Digital Igloo (Eric Klein, YGG)

I feel like you’ve mentioned this in the past, but what are your go-to headphones for mixing and Helix use? I’ve been using the Sennheiser HD 600 for a couple years but feel like they’re almost too high-def at times.
 
How much more processing power would be needed to produce modelling that is genuinely impossible for the user to distinguish from the original source. Including and perhaps most importantly in the feel and fine nuances of the original. ATM I think the sound is pretty much there but the player experience is lacking . For instance auditioning pickups through digital platforms diminishes the difference between the best and good. There is also a generic feel across amps with similar styles that is certainly not reflected in playing the real amps. Obviously different platforms will have different approaches but this is my experience . What percentage of the full interaction is modeled?
Thanks in advance.
 
I’m using the HX Stomp as an interface into Logic Pro. It’s just a blank patch as I’m only recording dry signal. When i go back to listen and then go back to record again, there’s no sound. I have to switch to another patch and then back to the blank patch and it comes back to life. I can even switch to another blank patch and it will come back. It seems to happen every time.

Is this a known issue?
 
Eagle said:
How much more processing power would be needed to produce modelling that is genuinely impossible for the user to distinguish from the original source.
Click to expand...
"...the user" is a huge can of worms here, because that ranges from über gurus who've been doing this for decades to... newbies who don't even know what modeling is.

"...from the original source" is also a big can of worms, because you almost have to append that question with "...assuming they utilize the exact same open system elements and gain match all closed systems to the source in a controlled, double-blind environment with someone else doing the A/B/X switching (or ideally, automated switching where the user doesn't even know when a switch takes place)." Which very, very few people have ever done, including those at many other modeler manufacturers.

I'd say that in a properly controlled A/B/X test, a good portion (but far from all) of our amp models can fool all but the tweakier of golden ears, when they play what you'd expect most guitarists to play over the course of a session. There may be fewer than a few hundred guitarists on the planet who can sit in our studio and call sound and feel discrepancies out with any consistency. One of our guru session guitarist buddies—let's call him Stan—might say things like "Okay, I'm definitely feeling something a bit off here. The harmonic on this particular string during this one fingerstyle pull-off seems to die out a bit faster than the other strings in the chord, but the real amp doesn't do this." Or "Hey, I'm feeling the sag here might be blooming a hair quicker than on the real amp, especially in the low end when doing palm mutes. Here, play this and you'll be able to tell." Or "Whoa, on the real amp with a Les Paul there's an ugly quack while tapping the low E repeatedly with a steel slide at the 7th fret, but on the model, the quack's less annoying. They're identical with a Strat, SG, and Bass VI tho'."

But for the vast majority of guitarists, the disparity they claim to hear/feel/experience is far more likely something other than the actual modeling:
  • Different playback system
  • Different playback volume
  • Different environment or position of the speakers in the room
  • A false memory of what the amp sounds/feels like
  • What the amp sounds like on a particular record, not the real thing in the room
  • Parroting their drunk uncle who told them "mOdELinG SuXorZ!" because he once owned a Zoom 9001 (which wasn't even modeling)
For example, Brayden may hop onto the YouTube comment section and complain: "Oh, these amp models all sound the same." Well of course—switching amps in a modeler doesn't also magically manifest a half dozen studio techs, swapping in a truckload of real power amps and cabs every time a switch is pressed. The same playback system will absolutely, positively smear the sound and feel of different amp models together (as it would with the real amps), which is no fault of modeling itself.

But that doesn't really answer your question:

Yes, there's absolutely room for improvement in both sound and feel, but the improvement appreciated by 300 Stans will likely be completely lost on half a million Braydens. However, many of the Braydens read the rants of Stans online, so we need to keep the latter happy.

Okay, that doesn't really answer your question either. I keep getting distracted by Santa Ana wind reports. Sorry! Will dig into this more later.
 
Last edited:
HomespunEffects said:
I’m using the HX Stomp as an interface into Logic Pro. It’s just a blank patch as I’m only recording dry signal. When i go back to listen and then go back to record again, there’s no sound. I have to switch to another patch and then back to the blank patch and it comes back to life. I can even switch to another blank patch and it will come back. It seems to happen every time.

Is this a known issue?
Click to expand...
Not at all. Could be a MIDI loop (make sure Global Settings > MIDI/Tempo > MIDI Thru is off), could be monitor settings in Logic. If you open a ticket, our CS team can probably sus it out for you.
 
Digital Igloo said:
"...the user" is a huge can of worms here, because that ranges from über gurus who've been doing this for decades to... newbies who don't even know what modeling is.

"...from the original source" is also a big can of worms, because you almost have to append that question with "...assuming they utilize the exact same open system elements and gain match all closed systems to the source in a controlled, double-blind environment with someone else doing the A/B/X switching (or ideally, automated switching where the user doesn't even know when a switch takes place)." Which very, very few people have ever done, including those at many other modeler manufacturers.

I'd say that in a properly controlled A/B/X test, a good portion (but far from all) of our amp models can fool all but the tweakier of golden ears, when they play what you'd expect most guitarists to play over the course of a session. There may be fewer than a few hundred guitarists on the planet who can sit in our studio and call sound and feel discrepancies out with any consistency. One of our guru session guitarist buddies—let's call him Stan—might say things like "Okay, I'm definitely feeling something a bit off here. The harmonic on this particular string during this one fingerstyle pull-off seems to die out a bit faster than the other strings in the chord, but the real amp doesn't do this." Or "Hey, I'm feeling the sag here might be blooming a hair quicker than on the real amp, especially in the low end when doing palm mutes. Here, play this and you'll be able to tell." Or "Whoa, on the real amp with a Les Paul there's an ugly quack while tapping the low E repeatedly with a steel slide at the 7th fret, but on the model, the quack's less annoying. They're identical with a Strat, SG, and Bass VI tho'."

But for the vast majority of guitarists, the disparity they claim to hear/feel/experience is far more likely something other than the actual modeling:
  • Different playback system
  • Different playback volume
  • Different environment or position of the speakers in the room
  • A false memory of what the amp sounds/feels like
  • What the amp sounds like on a particular record, not the real thing in the room
  • Parroting their drunk uncle who told them "mOdELinG SuXorZ!" because he once owned a Zoom 9001 (which wasn't even modeling)
For example, Brayden may hop onto the YouTube comment section and complain: "Oh, these amp models all sound the same." Well of course—switching amps in a modeler doesn't also magically manifest a half dozen studio techs, swapping in a truckload of real power amps and cabs every time a switch is pressed. The same playback system will absolutely, positively smear the sound and feel of different amp models together (as it would with the real amps), which is no fault of modeling itself.

But that doesn't really answer your question:

Yes, there's absolutely room for improvement in both sound and feel, but the improvement appreciated by 300 Stans will likely be completely lost on half a million Braydens. However, many of the Braydens read the rants of Stans online, so we need to keep the latter happy.

Okay, that doesn't really answer your question either. I keep getting distracted by Santa Ana wind reports. Sorry! Will dig into this more later.
Click to expand...
Thanks . I find clean amps to be the most lacking.
You agree about the pickup observation?
 
Eagle said:
How much more processing power would be needed to produce modelling that is genuinely impossible for the user to distinguish from the original source. Including and perhaps most importantly in the feel and fine nuances of the original. ATM I think the sound is pretty much there but the player experience is lacking . For instance auditioning pickups through digital platforms diminishes the difference between the best and good. There is also a generic feel across amps with similar styles that is certainly not reflected in playing the real amps. Obviously different platforms will have different approaches but this is my experience . What percentage of the full interaction is modeled?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
You would need to eliminate all the latency I would think
Which is hard to do when converting analog to digital and back
the thing with tube amps is that immediate response to the guitar
 
GTR37 said:
You would need to eliminate all the latency I would think
Which is hard to do when converting analog to digital and back
the thing with tube amps is that immediate response to the guitar
Click to expand...

Some milliseconds of latency (let's say anything below 5ms) shouldn't really impact things too much, especially as soon as you take into account that typical modeler listening positions are closer to the source.
Add to this people are using digital devices in their traditional rigs as well.
 
GTR37 said:
You would need to eliminate all the latency I would think
Which is hard to do when converting analog to digital and back
the thing with tube amps is that immediate response to the guitar
Click to expand...
It’s missing more than that.
 
Digital Igloo said:
Not at all. Could be a MIDI loop (make sure Global Settings > MIDI/Tempo > MIDI Thru is off), could be monitor settings in Logic. If you open a ticket, our CS team can probably sus it out for you.
Click to expand...
OK, I checked and MIDI thru is off. I'll run some more tests to see if I can get it to not happen and see if it's something that I'm doing.
 
Eagle said:
It’s missing more than that.
Click to expand...
But is it missing more than that...
Digital Igloo said:
...assuming you've utilized the exact same open system elements and gain matched all closed systems to the source in a controlled, double-blind environment with someone else doing the A/B/X switching (or ideally, automated switching where the user doesn't even know when a switch takes place)
Click to expand...
?

Maybe you indeed have, but the vast, VAST majority of people who claim modeling is deficient in some appreciable way are again, naïve Braydens comparing apples to oranges, not über-engineer-golden-ear Stans who understand multiple levels of context and have the knowledge and experience to properly compare apples to apples.

"Oh, I just played it and something's missing" is not a rigorous (or even helpful) exercise, especially given that 95% of the time, the critic is using a different playback system at a different volume at a different position in the room, which is more than 50% of one's tone and experience. Of course something's missing—at least half of it's missing!—but almost all of the time, it's one of those things (or user error, or an impedance mismatch, or gain staging, or a dozen other things), not some overarching, pervasive deficiency in modeling technology. Don't get me wrong—there are remaining deficiencies in modeling technology if the goal is a perfect facsimile of the sound and feel of the source amp's closed systems, but for almost every user, the deficiencies of everything outside those closed systems (that is, things the modeler can't be held responsible for) are deafening in comparison.

I mean, you sit in YGG Studios and watch one of LA's top electric guitar recording engineers play, trying to figure out when the computer might be switching between the real Soldano preamp and the modeled Soldano preamp. They turn to you and ask "When are you going to switch in the model?" and you say "The model switched in ten times." Now if that engineer or someone else in the room were to say something's missing, yeah, we take that very seriously. And they sometimes do, and we tweak before releasing it to the public.
Eagle said:
How much more processing power would be needed to produce modelling that is genuinely impossible for the user to distinguish from the original source. Including and perhaps most importantly in the feel and fine nuances of the original. ATM I think the sound is pretty much there but the player experience is lacking . For instance auditioning pickups through digital platforms diminishes the difference between the best and good. There is also a generic feel across amps with similar styles that is certainly not reflected in playing the real amps. Obviously different platforms will have different approaches but this is my experience . What percentage of the full interaction is modeled?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Thought about this a bit more, and it's a really good question. Not sure, to be honest. There are additional DSP blocks that can be added to Helix amp model tools that describe more esoteric or hard-to-nail behavior (thanks, Helix Core!), and the models would indeed get bigger. At a certain point, however, the architecture might not be ideal for taking it beyond those additional DSP blocks, so the next step would be to scrap the whole thing and come up with a different modeling methodology altogether, one that allows for much easier scalability. I suspect it'd start out with a much bigger DSP footprint, but I couldn't begin to guess how much bigger.

If you pointed a gun at my head, I'd guess that... 250-300%?... more DSP per amp model might hit a point where we're at truly diminishing returns to appease 99.5 % of hardcore Stans. Anything beyond that and we're waxing poetic about crystal lattices and such. But also keep in mind that plenty of Stans are perfectly happy with where we are now. Some amps' behavior and quirks are harder to nail than others, so one might appease a hardcore Stan at 80% of where we're at and another might require 300%.
 
Last edited:
Digital Igloo said:
But is it missing more than that...

?

Maybe you indeed have, but the vast, VAST majority of people who claim modeling is deficient in some appreciable way are again, naïve Braydens comparing apples to oranges, not über-engineer-golden-ear Stans who understand multiple levels of context and have the knowledge and experience to properly compare apples to apples.

"Oh, I just played it and something's missing" is not a rigorous (or even helpful) exercise, especially given that 95% of the time, the critic is using a different playback system at a different volume at a different position in the room, which is more than 50% of one's tone and experience. Of course something's missing—at least half of it's missing!—but almost all of the time, it's one of those things (or user error, or an impedance mismatch, or gain staging, or a dozen other things), not some overarching, pervasive deficiency in modeling technology. Don't get me wrong—there are remaining deficiencies in modeling technology if the goal is a perfect facsimile of the sound and feel of the source amp's closed systems, but for almost every user, the deficiencies of everything outside those closed systems (that is, things the modeler can't be held responsible for) are deafening in comparison.

I mean, you sit in YGG Studios and watch one of LA's top electric guitar recording engineers play, trying to figure out when the computer might be switching between the real Soldano preamp and the modeled Soldano preamp. They turn to you and ask "When are you going to switch in the model?" and you say "The model switched in ten times." Now if that engineer or someone else in the room were to say something's missing, yeah, we take that very seriously. And they sometimes do, and we tweak before releasing it to the public.

Thought about this a bit more, and it's a really good question. Not sure, to be honest. There are additional DSP blocks that can be added to Helix amp model tools that describe more esoteric or hard-to-nail behavior (thanks, Helix Core!), and the models would indeed get bigger. At a certain point, however, the architecture might not be ideal for taking it beyond those additional DSP blocks, so the next step would be to scrap the whole thing and come up with a different modeling methodology altogether, one that allows for much easier scalability. I suspect it'd start out with a much bigger DSP footprint, but I couldn't begin to guess how much bigger.

If you pointed a gun at my head, I'd guess that... 250-300%?... more DSP per amp model might hit a point where we're at truly diminishing returns to appease 99.5 % of hardcore Stans. Anything beyond that and we're waxing poetic about crystal lattices and such. But also keep in mind that plenty of Stans are perfectly happy with where we are now. Some amps' behavior and quirks are harder to nail than others, so one might appease a hardcore Stan at 80% of where we're at and another might require 300%.
Click to expand...
The other thing at current DSP how much do you estimate Stan would have to pay ?

Are we talking 2000- 3000
range to get the resources required
 
GTR37 said:
The other thing at current DSP how much do you estimate Stan would have to pay ?

Are we talking 2000- 3000
range to get the resources required
Click to expand...
I have no idea if this is actually a thing (it's probably not), but for argument's sake...

Let's say there's a particularly squirrely boutique tube amp that's just bonkers difficult to perfectly nail to the point where Stan cannot tell the difference in Line 6 Studios' A/B/X test. It might require 3x the DSP Helix reserves for the biggest amp model it has now. So we can do one or more of several things:
  • Utilize faster DSPs (or perhaps multiple DSPs, which would add latency and perhaps heat, power supply, and compliance issues that require additional work and more expensive parts to mitigate). Now it's many hundreds more. Probably not $3000, but certainly over $2000 if you assume our imaginary next-gen multieffects finally gets the fancy touchscreen we've wanted since 2012
  • Realize that the extra DSP blocks don't actually make the amp sound better, they just make it more accurate, warts and all. We could leave it as is—that is, more pleasing to the ear—and use up 1/3 of the DSP. Even if Stan can tell a difference in our studio A/B/X test, he likely wouldn't notice anything off by itself. Braydens might actually prefer the lower-DSP version
  • Realize that only one or two amps require that much extra DSP and we simply choose different amps to model
  • Realize that almost no one has actually played the real thing anyway
  • Quit YGG, move to Kauai, start a consultancy gig, and walk Bill&Ted and Paddles on the beach all day
 
Digital Igloo said:
But is it missing more than that...

?

Maybe you indeed have, but the vast, VAST majority of people who claim modeling is deficient in some appreciable way are again, naïve Braydens comparing apples to oranges, not über-engineer-golden-ear Stans who understand multiple levels of context and have the knowledge and experience to properly compare apples to apples.

"Oh, I just played it and something's missing" is not a rigorous (or even helpful) exercise, especially given that 95% of the time, the critic is using a different playback system at a different volume at a different position in the room, which is more than 50% of one's tone and experience. Of course something's missing—at least half of it's missing!—but almost all of the time, it's one of those things (or user error, or an impedance mismatch, or gain staging, or a dozen other things), not some overarching, pervasive deficiency in modeling technology. Don't get me wrong—there are remaining deficiencies in modeling technology if the goal is a perfect facsimile of the sound and feel of the source amp's closed systems, but for almost every user, the deficiencies of everything outside those closed systems (that is, things the modeler can't be held responsible for) are deafening in comparison.

I mean, you sit in YGG Studios and watch one of LA's top electric guitar recording engineers play, trying to figure out when the computer might be switching between the real Soldano preamp and the modeled Soldano preamp. They turn to you and ask "When are you going to switch in the model?" and you say "The model switched in ten times." Now if that engineer or someone else in the room were to say something's missing, yeah, we take that very seriously. And they sometimes do, and we tweak before releasing it to the public.

Thought about this a bit more, and it's a really good question. Not sure, to be honest. There are additional DSP blocks that can be added to Helix amp model tools that describe more esoteric or hard-to-nail behavior (thanks, Helix Core!), and the models would indeed get bigger. At a certain point, however, the architecture might not be ideal for taking it beyond those additional DSP blocks, so the next step would be to scrap the whole thing and come up with a different modeling methodology altogether, one that allows for much easier scalability. I suspect it'd start out with a much bigger DSP footprint, but I couldn't begin to guess how much bigger.

If you pointed a gun at my head, I'd guess that... 250-300%?... more DSP per amp model might hit a point where we're at truly diminishing returns to appease 99.5 % of hardcore Stans. Anything beyond that and we're waxing poetic about crystal lattices and such. But also keep in mind that plenty of Stans are perfectly happy with where we are now. Some amps' behavior and quirks are harder to nail than others, so one might appease a hardcore Stan at 80% of where we're at and another might require 300%.
Click to expand...
I have done the ABX test a few times and the clean to break up tones are easy to identify. The more gain you add the harder it is to spot the digital. "FRFR" is a big problem because it is nothing like the normal player experience. The ABX test was sat in the control room through monitors so helping the digital by interfering with the guitar cab feel.
 
Eagle said:
I have done the ABX test a few times and the clean to break up tones are easy to identify. The more gain you add the harder it is to spot the digital. ""FRFR"" is a big problem because it is nothing like the normal player experience. The ABX test was sat in the control room through monitors so helping the digital by interfering with the guitar cab feel.
Click to expand...
I agree that clean and edge of breakup tones/feel are harder to nail.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top