the trick to make any IR sound great, and make great ones sound RIDICULOUS

shatteredsquare

shatteredsquare

Power User
so in the cab block there is a little built in room setting. i think i read somewhere it's just a little low-resource room emulation.

it has 3 controls:
1. level
2. size
3. mic spacing

when you're in a room with a cab blasting your face off, usually if you're trying to get your sound dialed in you're in front of the cab twiddling your knobs getting ur jimmies rattled. you have 1, 2, or 4, maybe 8 speakers, and you have two ears.

an IR is a little tiny audio snapshot of a cabinet, caught from the source of the mics used to capture it. when that goes to tape, sure, in a mix it sounds great. but when you're practicing it's hard to really feel the sound like you would if you were jamming in front of the amp.

back to your ears. most of us have two of them. if you have a big head they will be spaced pretty far apart. if you are a normal guy they will be spaced further together. those are your head mics. FIRST turn the size down to 1, as low as it goes. that's getting your head mics up close to the cab. turn up the room level to about 50 or 60, that's turning your head mics on. space your ears to taste depending on how big your head is, start as low as it goes and check out 10-20 or so, the bigger your head is the wider the stereo image goes, until your head is the only thing that can fit in the room. now turn the size up SLOWLY by little increments of .01 or .10 and see if you hear any difference. that's you bringing your head away from the speaker.

NOW GO BACK TO ALL THOSE CRAPPY IRs YOU SAID WERE GARBAGE AND SEE HOW THEY SOUND. or just buy cab pack 13 and kick yourself in the nuts for wasting years and thousands of dollars on a tone quest that has now become completely unnecessary. honestly the only thing left to add is a snare drum rattle emulation.
 
with the level about 50 or even all the way up to 100, mic spacing pretty low maybe 15-25, and slowly start to bring the size up from 1, at some point the sound will 'come into focus', hard to explain but you'll know it when you hear it, and you can play with the sweet spot by changing the mic spacing, just like you play with the mic placement in front of the speaker. mic spacing feels like moving in front of the cab. it will all of a sudden sound like you're standing in front a damn cab in a room! it makes even the crappiest IR usable, and with some of the ML IRs they sound absolutely freaking stupid good now. another thing i realized this fixes is bass resonance that where before it wasn't settling properly, and messing with everything, this sounds like it lets the bass out of a box and lets it move around, and all of a sudden it blooms like crazy and everything sounds f-ing REAL.
 
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If I read this correctly, the OP is referring to the room size parameter, not speaker size. Cool info. I have messed with the room parameters a bit, but I will revisit my settings.
 
Interesting. But I wonder... Are you tuning specifically for the way *you* (and by "you", I mean anyone who's following your procedure) hear, or will others (i.e. listeners, not Axe-FX operators) notice the difference, too?
 
TieDyedDevil said:
Interesting. But I wonder... Are you tuning specifically for the way *you* (and by "you", I mean anyone who's following your procedure) hear, or will others (i.e. listeners, not Axe-FX operators) notice the difference, too?
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You, (as in anybody listening) can hear the difference.
It's kind of like a sonic focus is the best way I can think of describing it.
I've always found it to be a useful tool when I switch to headphones. I've always hated playing through headphones to begin with cause ya lose the speaker to guitar interaction, but there are times where I can't just crank up so headphones it is.
I have a few sets of good headphones but they always sound much different & I find myself having to kill some low end & bring up the highs a tad to try & match what I hear thru frfr speakers.
These parameters are very useful to quickly de-mud while adding nice clarity.
There's definitely some sweet spots to find.

I usually start 100% on the Room Level and between 2-5 Room Size and 20-40 on the spacing. Although a more pronounced effect can be had with higher Mic Spacing.
After I find the sweet spot I'll bring down the Room Level to keep everything as subtle as I can while still being effective.

The Air & Air Freq can also add some sizzle to the top end. If I use that I keep the Air setting pretty low though. Personally I usually don't like added sizzle. Ymmv
 
interesting read and entertaining also ;-))
Never messed with this. I understand that´s what you do at home sitting in front of the cab. On stage, how do you use those room parameters and do you have different presets with adapted room settings for home/stage use (not talking about Fletcher Munson in regards to volume here)?
 
Hhuent said:
interesting read and entertaining also ;-))
Never messed with this. I understand that´s what you do at home sitting in front of the cab. On stage, how do you use those room parameters and do you have different presets with adapted room settings for home/stage use (not talking about Fletcher Munson in regards to volume here)?
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Ah, I see what your sayin'.
I approach these setting as just another tool to fine tune the overall sound of a patch. I don't have a universal setting as it depends on the characteristics of the IR's being used.
It's kinda like a spacial eq of sorts where tweaking the virtual space, (room) changes the eq. It really is kind of like a fine tuned focus where it can add a nice final clarity.
But like anything else regarding playing out in different rooms, the actual real world room is going to affect your tone.
It's not really like a night & day difference in utilizing it, it's more of a fine adjustment of tone. The icing on the cake if you will. ;)
 
AlGrenadine said:
I thought everybody used that... You have the tools why not try them ?
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So much to learn, so little time... - but will start today.
EDIT: I may add, I experimented quite a bit with different mikes and proximity to beef up the sound but mostly keep prox. way down.
 
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Perdikament said:
Ah, I see what your sayin'.
I approach these setting as just another tool to fine tune the overall sound of a patch. I don't have a universal setting as it depends on the characteristics of the IR's being used.
It's kinda like a spacial eq of sorts where tweaking the virtual space, (room) changes the eq. It really is kind of like a fine tuned focus where it can add a nice final clarity.
But like anything else regarding playing out in different rooms, the actual real world room is going to affect your tone.
It's not really like a night & day difference in utilizing it, it's more of a fine adjustment of tone. The icing on the cake if you will. ;)
Click to expand...
thanks a bunch!
 
Hhuent said:
interesting read and entertaining also ;-))
Never messed with this. I understand that´s what you do at home sitting in front of the cab. On stage, how do you use those room parameters and do you have different presets with adapted room settings for home/stage use (not talking about Fletcher Munson in regards to volume here)?
Click to expand...

i don't know how it would work in a live situation, i am a internet phantom that doesn't really exist in the real world so i don't get out much. i was using headphones and it sounds amaaaaazingly real. i haven't tried it plugging into speakers yet. what i could hYpothesize to happen is that it would sound just fine through speakers, and even better than it did without it, in the same way it improved the headphone sound.

people stack reverbs all the time, Bob Clearmountain and Chris Lorde Alge talk all the time about using 2, 3, 4 different reverbs in series to get crazy sounds. with headphones it's like being in an anechoic chamber i guess, it's just your ears in a sealed container, there isn't any natural reverberation or space, so adding the diffusion makes it sort of a soft light effect, and makes a big difference going from nothing. when you use speakers the only reverberation you get is from the room you're in, so i'd imagine it would sound just as good, only better. does it sound like crap when they play def leopard through speakers in a room? hell no, it sounds hUUUUge. sounds like an ass ton of reverb. reverberating.

and you could still tune it by ear to play with the sweet spot if it's not to taste. but at that point it's getting kind of crazy, because you're sitting in a control room listening to speakers at a particular spot recreating the sound of a microphone recreating the sound of a speaker in a room at a particular spot. it's not like there is any level of purity left in a sound like that at that point. does it sound good? YES. done. NO? keep playing with it till it does. just remember, similar to the internet, none of this is actually happening. it's all virtual. like CLA say's, you can't make a bad sound, no one is going to get hurt.
 
Being my norm is headphones, I got all fired up to try this and then was reminded my AX8 doesn't have the freakin' room parameters. Any suggestions on how to implement this with say a small room verb block right after the cab block? Size is a parameter, but what would level and mic spacing equate to?
 
Ooops I do see mic spacing in the small rm verb block also. But the levels are early and late.
 
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