Anybody else getting sick of modellers?

[la szum]

I distinctly remember my first time in a professional studio in the late 1980s. 89-ish.

Anywho, we were going to track live all in the same room, and I was going to use
my actual amp (Randall RG100ES and 4 x 12). Our drummer was getting red light
syndrome (and actually wasn't on the final release ). We were burning time, and
money, so we pivoted and ended up having another drummer track the drums, and
then we all went and played to the drums while monitoring in the control room.

I struggled. It was different. REALLY different. I kind of hated it.

It wasn't wrong, though. It wasn't less than what I was doing. It was just different,
and the fact that it was different got into my head big time. I had never heard
guitar tones with direct monitoring in a control room before.

I am sure I could have gotten my head all up my ass about it, but it was more
important to get my parts recorded and those songs on tape.

To this day I know guitarists who get in their head in less than a tenth of a second
if there sound is not right. I feel a much more valuable skill is to get out of our own
way and make the best of whatever situation presents itself.

 

[spawnofthesith]

Kind of what I did what I did with some of the more recent IRs I've made of my own cabs. Measurement mic placed at my choice spot, IR shot, and A/B'ed with the source while the IR was EQed to match.

What do you use to create IRs?


I'd be curious to experiment with this. The sound of my mic'ed cab sounds way better to me than any IR's I've tried



Of course, maybe its because I use a captor, and lately around here I've been getting told those suck (news to me) and that's my problem

I'd be interested to give the suhr RL a shot, but after a certain point how much money/effort/uphill battle do I need trying to emulate a sound I already have, love, and have no issues with

 

[sashimi]

That looks like more fun than this thread is.

Ape in the room, eating cake

 

[jay mitchell]

Between guitar speakers, are there differences between how quick certain frequency ranges are thrown out?

Asked and answered. See above. There are audible differences in transient behavior among different guitar transducers and cabs. For example, some frequencies may decay more slowly than others, and this difference may not be immediately apparent if you only look at the magnitude response of the IR. Narrowband phenomena caused by resonances will have longer attack and decay times compared to other frequencies.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

What do you use to create IRs?

Reaper (contamination suit on), audio interface, and a microphone.

In a nutshell I run noise through an output of my interface into a power amp connected to the cab, record that sound with the microphone, render the cab sound with the noise, deconvolve (remove the noise from the recorded cab), and save as an IR.

Reaper comes with a convolution plug-in called ReaVerb that contains all of the tools needed to create IRs.

For what I was mentioning, I take it a step further and use multiple instances of Fabfilter Pro Q3 to help sculpt the response from the full range playback system I intend to use. I'll use a few instances for singling out specific bandwidths of the frequency responses of each source, and A/B using both my ears and an Extech decibel meter to equalize the area in question with more instances of Pro Q3. I do this through the entire spectrum of sound until I'm happy with the results. It takes a long time and I drive myself a little crazy with the details.

Of course my room response influences the sound but the first wave of doing this turned out really well when using the IRs with different playback systems in different rooms.

 

[timbuck3]

 

[fiftyshadesofslay]

If anything’s going to change my mind, it’ll definitely be a video of some guy flogging John Mayer presets.

 

[Sascha Franck]

If anything’s going to change my mind, it’ll definitely be a video of some guy flogging John Mayer presets.

Let alone that guy has the worst sense of time I've heard in quite a while. It's making me seasick to listen to just a single bar.

 

[jay mitchell]

Let alone that guy has the worst sense of time I've heard in quite a while. It's making me seasick to listen to just a single bar.

Sounds like he borrows time in some spots and then has trouble paying it back.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

The Reaper train should be stopping here soon too.

Reaper (contamination suit on), […]

Reaper comes with a convolution plug-in called ReaVerb […]

must.clean.thread.

 

[JiveTurkey]

must.clean.thread.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAPER

 

[spawnofthesith]

So this is gonna be controversial


But 100% audience perspective


Holy shit modeling is trash. Sorry guys.


Yikes. Based on tonight would actually actively avoid seeing bands not using real amps

 

[Mongillo19]

 

[dronerstone]

So this is gonna be controversial


But 100% audience perspective


Holy shit modeling is trash. Sorry guys.


Yikes. Based on tonight would actually actively avoid seeing bands not using real amps

Care to specify...? I mean, we can speculate, but I have a certain feeling it'll boil down to volume/girth - and I'm a "big dumb amps" guy myself, although I use my Helix Floor and pedalboard interchangeably.

 

[molul]

So this is gonna be controversial


But 100% audience perspective


Holy shit modeling is trash. Sorry guys.


Yikes. Based on tonight would actually actively avoid seeing bands not using real amps

I believe you. One can make an absolute crap of preset and sound awful. Like when you turn the treble and presence all the way up on a real amp.

Other than that, that's not what I get from the people coming to my bands gigs, and we're using HX stomp, Helix LT and Kemper.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, ever since I switched to modeling and FR full stop, I have received nothing but positive comments about my sound. From bandmates, FOH guys and knowledgable mates in the audience.
Now, as this sounds like hyperbole: No, people weren't bowing down praising my godly guitar toanz. It's also not as if that'd happen at each and every gig. But in case I got comments (and it happened quite a few times on what is hundreds of modeling gigs by now), they were positive, sometimes even very - and otoh I never even just once got a negative comment.

For myself, it's been partially mixed results, but the days when I thought kinda like "hm, maybe a real amp would suit this situation better" are extremely rare and actually quite long ago. By now, even if I actually still have two ready to roll amps and some nice sounding cabs, even if some of the patches in my setups are 4CM prepared, even in case transportation is no deal at all, it's not even an option I ever think about.

If I were to summarize, my overall balance between good-acceptable-bad sound experiences ever since I switched are possibly like 80%-15%-5%. And I can tell you that these figures looked way less favourable for amps/cabs back in the days.

Now, all this might have to do with the kind of music I'm mainly playing. It's a mixture of allround functional gigs, some funk/soul party stuff and ocassionally gigs where "classic rock tones" are asked for. Hence quite a lot of rhythm playing using clean and slightly hairy sounds, some standard marshall-ish riffing and the ocassional lead. No metal and most often gigs where the rhythm section consists of drums, bass, keys and guitar. Especially as there's keys, my role as a guitar player most often isn't being the main harmonic instrument but rather adding to the picture.
If I were to play more rock gigs, perhaps even some asking for at least somewhat heavier sounds, maybe my findings would be different.

 

[GTR37]

So this is gonna be controversial


But 100% audience perspective


Holy shit modeling is trash. Sorry guys.


Yikes. Based on tonight would actually actively avoid seeing bands not using real amps

In some cases yes but I have seen modelling sounded
Great the Warning had a Kemper stage and her sound blew away the headliners real amps

In addition Shinedown uses the Fractal and their live guitar sounds are awesome

So it really is dependant

 

[likitlikeyoulikeit]

I have seen AAL live......and they sounded great with modellers.....but the room was maybe 200 people

If they had played with amps.....not sure I would have enjoyed it as much.....just because their stage would have been packed ....and it was just 3 dudes....but this was 2011?

 

[spawnofthesith]

Care to specify...? I mean, we can speculate, but I have a certain feeling it'll boil down to volume/girth - and I'm a "big dumb amps" guy myself, although I use my Helix Floor and pedalboard interchangeably.

I believe you. One can make an absolute crap of preset and sound awful. Like when you turn the treble and presence all the way up on a real amp.

Other than that, that's not what I get from the people coming to my bands gigs, and we're using HX stomp, Helix LT and Kemper.

In some cases yes but I have seen modelling sounded
Great the Warning had a Kemper stage and her sound blew away the headliners real amps

In addition Shinedown uses the Fractal and their live guitar sounds are awesome

So it really is dependant

I have seen AAL live......and they sounded great with modellers.....but the room was maybe 200 people

If they had played with amps.....not sure I would have enjoyed it as much.....just because their stage would have been packed ....and it was just 3 dudes....but this was 2011?

Sorry for the drive by blanket controversial post, I was a bit tipsy


But yes I was at animals as leaders. 1k cap room. I've seen countless shows at this venue its not an inherently bad sounding room

But yeah, that sounded awful. Like really really bad actively made the show hard to enjoy despite the virtuoso playing

 

[likitlikeyoulikeit]

Sorry for the drive by blanket controversial post, I was a bit tipsy


But yes I was at animals as leaders. 1k cap room. I've seen countless shows at this venue its not an inherently bad sounding room

But yeah, that sounded awful. Like really really bad actively made the show hard to enjoy despite the virtuoso playing

That sucks...I hate that. Makes me mad when it happens.