Post cab eq

Yeah, right, I never care for the outer ends of the IR, might it have massive lows or sharp highs, no matter, I don't care because I eq that away. What I'm after when searching through IR libraries is the voice in the mids and if it reminds me of a real cab. It's hard to ignore peaking highs though.
Same here. But I often find myself taking an IR that is far too dark/muddy and finding use for it with a massive boost in the highs.

What makes an IR useful for me is it's individual high resolution response, sometimes hidden by a terrible overall amplitude response. The EQ controls are there for a reason. Without a doubt, IRs and EQ suck up more hours of my life then I care to even think about.
 
But the great majority of the tones we've all heard are recordings, which inherently involve mics.

There's so much to unpack, isn't there? :)

Add in world-class mixing that lops off a lot of the top and bottom in the guitar tones
we then end up trying to emulate playing by ourselves, and it leads me to wonder what
we are all chasing exactly, and if we are aware that what we trying to achieve by ourselves
is nothing like what worked in a full mixed and mastered recording.

I have yet to meet a guitarist in all of my years of playing that didn't use too much gain,
dialed in way too much bass, way too many highs, and in doing so emptied their guitar
of all of those mids that can sound like ass on their own, and righteous on record, or live.

Guilty myself. But in the midst of recovery and rehabilitation. :)
 
Significant cpu saving in Axe3-mk1 - about 6% when going from 2 cab slots @ max to 2 cab slots @ 512. Not sure how that would translate to FM9
Will definitely give that a try, then. Just got done going through the pairs of IRs used in my presets and mixing them into single files to avoid the Cab Block 2 IR #2 crackle issue. I can try out the shorter IR length while I go through and update presets with the new submixed IRs....
 
For in home practice I tend to play with backing tracks, some self made others from contributors. Eq on the backing tracks tend to be different from one to the next depending on the creator. EQ at the end of the chain (post cab) allows for final tone shaping and the guitar to sit better in the mix. I don't have to be fighting on hearing my self or the backing track.

The approach is similar to what the live audio engineer does in console. At least for my practice.
 
I recall Cliff posting about smoothing and something along the lines of "It's there for a reason, use it."

For me the big deal with Smoothing is that, the way it hits my ears anyway, it seems to reduce the room sound. My ideal IR would be just shot in some sort of insanely isolated environment, like an isolation booth, and Smoothing allows me essentially to recreate that with just about any commonly available IR. I was wondering at first why the free Redwirez pack really hit me, until I read they essentially remastered their IRs with some kind of smoothing.
 
When it's boomy there is also the speaker tab in the amp block. You can lower the low resonance some or shift the low res frequency some.

This is my preferred method to wrestle the low end to get it under control vs a low cut (which I still may do depending on the amp and tone I'm going for) and is where I first start. I always reduce the Low Resonance value down and/or shift up the frequency to ~115Hz (the measured value of my 4x12). I find any speaker Low Resonance under ~100Hz particularly hard to deal with using only conventional controls and/or EQ cuts, especially on Fender-type amps.

The Global Speaker Impedance curve is immensely useful for me for that purpose. Awesome addition.

After another load of experiments I finally settled on all IRs on MAX length with a Smoothing value of 2.

I'm a huge fan of Smoothing and feel it makes for a much more natural 'speaker' sound; although I don't have a III and the FM3/FM9 don't have this parameter, I use a synthetic, generated IR and bake in the 'smoothing'. I've done experiments with/without smoothing and love the way it 'de-phases' the objectionable comb filtering/phasing artifacts.
 
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Another huge one for me is to use Proximity to increase low end plus changing the Proximity Frequency (which is on the Room page of the Cab block on the hardware). That's such a powerful method of adding low end, I can then just use the amp and OD to control the low end after I've added just the right amount from the Proximity parameters.

But the great thing is that there are so many points in the chain where you can control eq on Fractal units, it's astounding.
 
Another huge one for me is to use Proximity to increase low end plus changing the Proximity Frequency (which is on the Room page of the Cab block on the hardware). That's such a powerful method of adding low end, I can then just use the amp and OD to control the low end after I've added just the right amount from the Proximity parameters.

But the great thing is that there are so many points in the chain where you can control eq on Fractal units, it's astounding.

Despite my variety in guitars, I've never really felt the need to add low end. Given I am not an IR hunter, I have no idea how this happened.
 
Despite my variety in guitars, I've never really felt the need to add low end. Given I am not an IR hunter, I have no idea how this happened.

I think it's just in the signal of your axe combined with whatever type of eq you start with. I always like to start with a brighter eq that has more of the top end that I like, then add low end with the speaker impedance curve and proximity as well as the amp / od settings afterward. But that's just my current workflow. Whatever works as long as you get there. :)
 
I think it's just in the signal of your axe combined with whatever type of eq you start with. I always like to start with a brighter eq that has more of the top end that I like, then add low end with the speaker impedance curve and proximity as well as the amp / od settings afterward. But that's just my current workflow. Whatever works as long as you get there. :)

It's weird because I like plenty of bands with great low end, I think I just gravitate to a killer bass tone + kick drum + mix to do it. Which isn't to say the guitar low end doesn't matter, but for playing on my own I never ramp it up.
 
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