Your opinion on how the best FRFR sounds vs. what FOH hears.

Whats your thought on how the best frfr monitors/cab sounds vs. what the audience hears thru the PA?

Any difference? If so, I'm wondering why sound better than what the audience hears.
 
People want their own monitors to be as flat as possible so they know what the pure Axe output sounds like. Then when they hear it through a PA system, they can understand how the PA is changing their sound since they know what "flat" sounds like. And from there they can adjust EQ as needed to get closer to the sound they want.

This concept is misinderstood sometimes and people instead think the goal is to make the Axe sound as flat as possible, which isn't true.
 
It's no different from a guitar cab on stage vrs how it sounds in the house. You know what your cab sounds like but when it's mic'd up and run through the house PA, if there is any difference with the house EQ / system you will hear that difference. In this instance the cab sound is the reference then the mic, mixing board, amps and speaker system will present the end result in the FOH.

When setting up your presets with FRFR monitoring you really want it to be as flat as possible so the preset can be as close as possible to the reference amp and cab (I/R) without any coloration from the monitors. For instance if the monitors you're using to build your presets are hyped then your presets will be EQ'd for that monitor. When running that preset through a PA that may have it's own coloring it will exacerbate the preset even further creating more work for the FOH engineer.

Bottom line, the main reason you want a good FRFR monitor is 1, to dial in your presets as close to the reference as possible. 2, to hear your sound as so to be inspiring to you the player. I don't know about you but if my sound doesn't inspire I don't play as well.

Once it goes to the FOH engineer you have to let him worry about how it fits in the mix providing it's in the context of a full band mix. 99 % of the audience won't even care as long as your playing is in time and in tune.
 
Whats your thought on how the best frfr monitors/cab sounds vs. what the audience hears thru the PA?
The best FRFR monitors will sound better than most PAs. For that matter, the best PAs will sound better than most PAs.

In the house, the audience is usually dealing with stronger room reflections and more of a far-field experience. That means less clarity for them.
 
In short - just dial in your presets to sound good at stage volume through your FRFR cabs and let the FOH feed be mixed for the PA elsewhwere.

You could spend hours trying to do it all pre-eq'ed from the AxeFX/AX8 for a 'flat' channel setting on the FOH ..... which will drive you insane..
 
it's not my job to worry about what it sounds like out front. i just want my stage monitoring to sound as good to me as possible. i often ask the sound engineer to put no guitar through the on stage monitors, because it always sounds crap to me. you can help the engineer a little bit if you reduce some of the lows and highs using the global eq, but any sound engineer worth his salt should have tried to make his pa as flat as possible using his eq and know what a decent guitar tone sounds like. if you have time and the engineer is open to the idea, you could use the looper to record a little bit and then walk out front and take a listen. if you think it could sound better, then make a couple of suggestions. buying the engineer a pint often helps lubricate this process. :)

remember that every pa is different, so there's no catch-all solution that will make your axe fx sound great through all of them without any tweaking at all
 
It's simple. Don't waste your time worrying about the differences.
Why?
Because once your signal hits FOH, it's out of your control, and it will drive you nuts if you worry about it. That's assuming it's not YOUR guy running FOH but the local house guy or some hired gun.
To be sure, work with them to make sure your stage sound - be that FRFR, standard wedge or IEM's - is something you are happy with and enables you to play your best, but leave the FOH mix to the guy out front. You can't hear the house sound or room artifacts from the stage and no-one likes to be told how to do their job. Let them do it the best they can, so you can focus on yours.

Most sound guys I know (including me) WANT to make you sound as good as they can with what they have.
 
I just want my stage monitoring to sound as good to me as possible.

This is your focus. It's what inspires you and makes what's coming out of the PA worth hearing.

The reason this makes such sense is because, while the FOH and FRFR can be fed the exact same signal, a couple of small cabinets pointed at your ears from short range in a small reflective stage space will sound incredibly different from what a listener in a large area through thousands of watts of PA and a whole band in the mix.

What you can know is that if you are hearing an awesome guitar sound through your FRFR rig, you're sending a great ingredient to the sound man to mix into his recipe. That's the value of FRFR, you hear what they are getting. Make that good and you have done your part.
 
IMO....
The quality of the tone and music can be equally matched.
There are physical variable also..distance from the speakers..room acoustics. The FRFR speakers are intended to balance within your relm. The audio in a venue varies depending on where you are.
 
I recently spent time at the FOH desk with my rig plugged directly into the board.
The goal was to hear my tone as the audience hears it week to week.
Our system has middle of the road, older Yamaha 2 way speakers for the mains.
They don't sound great just okay. So we did some listening to my patches.
There were 2 slight corrections to be made to the EQ which was then saved to my 2 channels.
Both were to remove a bit of unwanted frequencies.
Until doing this exercise I was a bit worried about what the audience was hearing.
Looking back my sound was good, and now it is the best it can be with the mains we have.
 
I've always used cabs with my Axe Fx live but I'm going yo start using FRFR. I might be wrong but if you have your sound the way you like it, wouldn't it be like a mic'ed rig and the soundman would adjust it until it sounds good ?
 
I might be wrong but if you have your sound the way you like it, wouldn't it be like a mic'ed rig and the soundman would adjust it until it sounds good ?

The best way to answer this question would be for you to build your presets on whatever monitor you are going to use then listen to how that translates to whatever FOH system you are going to play through.

For example, let say the FOH system was using QSC powered K series speakers and then you built all of your presets on speaker, the only variable would be the room and whatever is in it (sound guys job to tune it). Everything should translate perfectly!
 
I've always used cabs with my Axe Fx live but I'm going yo start using FRFR. I might be wrong but if you have your sound the way you like it, wouldn't it be like a mic'ed rig and the soundman would adjust it until it sounds good ?
I would say..that if your creating a patch in your studio or home your going to want a FRFR...and then yes the soundman will take care of the rest. No two rooms are the same...PA's are always different...etc. So you don't want to make those kind of decisions ahead of the fact...just come up with a good overall raw guitar sound. And if the guitar guy feels...in whatever room your happen to be in that it sounds too full or something...then they can handle it at the console
 
I let the FOH engineer worry about that.

At the professional level and bigger venues, the pure spl level PA speakers are sending into the crowd (~100 Db) will circumvent any fletcher munson stuff. So, as always dial in your presets at gig volume.

Even if you're not cranking your wedge on stage, it's going to be pretty loud out front depending on the venue etc. might as well dial in your presets at volume and since it's loud it will always sound much better than stuff done st a lower spl.

Experienced it on a corporate gig tonight. Monitor guy asked me to turn my wedge down because it was bleeding into the mics. I obliged but did walk out front on a wireless during soundcheck. Sounded great out front, my wedge at a low volume left a lot to be desired.
 
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