Why are we chasing the amp in the room sound?

[James Nash]

The situation is different for the players themselves. Depending on stage setup (volume, positioning of cabinets, monitors, side fills, IEM, etc), some guitarists are accustomed to hearing mostly their amp sound in the room. That makes a FRFR system a significant adjustment, and many may not like it. No argument there.

For those of us who have always preferred the sound of our guitars spread across the stage via wedges, side fills, and IEM... the adjustment is welcome.

 

[Jason Scott]

Folks, if you want to tackle my argument, address the organ thing. Would you tell organ players the same thing you're saying here?

"Since what we hear on an album is never the actual sound of the organ, 'organ tones' are largely a studio creation. Forget your thousand pound monstrous thing you lug around cus it sounds like an organ, that's not actual 'organ tones.' Play this amazing plugin through these great studio monitors and now THAT's 'organ tones.'"

"You can't possibly know what some great organ player sounded like nor even hope to recreate it in your playing with your organ, you can only hope to reach for the recorded tone."

My understanding of the issue is that some people are claiming that the tones fans are familiar with from various studio albums aren't necessarily accurately represented when playing in front of the same amp and cab, namely because the sound of the former is the product of miking the cab, in addition to whatever post-processing may have been used on the recording.

 

[sprint]

That's not the thread topic

It is precisely related to the thread topic: "Why are we chasing the amp in the room sound?"
My Answer Again: A reason we are chasing the amp in the room sound is because it is widely expressed that one needs to push air through real cabs to get the full experience of playing electric guitar, and that one is overlooking part of the real electric guitar experience by not pushing air through real cabs.

My added and related opinion is that: many guitarists like myself (late bloomer non gigging home players), have only had past exposure to recorded music (no AITR), so our quest to sound like the tone in our heads through the Marshall Head + Cab we bought at Guitar Centre (perhaps on recommendation from someone that raves about needing to feel the wind at one's back) often becomes a dissappointing and never ending quest.

When I started playing about 15 years ago I went through a bunch of Combo amps and a couple of modeller/power amp/real cab combinations and never liked the tone or felt I was getting very close to the tones in my head. Almost gave up on guitar - knowing nothing at the time about studio gear, I wondered what my Boss GT8 modeller would sound like plugged into our home stereo - BINGO!! Now, having a nice set of monitors and FR Cabs I'm happy, but I still haul out the real stuff regularly and continue the chase cuz so many speak of the magic.

I'll shut up now as I'm starting to sound like a broken record, (or a mic'd person live in a room repeatig himself annoyingly).

 

[∞Fractals]

Having heard both Pat Matheny and Eric Johnson live in 200 seat venues (and having seen a lot of live jazz growing up) I can comment somewhat on their tone.

I should also say I enjoy loud, live music. I even enjoy playing loud live music myself.

Pat Matheny plays through a Kemper and sounds a lot like his recorded tone. Even his GR8 playing is highly consistent with his recorded tone. Frankly the real champion in that group is Antonio Sanchez.

Eric Johnson on the other hand just plays too goddamn loud; i’d reckon close to well over 124DB. I have permanent damage in my right ear from that concert. Love his abilities; not a fan of his live experience. I would trade that concert for my hearing back in a heartbeat.

As I mentioned earlier, I play through both FRFR and traditional cabinets (a pair of 2 x 12’s).

You can have either/both with this box folks!

 

[yeky83]

Pipe organs are designed to fill rooms with sound. Guitar amps are not.

Back in the 1960s, yes, guitar amps were essentially designed to be room filling PA systems. But by the 1970s it was standard practice to mic guitar amps at venues of any size. The guitar amp quickly evolved into a tone GENERATOR, not a tone PROJECTOR. What we think of as classic guitar sounds are what was captured by a microphone. When we saw these iconic players, we heard them through PA systems.

This is not true of pipe organs. The classic pipe organ sound is what we heard at church. No microphone, no PA.

Hammond organ...

The situation is different for the players themselves. Depending on stage setup (volume, positioning of cabinets, monitors, side fills, IEM, etc), some guitarists are accustomed to hearing mostly their amp sound in the room. That makes a FRFR system a significant adjustment, and many may not like it. No argument there.

For those of us who have always preferred the sound of our guitars spread across the stage via wedges, side fills, and IEM... the adjustment is welcome.

Great! Use what you want and are inspired by! I just take issue with the claim that "electric guitar tones are a studio creation."

My understanding of the issue is that some people are claiming that the tones fans are familiar with from various studio albums aren't necessarily accurately represented when playing in front of the same amp and cab, namely because the sound of the former is the product of miking the cab, in addition to whatever post-processing may have been used on the recording.

Sure, that's self-evident and I'm not in dispute.

 

[yeky83]

It is precisely related to the thread topic: "Why are we chasing the amp in the room sound?"
My Answer Again: A reason we are chasing the amp in the room sound is because it is widely expressed that one needs to push air through real cabs to get the full experience of playing electric guitar, and that one is overlooking part of the real electric guitar experience by not pushing air through real cabs.

My added and related opinion is that: many guitarists like myself (late bloomer non gigging home players), have only had past exposure to recorded music (no AITR), so our quest to sound like the tone in our heads through the Marshall Head + Cab we bought at Guitar Centre (perhaps on recommendation from someone that raves about needing to feel the wind at one's back) often becomes a dissappointing and never ending quest.

When I started playing about 15 years ago I went through a bunch of Combo amps and a couple of modeller/power amp/real cab combinations and never liked the tone or felt I was getting very close to the tones in my head. Almost gave up on guitar - knowing nothing at the time about studio gear, I wondered what my Boss GT8 modeller would sound like plugged into our home stereo - BINGO!! Now, having a nice set of monitors and FR Cabs I'm happy, but I still haul out the real stuff regularly and continue the chase cuz so many speak of the magic.

I'll shut up now as I'm starting to sound like a broken record, (or a mic'd person live in a room repeatig himself annoyingly).

Uh, you replied to my post, hijacking my hypothetical kid with your hypothetical kid who is not interested in investigating what cabs actually sound like. By your description, he thought it irrelevant without trying it out. That's who I called willfully ignorant, not you.

You tried out guitar cabs and don't like them, fine. I'm not telling you to want any other way.

 

[DougB415]

Hammond organ...

I doubt that there is a majority of people who have heard an un-mic’ed Hammond and Leslie; that is truly a room-filling sound that, when recorded, just doesn’t have the same effect. Lord knows it’s been tried, but stereo just can’t cut it.

That being said, many players (myself included) use stereo Hammond emulations because they are far easier to deal with, and 99.9% of the audience has only heard recordings of a Hammond and Leslie, or they heard one that was mic’ed.

 

[∞Fractals]

I doubt that there is a majority of people who have heard an un-mic’ed Hammond and Leslie; that is truly a room-filling sound that, when recorded, just doesn’t have the same effect. Lord knows it’s been tried, but stereo just can’t cut it.

That being said, many players (myself included) use stereo Hammond emulations because they are far easier to deal with, and 99.9% of the audience has only heard recordings of a Hammond and Leslie, or they heard one that was mic’ed.

I have. Even recorded and engineered a record for papa in ‘91!

You might stop assuming so much about people. I don’t think it serves anyone very well.

I guess true live music ended in ~1972.

 

[yeky83]

I doubt that there is a majority of people who have heard an un-mic’ed Hammond and Leslie; that is truly a room-filling sound that, when recorded, just doesn’t have the same effect. Lord knows it’s been tried, but stereo just can’t cut it.

Many would say the same about guitar cabs vs. close mic'ed guitar cabs through a stereo.

That being said, many players (myself included) use stereo Hammond emulations because they are far easier to deal with, and 99.9% of the audience has only heard recordings of a Hammond and Leslie, or they heard one that was mic’ed.

Sure. But the question is which do you chase as a Hammond player for inspiration, pleasure, etc.
And you can answer that it's stereo emulations, cus it's obviously subjective and there's no wrong answer.

But who would ask such a thing of a Hammond player like "why do you chase the un-mic'ed Hammond and Leslie sound when all the recordings of it are the stereo mic'ed sound, and that's the actual Hammond tone rather than the actual Hammond tone, and you can never aspire to your heros' Hammond sound except their recorded sound, blah blah." Nonsensical stuff.

 

[Jason Scott]

Sure, that's self-evident and I'm not in dispute.

Here was your paraphrase of the opinion of others, "Since what we hear on an album is never the actual sound of the organ, 'organ tones' are largely a studio creation."

Aren't the tones on studio albums largely studio creations given that the sound heard when playing in front of a real amp and cab isn't representative of the sound on said albums? The sound some players tend to chase with a real amp/cab are tones they've heard on commercial recordings, which is futile.

 

[James Nash]

Maybe we need to clarify what "chasing tone" means.

If it means trying to copy someone's tone off an album, it's self-evident that means a studio creation. If it means trying to copy a tone you heard in a stadium or large venue, again that's a mic'd and processed sound.

But if we're talking about chasing our OWN tones, that's another story. Yes, for the player involved, some portion of that involves hearing our amps in rooms. But most of us also care about what's being presented to the audience, either on recording, or through the PA. And what the audience is hearing is NOT the acoustic sound of the cabinet.

Case in point: I've found I can get a good sound onstage by putting a big cabinet on the floor, cranking it up, and standing off axis. It's a big room sound that I'm happy hearing on stage. The problem is, whoever the amp is pointed at will say it's too loud. And if a stage engineer just throws a mic on the speaker cone, it will invariably be way too bright, since I've set my amp up so it sounds good off-axis.

"Amp in a room" is a real thing. i.e. people put amps in rooms. They also go to all kinds of lengths to help control that sound: baffles, tilting cabinets toward the player or ceiling, aiming them backward, isolation trunks, etc.

But "amp in a room" is also a myth. Because it's not the way 99% of people experience the sound of an artist.

 

[Jason Scott]

But "amp in a room" is also a myth. Because it's not the way 99% of people experience the sound of an artist.

Not everyone is trying to replicate the sound of a particular artist or recording. Some people simply like the direct (ie. unmiked) sound of a real amp and cab.

 

[∞Fractals]

Not everyone is trying to replicate the sound of a particular artist or recording. Some people simply like the direct (ie. unmiked) sound of a real amp and cab.

and +SPLs ...

 

[yeky83]

Maybe we need to clarify what "chasing tone" means.

If it means trying to copy someone's tone off an album, it's self-evident that means a studio creation. If it means trying to copy a tone you heard in a stadium or large venue, again that's a mic'd and processed sound.

But if we're talking about chasing our OWN tones, that's another story. Yes, for the player involved, some portion of that involves hearing our amps in rooms. But most of us also care about what's being presented to the audience, either on recording, or through the PA. And what the audience is hearing is NOT the acoustic sound of the cabinet.

Case in point: I've found I can get a good sound onstage by putting a big cabinet on the floor, cranking it up, and standing off axis. It's a big room sound that I'm happy hearing on stage. The problem is, whoever the amp is pointed at will say it's too loud. And if a stage engineer just throws a mic on the speaker cone, it will invariably be way too bright, since I've set my amp up so it sounds good off-axis.

"Amp in a room" is a real thing. i.e. people put amps in rooms. They also go to all kinds of lengths to help control that sound: baffles, tilting cabinets toward the player or ceiling, aiming them backward, isolation trunks, etc.

But "amp in a room" is also a myth. Because it's not the way 99% of people experience the sound of an artist.

You clarified it fine a few posts ago:
"This gets to the question of what motivates a player. Because players don't spend most of their time LISTENING to their tone. They spend the time USING it. For me, the "best" guitar tone is the one that inspires me to play my best. What it actually sounds like to an objective observer is second priority--if I get off on the sound, the tone is doing its job. Everyone may not agree with that perspective, but I think many do."

That's what most of us chase as players, and that's the discussion at hand. Now you're broadening the term to include what the audience hears and such (against your previous clarification), and it kinda doesn't work.

Anyway, seems we mostly agree now.

 

[yeky83]

Here was your paraphrase of the opinion of others, "Since what we hear on an album is never the actual sound of the organ, 'organ tones' are largely a studio creation."

Aren't the tones on studio albums largely studio creations given that the sound heard when playing in front of a real amp and cab isn't representative of the sound on said albums? The sound some players tend to chase with a real amp/cab are tones they've heard on commercial recordings, which is futile.

Yes, and yes that would be futile.

 

[unix-guy]

If you were lucky enough to hear EVH play a keg party in 1974, then you heard his “amp in a room.” Otherwise, you heard his tone through a microphone like the rest of us.

Yep! But even then, potentially very different from how Eddie himself actually heard it from his place on stage at the same time.

 

[Greg Ferguson]

You should actually read the wiki you linked, cus it repeatedly legitimizes "amp in the room" over and over again. No mention of it being a myth.

I have read it many times. In particular it says

"In the end, if you crave a real "amp/cab in the room" tone from your modeler, just amplify it through a power amp and a traditional guitar speaker cabinet.

"You'll never get monitors to sound like "cab in the room". If you want that use a SS power amp and cab. No amount of forum discussion is going to change physics." source

"Amp in the room" is a myth or a chimera, because, while people talk about their concept of "amp in the room", it doesn't really exist as a concrete, consistent and repeatable thing because it's that person's idea of what their amp sounded like at that place and time. It's not something that can be written into an algorithm and reproduced to everyone's satisfaction.

Modelers can only accurately recreate the sound of the amplifier; That is their litmus test, that the comparison of the output of a real amp is matched by the output of the modeler's amp. Once the sound hits the cabinet in a preset it's altered by the sound of that particular modeled cabinet in that particular room where the IR capture occurred of that speaker, not any other room and not any other cabinet or speaker or microphone. The modeled cab, speaker, microphone and ambient sound in that room will not match any other room or placement of a real cabinet in another room, so getting the modeler to recreate "amp in the room" is not going to happen except by happy accident. Instead, what will happen is the modeler will recreate the sound of a well-tweaked amp into a cabinet with great speakers mic'd by an engineer who was trying to capture the very best sound at several sample points and using different microphones in a studio environment. And, they use near-field captures to try to remove room acoustics as much as possible, rather than far-field captures. The tech notes go over that somewhere or other too. That's the goal of a modeler.

If someone wants to sound like their particular rig's unmiked sound, then they have to take parts of the modeling chain out and substitute the real-world analogs, as Cliff said in the quote above. And, if they're going to be true to their ideal, they'll have to adjust it every time they move the cabinet to a different room because the room will change their perception of the sound of the cabinet.

Cliff's tech notes are great reading because they explain how an engineer looks at, and works through, modeling guitar amps. He, and Fractal, are after consistent output, which is the antithesis of matching one person's idea of their perfect amp sound in a particular room.

 

[James Nash]

broadening the term to include what the audience hears

Of course this is important. As a player, my top priority is playing well. But what I really want is tone I like for my own benefit, and someone with great ears tweaking it from there to present to the audience. This is, again, why I think albums (including live albums) often sound better than the tone in the room at the time. No matter how brilliant a player may be, there is probably someone with even better ears and engineering chops who can improve the sound. This is why very few top players engineer themselves.

 

[lqdsnddist]

and +SPLs ...

Of course the more SPL’s you subject your ears to the worse your hearing becomes over time, and not just auditory thresholds, but also declines in frequency discrimination and temporal processing ability.

Then everything sounds like it’s got a blanket over it, so you crank the highs but then everyone complaints about your ice pick tone, and how your to loud et al.

I don’t think anyone who has made a career out of loud guitar amps/great tone hasn’t suffered some hearing loss as a result.

I grew up with a 2203 and 4x12 in my bedroom, and it’s a beautiful thing, but these days I don’t like even my Princeton louder than 3

if I have to be in the room with a loud amp these days it better go in an iso cab or closet. Last thing my remaining hearing wants is to ever be stuck in the room with a cranked amp

 

[yeky83]

I have read it many times. In particular it says

"In the end, if you crave a real "amp/cab in the room" tone from your modeler, just amplify it through a power amp and a traditional guitar speaker cabinet.

In other words, it's not a myth.

What is up with this thread??

"Amp in the room" is a myth or a chimera, because, while people talk about their concept of "amp in the room", it doesn't really exist as a concrete, consistent and repeatable thing because it's that person's idea of what their amp sounded like at that place and time. It's not something that can be written into an algorithm and reproduced to everyone's satisfaction.

Modelers can only accurately recreate the sound of the amplifier; That is their litmus test, that the comparison of the output of a real amp is matched by the output of the modeler's amp. Once the sound hits the cabinet in a preset it's altered by the sound of that particular modeled cabinet in that particular room where the IR capture occurred of that speaker, not any other room and not any other cabinet or speaker or microphone. The modeled cab, speaker, microphone and ambient sound in that room will not match any other room or placement of a real cabinet in another room, so getting the modeler to recreate "amp in the room" is not going to happen except by happy accident. Instead, what will happen is the modeler will recreate the sound of a well-tweaked amp into a cabinet with great speakers mic'd by an engineer who was trying to capture the very best sound at several sample points and using different microphones in a studio environment. And, they use near-field captures to try to remove room acoustics as much as possible, rather than far-field captures. The tech notes go over that somewhere or other too. That's the goal of a modeler.

If someone wants to sound like their particular rig's unmiked sound, then they have to take parts of the modeling chain out and substitute the real-world analogs, as Cliff said in the quote above. And, if they're going to be true to their ideal, they'll have to adjust it every time they move the cabinet to a different room because the room will change their perception of the sound of the cabinet.

Cliff's tech notes are great reading because they explain how an engineer looks at, and works through, modeling guitar amps. He, and Fractal, are after consistent output, which is the antithesis of matching one person's idea of their perfect amp sound in a particular room.

You're very confused. No one in this current discussion is asking a modeler to algorithmically come up with an "amp in the room." And just because it can't be done algorithmically, doesn't suddenly make it a "myth," what in the world?

Bring your own cab and room to achieve "amp in the room." Nothing mythical about it.

Of course this is important. As a player, my top priority is playing well. But what I really want is tone I like for my own benefit, and someone with great ears tweaking it from there to present to the audience. This is, again, why I think albums (including live albums) often sound better than the tone in the room at the time. No matter how brilliant a player may be, there is probably someone with even better ears and engineering chops who can improve the sound. This is why very few top players engineer themselves.

I didn't say it wasn't important.