Sidivan
Fractal Fanatic
I've been incredibly impressed with the Axe FX's performance thus far through our PA setup, but last week the owner of the PA (our drummer) brought an experienced sound guy in to help "setup the rest of the rack effects". I was not present during this ordeal, but they moved a bunch of power amps around in racks, hooked up all the rack effects (compressors and such), etc... I don't know exactly what they did because I can't get the time, or the knowledge for that matter, to start digging into the routing, but this has effected our sound tremendously. The drums sound fantastic as do vocals, but my axe now sounds neutered.
I'm no longer getting the response from the PA sound that I normally get. The cleans sound good, but my distortion tones sound squashed and over-compressed. When I hit a distorted note, for a split second I hear the attack and then it's like a limiter or compressor kicks in and clamps the sound down. I have virtually no control over the dynamics because it doesn't matter if I slam the strings or barely tap them now. I've been throwing a fit about compression, figuring they routed everybody to an outboard compressor instead of just the drums and/or vocals, but the drummer swears there's no compressor on my chain. I then thought phasing was an issue because initially he said the PA was in stereo... later he admitted it was mono. I changed the output settings on the axe from Stereo to Copy L->R and there is no difference in the sound. I did notice a slight bit of the "imaginary compression" come off when I reduced the output signal, but it still didn't sound open like it did 2 weeks ago.
I'm at wit's end here trying to figure this out. I think it MUST be a compressor or limiter that's cutting the chutzpa off my signal. Any ideas?
I'm no longer getting the response from the PA sound that I normally get. The cleans sound good, but my distortion tones sound squashed and over-compressed. When I hit a distorted note, for a split second I hear the attack and then it's like a limiter or compressor kicks in and clamps the sound down. I have virtually no control over the dynamics because it doesn't matter if I slam the strings or barely tap them now. I've been throwing a fit about compression, figuring they routed everybody to an outboard compressor instead of just the drums and/or vocals, but the drummer swears there's no compressor on my chain. I then thought phasing was an issue because initially he said the PA was in stereo... later he admitted it was mono. I changed the output settings on the axe from Stereo to Copy L->R and there is no difference in the sound. I did notice a slight bit of the "imaginary compression" come off when I reduced the output signal, but it still didn't sound open like it did 2 weeks ago.
I'm at wit's end here trying to figure this out. I think it MUST be a compressor or limiter that's cutting the chutzpa off my signal. Any ideas?