Mastering Live Tones with the FM9: Advice Needed!

VaggelisPRS

VaggelisPRS

Member
Hello, my fellow guitar enthusiasts!

Hope you're all doing great!

I need some advice on a nagging issue as I prepare to start gigging with the FM9. When I craft a tone using headphones, it sounds perfect. But when played through speakers, it falls flat. After tweaking, it may sound decent, but then in the studio on monitors, it's completely different!

How can I make tones that translate well across setups?

Here’s where it gets tricky:

  • Rehearsals often involve PA speakers.
  • Studios sometimes provide just one floor monitor, resulting in a summed L-R signal that sounds bad, especially since my presets are designed for stereo!
  • If I use in-ear monitors (IEMs), should I prioritize crafting tones for them, PA speakers, or my personal monitors?
I’m considering purchasing GR NF G210A ST monitors because they’re lightweight and sound great, which could provide a consistent setup. But until then, what’s the best approach?

Even when dialing in my tone on floor monitors, the sound changes dramatically when played through PA speakers. Should the live sound engineer handle EQ adjustments during rehearsals, or do I need to create presets differently?

Switching between monitors feels like switching guitar cabs, even though I use the same IR across all presets. Should I adjust my EQ for each situation, like with a real amp?

Maybe the best solution is to invest in my own FRFR monitor, create presets on that, and use it consistently for rehearsals and gigs, leaving PA adjustments to the sound engineer.
Also, are PA speakers closer to monitors or hi-fi systems in sound characteristics?

On another note, here are some tone issues I’m facing:

  • My sound often feels boxy, fizzy, muddy, or harsh, no matter what I do. Is it my guitar?
  • I have excellent presets from MF, Cooper Carter, and others, so I don’t think it’s the programming.
Specific questions:

  1. Any recommendations for cab and preamp low/high cuts? What frequency ranges do you use for a clean, balanced tone without mud or harshness?
  2. Has anyone tried Tonefactor XR IRs? Are they worth exploring?
  3. I’ve been trying to simplify things by using just one York IR for all presets. Is that approach limiting my results?
As a session musician who’s used to analog gear, transitioning to digital has been a steep learning curve. Any advice or insights to navigate these challenges would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!
 
Tough one, and I'd say there is not one right answer.

Personally, I dial my tones in in my studio on my studio monitors. I aim to create sounds that will sit great in a mix and leave as little as possible to do for the sound engineer.
Live, I use IEMs or wedges, and find my sounds translate well. There are, of course, differences, and I can tell so immediately, but that usually does not impact my playing or how my sounds feel.

As for the presets you mention: the guitar is one obvious thing to look at. Could also be your monitoring situation. Or your fingers/style.

Low/high cuts: I low cut my presets at around 80Hz, and mostly do not use high cuts. I had a discussion with Justin from York Audio about it, and he recommended to not use a high cut, but dial the amp tones in properly. Makes sense to me, as the IR captures the speaker as it is.

Tonefactor: Personally, I stay away from them. Their marketing is major BS, as they market their IRs as being "dynamic", which by the nature of IRs is just not the case. Their IRs are simply pre-processed. They sound nice, but their marketing bugs me a lot, shady dudes. For great IRs, see York Audio: top notch products, and a nice and response guy. Doesn't get any better than that.

Using one IR makes a lot of sense; in an analogue world, you'd have 1 (or maybe 2) speakers, even when using multiple amps. I do the same in Fractal land, I use the same 2 IRs for a whole set (stereo setup). This gives tonal consistency and makes things for the engineer a lot easier.

Transitioning to digital: I am a hardcore believer in actual amps, the amps in my studio are Fender and Vox from the 60s, and I had a hard time transitioning as well. What helped me: I more or less recreate my actual amps/setups in Fractal land, which gives me a familiar soundscape. I spent days and days dialing in tones, adjusting this and that, and eventually succeeded.
I just recently put together a small pedalboard that goes before my FM9 (compressor, 2 drives) as I found that makes the Fractal sound noticeably more realistic, and also improves the feel of the presets.

Lots of good advice in the Cooper Carter videos, I also found The Studio Rats YT channel very helpful for my approach.
 
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A lot of good advice from @sawyer. Headphones are not going to translate very well to monitors. I also notice that many people dial their guitar tone by itself. I'd strongly recommend to dial it in a mix, or at least with some sort of backing track.

As far as changing monitors and stereo/mono, I always assume that a venue will be mono, and have set up my presets so they are passable in mono. I'm pleasantly surprised when I can run stereo, but it's not that common. I also bring my own monitors (EV PXM-12MP). I can dial tones on them at home and also use them on the gig. No translation.

Finally, @Greg Ferguson is 100% correct in that dialing tone at gig volume is important.
 
VaggelisPRS said:
How can I make tones that translate well across setups?
Click to expand...
Dial in the sounds in a band mix in as neutral an environment as possible. This means good studio monitors placed well in an acoustically treated room. The room is your biggest speaker and no speaker upgrade or room correction can solve the huge 70hz dip from a 9ft ceiling for example, distortion / comb filtering caused by reflections off the walls/ceiling, etc. The more neutral your environment is the better your sounds will translate across different media. After load in the first thing any FOH engineer does is tune the PA to their preferred curve, usually roughly flat. If you get some crap backline stage wedge and your tone sounds bad through it, you can still be confident in what you're sending to FOH or the DAW because you built it in a neutral environment and know how it sounds in a band mix.
VaggelisPRS said:
My sound often feels boxy, fizzy, muddy, or harsh, no matter what I do. Is it my guitar?
Click to expand...
There's really no way to answer this without some clips, but I suspect treating your room will go a long way to clean this up. Right now you're hearing the direct tone from the speakers, combined with tons of out of phase reflections from all 6 walls across the entire audible spectrum. There's no way to accurately judge anything in that environment. If you decide to DIY some panels, make them as thick as possible. 3" panels filled with building insulation will do nothing for the low mids and bass and will just make your room sound creepy and dead.

Buying new IRs is not the solution and I agree with Sawyer's takes on the vendors.

Headphones are difficult to dial in tones on unless you're already very comfortable with how they translate to other environments. Having good quality neutral headphones helps quite a bit but still takes getting used to compared to speakers in a room. Ollo audio from Slovenia is my preferred brand, I've tried most brands up to $1000 and Ollo is popular here for a reason.
 
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VaggelisPRS said:
My sound often feels boxy, fizzy, muddy, or harsh, no matter what I do. Is it my guitar?
Click to expand...
Could be the cab IR. I generally find most cabs to be muddy. I choose brighter ones. There are plenty. Could also be the position of your monitors. If they are up against a wall or (worse) in a corner, that will oversimplify the low frequencies.

I find headphones to sound fizzy, with my desk and floor monitors it's much less fizzy.
 
VaggelisPRS said:
My sound often feels boxy, fizzy, muddy, or harsh, no matter what I do. Is it my guitar?:
Click to expand...

Sounds like Messrs. Fletcher and Munson are kicking your butt. The closer to stage volume you are when you tweak and tweeze your tone to perfection, the better your presets will sound. The quieter you mix, the more likely you are to turn up the bass and treble/presence and cut mids, resulting in boom and fizz when you play it loud. The human ear is less sensitive to lows and highs at lower volumes, and flattens out a fair bit at higher volumes. The idea of having FRFRs around is a good one, even if you still do in-ears at your gigs, as it lets you crank it up a bit when dialing things in, and can hrlp with guitar feedback and sustain. Optimally, shoot for 85-90dB when setting up tones, as this is close to live volume....
 
As many have already said...

Dial in your sounds at as close a volume to your performance level as possible. With physical amps, you rarely have the ability to do anything other than this. In the digital realm, most players are tone chasing too quietly.

Gig volume tone-chasing can be hard on the ears (and hard on relationships!:laughing:), but it's really the best (only...) way to do it without years of experience compensating for the various factors at play when you dial at too low a level.

Start with High and Low Cuts in the PREAMP page of your cabinet block. Most guitar tones in a mix don't need to say a whole lot below ~100 Hz and above ~6000 (ballpark numbers, ymmv).

Go from there. Dial in while your band is playing or while you're blasting backing tracks.

It can be tough to wrap your head around, but most of the time, to stand out you need to take out frequencies.
 
For me what works well is 120hz for the low cut and 5.5khz for the cut,
I use the dyna-cab => the placement of the microphones also contributes to this adjustment
 

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Cooper Carter said:
Start with High and Low Cuts in the PREAMP page of your cabinet block
Click to expand...
Interested as to why you make the cuts in the Preamp page and not on cab page. What is the benefit of doing it here? There are so many different places/ways to make these cuts within the unit it can be confusing, I’m always happy to learn new ways of doing things but I like to understand a little bit more about why.
 
Madtone said:
Interested as to why you make the cuts in the Preamp page and not on cab page. What is the benefit of doing it here? There are so many different places/ways to make these cuts within the unit it can be confusing, I’m always happy to learn new ways of doing things but I like to understand a little bit more about why.
Click to expand...
Preamp page applies the cuts to all the IRs equally; the individual IR cuts apply to, well, the individual IRs. Two ways of accomplishing the same thing.
 
Cooper Carter said:
Preamp page applies the cuts to all the IRs equally; the individual IR cuts apply to, well, the individual IRs. Two ways of accomplishing the same thing.
Click to expand...
Guys, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to help me.
So, let’s say I’m working with a band and tweaking my presets to sound good in that context. But what if I want to create a great tone just for home use?
For example, I really like Van Halen’s sound, but objectively, his tone requires volume to make everything stand out properly. So, how can I replicate that at home? Should I create a preset that sounds great specifically for home use, separate from my gig presets? Then, I could keep the same effect and block structure but adjust the levels during rehearsals to ensure a great live tone.
When using studio monitors, should I treat them as if they’re my cabinets to get the right feel, or should I just aim for a nice tone that sits well over a backing track?
I’ll upload a short video of me playing so you can see my playing style. However, the sound in the video is from the camera because I haven’t gone through the process of making a preset that blends perfectly with a track yet. I’m also not sure if I should be doing additional tweaks in the DAW afterward.
Also, shouldn’t the EQ ideally be done using headphones? At home, I’m using Audio technic ATH-M50x headphones and Yamaha HS7 monitors.
With my real amp, I know how to dial in a preset that’s okay for a gig, even at home volume, because I’ve spent years getting to know it. But with the FM9, poor thing, I haven’t quite figured it out yet—haha!
Once again, thank you for everything. My girlfriend will be really happy if you can help me out because she’s the one who deals with my frustration when I can’t get the tone I want haha!
Take care, everyone, and enjoy yourselves! :D
 
Regarding home presets vs live presets - I use the same base preset but one is tweaked to sound right for home use in studio monitors at home volumes, and the other is tweaked to sound right through the PA at gig volume.

Think about what happens in a recording session - the engineer will move the microphones until the sound is right in the control room. And then further processing will be added (EQ, compression, etc.) until it sounds right in the mix. We need to do the same thing in our presets to get the desired results.
 
Personally, I use the same presets at home as I do live. I don't record much, unless I'm just goofing around so I don't EQ much. I usually just use the global EQ and adjust whether I'm home or at a gig. Mainly it's just tweaking the low end and some resonance stuff because my basement is a smaller area than the gigging area.
But all in all, I know what my presets sound like at a gig so there's really no need to tweak them at home just to simply "practice" songs.
If there is a noticeable effect part in a song, I just copy a preset that has the gain structure and add the effect on a scene, etc.
 
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VaggelisPRS said:
Guys, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to help me.
So, let’s say I’m working with a band and tweaking my presets to sound good in that context. But what if I want to create a great tone just for home use?
For example, I really like Van Halen’s sound, but objectively, his tone requires volume to make everything stand out properly. So, how can I replicate that at home? Should I create a preset that sounds great specifically for home use, separate from my gig presets? Then, I could keep the same effect and block structure but adjust the levels during rehearsals to ensure a great live tone.
When using studio monitors, should I treat them as if they’re my cabinets to get the right feel, or should I just aim for a nice tone that sits well over a backing track?
I’ll upload a short video of me playing so you can see my playing style. However, the sound in the video is from the camera because I haven’t gone through the process of making a preset that blends perfectly with a track yet. I’m also not sure if I should be doing additional tweaks in the DAW afterward.
Also, shouldn’t the EQ ideally be done using headphones? At home, I’m using Audio technic ATH-M50x headphones and Yamaha HS7 monitors.
With my real amp, I know how to dial in a preset that’s okay for a gig, even at home volume, because I’ve spent years getting to know it. But with the FM9, poor thing, I haven’t quite figured it out yet—haha!
Once again, thank you for everything. My girlfriend will be really happy if you can help me out because she’s the one who deals with my frustration when I can’t get the tone I want haha!
Take care, everyone, and enjoy yourselves! :D
Click to expand...
Since I don't have the possibility to play at very high volume at home and my room doesn't sound at all like my rehearsal room and even like a live room... I prefer to use headphones.
For me, it's what gives me the feeling of playing loudly and which is closest to the rehearsal sound.
Before, I corrected the preset with the global EQ on the output when arriving at rehearsal. This partially suited me.
So at home, headphones are life!!
Best wishes for this new year 2025, Fractalian friends !!
 
Lolo-G said:
Since I don't have the possibility to play at very high volume at home and my room doesn't sound at all like my rehearsal room and even like a live room... I prefer to use headphones.
For me, it's what gives me the feeling of playing loudly and which is closest to the rehearsal sound.
Before, I corrected the preset with the global EQ on the output when arriving at rehearsal. This partially suited me.
So at home, headphones are life!!
Best wishes for this new year 2025, Fractalian friends !!
Click to expand...
What headphones do you use that best reflect the freq response of live playing? I'm ok with it being dark in monitors if I know itll sound right in a live context
 
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