Is it me or are others in the same boat?

Physics GIF
 
I played about 60-70 gigs this year. 80% of them with InEar.
I always have my Redsound MF10 with me just in case. It was a big change, but now that I have my fitted earplugs, I don't want to go back. And it's also just healthier for the ears. And you travel light. And in many theater or musical jobs, speakers are not allowed on stage.

The problem with FRFR is not the concept itself, but whether the quality of the components fits.

I've tested a lot of studio monitors in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, the really good ones also cost a lot. Until a few days ago, I was using KSD Audio C88s. These are really phenomenally good speakers. But they have one problem. Latency. As with so many monitors that have DSP built in. When monitoring and mixing, it's absolutely not a problem. But when playing, it is.

Last week I played my FM9 through these speakers. For fun, I used a cheap transmitter from China. This one supposedly has a latency of less than 2 ms. The FM9 was connected analog through my Fireface UCX+. The sound was really great, but the feel was not. I probably ended up with a total latency of about 15 ms.
That came from the transmitter (6 ms), the Fm9 (1 ms), the RME (3 ms analog in, analog out), and the monitors (5 ms, 2 ms for conversion, and 3 ms for FIR filtering).

It's often not the lack of punch that spoils an FRFR, but the indirect feel. That should be taken into account as well.

So I was looking for monitors that don't use DSP, but do the filtering completely analog and still sound good. But this is also wrong, because really good monitors should not have their own sound, but should reproduce what is "served" to them. And now I have two PSI AUDIO 21.
No latency, all analog. Fantastic. They are so much fun to play with. And in my opinion, such fantastic gear as the FM3, FM9 and AXE FXIII need good companions. I wish I could replicate this sound on stage.

So imagine if someone wanted to build a stage-ready version of these studio monitors. Only bigger, louder and more robust. You'd probably end up paying 25k per speaker.

But maybe the right FRFR speaker will come along that every guitarist will be happy with.
But quality has its price. Just like my "Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo" 😂 Justing kidding. Google them.

At the moment I am more than satisfied with InEar and the REDSOUNDs. And FOH sounds fantastic anyway. And that's probably the most important thing. We want the audience to be happy.

But real guitar speakers on stage? No for me.
 
Keybi said:
Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo
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This is where you will eventually end up in the search for absolute perfection.

The AxeFx-only rig really appeals to me. I have tried the amp+speaker cab route, but it always adds RAW VOLUME back to the equation. I have a pair of QSC K2.12s and a QSC KS112 sub in my practice space. This is the best emulation I have for how the FOH will sound. This is my "standard" for what sounds good to me and the audience. Trying to "master" my guitar tone through desktop monitors or headphones will always sounds different than the PA. Furthermore, shaping what I am providing to FOH on an actual PA gives me more control over the final tone.

Scientific? No. But if it sounds good to me,
 
knwlnd said:
The traditional cab with Celestion FRFR speakers in it might be the issue if it’s not been adapted to support them in any way.

When I approached Zilla about building FRFR cabs they came up with a specific design that is ported and quite different internally from their standard 112.

The overall internal volume of the cab was adjusted in the direction of Celestions recommended design then tuned with a baffle and dampened with wadding in some specific way.

He also mentioned the ported design was somewhat critical to getting a good sound from this speaker type.
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^^THIS^^
 
Keybi said:
I've tested a lot of studio monitors in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, the really good ones also cost a lot. Until a few days ago, I was using KSD Audio C88s. These are really phenomenally good speakers. But they have one problem. Latency. As with so many monitors that have DSP built in. When monitoring and mixing, it's absolutely not a problem. But when playing, it is.
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This is why I have not bothered with for example Genelecs with built in room correction, even though I really want that feature. Their system still has 4ms latency which is honestly not great for something like this when some cheap IR loader can manage 1ms.

It's less latency to do room measurement with Sonarworks Reference ID Measure, create L/R IRs of that and run them on the Axe-Fx 3 with the IR Player block at the end of the chain. Or just replicate most of the correction using the global EQ options.

PS. I have a really hard time recommending Sonarworks. Their software is buggy as hell and just turning on any new audio device while their system level app is running will make it crash. I've reported this to the company ages ago and they somehow can't seem to fix this yet I can get this to happen on multiple systems easily. As far as I am concerned, there's some real amateur hour stuff going on at Sonarworks software department. The room measurement software works well though.
 
trancegodz said:
Dweezil Zappa gets a good sound using FRFR as you can see on these videos. He was using QSC. Some of the people on this forum have worked with Dweezil helping him dial in his sounds.



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You can't really judge how FRFR (or really anything) sounds from a video... because it’s going to have conversion and compression and color from whatever mic(s) captured the audio AND most importantly you're hearing it through whatever YOU are listening with.

So at best it will sound as good as your monitoring system. :(
 
I’m going to beat this dead horse again and say if you have less than perfect monitoring, the slate VSX headphones are really hard to beat for dialing in your own sounds. Use them in conjunction with any DAW and you’ll be able to access simulations of million dollar rooms.
 
Alainarose said:
Understand.

I normally play a real Friedman cabinet with GB/V30 mix. I have a bunch of YA and other IRs of this cabinet that I purchase online to be close to my real cabinet. Again the whole capture/mic/mic placement and room that the capture was done is the only variable I cannot control so maybe me shooting my own IRs of my own cabinet in my own space might be an idea that I never thought of.
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It's worth a try Cliff recommended years ago in this topic https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/amp-in-the-room.141579/
may be useful for you and a bit of a good surprise.
 
cole lewis said:
Curious what you think those options are. Xitone are working fine for me but ya'll got me curious.
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Happy to oblige! Shall we limit this to “self powered” only or are folks open to analog amp/passive speaker combo’s? And are we talking floor wedges only or standard boxes?
 
Well the difference between an IR and AITR is complex. Think only of the extreme directivity of a guitar speaker resulting in different reflections from walls, floors.

Perhaps it has been mentioned before, but suppose you would place your head right in front of a guitar speaker at mike position. That would be place where the IR was shot.

When I listen to a guitar amp my listening position is approx 1m distance, 30 degrees at top of the cone, 20 degrees right of the cone, so “out of the beam”. For me using a shelving eq, reducing highs some 4 or 5 dB from 3kHz helps a lot. Playing around with filterslope and frequency to tune it helps.
 
Alainarose said:
Ready to take up the tuba.
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🤣 I feel your pain. I bought and sold three AX8s and went thru a few FRFRs (including a couple of CLRs) for the same reason. I don't really have anything new to add to the above...lots of great advice. For me I think the change happened when I was forced to use IEMs or stop playing live because my hearing was taking a beating...tinnitus is pretty bad now. ANYWAY, Once I realized that what I was hearing (tube amp>cab>mic>IEM) was essentially the same, I bought my third AX8 and never looked back. The next step was to dial in my guitar for the PA rather than amp in the room...IOW to sound like it does when the audience hears it (again, the same sound as when I was using analog gear). Now with the Axe3 and FM9, I do the same and have refined things: So, I got nice studio monitors and a nice PA wedge (EV PXM-12MP), and between the two, I am able to dial in sounds that sound great to the audience. I use Out 1 for my IEM so I can fine tune the eq to me and Out 2 so I can fine tune the eq to FOH. These both have become set-and-forget. I don't tweak for different rooms...that for the engineer IMO.

As a bonus, it sounds great in the room too. It's not a 412 in terms of "moving air," but, especially in a band situation, I think it sounds BETTER than my amp/cab did...because I can fix things I couldn't in my analog rig. Recently I'm trying to lean back toward some of those imperfections but not all the way...it helps it sound a little more analog.

Finally a cool thing about the EV wedge: it has a "monitor 2" setting that shaves the frequency range down, giving a more cab-like quality. [NOTE: after a booth review, it turns out I am wrong about what mon 2 does] It offers four different eqs to give you quick/easy option to fine tune on a gig. At the end of the day, I don't use the others much because my patches are dialed in for the PA, and I'm listening thru IEM. 90% of gigs I don't use the speaker at all.
 
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macfly said:
🤣 I feel your pain. I bought and sold three AX8s and went thru a few FRFRs (including a couple of CLRs) for the same reason. I don't really have anything new to add to the above...lots of great advice. For me I think the change happened when I was forced to use IEMs or stop playing live because my hearing was taking a beating...tinnitus is pretty bad now. ANYWAY, Once I realized that what I was hearing (tube amp>cab>mic>IEM) was essentially the same, I bought my third AX8 and never looked back. The next step was to dial in my guitar for the PA rather than amp in the room...IOW to sound like it does when the audience hears it (again, the same sound as when I was using analog gear). Now with the Axe3 and FM9, I do the same and have refined things: So, I got nice studio monitors and a nice PA wedge (EV PXM-12MP), and between the two, I am able to dial in sounds that sound great to the audience. I use Out 1 for my IEM so I can fine tune the eq to me and Out 2 so I can fine tune the eq to FOH. These both have become set-and-forget. I don't tweak for different rooms...that for the engineer IMO.

As a bonus, it sounds great in the room too. It's not a 412 in terms of "moving air," but, especially in a band situation, I think it sounds BETTER than my amp/cab did...because I can fix things I couldn't in my analog rig. Recently I'm trying to lean back toward some of those imperfections but not all the way...it helps it sound a little more analog.

Finally a cool thing about the EV wedge: it has a "monitor 2" setting that shaves the frequency range down, giving a more cab-like quality. I have already done this in the cab block, but it does give a quick/easy option to fine tune on a gig. At the end of the day, I don't use it much because my patches are dialed in for the PA, and I'm listening thru IEM. 90% of gigs I don't use the speaker at all.
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@macfly, how do you set your room up physically, with both studio monitors and the EV?

In my similar setup, I put the EVs behind me, at the opposite end of the (not very big) room from the monitors and computer. I'm noticing that the EVs sound brighter when I'm facing them than when they're shooting at the back of my head. (They're on low poles.) That's not a surprise, that's how ears work.

I'm reluctant to put them in the studio monitor end, out of concern that they're big enough to affect the room response, but I don't see a way to avoid both that and the back-of-my-head thing.
 
JoKeR III said:
Going from amps to modeling can be a shock to the system if you're trying to capture the same feel of the "amp in the room". I've said it before in other threads, but my 'aha moment' came when realized that modelers create a guitar sound, the same guitar sound you hear when listening to a CD.

I was listening to a Joe Satriani album at my PC and was thoroughly enjoying it as usual. One time in particular, it struck me as odd that I wasn't thinking that the guitar didn't sound right because the amps weren't in the room with me, it was just good music with great guitar tones. It dawned on me that this is the sound that the AX8 (at the time) was creating.

I was using an amp and cab to power the AX8 but was not really sold on the tones the tones I was getting at home. After listening to the album, I plugged the AX8 into my interface and attempted to create some of the tones I was hearing and wouldn't you know it, I was able to get pretty close! I stopped chasing the AITR sound and began experiencing my guitar tones as recorded sounds. Wrapping my head around this 'philosophy' was a breakthrough for me and really opened the potential of amp modeling, making it much more enjoyable. It's been well over 5 years since I used an amp and cab for any reason, I get everything I need from my Axe III/FM3 through studio monitors.
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^^^^ This was my exact experience. Once I set the rig up with the band for volume and listened like I did in the studio through playback, it all came right for me. It is a different vibe. I can replicate it with my tube power amp and a couple of 4x12s, but have nowhere I can play at those sorts of volumes. For us non-arena-playing types, this has been the way. And it works from very small rooms to outdoor festival stages.

Every player is different, though, so some may not adapt to it well. In these days of silent or near-silent stages, the “I have to feel my pant legs flapping in the speaker breeze” guys are going to struggle.
 
Alainarose said:
I understand DL has the benefit of a $XXXXXXXX PA system to make their tone sound glorious but those tones had to be captured through a smaller system by the guitar techs. I know Phil uses a CLR onstage as Seb does not use in-ears and the Viv uses an Engl Cab on stage for the feel but the FOH is what is producing the sounds with the IR's. I have done your approach with running a real cabinet with no IR's and a FRFR with IRs to blend both worlds with good results. In the end the traditional guitar cabinet was the body of the sound and the FRFR with IRs was just there for taste and coloring. Again, fun solution to make a quick W/D or WDW rig.
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Thanks for the mention, now you have given me the need to check the mentioned results of the combination of output sources. Got to love the routing options with the ax3!!
 
My Adam T5Vs are fine for lower volume, but lately I've been using my Powercab Plus 2x12 more and more when I want to turn it up past bedroom volume. I know some folks don't care for the Line 6 solution, but I've been able to make it sound good to my ears. Is it dead nuts to my real JP2C running into a Recto 4x12? No, but it still sounds convincing enough for me and with the 2x12 version I can still make use of the Axe 3 stereo capabilities.
 
I think this AITR vs (high quality) FRFR is a mental thing for most.
If Fractal sounds great via studio monitors, and it sounds great via the mains, why wouldn't it also sound great via a high quality FRFR?
I use an FM3 and CLR on stage and love it...so do the FOH folks...and when I go out front it sounds exactly the same, only bigger.
 
Dave Merrill said:
@macfly, how do you set your room up physically, with both studio monitors and the EV?

In my similar setup, I put the EVs behind me, at the opposite end of the (not very big) room from the monitors and computer. I'm noticing that the EVs sound brighter when I'm facing them than when they're shooting at the back of my head. (They're on low poles.) That's not a surprise, that's how ears work.

I'm reluctant to put them in the studio monitor end, out of concern that they're big enough to affect the room response, but I don't see a way to avoid both that and the back-of-my-head thing.
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I'm no help to you there. My monitors are just sitting on a couple of pieces of furniture but not appropriately placed (one is a little higher than the other, ports are line of sight with my ears LOL). So I'm sure that could be better. I'm a slob, so the wedge just goes where ever it can, but usually to my left and on the floor. I do occasionally raise it to check that coupling isn't a factor. Sounds I'm getting are working well for sound guys...they just do the same setups they do for a mic'd cab...low cut +/- 80Hz and high cut +/- 8K...the better of the guys we work with says he usually pulls down 1K slightly to keep guitars out of the vocals.
 
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