Wish How to Fix The Problem with ROTARY model!

F

Framptonite

Member
After 25 years of resisting, I have adopted the Axe-FXiii as my rig. For everything. The clarity and "life" are finally there, and the tweakability is insane for a gearhead like me. I don't even compare it to "real" amps (I refer to them as "practical" or "physical" amps). The tones are real! And the FC's are a dream come true! There's one CRITICAL piece of Fractal gear that's missing:

A room scanner for the rotary! Think about it. Fractal nails the auditory imagery of nearly every piece of gear, including the "air" from distance micing, etc. But how can you accurately model the way a spinning horn and scoop physically spray sound around a room when the modeler does not know the exact size, dimensions and surface nature (or lack) of the room the rotary is in? Unlike studio walls that don't move, the rotary's psychoacoustic tricks depend on the ear-brain combination of processing the actual reflections and real-world doppler from the unique physical room environment of the moment.

Without naming brands, the real estate virtual tour & construction market has spawned "Port Matter" scanners that instantly scan a room in 3D. Fractal should build a room scanner that plugs into the USB port and "informs" the rotary (and many other time-based effects) algorithms exactly what environment they're situated in. Assuming the post-Covid supply chain cluster f@&k end soon, I bet Fractal could engineer this accessory & offer it for about $300.

I love the Fractal. But my ears still don't hear a L@$lie.
 
I’m curious how you resisted a device for 25 years that first appeared in 2018.

I am very familiar with the sound of Leslie units and use the block in many of my presets, and think it works well.

The idea of scanning a room’s dimensions in an attempt to calculate the effects of acoustics on the cabinet would be flawed if you don’t also calculate the sound absorption of the materials in the room and the number of people and their mass and clothing.

But why stop there? Shouldn’t that acoustic environment and its effect on dampening also be calculated for the cab block or the overall modeled sound?

Or, instead, shouldn’t the models generate sound as close as they can to the original close-miked device, and let the room acoustics fall where they will, because that’s what would happen in a real life use of a close-miked rotary cabinet or a guitar cabinet on a stage?

The idea of the modeler is to mimic the sound of closely miked cabs, including rotaries, and your chosen room acoustics are modeled by the reverb block and then passed into the real, enclosing, room which has its way with the sound, for better or worse.
PS - I use two FRFR cabs specifically because I want them to handle the rotating sound of my Leslie and stereo blocks. You can’t get a real Leslie sound unless it’s in stereo.
 
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I've resisted MODELERS since 96 when the red bean first appeared.
I run 2 FRFRs plus a 3rd mono FRFR. Yep, stereo makes everything read better.
And sure, in larger venues where the PA is what the audience hears; great.
But in clubs & smaller intimate settings - I haven't been wowed by the rotary yet.
I hear a chorus on steroids.
 
Framptonite said:
After 25 years of resisting, I have adopted the Axe-FXiii as my rig. For everything. The clarity and "life" are finally there, and the tweakability is insane for a gearhead like me. I don't even compare it to "real" amps (I refer to them as "practical" or "physical" amps). The tones are real! And the FC's are a dream come true! There's one CRITICAL piece of Fractal gear that's missing:

A room scanner for the rotary! Think about it. Fractal nails the auditory imagery of nearly every piece of gear, including the "air" from distance micing, etc. But how can you accurately model the way a spinning horn and scoop physically spray sound around a room when the modeler does not know the exact size, dimensions and surface nature (or lack) of the room the rotary is in? Unlike studio walls that don't move, the rotary's psychoacoustic tricks depend on the ear-brain combination of processing the actual reflections and real-world doppler from the unique physical room environment of the moment.

Without naming brands, the real estate virtual tour & construction market has spawned "Port Matter" scanners that instantly scan a room in 3D. Fractal should build a room scanner that plugs into the USB port and "informs" the rotary (and many other time-based effects) algorithms exactly what environment they're situated in. Assuming the post-Covid supply chain cluster f@&k end soon, I bet Fractal could engineer this accessory & offer it for about $300.

I love the Fractal. But my ears still don't hear a L@$lie.
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I like where you’re coming from, but I don’t think this will work the way you think it will. You want to scan the room, figure out where a wall is, and model the reflections coming off of that wall. Then you want to impress that on top of the reflections that are already coming from the wall. Not a recipe for realism, really.
 
I wonder if the new Fullres room IR’s might help create a better Rotory-in-the-Room sound? I agree that a real Leslie in the room is hard to beat.
 
@Framptonite, you may be chasing a spatial psychoacoustic effect (e.g. "rotary in a specific room and listening from a particular location") which isn't what the Axe is about.

I bet some clever folks have programs/plugins to simulate spaces via Atmos... maybe that's more suited to your desire.
 
Yeah, in many ways, you cannot model a rotary; there just no substitute for physically spraying sound around a space with moving horns & scoops. Kinda like expecting an LED wall to aim specific beams of light like a moving head. Sure, they wash the venue with ambient light and illusion & they look fantastic but they can't focus as a spot. The Fractal sounds fantastic - I may be asking for too much.
 
A Leslie is notoriously difficult to emulate. The problem is simplified a bit when the goal is to emulate a stereo recording of a Leslie. There are some good ones out there. My favorite is the one from GSI.
 
Framptonite said:
I've resisted MODELERS since 96 when the red bean first appeared. ...
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A common misconception. IIRC Line 6 did claim to be the initiators (if not the inventors) of guitar amp modelling, but that is not correct.

I think the first comercially available modeller was Roland's VG-8 in the early 90's which included COSM modelling for guitar types (with per-string pitch changing), amp & speaker/mic modelling with effects as well.

This was followed in 1995 by a single-rack processor GP-100 which excluded the guitar modelling, but had some powerful features like dual amps, MIDI and multi-paramater control. I had one of these and got some great tones out of it. Boss then released a slightly less powerful version, the GX-700 in 1996.

Line 6's first product was the AxSys 212 combo amp in 1996. The first red-bean POD was released in 1998.
 
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GM Arts said:
A common misconception. IIRC Line 6 did claim to be the initiators (if not the inventors) of guitar amp modelling, but that is not correct.

I think the first comercially available modeller was Roland's VG-8 in the early 90's which included COSM modelling for guitar types (with per-string pitch changing), amp & speaker/mic modelling with effects as well.

This was followed in 1995 by a single-rack processor GP-100 which excluded the guitar modelling, but had some powerful features like dual amps, MIDI and multi-paramater control. I had one of these and got some great tones out of it. Boss then released a slightly less powerful version, the GX-700 in 1996.

Line 6's first product was the AxSys 212 combo amp in 1996. The first red-bean POD was released in 1998.
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Trust @GM Arts to know the history of amp modeling. He's been in it, like, forever. :)
 
GlennO said:
A Leslie is notoriously difficult to emulate. The problem is simplified a bit when the goal is to emulate a stereo recording of a Leslie. There are some good ones out there. My favorite is the one from GSI.
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I love the GSI rotary.

I've always assumed that rotary effects try to simulate a miced Leslie. A good binaural recording of a Leslie would certainly sound amazing. But even if you could somehow model that type of signal in real time, I imagine that you'd still need to use headphones to hear it properly.
 
There is technology developed to provide virtual surround sound in headphones. Also, Yamaha has released a virtual capability in their home theater amps that can give the illusion of speakers in positions where they ‘ain’t. Perhaps this sort of thing might be useful to give the stereo Leslie sound motion… and perhaps not!
Thanks
Pauly
 
steadystate said:
Digital amp sims have been around a long time. I had a Yamaha REX50 in the 80s. The tone and aliasing were quite comical. When digital distortion and eq became "modeling" is anyone's guess.
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One of my 1st guitar-specific rack processors (after SR&D) was a Yamaha GEP-50: a no-frills SPX-90 with some truly comical distortion algorithms. But it had great SPX-90 verbs in it.
 
pauly said:
There is technology developed to provide virtual surround sound in headphones. Also, Yamaha has released a virtual capability in their home theater amps that can give the illusion of speakers in positions where they ‘ain’t. Perhaps this sort of thing might be useful to give the stereo Leslie sound motion… and perhaps not!
Thanks
Pauly
Click to expand...
There’s several versions of virtual surround sound from different sources. Dolby Atmos is available through Apple TV and many albums in their music store, for instance. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182

It’s interesting stuff, but it’s not practical for live music unless your FOH system has speakers firing at the roof to reflect down, or mounted on the ceiling firing down.

The technology isn’t set up for on-the-spot modeling of sound. An old friend of mine who does consulting and sound engineering for movies said they have to do a lot of setup when they’re engineering and mixing it, but it sounds glorious when they’re done.
 
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