see how that changes the tone.
 
To me, it sounds as if the top end was rolled off in the eq section, that could also account for it sounding lower in volume. Joe
 
Sounds like a cab might be in there now. Were you using a cab on strictly the acoustic chain before or now? My acoustic tone matched patch doesn't use a cab.
 
After looking at the waveforms and analysing the clean portion using matching boundaries it seems that the following is apparent...
Clip 1: Peak Level is -1.1dB
RMS Level is -12.6dB
Clip 2: Peak Level is -4.3dB
RMS Level is -18dB

If I apply an RMS normalization of -12.6dB to Clip 2 then the peak is -0.1dB and there is still a difference in tone so it's not just the volume which is different between the clips.

I don't have anything to analyse the frequency content but to my ear it seems like a lot of information 4-5kHz and above seems to be absent. Just applying a basic multiband EQ seems to help but there is still something missing.

(Note: I could have made a mistake on the above, being prescribed a lot of meds at the moment doesn't help with my thought processes nor my ears)
 
Occam’s Razor

I knew the amp modeling had changed, but I was so certain that what I was hearing had to be something else.

So, I disabled each effect block one by one so I could see if something was set weird somewhere in the chain. The only thing the amp block was doing was providing a very mild clean boost to the guitar signal. The Tone Match block was doing all of the work. But, the amp block was the only thing i hadn't messed with yet.

Turns out that the change in the amp modeling was just enough to make the sound of the Tone Match go funky. I changed the amp model to something that was cleaner and a little less finicky as a clean, and it’s getting back to where I was. It’s a bit cleaner than what I had before. It may actually be closer to an acoustic sound now, but I’m not sure how that will sit in my three-piece rock band mix. I may want it to be more aggressive with it. I’ll try a few other amp models to see how they sound. In the meantime, this is workable.

I made a few other minor adjustments, nothing big, some EQ, etc. I also got rid of the guitar body IR. It wasn’t really needed. I changed the IR on the crunch sound to a factory cab in case anyone else wanted to try out the preset.

I attached the new preset as well as a recording. Again, expression pedal 2 brings in the crunch sound with the heal down.

Thanks for taking the time to look into this. I do appreciate it. I need to remember that the Tone Match block itself may not change with a firmware update. But if the amp changes that is feeding it, it can give you some very interesting results. It didn’t take much to get it back, and I didn’t have to redo the match, which was good. I think with a little more tweaking I'll get back to where I was.

 

Attachments

  • Acoustic Strat 4.syx
    6.3 KB · Views: 4
It has been my experience that firmware updates sometimes (always) break Tone matches.
Its a good idea to keep reference tracks for your tone matches so you can re-match them if needed.
 
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