Truth about Tonematching? Help Getting quality TM presets.

boltrecords

boltrecords

Fractal Fanatic
So I've tried my fair share of Tonematching and have gotten some mixed results. Most TM presets I've tried seem to just sound and feel lifeless. I don't know how else to explain it. So my question for you all is what would be the absolute BEST source to tone match from? I've used wav files up until now. I've limited myself to songs that I had on CD or in itunes that could pull an isolated portion from. Ie. sweet child o mine, eruption, whole lotta love. Stuff like that. I haven't really used any YouTube videos or mp3's.
Is a wave file going to give significantly better results than an mp3? Correct me if I'm wrong but what I've been doing is taking my songs in iTunes, and clicking the option to convert to wave file. Then I would use that as my source. Is this the same as ripping a wave file off an actual CD? That's one things hate about iTunes and music online these days. No hard copy and wave format at my finger tips.

Are there any other sources that people have used that give better results than wav? I've tried some of those ISO tracks out there but have gotten some pretty shitty results. Most are the same if not worse than using a YouTube video.

Finally, has anyone gotten good results with using TM live? This is mainly what I'm using it for. It seems to me that TM would work better in a recording setting rather than with a live band mix.

Thoughts?
 
I'm not a TM expert, but I'd believe that it would be something that would work best in a recording situation than a live mix just because you are bringing in the whole monitor/speaker aspect of coloration. I could be wrong, but I don't think that I am on this one.

If you really want to get as precise as possible and test your theory I would create a project in a DAW with one track being a WAV file ripped from a CD and a second track being an MP3 copy of it around 128kbs. Then record a dry track playing along. Make two copies of the exact same preset and then TM each using the WAV for one and the MP3 for the other.

Whatever you get from that should give you a pretty scientific conclusion. Or not. It's theory. :)
 
Converting an m4a or mp3 to wav in iTunes is not the same thing as ripping a wav from a CD. Taking the wav from the CD will be better quality. You can't gain fidelity from an already compressed file by converting it into a wav.
 
cd to wav... if you cant find a lot of guitar only, try piecing a bunch of little bits together to make a longer passage... i'm going to go down this route when 10 comes out... I have spent no time tweaking since the last update, as it all tends to be for not.
 
Yeah that's what I thought. So pretty much buying music on iTunes screws you out of having the higher quality format. Looks like I'm going back to buying CDs again
 
Chris@KatsuKuriMedia said:
So no one has made a successful tone match with an mp3?
Click to expand...

Axes - The Count of Tuscany (partial cover) - YouTube

The lead tone is basically done from YouTube (I re-matched it later with the .wav isolated track but it sounded absolutely the same with the YouTube match which is a lot lower quality) and I can generally say that I had hugely amazing results from low quality sources, too.
To the OP:
The basic idea is to get a VERY (and when I say VERY I actually mean VVEERRYY) similar tone to what you want to match to, then match it to the original recording.
Also, don't expect the same clarity and dynamics of patches with isolated recording tone matches that you would get with a preset with a cab - the Axe II does a great job to get as close as it can get to amp in the room sounds, but 99% the recording tones are far more compressed/EQd to fit in with the mix.
 
1. Most mixed guitar tracks don't sound so good on their own, your Tone Match will sound like the isolated track and not like your impression of the track in the mix.

2. It's the Axe - use the Tone Match as the basis for dialing in a sound you like.
 
While it's easy enough to hear the difference between an mp3 and a wav, I'm willing to bet big that all other things being equal, most would have a very hard time distinguishing between TMs made from each... especially once the respective clips were uploaded to SoundCloud or wherever for listening.
 
An MP3 can sound REALLY good or it can sounds like crap. It depends on how it was encoded. Even a so-so 128kbps MP3 should be able to give you a good tone match. People have gotten good results from worse sounding YouTube videos. If you can't get a good match from it I think your problem lies elsewhere.

BTW, "gingivitis the wart" is correct. A CD ripped to WAVE is an exact digital copy of the audio file. MP3 and AAC throw away information during compression to create smaller files. The encoding discards data (it is "lossy") in a way using techniques that are not perceptible to most at higher bitrates. Converting those formats back to WAV won't restore that lost information.

iTunes currently encodes to 256kbps AAC format. I doubt most people can tell the difference from a CD especially with consumer gear in most listening environments, but they'll think they can. Kind of like tube snobs. :)
 
rickboot said:
iTunes currently encodes to 256kbps AAC format. I doubt most people can tell the difference from a CD especially with consumer gear in most listening environments, but they'll think they can. Kind of like tube snobs. :)
Click to expand...

+1

English is not my native language - I'll try to explain it

Most lossy audio compression using methods of psychoacoustics, masking audio information that isn't hearable under certain circumstances. I try to explain this very simple - As humans, we're able to hear a difference between two different leveled signals in a mix within a certain dynamic- and frequency-dependent range. Because of our human voice, our ears are made for frequencies between 400 to 4000Hz - below or upper to this range , lower leveled signals will be masked much better by higher level signals. Audio Compression cut the so called unhearable- or masked audio information away (how much depends on the bit rate of the codec). So it really depends on the loudness of a mix. Because of the loudness war, it's really hard to hear a difference from wav to mp3 on current productions. To get an tonal fingerprint from an isolated guitar track - a good quality mp3 does it well for the TMA process.

btw. I'm not talking about bit rates below 160kbit/s ;)

cheers
Paco
 
I edited my post a lot right after I first wrote it because I had my personal opinion on the whole thing in there, but at the end of the day it's only going to be speculatory IMHO until the end user performs a controlled test on their own which is why I deleted a lot of it.

But since we're having a discussion about it anyway, my opinion is that it won't make much of a difference. The biggest thing that may be lost is a bit of the high end which can probably be dialed in or out just using the tools within the AxeFXII. And everyone who says that once a file is in a lossy format you are not going to recover any of the information that was removed during the compression process is absolutely right. That data is gone; it cannot be recreated.

I also believe that because guitar is so band limited to begin with that the quality of the source (unless it's so bad that the timbre or tonal quality is really changed) won't matter as much as we would like to think. I mean we're talking about an EQ heavy technique here; it's not really changing the gain structure of the amp model or the AxeFXII itself.

I can imagine that there may be some differences, but nothing that's going to be so dramatic that it would be earth shattering. But a controlled test is the best way to determine that for sure.
 
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