Is it just me?

[webe123]

@vicarious Virus...Nothing wrong with looking for tips, but the way you posted your question, you acted as though something may be wrong with the axe fx....which is NOT the case!

 

[simeon]

I actually do NOT have the cabs you referred to!! Where can I find these?

that's because you're not on the II. mixing cabs is still a good idea though. choose two mono hires cab blocks in parallel which compliment each other. it's a really good way to fine tune your sound and add harmonic complexity.

i think the problems you're encountering are down to your master volume being set too high. remember there are three types of amps...those with no master volume (like the ac30) which should have the mv set to 10. vintage amps like all the marshalls etc, which like a high mv setting and modern high-gainers that should have the mv set around 3-4. keeping the mv set low like this will increase definition, punch and tightness. use an 808 in front of the amp to boost it slightly, as others have said, which will also cut the low end that the amp is seeing and make it tighter and more focused.

 

[VicariousVirus]

that's because you're not on the II. mixing cabs is still a good idea though. choose two mono hires cab blocks in parallel which compliment each other. it's a really good way to fine tune your sound and add harmonic complexity.

i think the problems you're encountering are down to your master volume being set too high. remember there are three types of amps...those with no master volume (like the ac30) which should have the mv set to 10. vintage amps like all the marshalls etc, which like a high mv setting and modern high-gainers that should have the mv set around 3-4. keeping the mv set low like this will increase definition, punch and tightness. use an 808 in front of the amp to boost it slightly, as others have said, which will also cut the low end that the amp is seeing and make it tighter and more focused.

I will try out these settings and post back in a little bit.

 

[mba]

The guy from "Boy in a band.com" made a good point about the master control and how it thickens up the sound when cranked. Similar to a tube amp.

I don't know who is this guy, i just know that Cliff said "set the master at 3 with high gain amps".
Simeon points to the right direction.
I could add that spdif connection would bring more low end because the best cable always sucks the low end.

 

[VicariousVirus]

I don't know who is this guy, i just know that Cliff said "set the master at 3 with high gain amps".
Simeon points to the right direction.
I could add that spdif connection would bring more low end because the best cable always sucks the low end.

Whats the purpose of the spdif connection? Why is it better than XLR?

 

[jimfist]

Whats the purpose of the spdif connection? Why is it better than XLR?

In theory, keeping the signal path 100% in the digital domain using the SPDIF will yield the most accurate and pristine recording of your tone from the Ultra. In practice, I believe some forum members have had mixed experiences with this method for whatever reason. Naturally, the conversion from analog to digital and back again is a critical thing, to the point where the AxeFX II had included USB for easier access to direct digital recording as an option to SPDIF. Choose your poison, and do the best you can with what you have. Plenty of users get fine results using XLR into some kind of digi interface.

You do need to be aware, though, that the XLR outs of the Ultra are LINE level and HOT, so if your interface's XLR input is set to expect MIC level, there may be serious overdrive issues due to level mismatch. Your recordings didn't seem to exhibit this, but it is something to be aware of. You want to make sure that your signal going into your DAW is clean and has good signal to noise.

With the ULTRA using SPDIF, it must be the master clock in your recording system and is fixed at 48kHz rate, which can be a hassle since many users like to record at other sample rates and with their system's dedicated sample rate clock controlling things.

Facts being facts, if you want to try to get tones that stand up vs. the "big boys", you have to get very serious about your gear, interfaces, studio speakers, environment, etc...or have a golden boy touch and great knack for this type of tweaking.

To be honest, the USB interface on the AxeFx II, as well as a ton of other upgrades, make owning the II a real no brainer if you have the $$$ IMO. But I own both, so I'm happy either way ;-)

Good Luck!

 

[VicariousVirus]

In theory, keeping the signal path 100% in the digital domain using the SPDIF will yield the most accurate and pristine recording of your tone from the Ultra. In practice, I believe some forum members have had mixed experiences with this method for whatever reason. Naturally, the conversion from analog to digital and back again is a critical thing, to the point where the AxeFX II had included USB for easier access to direct digital recording as an option to SPDIF. Choose your poison, and do the best you can with what you have. Plenty of users get fine results using XLR into some kind of digi interface.

You do need to be aware, though, that the XLR outs of the Ultra are LINE level and HOT, so if your interface's XLR input is set to expect MIC level, there may be serious overdrive issues due to level mismatch. Your recordings didn't seem to exhibit this, but it is something to be aware of. You want to make sure that your signal going into your DAW is clean and has good signal to noise.

With the ULTRA using SPDIF, it must be the master clock in your recording system and is fixed at 48kHz rate, which can be a hassle since many users like to record at other sample rates and with their system's dedicated sample rate clock controlling things.

Facts being facts, if you want to try to get tones that stand up vs. the "big boys", you have to get very serious about your gear, interfaces, studio speakers, environment, etc...or have a golden boy touch and great knack for this type of tweaking.

To be honest, the USB interface on the AxeFx II, as well as a ton of other upgrades, make owning the II a real no brainer if you have the $$$ IMO. But I own both, so I'm happy either way ;-)

Good Luck!

You are the man once again!

I feel like upgrading to the II is definitely in the near future.
Thank you for all the awesome information!
I definitely feel like my weakest point is the interface at the moment.
Once I upgrade my computer and get the Saffire pro 40, my tones will hopefully be up to par.

 

[DNW]

I checked the heavy preset and the master is too high (8.xx), Set the master at 3.

Treble 8.xx
Bright cap ON
Presence 7.4
It makes a lot of high end. Try to desengage the bright cap and work only with treble and presence controls.

It's not necessarily so clear cut. While generally I guess most would be using the high gain amps with low master settings, a higher master can thicken the sound up a lot. It also means you might have to compensate in the high end with higher settings to keep the sound from going beyond a nice smooth high end to becoming too dull.

That said, generally it is easier to get a good metal high gain sound running a lower master. There's generally more compensating to do with a higher master than just upping the treble/presence a bit, and it's probably a better place for VV to start.

You need to understand that all of the tones you listed have many layers of guitars recorded on different guitars with different amp blocks and a Ton of post processing. Misha did the first periphery album with stock everything on the ultra. 412 German cab and a bunch of amps.

The other thing of course is that the mix is far more than just the layers of guitar tracks. VV, the drums in your clip don't sound like they're sitting particularly well with the guitars. The OHs in particular sound like they're somewhat separated from the rest of the mix. And if there's a bass guitar in there, I didn't hear it. There seems to be a big gap in the mid-range of the mix, and one way to fill this gap aside from vocals or upping the guitar mids, is to use an overdriven bass track with a nice grindy mid-range.

Meshuggah's Chaosphere is one example of the guitars basically sounding quite horrible and thin, but the whole mix sounding fairly huge. A lot of what one might think is a huge guitar sound is actually coming from the bass track.

As has been said, if you don't want to spend money on RW or whatever other cabs, or for whatever other reason don't want to get into that, you can get a lot from the stock cabs by being crafty. Try blending different cabs/mics together. If you think there's something missing from the mix, instead of trying to tweak the amp block or PEQs or whatever, you might be able to get what you want by running a mix of cabs. Even just having a tiny bit of signal from another cab blended in can make a significant difference. Try all kinds of different stuff. Different cabs, mics, run a filter with your second cab, run a 2nd parallel signal out of the amp block into a drive block and then another cab, whatever. You can get all kinds of crazy crap out of the stock unit.

At work, so I can't look at your preset. But unless you're being crafty with it (like say, MBC to tighten up the low freqs), I would wonder why you're using compression in a high gain signal. High gain sounds are very compressed to start with, and then generally some pretty heavy limiting is put over the mix of this kind of thing as well.

 

[VicariousVirus]

It's not necessarily so clear cut. While generally I guess most would be using the high gain amps with low master settings, a higher master can thicken the sound up a lot. It also means you might have to compensate in the high end with higher settings to keep the sound from going beyond a nice smooth high end to becoming too dull.

That said, generally it is easier to get a good metal high gain sound running a lower master. There's generally more compensating to do with a higher master than just upping the treble/presence a bit, and it's probably a better place for VV to start.



The other thing of course is that the mix is far more than just the layers of guitar tracks. VV, the drums in your clip don't sound like they're sitting particularly well with the guitars. The OHs in particular sound like they're somewhat separated from the rest of the mix. And if there's a bass guitar in there, I didn't hear it. There seems to be a big gap in the mid-range of the mix, and one way to fill this gap aside from vocals or upping the guitar mids, is to use an overdriven bass track with a nice grindy mid-range.

Meshuggah's Chaosphere is one example of the guitars basically sounding quite horrible and thin, but the whole mix sounding fairly huge. A lot of what one might think is a huge guitar sound is actually coming from the bass track.

As has been said, if you don't want to spend money on RW or whatever other cabs, or for whatever other reason don't want to get into that, you can get a lot from the stock cabs by being crafty. Try blending different cabs/mics together. If you think there's something missing from the mix, instead of trying to tweak the amp block or PEQs or whatever, you might be able to get what you want by running a mix of cabs. Even just having a tiny bit of signal from another cab blended in can make a significant difference. Try all kinds of different stuff. Different cabs, mics, run a filter with your second cab, run a 2nd parallel signal out of the amp block into a drive block and then another cab, whatever. You can get all kinds of crazy crap out of the stock unit.

At work, so I can't look at your preset. But unless you're being crafty with it (like say, MBC to tighten up the low freqs), I would wonder why you're using compression in a high gain signal. High gain sounds are very compressed to start with, and then generally some pretty heavy limiting is put over the mix of this kind of thing as well.

Thank you for the awesome advice. I totally agree that the bass can fatten a guitars sound up extremely. Meshuggah and Pantera are huge examples of this tactic.
I used compression because that is what I hear on the periphery guitar tones. Honestly the role of compression is a little bit misunderstood by myself, judging by the layout of my previous preset.

I'm just trying to get moving in the right directions. The tone is in my head, the playing is in my hands. Maybe its the lack of engineering skills, or level of ignorance I have towards the Ultra thats just not translating tones to hands.

Who knows maybe it's my interface making everything else sound like absolute shit.

 

[VicariousVirus]

It's not necessarily so clear cut. While generally I guess most would be using the high gain amps with low master settings, a higher master can thicken the sound up a lot. It also means you might have to compensate in the high end with higher settings to keep the sound from going beyond a nice smooth high end to becoming too dull.

That said, generally it is easier to get a good metal high gain sound running a lower master. There's generally more compensating to do with a higher master than just upping the treble/presence a bit, and it's probably a better place for VV to start.



The other thing of course is that the mix is far more than just the layers of guitar tracks. VV, the drums in your clip don't sound like they're sitting particularly well with the guitars. The OHs in particular sound like they're somewhat separated from the rest of the mix. And if there's a bass guitar in there, I didn't hear it. There seems to be a big gap in the mid-range of the mix, and one way to fill this gap aside from vocals or upping the guitar mids, is to use an overdriven bass track with a nice grindy mid-range.

Meshuggah's Chaosphere is one example of the guitars basically sounding quite horrible and thin, but the whole mix sounding fairly huge. A lot of what one might think is a huge guitar sound is actually coming from the bass track.

As has been said, if you don't want to spend money on RW or whatever other cabs, or for whatever other reason don't want to get into that, you can get a lot from the stock cabs by being crafty. Try blending different cabs/mics together. If you think there's something missing from the mix, instead of trying to tweak the amp block or PEQs or whatever, you might be able to get what you want by running a mix of cabs. Even just having a tiny bit of signal from another cab blended in can make a significant difference. Try all kinds of different stuff. Different cabs, mics, run a filter with your second cab, run a 2nd parallel signal out of the amp block into a drive block and then another cab, whatever. You can get all kinds of crazy crap out of the stock unit.

At work, so I can't look at your preset. But unless you're being crafty with it (like say, MBC to tighten up the low freqs), I would wonder why you're using compression in a high gain signal. High gain sounds are very compressed to start with, and then generally some pretty heavy limiting is put over the mix of this kind of thing as well.

Thank you for the awesome advice. I totally agree that the bass can fatten a guitars sound up extremely. Meshuggah and Pantera are huge examples of this tactic.
I used compression because that is what I hear on the periphery guitar tones. Honestly the role of compression is a little bit misunderstood by myself, judging by the layout of my previous preset.

I'm just trying to get moving in the right directions. The tone is in my head, the playing is in my hands. Maybe its the lack of engineering skills, or level of ignorance I have towards the Ultra thats just not translating tones to hands.

Who knows maybe it's my interface making everything else sound like absolute shit.

 

[speedloader]

I used compression because that is what I hear on the periphery guitar tones. Honestly the role of compression is a little bit misunderstood by myself, judging by the layout of my previous preset.

Challenge accepted! Found something I could use in MAKE TOTAL DESTROY.



And here's the patch for Ultra/Standard if some of you want to try it out. Deffo needs some noise gate tweakage as you might here in the clip also but that's a bit gear specific so shouldn't be an issue.

EDIT: And sorry for not being able to give a 7-string clip.

Clark already did a matchEQ of periphery's last album, if that's what you're looking for I guess it's a good starting point to reach your own goals.

 

[speedloader]

Btw, you have to view the original post to download the patch.

 

[VicariousVirus]

Btw, you have to view the original post to download the patch.

Where can I find the original posts?

 

[speedloader]

Oh, just click on the little arrow after Clark's name, at the top of his quote.

 

[DNW]

I used compression because that is what I hear on the periphery guitar tones. Honestly the role of compression is a little bit misunderstood by myself, judging by the layout of my previous preset.

If you're going off the sound in their final mixes though, that might be more about compression/limiting applied over the whole mix, rather than a compressor in the guitar chain.

 

[VicariousVirus]

If you're going off the sound in their final mixes though, that might be more about compression/limiting applied over the whole mix, rather than a compressor in the guitar chain.

Exactly what I thought about after I posted that.

After some more reading, I've realized a lot of the guys who aren't frolicking all over the "Djent" scene.. Dislike compression on heavy guitars.
Being compressed already, post compression is redundant and obsolete. What is the general consensus?

 

[nixerx]

Its gotta be in your interface coloring things. Do you have another amp source you can try your patches on like a PA?

My DC800 is the best sounding thing to hit the AxeFX since ..... well ever. 90% of all the models I used with my Hellraiser or Loomis were ice picky and needed some serious tweaks.

Im currently using the 5150 sim..basically Green Channel no boost. Try using the Metal Cab with the 67 mic. Turn the speaker drive to somewhere between 4 and 6.


What woods are your guitar?

 

[VicariousVirus]

Its gotta be in your interface coloring things. Do you have another amp source you can try your patches on like a PA?

My DC800 is the best sounding thing to hit the AxeFX since ..... well ever. 90% of all the models I used with my Hellraiser or Loomis were ice picky and needed some serious tweaks.

Im currently using the 5150 sim..basically Green Channel no boost. Try using the Metal Cab with the 67 mic. Turn the speaker drive to somewhere between 4 and 6.


What woods are your guitar?

That's what I believed to be the issue for sure. I really need to upgrade. I'm getting the Saffire Pro 40 in a week or two.

My DC800 build-

NGD! DC800...soooo rediculous! - Sevenstring.org

Anybody on the forums have any experience with the SaffirePro 40 with or without the Axe fx?

Thanks for all the replies.