Tips wanted for VU monitoring levels

Ant Music

Ant Music

Fractal Fanatic
Before you all scream "Use your ears!!!!!" I am am just wanting to know if there are some ball park ranges that people tend to set the difference between their clean and high gain dirt levels? Or at least tell me what works for you?

I find that I don't often play at full volume through a cab and power amp unless I am rehearsing or gigging. So most of the time I am using my head phones at home so it's hard to really dial in my levels and see how they work in a live scenario (when I don't really have time to concentrate on that in rhrsl). One further consideration is leaving enough head room for my power amp. Sometimes I find I set my levels to what works on my headphones but when I plug into the power amp and cab, my cleans are breaking up the power amp which is not ideal.

Anyway there are a number of variables here but what works for you guys?

Thanks in advance :)
 
Ant Music said:
Before you all scream "Use your ears!!!!!" I am am just wanting to know if there are some ball park ranges that people tend to set the difference between their clean and high gain dirt levels? Or at least tell me what works for you?

I find that I don't often play at full volume through a cab and power amp unless I am rehearsing or gigging. So most of the time I am using my head phones at home so it's hard to really dial in my levels and see how they work in a live scenario (when I don't really have time to concentrate on that in rhrsl). One further consideration is leaving enough head room for my power amp. Sometimes I find I set my levels to what works on my headphones but when I plug into the power amp and cab, my cleans are breaking up the power amp which is not ideal.

Anyway there are a number of variables here but what works for you guys?

Thanks in advance :)
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Not an answer to your question, but if you are driving the power amp too hard, why not just turn down the output level on the Axe Fx?

Are you running your amp at full output volume?
 
Good question, the answer is I am competing with another guitarist and they seem to be telling me to turn up louder all the time. Bare in mind I am using a EHX 44 Magnum power Amp. I'm considering upgrading to a Matrix rack mount power amp but I am trying to cover all bases first before making the jump.
 
Ant Music said:
Good question, the answer is I am competing with another guitarist and they seem to be telling me to turn up louder all the time. Bare in mind I am using a EHX 44 Magnum power Amp. I'm considering upgrading to a Matrix rack mount power amp but I am trying to cover all bases first before making the jump.
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Ok... So you are over driving a solid state power amp. Not good... You can try placing a compressor after your amp or cab block to squash the peaks a bit. But it really sounds like you need a better power amp.
 
unix-guy said:
Ok... So you are over driving a solid state power amp. Not good... You can try placing a compressor after your amp or cab block to squash the peaks a bit. But it really sounds like you need a better power amp.
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Yeah thanks for the input. I'm painfully aware that I might need to get a more powerful power amp.

But getting back to the original question, is there a sweetspot that generally works for clean tones and highgain levels for the VU meters or something that typically works for you? I never use compression on my clean tones cause I hate the feel of it but I understand there are inherently going to be dynamic differences between Clean and high gain tones. So yeah....
 
Ant Music said:
Yeah thanks for the input. I'm painfully aware that I might need to get a more powerful power amp.

But getting back to the original question, is there a sweetspot that generally works for clean tones and highgain levels for the VU meters or something that typically works for you? I never use compression on my clean tones cause I hate the feel of it but I understand there are inherently going to be dynamic differences between Clean and high gain tones. So yeah....
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I haven't quite found the right balance yet between clean and gain, however recently I've been thinking I need more headroom in general - that would mean turning down ALL my tones to about -6db on the VU meter and then turning up the ones I want really loud. I'm yet to try it out though as it's a bit of a task to go through all my presets!

There always seems to be plenty of play on the output knob (I've never had it passed half way!) for me so I could just crank that up to make up for lost volume. I play direct to FOH and monitor myself through an active monitor summed from output 2. If you're breaking up your power amp then it sounds like you need more juice than what you have to compete with the rest of the band - or perhaps lower resistance speakers?

With compression, I would say it's a must on most clean sounds although sometimes pre and other times post amp. Watch the compression gain reduction on the axe screen while you play through a compressor (page 2 of the comp block - I wish it displayed on axe edit!), you want to start with the threshold all the way up and lower it until the black part of the bar is reducing on harder hits but not really doing anything if you platy softly (don't forget to listen too!). Getting the attack time right is pretty important too.
 
Thanks but I really hate compression. Feels so unnatural and like there's a blanket over my sound. It gives me the creeps. Also when I hear those compressed to all hell modern Djent cleans I wanna die. It sounds awful, not even representative of what a guitar is by that point.
 
If you turn the threshold up on the compressor and turn up the ratio all the way it will act as a limiter and shouldn't affect your tone at all until you hit the limiter. At that point it will affect your tone in a better way than overdriving your power amp. So just keep turning the threshold up until it starts overloading your amp then back off a little bit. Might be worth trying until you get a better amp. The compressor would be the last block in the chain. Also make sure you use the line level option And make up gain off.
 
Ant Music said:
Thanks but I really hate compression. Feels so unnatural and like there's a blanket over my sound. It gives me the creeps. Also when I hear those compressed to all hell modern Djent cleans I wanna die. It sounds awful, not even representative of what a guitar is by that point.
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Perhaps you are not aware, but I would guess that every commercially recorded piece of music in the last 25+ years has compression on it.

You don't want it compressing the whole time, you just want it to tame the peaks. Clean sounds tend to have a lot of transients, which a compressor is perfect at taming.

To answer your question though, you should use the horizontal VU meters and target the 0db mark. Try to keep your peaks at or below that mark.
 
The front panel horizontal VU meters use an apparent loudness algorithm. I find it works really well to get presets close to the same apparent volume.

Use the "0" mark as your reference.

With overall volume, let the amp do the heavy lifting and leave headroom in the Fractal.
 
I use the VU meter to set the rhythm high gaIn to 0 db and then I set the clean so that it's just under 0 when I hit it extremely hard (I don't use compression on clean either so you'll notice it's very dynamic. Then my lead I set about 3 db over 0 and it works perfect while still a little bit of room so you don't clip. This seems to work great for me in a band situation. Now if your poweramp can't handle you being loud enough when your rhy is at 0 then yes, you definitely need a better one and I recommend the Matrix gt1000fx, plenty loud over a drummer.
 
There's a link to a video somewhere on these forums that shows you how to use LUFS meter. A search should find it I think.
Generally my high gain patches are about 3-6 dB louder than my clean patches but that's because the songs get real loud and the drummer hits hard during these sections.
 
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