Where to adjust sound when going from headphones to live settings to make same?

D

dinkyguitar

Member
Hi,

Just updated to firmware 21 and the sound via headphones just blows me away so I'm trying to get that same sound when I play live (basement/home player).

Currently I'm playing thru my tube stereo Carvin TS100 using 2 x 2x12's cabs....v30's in one and Eminence v128 Legends.

I have duplicated my presets, one for headphone use the other when I play live.

To match the sound from the headset to live playing, I've typically turn amp modeling & cab sim off then use bass/mid/treble/presence settings on the amp block. But I'm not sure if I should be using an EQ block or something else instead.

Or.....maybe it doesn't matter what settings I adjust as long as it sounds good to me...that is the question.

How do you guys match the sound coming from headphones to live?

dinky
 
dinkyguitar said:
How do you guys match the sound coming from headphones to live?
Click to expand...

What sounds good live may not sound good on headphones and vice versa. For example, I've been using a super dark IR for live that sounds great when my FRFR or PA speakers are cranked up but is kinda dull on headphones. The best thing you can do is crank your live rig up to gig volume and try to make it sound good like that.
 
dinkyguitar said:
To match the sound from the headset to live playing, I've typically turn amp modeling & cab sim off then use bass/mid/treble/presence settings on the amp block. But I'm not sure if I should be using an EQ block or something else instead.
Click to expand...
Don’t turn off amp or cab modeling with headphones.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/ has curves to flatten the response of headphones. Find yours and add a GEQ or PEQ block with the settings, or an IR Player block with the associated IR, immediately before the Out 1 block. Turn up the volume until it’s comfortably loud to defeat the Fletcher-Munson effect, then adjust your Amp block’s tone controls. When it’s what you want bypass or remove the headphone compensation block and save the preset.

At that point you can bypass/disable the cab modeling if you are going to a guitar cab. Disable the power amp modeling if you are using a tube power amp.

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Connections_and_levels has a lot of useful information about this process along with using headphones.
 
deathbyguitar said:
I've been using a super dark IR for live that sounds great when my FRFR or PA speakers are cranked up but is kinda dull on headphones. The best thing you can do is crank your live rig up to gig volume and try to make it sound good like that.
Click to expand...
Are you using a compensation curve when listening with the headphones? How good are the headphones? I use them the majority of the time and find the presets I make sound very similar to my EV cabs, so much so I don’t change the EQ except to compensate for the stage when I’m live.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Don’t turn off amp or cab modeling with headphones.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/ has curves to flatten the response of headphones. Find yours and add a GEQ or PEQ block with the settings, or an IR Player block with the associated IR, immediately before the Out 1 block. Turn up the volume until it’s comfortably loud to defeat the Fletcher-Munson effect, then adjust your Amp block’s tone controls. When it’s what you want bypass or remove the headphone compensation block and save the preset.

At that point you can bypass/disable the cab modeling if you are going to a guitar cab. Disable the power amp modeling if you are using a tube power amp.

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Connections_and_levels has a lot of useful information about this process along with using headphones.
Click to expand...
Thanks....I should have been more clear...I meant to say I turn off amp modeling & cab sim when playing live.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Don’t turn off amp or cab modeling with headphones.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/ has curves to flatten the response of headphones. Find yours and add a GEQ or PEQ block with the settings, or an IR Player block with the associated IR, immediately before the Out 1 block. Turn up the volume until it’s comfortably loud to defeat the Fletcher-Munson effect, then adjust your Amp block’s tone controls. When it’s what you want bypass or remove the headphone compensation block and save the preset.

At that point you can bypass/disable the cab modeling if you are going to a guitar cab. Disable the power amp modeling if you are using a tube power amp.

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Connections_and_levels has a lot of useful information about this process along with using headphones.
Click to expand...
This has been super helpful EQing my DT880's. Thank you for the link!
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Don’t turn off amp or cab modeling with headphones.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/ has curves to flatten the response of headphones. Find yours and add a GEQ or PEQ block with the settings, or an IR Player block with the associated IR, immediately before the Out 1 block. Turn up the volume until it’s comfortably loud to defeat the Fletcher-Munson effect, then adjust your Amp block’s tone controls. When it’s what you want bypass or remove the headphone compensation block and save the preset.

At that point you can bypass/disable the cab modeling if you are going to a guitar cab. Disable the power amp modeling if you are using a tube power amp.

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Connections_and_levels has a lot of useful information about this process along with using headphones.
Click to expand...
Can you setup a PEQ in the global settings rather than at a preset level? Of course then then it off when not using headphones.
 
You can set the Global Output EQ for each output to Graphic, Parametric, or OFF in the General Settings menu.
 
GuitarGuy316 said:
Can you setup a PEQ in the global settings rather than at a preset level? Of course then then it off when not using headphones.
Click to expand...
Yes, but that runs into a problem if you need to play live and use that global EQ to compensate for room acoustics. I reserve the global EQ for tweaking to fix the room acoustics live because we have two layers for adjusting EQ, in the preset and globally. I start knowing the presets already sound good and work from there.

I adjust my preset’s Amp tone controls with a PEQ, GEQ or IR Player in the preset as the block before Out 1, get the basic sound how I want it, then remove or disable that compensation block, and adjust pre and post effects without it because I know that the sound will still be good.

Back to the global EQ: Because we can’t store and recall multiple settings for different situations, I treat the global EQ as my live sound, last chance to get it right for all the presets, house EQ. I fix stage rumble, and boom from rooms in that control.

It’s important to be able to trust the rig to sound right so you don’t have to constantly listen with the headphone/playback EQ, instead we have to learn to compensate in our head. If you can’t trust it then you have work to do, similar to having a mix down room with lousy acoustics, you can’t trust what you hear so you MUST get to a place that you trust.

I use EV PXM-12MP cabs and really like how they reproduce the sound coming from the modeler and trust they’re going to always do the same thing. If a room emphasizes undesirable frequencies I adjust them in the global EQ.
 
I think, you are going somewhat in the wrong direction.

Since you are playing live with a tube power amp and a cab, you need to match your fractal models to those. The Carvin may be a very clean tube power amp, in which case you might benefit from leaving power amp modelling on. If, on the other hand, the Carvin is a big part of your live sound, you need to find Axe amp models whose power amps match the color of your Carvin. Also, you are playing with a real cab. In that case the only way to get your headphone sound to match your live sound is to make an IR of your cabinet and use that IR exclusively for headphone playing.

So, in the end, I think you need to match your headphone sound to your live sound - not the other way around.
 
Instead of seeing the poweramp part as an on versus off decision, you can also turn down the MV some in the amp block to have less poweramp coloration.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Yes, but that runs into a problem if you need to play live and use that global EQ to compensate for room acoustics. I reserve the global EQ for tweaking to fix the room acoustics live because we have two layers for adjusting EQ, in the preset and globally. I start knowing the presets already sound good and work from there.

I adjust my preset’s Amp tone controls with a PEQ, GEQ or IR Player in the preset as the block before Out 1, get the basic sound how I want it, then remove or disable that compensation block, and adjust pre and post effects without it because I know that the sound will still be good.

Back to the global EQ: Because we can’t store and recall multiple settings for different situations, I treat the global EQ as my live sound, last chance to get it right for all the presets, house EQ. I fix stage rumble, and boom from rooms in that control.

It’s important to be able to trust the rig to sound right so you don’t have to constantly listen with the headphone/playback EQ, instead we have to learn to compensate in our head. If you can’t trust it then you have work to do, similar to having a mix down room with lousy acoustics, you can’t trust what you hear so you MUST get to a place that you trust.

I use EV PXM-12MP cabs and really like how they reproduce the sound coming from the modeler and trust they’re going to always do the same thing. If a room emphasizes undesirable frequencies I adjust them in the global EQ.
Click to expand...
Yes you are correct in your use case. I don't play live, just at home so I think using the a Global PEQ is best for my use case for switching between headphones and studio monitors. I can simply just disable the Global PEQ when using monitors vs. headphones.
 
GuitarGuy316 said:
Yes you are correct in your use case. I don't play live, just at home so I think using the a Global PEQ is best for my use case for switching between headphones and studio monitors. I can simply just disable the Global PEQ when using monitors vs. headphones.
Click to expand...
Yes, in that case you can.

The best sounding compensation is using one of their IRs for a particular headphone but there’s no way to use it globally.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Yes, in that case you can.

The best sounding compensation is using one of their IRs for a particular headphone but there’s no way to use it globally.
Click to expand...
Can you save the IR to the IR loaded as a default so every time you add the IR loader to a preset it automatically loads that specific IR?
 
GuitarGuy316 said:
Can you save the IR to the IR loaded as a default so every time you add the IR loader to a preset it automatically loads that specific IR?
Click to expand...
I use four different types of headphones, so I saved their respective compensating IRs as User Cabs, then configured the IR Player block with a channel dedicated for each one, adjusted their levels to avoid volume differences fooling my brain, and saved the block to the Block Library.

When I need the IR Player block in a preset, I add the block immediately before the Out 1 block, then click on the little window below "Library" on the bottom-left side of the Edit window, and it'll pop up any saved blocks of that type. When I select the saved entry Edit will configure the block in the grid to those settings. I then pick whichever channel I needed and begin working with the preset.


PS - The IR Player block is FX3-only (at least at this point in time) so it's not available on the FM* units, however, it's possible to use a compensating IR in the Cab block.
  • On the FM9 add a second Cab block at end of the chain just prior to the Out 1 block.
  • On the FM3, because it's limited to a single Cab block, use a second IR for the compensation temporarily. You might be tempted to leave that IR assigned, but think carefully about that because it'll add additional CPU load unnecessarily.
In either case, don't use the Cab block controls to change the sound or add additional filtering, and play some music through the preset, toggling the bypass of that block or cab to adjust the Level so there's no volume change.
 
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Greg Ferguson said:
Don’t turn off amp or cab modeling with headphones.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/ has curves to flatten the response of headphones. Find yours and add a GEQ or PEQ block with the settings, or an IR Player block with the associated IR, immediately before the Out 1 block. Turn up the volume until it’s comfortably loud to defeat the Fletcher-Munson effect, then adjust your Amp block’s tone controls. When it’s what you want bypass or remove the headphone compensation block and save the preset.

At that point you can bypass/disable the cab modeling if you are going to a guitar cab. Disable the power amp modeling if you are using a tube power amp.

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Connections_and_levels has a lot of useful information about this process along with using headphones.
Click to expand...
Holy crap, @Greg Ferguson. These are great! I hadn't really tried using corrective EQ, but whether it's using the recommended PEQ curves at that github resource or the IR's there, I can now hear marked improvements in my Audeze and Sennheiser HD600s. And they both sound quite similar when corrected.

Now, however, I find myself wishing I could just put correction on the headphone output for EVERYTHING in my system, whether that's the AxeFX or Spotify playback or my DAW. Naturally, UAD won't let me do an insert that way.

I wish Schitt Audio or someone made a headphone amp that integrated an IR player.
 
greiswig said:
Holy crap, @Greg Ferguson. These are great! I hadn't really tried using corrective EQ, but whether it's using the recommended PEQ curves at that github resource or the IR's there, I can now hear marked improvements in my Audeze and Sennheiser HD600s. And they both sound quite similar when corrected.
Click to expand...
That's the idea of correcting the curve, to get them back to neutral.

greiswig said:
Now, however, I find myself wishing I could just put correction on the headphone output for EVERYTHING in my system, whether that's the AxeFX or Spotify playback or my DAW. Naturally, UAD won't let me do an insert that way.

I wish Schitt Audio or someone made a headphone amp that integrated an IR player.
Click to expand...
There are apps that'll run on our computers that sit inside the audio processing, and that allow us to use IRs. I don't remember their names, but I'm sure someone will supply some. Similarly, there are apps that can sit inside our tables and phones that provide improved sound. In a DAW it should be easy to find a way to run the audio through a specific IR; I've never tried so I can't supply any ideas though.

I don't worry too much about flattening the curve once I'm finished setting my Amp+Cab block's sound. I know there's a difference, but I can adjust inside my head to accommodate the delta. I use two EV PXM-12MP cabs for my FRFRs and like how they reproduce the sound of the modeler, so I trust that the sound coming out of them will be very close to the compensated sound in the headphones. It's good to be aware of how the sound changes between the two situations of compensated vs. uncompensated sound and to know when to use the first.

Most of all, just have fun. These are crazy good tools and investments and are very addicting. Fractal deserves all the accolades for having invented them and made them available to us.
 
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Oh, I'm intimately familiar with the EV PXM's, @Greg Ferguson. I think I was the first adopter on this forum. But as you know, there's a lot of variance in the various settings of them, and even more when you start thinking about different placements and boundary treatments. It's really nice to be able to calibrate your ears against something that is as close to "smooth" as possible (corrected headphones), then do some settings in the EV that match that for each of the various positions you're likely to have the monitor in on a gig.

I also trust my monitors and room treatment a bit more now that the corrected headphones sound a lot like my monitors do in my typical listening position.
 
Rather than turn things on or off when I go onstage - there’s always a risk of forgetting - I take my monitoring signal from Output 1, and the PA from Output 2. I used to have a different global EQ for Output 2, but since we changed PA I just use them for different volumes.
 
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