Why does the sound of a modeler have to be "the sound of a miced amp" instead of "the sound of an amp"

Xcdchdchjjf

Experienced
Ttitle explains the question.

Maybe im missing something like why cant we "turn off" the "mic" part of the modelers (any modeler-- but i use an FM).

Like... people say the modeler sounds like "a miced amp, not an amp."

I get for going direct in you owld want the "mic part" or for FOH DI,
but in general, like if im plugging into a FRFR.... why would I want the "mic" portion to be a factor?

I understand you need to use a mic to "sample" the speaker cab.... IR

I dont know maybe im overhtinign this but people always correct others "a modeler doesnt sound like an amp--- it sounds like a "MICED" amp!"
 
Cliff has an amp in the room eq setting that replaces the cab block.
Search for AITR
@Cooper Carter has some info on that also
If I recall correctly.

You could run the amp to a cab and eq block in parallel and then out to separate outputs to have the best of both worlds
 
Thanks the last two posts answered the question, yes I mean "miced cab" thanks.

I plug into my amp and listen all the time, doesnt require me to fire up the neumann.

However firing up the FM3 into a speaker (amp/cab) requires that the FM3 has the "sound of a mic"

"How else would you hear an amp?"

With my ears?
 
I think your terminology is wrong… a modeler sounds like a mic’d cab (not a mic’d amp) if you are using an IR. If you don’t use an IR and go through a real cab, then it will sound like a real cab.
So why do people complian that modelers are "boxy" and dont "sound like an amp"

I guess they are just inexperienced?

I use my good mics on cabs so that they "sound like real life" etc. in the recording.
 
Ttitle explains the question.

Maybe im missing something like why cant we "turn off" the "mic" part of the modelers (any modeler-- but i use an FM).

Like... people say the modeler sounds like "a miced amp, not an amp."

I get for going direct in you owld want the "mic part" or for FOH DI,
but in general, like if im plugging into a FRFR.... why would I want the "mic" portion to be a factor?

I understand you need to use a mic to "sample" the speaker cab.... IR

I dont know maybe im overhtinign this but people always correct others "a modeler doesnt sound like an amp--- it sounds like a "MICED" amp!"
When people say the modeler doesn't sound like an amp, where were they standing when they listened? Where were their ears? The audience hears a very different thing than the guitar player does on stage if the cabinet is pointing at the player's knees because it's pointed at the audience's heads. What they hear is extremely close to the sound of the miked cabinet, the same sound that is being pushed through the FOH system and is filling the room.

Conduct an experiment: Walk around the room when someone is playing their guitar through a cabinet. Put your head on-axis to the speakers, and off-axis from as close to the stage or the cabinet as you can get, then compare that sound to the modeler's output and decide which is more accurate. Or, set up a cabinet and mike it in a studio space, first setting the mike where your head would be in relation to the amp, and then where it'd be when miked in a studio, then compare the sounds.

I have ALWAYS positioned my combos pointing at my head, either tipped back against a wall or on an amp stand, and learned a long time ago that my amp's normal sound is exactly like the sound of the modeler, so, when modelers became a thing, it was a no brainer to me.

There's a huge amount of information about IRs and amplifier recording techniques available in the manual, the Wiki, and on websites. I'd recommend spending some time and reading what the recording experts say. Here are some links from the Wiki…

Impulse Responses
Close-miking
FRFR and amp/cab-in-the-room
 
Here's a timely video by Jonathan Cordy comin' at you from his cave (his lighting is a little better in this one). By all means watch the whole thing, but the essential bits are from 3:26 to 6:28 and then the closing 'Polar Bear analogy'. BTW, the polar bear analogy is really good.

 
Found it! I had recently watched this video because I am interested in maybe using a powered cab in the future. This guy nails what people really have concerns with when you say you're hearing a mic'd amp (okay, so technically a cab, but that's the language we use). It's really more about the feel.

Watch from about 4:30 to 5:00.

 
Thanks the last two posts answered the question, yes I mean "miced cab" thanks.

I plug into my amp and listen all the time, doesnt require me to fire up the neumann.

However firing up the FM3 into a speaker (amp/cab) requires that the FM3 has the "sound of a mic"

"How else would you hear an amp?"

With my ears?
A mic hears basically what your ears hear, but if they were 1" from the speaker.

An alternative is to run without a cab block into a real cab and stand away from it.
 
Honestly, what I think he may be trying to say, is why can’t we get the modeler to make PA speakers or “FRFR” emulate the sound of a real guitar cab. The obvious answer being the guitar speakers themselves coupled with the cab/cab dimensions. Completely different frequency responses…
Impulse responses are a capture of a cab -> mic. With most mics having distinct effect on the sound captured, that gets imprinted into the IR. It's a big part of what makes a guitar sound like it does in a recording.

I've captured my own cabs using a reference mic, which is reasonably close to flat frequency response and thus should have little effect on the sound captured in the mic itself. But the mic position still matters a lot. Even at the center of the cone I find that the end result is still not the same thing you hear in the room and you still want to apply high/low cuts to the IR to make it sound pleasant.

The few products on the market that try to make a FRFR system emulate a speaker without a mic are the Line6 Powercab and the Kemper Kabinet. Their approach is a bit different where the Powercab does the processing all in itself and the Kemper Kabinet does the processing on the Kemper. The way these work is that both companies know which speaker is used, they can measure its frequency response in the specific enclosure they use with it. They then create an IR to flatten the frequency response of that setup and apply another IR to emulate a specific speaker model (e.g a Celestion Blue). I haven't tried these so I don't know how well they work but user reports seem pretty divisive where some love it and others hate it.

But even these products cannot make a closed back 1x12 sound like a 4x12. Instead they try to make them sound like closed back 1x12 with different speaker models.
 
Hi all !

I think the OP is getting at a ground-up-component-level-digitally-modelled-speaker-without-any-mic-involvement ..... as opposed to mic-shot IR's.

I would expect because of the nature of measuring such different physical and primitive componentry that makes up a real physical speaker, it is probably a huge degree harder than measuring and modelling an Amp / Electrical circuit.

To my basic-mind ..... this would be a genuine game-changing achievement if it were to come to pass.

Ben
 
I get for going direct in you owld want the "mic part" or for FOH DI,
but in general, like if im plugging into a FRFR.... why would I want the "mic" portion to be a factor?
Plugging into an FRFR is for all intents and purposes the same as going to FOH. When using a power amp and guitar cab, turning off the Cab usually sounds better than using an IR because the guitar speaker(s) are part of the tone, not merely reproducing sound like a PA system or FRFR does.
 
turn off the cab sim and listen through a full range speaker. that's why we need a mic'd cab emulation.

play the same Axe signal with no cab sim through a real guitar cab and it will sound like the "guitar amp sound" you know.

a full range speaker is a speaker in a cabinet - it's just not a guitar cabinet that produces that specific sound. you'd experience the reverse if you played full range music through a guitar cab - it won't sound right.

it's all about the specific speaker reproducing the sound. the cab of a real amp/cab produces at least half (maybe more) of the tone.

a physical full range speaker cannot sound like a guitar cab and speaker because it physically is not one. to make that type of sound come out of a full range speaker, a cab simulation has to be used. to create a cab simulation, a microphone is used to record what the cab sounds like in the form of an Impulse Response.

some people don't use a cab block and instead use some form of EQ to create a familiar guitar tone. the microphone used for IRs is just a choice to "bake in" popular mics used on actual recordings.

the sound of an amp is what you get when you turn cab sims off. a real amp would sound like that without a cab as well. so you aren't getting "the sound of an amp" because no one ever listens to that. you're getting the sound of an amp and cab, and a cab has to be recorded with a microphone for it to get on a recording or to create an IR of that specific cab. again you could also just manually add an EQ, but an IR makes sense because it's a version of the real cab the real amp would be using anyway.

no one hears "just" the sound of an amp in almost all cases. it's always an amp and cab. IRs need to be used to make a full range speaker sound like a guitar cab.
 
some people don't use a cab block and instead use some form of EQ to create a familiar guitar tone. the microphone used for IRs is just a choice to "bake in" popular mics used on actual recordings.

the sound of an amp is what you get when you turn cab sims off. a real amp would sound like that without a cab as well. so you aren't getting "the sound of an amp" because no one ever listens to that. you're getting the sound of an amp and cab, and a cab has to be recorded with a microphone for it to get on a recording or to create an IR of that specific cab. again you could also just manually add an EQ, but an IR makes sense because it's a version of the real cab the real amp would be using anyway.

no one hears "just" the sound of an amp in almost all cases. it's always an amp and cab. IRs need to be used to make a full range speaker sound like a guitar cab.
I'd add that EQs have their own issues. There's a lot of analog cab sims out there that are built from a number of EQ filters. For example the one on my BluGuitar Amp 1's recording out claims to be built from 7 different filters. Yet it still sounds much better if you use the BluGuitar BluBox cabinet simulator that uses IR-based cabinet sims.

The new Fryette Powerload IR loadbox even lets you combine analog cab sims with impulse responses as maybe that can give you results that you like. I think of IR cab sims as kind of like having hundreds of tiny EQ filters there reproducing the sound of a cab+mic.

But above all that "cab in the room" sound depends on a lot of factors. The space itself, your ears in relation to the speakers and how directional that real guitar cab is in the first place. Most of us don't stand directly in front of the cab but instead hear it off axis, with significant reduction of high end. Similarly floor and room reflections have an effect on how we perceive the low end.

At this point I'm so used to hearing cab sims that I don't really think about them much and just consider them a slightly different sound.
 
I can imagine, if you shot ir‘s of a guitar cabinet in an anechoic chamber with an omni directional measurement mic and enough distance to the cab, that there is not only a part of the membrane hearable but the whole cabinet with its own enclosure resonances, its possible to bring up an ir of the full speaker.
But i don’t know, if such ir‘s exist, i think its expensive to rent such a room for ir shots!
 
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