Low Cut, High Cut

[VanHalen]

We've had the ability to use stereo cabs for ages. There are plenty of reasons to keep them around that have nothing to do with binaural imaging. I don't see them going away.

I don't understand. There is no problem with stereo cabs in the Axe FX.
As binaural IRs catches the reverb/ambiance of the room, they need IRs longer than 180 ms, that's all.

 

[iaresee]

As binaural IRs catches the reverb/ambiance of the room, they need IRs longer than 180 ms, that's all.

Don't think so. A binaural recording accounts for the distance and mass of a human head between the left and right channels so spatial imaging is improved. It doesn't need to capture long reflections in the environment to work. It only needs to capture the left-to-right delay introduced by a head.

Anyhow this is all a massive tangent to this thread. Maybe take it to a new thread?

 

[VanHalen]

Don't think so. A binaural recording accounts for the distance and mass of a human head between the left and right channels so spatial imaging is improved. It doesn't need to capture long reflections in the environment to work. It only needs to capture the left-to-right delay introduced by a head.

No, with the binaural technique, you record what needs to be recorded, it depends only on the situation (from this point of view, there is no difference with a room mic). If you want to capture a cab + ambiance of the room, the length of the IR will depend on the characteristics of this room. In general, it will be longer than 180 ms.

Anyhow this is all a massive tangent to this thread.

Not that much, Cliff gives advice waiting for more farfield mic IRs, I am completely OK with this.
The point here is that we also wait for room mic IRs, capturing ambiance/reverb of rooms too and it would be cool if the Axe FX / CabLab could handle longer IRs, for room mics (and why not binaural mics). Why ? Because this is what ingeneers and producers do in real life : mixing near-field/far-field/room mics, capturing cabs AND the ambiance of the venue.

If there's almost no device who can handle long IRs (I'm talking about devices such as the Axe FX, the Kemper, the Helix... amp modelers in general), producers won't be encouraged to make this kind of IRs. We can already find IRs longer than 180 ms (we can also find binaural ones but they are too few for the moment) but we can't process them with the Axe directly, we need external devices such as a Logidy Epsi (or a DAW with MixIR...). I am convinced the Axe FX could handle longer IRs but maybe I'm wrong...

Maybe take it to a new thread?

The thread already exists. As I mentioned before, here is the link : http://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/amp-in-the-room-feeling.119127/

 

[Raab90]

I think you're missing my point. If my monitors are pumping out an exact replica of what the mic(s) heard 1" in front of the speaker, and if we assume that the speakers (monitor or guitar amp) cease to influence the sound once the sound has been produced, then the result that I hear - 10' away - should be the same as what I'd hear from the amp.

Fiddling with high and low cut to make the sound going into the monitors sound more like an amp 10' away, and then adding the actual physical distance from the monitors when I hear them seems like it would double the effect.

Try it this way. Imagine that I've put the monitors on top of the guitar cabinet the IR came from, in the room where the IR was made. If the sound coming out of both the monitors and the guitar was exactly the same measured from 1" in front of each, wouldn't they sound exactly the same 10' away? Why would I try to make the monitors sound different than the sound 1" from the guitar speakers?

I understand where you're going to.
Let's assume the IR is the exact same sound that comes out of the speaker.
Then, in order to sound the same as the cab being emulated, your FRFR monitors would need to be the same size, be made out of the same wood and have the same speaker distance as the cabinet that's being emulated. And that is, assuming all speakers in the cabinet are exactly the same...Otherwise, you would need to get a different IR for each speaker.

However, IMO, that doesn't prevent you from having an "In the room sound", then again, it all depends on your definition of "In the room". Say you use a G12H IR.
Just cut the excess lows and high, and you will get the "in the room" feeling, as long as you play loud that is. It will NOT sound like the G12H that's being emulated, it will sound like a different speaker, but a different speaker in that room for that matter.

For example, I shot an IR of an old marshall cab with V30's, and then I ran the AXE through both the real cab and my FRFR setup.
I compared them both side to side, and ofc, they sounded different. Then I used filters after the IR to tweak the sound until it sounded as close as possible to the real cab. Voila.

The problem here is that, that EQ setting is only valid if I place my monitors in the exact same position i had them when i did the eqing, and obviously it's only valid for my particular FRFR setup. Some people might say this will won't work and it's nonsense. Maybe, but to me, it sounds and feels like the cab I used in that studio. I have different EQs for 2x12, 2x10, 4x12, and so on.

I think that process could be automated, but it would require an algorithm that adapts it to your particular set up. But that would be basically having to do a cab simulation block rather than just an IR block, much like the amp block. And it would still not guarantee it would sound the same.

 

[FractalAudio]

I think you're missing my point. If my monitors are pumping out an exact replica of what the mic(s) heard 1" in front of the speaker, and if we assume that the speakers (monitor or guitar amp) cease to influence the sound once the sound has been produced, then the result that I hear - 10' away - should be the same as what I'd hear from the amp.

Fiddling with high and low cut to make the sound going into the monitors sound more like an amp 10' away, and then adding the actual physical distance from the monitors when I hear them seems like it would double the effect.

Try it this way. Imagine that I've put the monitors on top of the guitar cabinet the IR came from, in the room where the IR was made. If the sound coming out of both the monitors and the guitar was exactly the same measured from 1" in front of each, wouldn't they sound exactly the same 10' away? Why would I try to make the monitors sound different than the sound 1" from the guitar speakers?

That's not the way it works. 1" from the speaker is the near field. The response of a speaker in the near field is very different than the response in the far field. In the near field the response changes (drastically) across the face of the transducer. Even moving the mic a fraction of an inch will result in a very different sound.

10 ft. from the speaker is the far field and the response changes smoothly as you move across the field.

If the near field were the same as the far field then the sound wouldn't change as you moved the microphone and you could place the microphone anywhere on the face of the speaker. Anyone who has mic'd a speaker knows that this isn't the case.

This is advanced acoustics stuff. You can read about the various fields by searching the internet.

 

[barhrecords]

The binaural IR's might be interesting for in ears.

I've never gotten as inspiring tone with in ears as I do with FRFR. Even with a loud wedge in the room for sustain.

 

[bishop5150]

So we make the low and high cuts in the cab cab block so our FRFR monitors sound more amp in the room and cab like on stage but do we want that for the signal we're feeding to FOH?

 

[Moke]

So we make the low and high cuts in the cab cab block so our FRFR monitors sound more amp in the room and cab like on stage but do we want that for the signal we're feeding to FOH?

Good point, I don't.

I make all of my low and high cuts with FOH in mind. I never try to make my FRFR sound like a guitar cab. It gets lost in the mix. I have been trying to get my guitar to sound like the mic'd guitar sound that I've heard all of my life.

 

[RDH]

Good point, I don't.

I make all of my low and high cuts with FOH in mind. I never try to make my FRFR sound like a guitar cab. It gets lost in the mix. I have been trying to get my guitar to sound like the mic'd guitar sound that I've heard all of my life.

I'm on the same bus Bro!! By the way you've acquired some Amazing skill at producing them!!

 

[barhrecords]

Good point, I don't.

I make all of my low and high cuts with FOH in mind. I never try to make my FRFR sound like a guitar cab. It gets lost in the mix. I have been trying to get my guitar to sound like the mic'd guitar sound that I've heard all of my life.

Before you could affordably make your guitar sound just like a record, that's what everyone wished for.

Now that you can make your guitar sound like a record, dayum we want it to sound like an amp.

Never please a bunch a guitar nerds lol

 

[Eanna]

I assume this has been asked often before but...
Is it possible that Fractal could provide a global cab hi / low filtering option??
Along using with my main filtered cab presets in a live band context, I'd love to be able to randomly scroll through presets just to see how alternative amps might sound in the mix too.
Unfortunately because each individual preset's cab needs to be filtered separately, this is a very time consuming prospect, especially for those of us that like to chop & change user banks from Fremen, Yek, etc. Without filtering, cabs just don't sound right in the mix & worse, I run my monitors LOUD and know that unfiltered cab hi-end causes my ears to ring after a gig...). Thanks!

 

[yek]

I assume this has been asked often before but...
Is it possible that Fractal could provide a global cab hi / low filtering option??
Along using with my main filtered cab presets in a live band context, I'd love to be able to randomly scroll through presets just to see how alternative amps might sound in the mix too.
Unfortunately because each individual preset's cab needs to be filtered separately, this is a very time consuming prospect, especially for those of us that like to chop & change user banks from Fremen, Yek, etc.
Without filtering, cabs just don't sound right in the mix & worse, I run my monitors LOUD and know that unfiltered cab hi-end causes my ears to ring after a gig...). Thanks!

You've got that already: the Global EQ.

 

[Eanna]

You've got that already: the Global EQ.

Thanks, I had considered that, but is it not fixed frequency & so a compromise in terms of accuracy, compared with the cab block's configurable filters, slope options, etc,?

 

[yek]

Yes, that's correct.

Another way, if you have an Axe-Fx, is to use a PEQ in your presets. Make it a global block. Attach an ext. controller to its Bypass. Set the first and last bands to Blocking and choose the freqs. Then use I/O > MIDI > Ext Ctrl Init Val to enable it or bypass across all presets.

 

[Eanna]

Yes, that's correct.

Another way, if you have an Axe-Fx, is to use a PEQ in your presets. Make it a global block. Attach an ext. controller to its Bypass. Set the first and last bands to Blocking and choose the freqs. Then use I/O > MIDI > Ext Ctrl Init Val to enable it or bypass across all presets.

Thank you for your time responding to this. Do you mean I'd need to add a PEQ block to each preset? And if so, wouldn't this almost be as time consuming as dialling in filter settings for each of the 700-odd preset cabs? I have AxeFX XL & I'm probably missing something by a mile here, apologies!

 

[bdrepko]

I think you're missing my point. If my monitors are pumping out an exact replica of what the mic(s) heard 1" in front of the speaker, and if we assume that the speakers (monitor or guitar amp) cease to influence the sound once the sound has been produced, then the result that I hear - 10' away - should be the same as what I'd hear from the amp.

Fiddling with high and low cut to make the sound going into the monitors sound more like an amp 10' away, and then adding the actual physical distance from the monitors when I hear them seems like it would double the effect.

Try it this way. Imagine that I've put the monitors on top of the guitar cabinet the IR came from, in the room where the IR was made. If the sound coming out of both the monitors and the guitar was exactly the same measured from 1" in front of each, wouldn't they sound exactly the same 10' away? Why would I try to make the monitors sound different than the sound 1" from the guitar speakers?

There is also coloring added by the microphone that is used to capture the IR.

 

[yek]

Thank you for your time responding to this. Do you mean I'd need to add a PEQ block to each preset? And if so, wouldn't this almost be as time consuming as dialling in filter settings for each of the 700-odd preset cabs? I have AxeFX XL & I'm probably missing something by a mile here, apologies!

Yes, has to be added manually.

 

[brokenvail]

So we make the low and high cuts in the cab cab block so our FRFR monitors sound more amp in the room and cab like on stage but do we want that for the signal we're feeding to FOH?

I have pretty much always used cab block low/Hi cuts and I send it to FOH. FOH guys love me. Some places add a little bit of high end depending on the room but I have never had anyone add some low end

 

[barhrecords]

In my experience, I play two kinds of shows.

a) The sound crew doesn't know the band well. In these scenarios, they usually do nothing to the band inputs unless there is an issue. They really don't care if I low cut / high cut / eq or whatever. They assume the tone is what I like and move on. The focus is almost always the lead vocal and drums.

b) The sound crew knows the band well. In these cases, which are rare for me, there is more concern and communication about the guitar.

 

[StickMan]

That's not the way it works. 1" from the speaker is the near field. The response of a speaker in the near field is very different than the response in the far field. In the near field the response changes (drastically) across the face of the transducer. Even moving the mic a fraction of an inch will result in a very different sound.

10 ft. from the speaker is the far field and the response changes smoothly as you move across the field.

If the near field were the same as the far field then the sound wouldn't change as you moved the microphone and you could place the microphone anywhere on the face of the speaker. Anyone who has mic'd a speaker knows that this isn't the case.

This is advanced acoustics stuff. You can read about the various fields by searching the internet.

My understanding was that many IR's were a blend of individual mics in different positions, in an attempt to capture different aspects of the sound of the speakers.