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

[Rex]

If you're running the reverb in series, use Mix as a substitute for Level.

 

[RossE]

Thanks Rex. The light finally went on and I figured that out on my own.
I think shatteredsquare is on to something with this. For my 1st pass I settled on 8.0 for the size, 20% for the level/mix and 22.4% for the mic spacing. I can definitely hear/feel a pleasant difference with the reverb block engaged. More alive, present and better feel with pick attack. I wonder about settings for all the deeper parameters in the reverb block (like Echo Density, Stereo Width, etc.) to match what the cab room is doing. I just left them at defaults.

 

[levipeto]

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.

Hahaha. I agree!

 

[HarrySound]

This man needs a doctor...




....and I need to give this a try.
....and yes cab pack 13 is incredible

 

[Hhuent]

Thanks Rex. The light finally went on and I figured that out on my own.
I think shatteredsquare is on to something with this. For my 1st pass I settled on 8.0 for the size, 20% for the level/mix and 22.4% for the mic spacing. I can definitely hear/feel a pleasant difference with the reverb block engaged. More alive, present and better feel with pick attack. I wonder about settings for all the deeper parameters in the reverb block (like Echo Density, Stereo Width, etc.) to match what the cab room is doing. I just left them at defaults.

AX8 user here also and this sounds promising.

 

[bread]

I bought cab pack 13 and loaded the cabs into the user banks. They sounded pretty horrible so I'm doing something wrong

Any ideas ? I auditioned them in cab lab and they sounded good but not when loaded from the user bank into a block in axe edit

 

[HarrySound]

I bought cab pack 13 and loaded the cabs into the user banks. They sounded pretty horrible so I'm doing something wrong

Any ideas ? I auditioned them in cab lab and they sounded good but not when loaded from the user bank into a block in axe edit

I only really use the Alloy folders. Thats the 4x mic combo and 4x single mic IRs. I used to use Mishas mixes but they weren't really what I was after.

 

[bread]

I only really use the Alloy folders. Thats the 4x mic combo and 4x single mic IRs. I used to use Mishas mixes but they weren't really what I was after.

OK I'll try the alloy thanks for your help.

 

[shatteredsquare]

I bought cab pack 13 and loaded the cabs into the user banks. They sounded pretty horrible so I'm doing something wrong

Any ideas ? I auditioned them in cab lab and they sounded good but not when loaded from the user bank into a block in axe edit

would have to hear a clip of what you mean by horrible, and see the preset you're running. any one of the bajillion parameters in the amp block can cause an immediate train wreck, and a lot of them will do that for you in a quarter turn or less...it's so freakin hard to tell though if you don't know what the knob is doing in the circuit. plus when you've been screwing with a preset for a long time you get completely lost down the rabbit hole and forget that you maxed out the flux capacitance reactor yesterday and no matter what you do everything sounds like mosquito farts. 'wahwahwah AXE FX SUCKS.' no no no son, the axe fx is a computer. you just have no idea what you're doing pretending to be hacker man.

 

[shatteredsquare]

I only really use the Alloy folders. Thats the 4x mic combo and 4x single mic IRs. I used to use Mishas mixes but they weren't really what I was after.

I didn't dig mishas mixes either, nor the ace picks, but he uses a lot more gain then most for all that widdlywiddly shit. I like getting sub bass resonance tuned in so as to not need a bass player. There is a couple 421 ones that sound insane, you can hear how it feels hollow, the space in the cab, it's weird as hell. Scrolling though the alloys it was hard to find a bad one, just a matter of how you like to emphasise your frequencies.

 

[HarrySound]

Personally I like the sm57 mixes and tend to stay away from the md421 as it sound super bright.
Now I've semi calibrated my room even the sm57s sound way to top heavy so I'm leaning towards the r121 now which previously sounded muddy as hell.
I just need to tweak my amps now I can actually hear the low end.

 

[Jason Scott]

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.

This is a super useful insight that should probably be a sticky in every Axe users tweaking checklist.

 

[shatteredsquare]

This is a super useful insight that should probably be a sticky in every Axe users tweaking checklist.

I'm telling you dood, once you find the sweet spot on the master volume, the IR and the virtual space you put the IR in are the single most influential components to a tone. gain, tone, tone stack stuff, transformer, bias, that stuff all effects how the amp responds, but strictly from a sound perspective, to get it to sound GOOD, once you put it in a virtual space it's honestly hard to make it sound bad. The absolute best tone though is when you dial in all your microscopic flux capacitor settings and get that to sound retarded, then put that in just a little bit of space to where it's like a couple virtual feet between you and the sound...IT'S GETTING DUMB. I want to try and post some clips soon to see if I'm high or if it actually does sound as good as I think.

 

[shatteredsquare]

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

I read I think in the manual that air mixes in signal from the cab block input with the cab block output. Unless that's a typo that means just amp sound mixed in with the cab sound at the back. I've haven't messed with it yet but the amp without a cab sounds pretty knarly, does it sound good?Unless it's a typo and it mixes cab sound back into the IR.

 

[Rex]

I read I think in the manual that air mixes in signal from the cab block input with the cab block output. Unless that's a typo that means just amp sound mixed in with the cab sound at the back. I've haven't messed with it yet but the amp without a cab sounds pretty knarly, does it sound good?Unless it's a typo and it mixes cab sound back into the IR.

Not a typo. But don't sweat the theory. Dial in some air and see if you like it.

 

[steadystate]

The Room section of the Cab block is just a cluster of short mono delays that IMO sound less than stellar through stereo IEMs. The "Early" parameters of the Reverb block sound orders of magnitude better for this purpose. I've found no real use for Room in the Cab block.

 

[Jason Scott]

The Room section of the Cab block is just a cluster of short mono delays that IMO sound less than stellar through stereo IEMs. The "Early" parameters of the Reverb block sound orders of magnitude better for this purpose. I've found no real use for Room in the Cab block.

After comparing the two and playing with the Advanced parameters (Early Level, Diffusion, Mic Spacing, etc.) in the Reverb block quite a bit, to my ears the Cab block Room parameters have a greater stereo imaging quality that I simply couldn't replicate or tweak to sound superior using the former, but that's me.

 

[mikeym-76]

I never experimented with any of the room settings before, but I have to say, there is a big difference here. I've been using 60% room level, 1.00 Room size, and 20% mic spacing, and I feel like I can walk into my guitar sound and walk around. Thanks for drawing my attention to this, Shatteredsquare. Awesome.

 

[StickMan]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for fixing the spelling of "ridiculous" in the thread title.

 

[shatteredsquare]

I never experimented with any of the room settings before, but I have to say, there is a big difference here. I've been using 60% room level, 1.00 Room size, and 20% mic spacing, and I feel like I can walk into my guitar sound and walk around. Thanks for drawing my attention to this, Shatteredsquare. Awesome.

HAHA! it's crazy huh? With room size that small, mic spacing kind of stimulates how far away it feels like you're standing.

This trick did it for me, I'm not spending 2 hours tweaking the flux capacitor bias controllers anymore getting pissed off why nothing sounds good. Now I'm spending 2 hours thrashing a screaming half stack in complete dead silence to the outside world.