Why are so many people not relying on their ears anymore?

Because my ears are done.
My hearing loss (attenuation of certain frequencies) coupled with nasty tinnitus means it's very difficulty to distinguish a lot of subtle variation.

I always update the firmware, but with audio improvements I've rarely heard any night & day changes in the sound of my presets after an update. Sure, if I went back to an ancient firmware version, I'd probably be able to tell, but incremental stuff, no way. Just something a lot of us have to live with, and I have to put my trust in those telling me it's better that it actually is!.
 
jrayjr said:
Hey yall,

first of all, each to their own, i know that.

But i am just curious why so many people want definitive awnsers or specs or whatever for things instead of just trying something out,
and use it if it sounds good.

If it sounds good, it is good. Isnt that part of the fun, happy accidents and everything, maybe not anymore?

I dont know, maybe its just me and see it wrong^^

Best
Johnny
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Trust the schematic!!! :)
 
An example: people don't tend to dial in Brian May just by ear - they go to any of the 1000s of resources on the subject and immediately see AC30, which they select and are well on their way, dialed in by eyes, and not nerdily reading any schematic (though that may help also with diminishing returns). Same for so many other iconic tones. General example I know, but same principal for many things: once u know how it works/behaves, it's there to access without chasing + uncertainty.
 
jrayjr said:
But i am just curious why so many people want definitive awnsers or specs or whatever for things instead of just trying something out,
and use it if it sounds good.

If it sounds good, it is good. Isnt that part of the fun, happy accidents and everything, maybe not anymore?

I dont know, maybe its just me and see it wrong^^
Click to expand...
I look at it as a lack of experience with the older, real, gear, and lack of understanding of the new gear, and a lack of self-confidence in their abilities.

Having worked with real amps teaches us to experiment with the controls, especially with amps like a Princeton or Deluxe, which were straightforward and easy to figure out. Working with early pedals also gave us the idea that twiddling knobs was a relatively safe thing to do; We knew we wouldn't break the amp, we might make it sound bad but we could easily fix it by returning the knob to its original position. The more complex amps and pedals became we'd learn as we went, incrementally learning this 'n that as we introduced changes to our rigs.

People who started much more recently, or didn't experiment very much, don't have that cushion of experience. The new gear often has a lot more knobs to learn, especially when it's a digital device. When they hit a Fractal, which is layers and layers of tweakability, they freeze because they don't have the knowledge of how amps and pedals work, and the amalgamation of amps, pedals, cabs, and post-effects is mind-blowing.

And some people are not natural experimenters, so they want working presets. The problem is that the preset is only one person's idea of how something should sound and without that willingness to experiment they start searching, thrashing, and trying to find perfection in other people's work, which usually results in frustration. They'll either get mad and say the modeler is bad/stupid and sell it and maybe trash it on some other forum, or they'll dig in and figure it out and love it, or maybe suffer silently then become a lead singer.
 
Because my ears are rather inexperienced. If someone tells me "XYZ gain increased by 5db" then I am more aware, because otherwise I would overhear most things.

I think I haven't spotted a difference from FW 15 till now. I don't hear a difference between many things. To me brass or steel bridge, alnico or cermic, ... all sounds quite the same.
 
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Overcaster said:
Because my ears are rather inexperienced. If someone tells me "XYZ gained increased by 5db" then I am more aware, because otherwise I would overhear most things.

I think I haven't spotted a difference from FW 15 till now. I don't hear a difference between many things. To me brass or steel bridge, alnico or cermic, ... all sounds quite the same.
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We have to learn how to hear. Some differences are easy to pick out, others are very finely nuanced, and it depends on where you are in your experience and whether it's important for you to know. But, again, you can learn how to hear the differences, it just takes time and practice and a desire to dig in and do that work, and sometimes it's not necessary so it's OK to not be able to tell. 's all cool.
 
For me, I'll hear a tone, maybe choosing a factory preset, yet there's an aspect of that tone that I don't care for. But I don't know how to get it to sound like what I want. Especially since the solution usually involves combinations of adjustments of various parameters, of which we have many that interact together.
Ok, I can hear that this tone has too much high end, but when I cut the treble, now it just sounds too dark. So now do I add some presence, or do a cab cut, or...? Ok, let's try those. Next thing I know I'm 30 minutes into my practice time, and I haven't yet begun to work on what I wanted to work on.
I'd like to learn more about what to tweak, but I also want to become a better player, so for now, learning how to get the tones I want has to take a back seat, and I just find a preset that gets me close, and do some minor adjustments, and save it to a new location. I'm getting a small-ish collection of my own tweaked presets that still sound good when I first turn on the Axe. But some of the ones I thought sounded good at the time, I may as well just delete now!
 
The greatest asset of the Fractal stuff is the same as it's greatest weakness... you have access to all the stuff under the hood that a person that mods amps for a living does. Put that in the hands of someone who has never had access to such things and you are bound to have some terrible results.
For anyone that asks me, I always say to treat it like you would a real amp for a while (load the stock preset and then tweak only the settings that are on the actual amp) and then once you get to a point where your knowledge base is much more broad after spending time researching or messing with some advanced parameters, you can start to make the amp "yours".
 
The mind has more indulgence planning pleasures than actually perpetrating the pleasurable acts. Just think of all the time you spend thinking and planning about food, sex, dates... and how fast it vanishes when you put your hands on it (if you really can), and immediately start planning the next pleasure or thinking about past pleasures. It is called the monkey mind
 
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App12 said:
I guess Cliff could just use his ears and say “meh, good enough, no need for the actual amp and schematics.”
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You wouldn't think that by reading the Firmware Release Notes. How would he know things like "Fixed wrong internal transformer matching value for Friedman Small Box model", "Fixed wrong resistor value in Solo 88 Lead input circuit. Impact is probably negligible" or "Fixed Bludojai Lead model missing resistor between last preamp stage and power amp"?

He is a master of accuracy, even recreating the actual flaws of these old designs. His target was to sound like the real amp, not to sound good. If modeled by ear, these imperfections would not be there. That's why he created the FAS models, to overcome these flaws.
 
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squealie said:
I think that many players don't understand the 'you are gonna sound like you no matter what' aspect.
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This x1000. I know a REALLY great player who did a comparison vid of different amps.
He literally dialed them in how he thought they sounded best. The result was that
they all sounded pretty much the same. He dialed all the different out!!! :)

The flip side is taking 5 different players and having them play on the same amp. I bet
the results would be more diverse than one good player playing a bunch of different
amps.
 
squealie said:
I think that many players don't understand the 'you are gonna sound like you no matter what' aspect.
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Unless you’ve learned how to sound like someone else. Im sure we’ve all been sent those “these 20 famous guitar players in one cover” videos. That in itself is also a skill.
 
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