Why can't the Axe get that "Amp In The Room" Sound

I've stopped chasing the 'amp in the room' paradigm and gone with the 'tone in my head' paradigm. I've no idea how anyone can expect to have a cabinet IR with a mic on it replicate a speaker in an actual room - even using reverb, which frankly is indeed your 'room'. Why? The mic, even a reference mic, had to be positioned somewhere.... and that's what you hear. If you walk around a cab in the room as you jam, the cab interacts with the room, the air, the humidity, the volume, everything. The timbre of the amp's tone and your tone mesh with the space to create a variable signal. It's not a constant. A fixed mic creates a fixed position 'snapshot' of that tone/timbre.

You can have great sounding IR's that are close mic'd; create great mixes of near-and-far-field IR's (my chosen method) but if you move in the room and the guitar timbre from the cabinet doesn't change... is it really an 'amp in the room'?? I say no. Can you capture that using FF IR's and have a very realistic cab sitting there in a given space? Jay's done it, others have done it... so yes. In my experience the reason you put a 57 on a cab and then EQ the board is that it works in the mix - cut, body, ring, color - (timbre) is all there *assuming you know what you are doing for the given room*. But when I chased that rabbit hole personally, I had what I felt were incredible sounding tones that did not cut, sparkle or have body *in the mix* based off the board tapes I heard. The sound engineer had to cut lows (though not as much) cut highs and boost mids - your 'standard' sort of 'make it fit' take that is universal using a 57 on an amp. Alone? Glorious. With a dense mix? Needs EQ.

I approach it from a different angle - my goal is to spoon feed them exactly the tone I know works in mixes (based on my opinion and my experience and my design) straight to FOH that needs as minimal EQ on the board as necessary.

My approach has shifted and evolved over time; and I've made many different cases for many different solutions using IR's. This past December 2010 I took the time and reevaluated everything I do from the why and how and where angles and arrived at a 4"-6" cap edge off axis with a 57 at 95% and a 5% Room mic with character (ie. Royer 121 or Coles Ribbon mic; not a flat TC30). That fit my goals and has worked well with me.

I'm no genius nor do I play one on the Internet; but I am good at finding ways to make tools work for what I want. With the depth of what you can do with the Axe-FX, coupled with the power and variety of what you can do with custom IR's, I've come to a very happy place. Will that change again at some point? Perhaps; but a few months on past that few weeks of exploring, I've felt zero reasons to 'get inside' the box again.

All this is honestly my opinion and presented as such. I am not right, nor claim to be an authority on anything. I know what I want, and I am determined and focused enough to get it. I share it, but do that with the full knowledge that will not help everyone. Everyone has different goals, approaches and taste. We have gear that really opens up the possibilities and my way does not need to be the 'right' way or the 'only' way. It's just simply, honestly, my way.
 
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I've found that the 'in the room' syndrome is much less a factor at volume. In my experience you are pumping it through Reference Monitors, or low-volume bedroom playing, what you want to hear is 'not there', or more to the point, you can't hear it. So many times I've created the 'perfect patch', only to turn it up and have it feel brittle, or muffled, or even hear a frequency that irritates the crap out of me.

No substitute for volume.

Don't overlook that certain amps will only work well with certain cabs (natch.)
 
The other shock for me, when me and my bandmates starting going direct to reduce stage volume as much as possible, was yikes, I needed to practice guitar and singing a whole lot more!!! lol When there isn't a giant wash from the stage, it really reveals your performance like a microscope for better or worse :)
 
Playing thru the Atomic FR combo I certainly would say it sounds exactly like a tube amp in a room. When going direct into an audio interface and monitor speakers the sound I get is more akin to a miced sound.
 
Scott Peterson said:
If you walk around a cab in the room as you jam, the cab interacts with the room, the air, the humidity, the volume, everything. The timbre of the amp's tone and your tone mesh with the space to create a variable signal. It's not a constant.
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You make a very good point!

But when you mic a cab on stage and feed that to FOH, how is that different than a nearfield IR cab sim being sent to FOH (aside from the undesireable bleed from other sounds on stage)? If you have a nearfield IR that is the same as how you would mic a guitar cab on stage, aren't you getting essentially the same sound out to the audience?

And if the issue is how it sounds on stage (to the guitarist), isn't it just a matter of creating custom presets that sound good regardless of whether they sound exactly like a 4x12 cab with its variable, position-dependent tone, or like a close-mic'ed 4x12 cab with consistent tone, made variable (in a different way) by being pumped out of an FRFR cab instead?

I guess I'm really trying to understand the appeal of "amp in the room" sound and why we aren't all trying to eliminate it rather than replicate it with our Axe-Fx rigs? Because it sure doesn't sound like a desireable phenomenon to me.
 
zslane said:
...when you mic a cab on stage and feed that to FOH, how is that different than a nearfield IR cab sim being sent to FOH (aside from the undesireable bleed from other sounds on stage)?
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You nailed it. Close-miking a cab gives you the near-field response of the cab. And that's what your audience hears, whether at a gig or on a CD. They don't hear the amp-in-the-room sound.

As Scott pointed out, a cab will sound different at different locations in the room. That's especially true with multi-speaker cabs, where the sound from two or more drivers will have a phase relationship with each other that varies with frequency and location. That's appealing to guitarists, because your left ear is never in the same position as your right ear (they're a foot apart from each other, separated by a skull that absorbs, reflects and diffracts sound), and you will sense some of those differences even when you're standing still. That's a big part of the "3D" sound that guitarists love.

IMHO, the amp-in-the-room sound is comfort food for guitarists. It's what we're used to, and it's what many of us like, in the same way that someone who was raised eating margarine will think that butter tastes weird. But to the audience, it's meaningless in all but the most intimate venues.
 
I'm enjoying making both right now. I have some different cabs and power amps that sound very good but sometimes I really need to hear that 'complete' patch through the studio monitors from the AC30 or Matchless or Marsha they just sound so damn good too. I have the luxury of always playing the same controlled, relatively low volume home studio environment though.
I think for most of us players if the sound inspires you it's all good regardless of just how much 'in-the-room' it is.

Face it, some guys playing on stage have so many delays and reverbs running that my FRFR studio monitor set up running a relatively dry amp block is way more in the room sounding than their real amp in the room yet their audience and those players love their sound. Good is good and the AxeFX can get it for you...no matter what happens to be good to you, you just have to pick your amp/speaker and dig in. For me I need both.
 
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Personally, I don't think the thing that's missing is the "amp in the room" sound when you use the Axe-FX. It is literally the feel and interaction that you get when you play a tube amp. I think the Axe-FX is fantastic but this is the one thing no modeling rig has nailed in my experience. I can get my Axe-FX to sound great, react to touch great, and at reasonable volumes. But I have to admit it's not the same. The last couple nights I've been out playing with just a Bogner Mojado 1x12 combo and a pedal board with a few stomp boxes. The amp only has two controls: volume and a preamp voicing 4-postion switch. It sounds glorious. And it feels great to play it in ways that I've forgotten about over the last couple years that I've been playing with the Axe-FX. And yes I know that "feel" in this context is subjective - it's difficult to convey what that "thing" is that tube amps have. But they have it and no modeler/FRFR system I've ever played has.
 
I think this is a good clue as to why it's hard for the axe-fx to simulate the dynamic power-amp speaker interaction. Check out Cliff's comment. This is from Axe-Fx Wiki:
"Speaker Resonance Frequency: this one is important to match the amp sim to the speaker type. Quote Cliff: "Furthermore there are certain aspects that simply can't be modeled and require user intervention. For example, a speaker has a low-frequency resonance. A tube amp will create a higher output at that resonant frequency. The Axe-Fx has no way of knowing what that resonant frequency is and defaults to a value that is common for the speakers that are typically used with that amp. However, if you drive that speaker through a solid-state amp you won't excite the resonance unless you adjust the Speaker Resonant Frequency to match it. This is the one of the few advanced parameters I ever adjust and I tweak it until I hear the bottom end "sympathize". For example, my favorite Mesa cab resonates around 110 Hz but most of the models default to 95 Hz so I usually adjust the Speaker Resonance to 110 Hz when using that cab. After I do that the Axe-Fx is indistinguishable from the real thing, IMHO."
 
Hmmm Maybe someone can add a table to the Wiki with recommended resonance per cab per amp?

Joost Assink said:
I think this is a good clue as to why it's hard for the axe-fx to simulate the dynamic power-amp speaker interaction. Check out Cliff's comment. This is from Axe-Fx Wiki:
"Speaker Resonance Frequency: this one is important to match the amp sim to the speaker type. Quote Cliff: "Furthermore there are certain aspects that simply can't be modeled and require user intervention. For example, a speaker has a low-frequency resonance. A tube amp will create a higher output at that resonant frequency. The Axe-Fx has no way of knowing what that resonant frequency is and defaults to a value that is common for the speakers that are typically used with that amp. However, if you drive that speaker through a solid-state amp you won't excite the resonance unless you adjust the Speaker Resonant Frequency to match it. This is the one of the few advanced parameters I ever adjust and I tweak it until I hear the bottom end "sympathize". For example, my favorite Mesa cab resonates around 110 Hz but most of the models default to 95 Hz so I usually adjust the Speaker Resonance to 110 Hz when using that cab. After I do that the Axe-Fx is indistinguishable from the real thing, IMHO."
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Inspired by Scott's excellent post, today I made a nice discovery:
I'm adjusting the air par. in cabs, so that it matches the double or triple the tone frequency in the amp geek page. So, if the frequency is say 600hz, I'll turn up the air (mix around 50-60%) to 1200, 1800 or 2400, depending on which cab I use.
This seems to bring forth the sound and the dynamics (interaction) seem to match (better than without it) that of an actual guitar cab.
I don't know if this will work for everyone, but my experience was very positive in regards of a more "amp in the room" feeling.
 
The use of effects may be one of the things here.

If I play on my old Marshall-rack with a 4x12 cab. I use only a little Reverb. The ROOM takes care of the rest!

But when I play the AXE through the PA I use a lot more effect to make the guitar blend right in the mix. This is a great pleasure to use my In-ear(The sound in my head) monitor now.

I have prepared all my patches with a separate reverb , so I can use both the PA AND my old Marshall 20/20 Power amp with the 4x12. I just havent found the need to do so yet. And maybe I never will :)

AAEN
 
Okay, I think I'm starting to catch on. What I picked up from your inputs is that each point on the surface of a speaker can be thought of as its own unique sound source and they are all different from one another.

When you listen to a speaker/cab in a room you are picking up a summation of all those sound source both directly from the speaker/cab as well as reflected by the room with all of the modifications that it adds to the sound.

When you close mic, you pick up a subset of these speaker/cab point sources and eliminate a good deal of the bleed through from secondary sound sources. Each mic position corresponds to a different sound.

A far field mic duplicates more of what you hear in the room when you actually listen to the speakers without micing.

But an FRFR speaker surface can also be thought of as a series of unique sound sources and if you close mic'd it you'd also hear different sounds from different micing positions. And if listened to it "in the room", you'd also hear a summation of all those sound sources together with the secondary sounds produced by the room. Isn't this also an "amp in the room"? What's so different?

I'm also a little confused about the idea that you shouldn't run Axe cab sims through a real physical cab as that would "muddy" the sound. Sort of like having two eq's that might cancel out the sweet sound that each eq would produce individually.

But there doesn't seem to be any problem with running two cab sims in parallel or running a cab sim ( which includes a mic by default ) through another mic sim. Or having two cab sims, with their two inherent mic sims, together with two external mic sims. Or even having cab/mic sims which are blends of other cab mic sims. Why does this work but running a cab sim through a real cab doesn't. Just trying to understand a bit better ... thanks for the insights ...
 
What exactly is a "far-field" mic anyway? I realize that it's farther away, but with RedWirez, which position would this be? Just use a "room" IR and that's it, or... ?

quark said:
I'm also a little confused about the idea that you shouldn't run Axe cab sims through a real physical cab as that would "muddy" the sound ... But there doesn't seem to be any problem with running two cab sims in parallel or running a cab sim through another cab sim
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There isn't a "problem". It's just a recommendation as you may not get the results you're looking for. There's no difference between running a series of 2 cab sims or 1 cab sim and a real guitar cab. You're free to do whatever you like to achieve your goal.
 
quark said:
But an FRFR speaker surface can also be thought of as a series of unique sound sources and if you close mic'd it you'd also hear different sounds from different micing positions. And if listened to it "in the room", you'd also hear a summation of all those sound sources together with the secondary sounds produced by the room. Isn't this also an "amp in the room"? What's so different?
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That's a little like asking what is so different about hearing a stereo image through two speakers versus one. A cab sim driven by your typical nearfield IR is only producing the sound of, say, a 4x12 cab from a single microphone position. Even though an FRFR cab has a speaker which can sound different as you move around it "in the room", it is still nevertheless only delivering the limited sound scape of the nearfield IR cab sim. So while you will get room reflections and other "off axis" phenomenon from an FRFR cab, it will be the reflections and off-axis modulation of a source sound that is itself already very different from the reflections and off-axis modulations you'd get from an actual 4x12 cab with all four of its speakers firing at your ears, at different angles, at whatever position(s) you're standing in.

Now, as I understand it some FRFR monitors are designed to deliver more consistent sound across a wider range of listening positions in an attempt to minimize some of these typical "speaker cab artifacts", but it's not a standard feature (or design goal) of FRFR monitors as a whole. Caveat emptor and all that.

As to whether or not this "amp in the room" sound is really that significant a factor when playing live is a question each musician must answer for themselves (and it actually surprises me how many find it to be a problem). I totally get what Scott P. is saying when he talks about striving to achieve a certain "three dimensionality" from the cab sims when recording, since the recording environment is one place where all these subtle nuances become readily apparent. But in the loud, acoustically incoherent environment of most small-scale venues (or even larger outdoor festival venues for that matter), I just don't see how it can really matter that much. And since a little mixing of IRs and a little tweaking of resonant frequency parameters can't ostensibly span the gap, I don't see what the fuss is all about.
 
Leaving aside momentarily the issue of the exact effect of playing through a multisource cabinet - e.g., 4x12 or 8x12 arrays of transducers - it is possible to create the effect of playing through a guitar cab - including effects due to open-back cabs - with an FRFR system. In fact, you are playing through an "amp in the room" when you use an FRFR system. If the "cab" portion to the FRFR "amp in the room" is well-behaved - definitely not a given - and if you can be content to play through a 1x12 guitar cab - then you need not give up your "amp in the room" experience to use FRFR. OTOH, if you have an open mind and some amount of experience playing in situations where most or all of what you hear when you play isn't coming to you directly from your amp, the "amp in the room" experience is irrelevant.
 
quark said:
I'm also a little confused about the idea that you shouldn't run Axe cab sims through a real physical cab as that would "muddy" the sound. Sort of like having two eq's that might cancel out the sweet sound that each eq would produce individually.

But there doesn't seem to be any problem with running two cab sims in parallel or running a cab sim ( which includes a mic by default ) through another mic sim. Or having two cab sims, with their two inherent mic sims, together with two external mic sims. Or even having cab/mic sims which are blends of other cab mic sims. Why does this work but running a cab sim through a real cab doesn't. Just trying to understand a bit better ... thanks for the insights ...
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Guitar cabinets restrict the frequency response of the signal. They have a significant high-end rolloff, and they trim the low end as well. When you feed one cab into another (which you can't really do with a pair of real cabs), the bandwidth restriction becomes noticeably more severe.

The difference between that and the other scenarios you described is that running a cab sim into a real speaker cab puts the two cabs in series; the other scenarios put the cabs in parallel. That's a big difference. In series, you've got the real cab processing the restricted signal from the cab sim, and restricting it more. In parallel, it's more like driving two real cabs with the same amp. You're not adding one bandwidth restriction to another; you're just putting two sweetly-restricted tones side-by-side.

Recently in another thread, there was a forum member trying to achieve an AC/DC tone using his guitar cab. He tried the Hell's Bells factory preset, which sounds great running FRFR. But through his amp cab, he described it as sounding like Angus Young playing from inside a sealed box. When he turned off the cab sim, it sounded better.
 
Jay Mitchell said:
OTOH, if you have an open mind and some amount of experience playing in situations where most or all of what you hear when you play isn't coming to you directly from your amp, the "amp in the room" experience is irrelevant.
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Yes, well, this seems to be where we leave a lot of the "amp in the room" dudes behind. *shrug*
 
Rex said:
The difference between that and the other scenarios you described is that running a cab sim into a real speaker cab puts the two cabs in series; the other scenarios put the cabs in parallel. That's a big difference. In series, you've got the real cab processing the restricted signal from the cab sim, and restricting it more. In parallel, it's more like driving two real cabs with the same amp. You're not adding one bandwidth restriction to another; you're just putting two sweetly-restricted tones side-by-side.
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Thanks, Rex, that makes a lot of sense. What do you think about running a mic sim after a cab sim which already inherently contains a mic sim? Sounds like that could potentially be more of an issue. ( I'm assuming that every IR was derived by using a mic of some type and then we can add another mic in series through the cab block).

p.s. - thanks to everyone for some really good thoughts, links, and real life examples. I learned a lot from your discussions.
 
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