Helix: huge noise in acoustic sim block

[molul]

Yesterday I tried a "trick" I read here for the acoustic simulator to sound good, which is disabling the amp+cab block.

Now it does sound quite better, much more believable, but now I'm getting a huge noise, and I can't seem to make it go away with the block controls. Well, I can set them to very low values, but it doesn't sound like an acoustic guitar anymore, and the same if I use a high cut filter. The only way to make it go away is enabling the amp+cab block (Jazz Rivet), which makes the acoustic sim sound very bad.

Does anyone here have this issue? Any advice?

 

[James Freeman]

Acoustic Sim is literally just an EQ curve.
40dB of boost at treble frequencies, that comes with boosting noise at those frequencies by that amount.
Enabling Cab/IR block will cut those high frequencies hence cut the boosted noise.

 

[molul]

Thanks. I guess I'll have to use two separate blocks for amp and cab, and have the amp disabled but not the cab.

It would be very cool being able to disable one of them in amp+cab blocks.

 

[James Freeman]

As a final note, acoustic sim is designed to make your electric guitar sound like acoustic, there is no need for amp or cab blocks after it.
Unless of course you are going for an amplified acoustic sound?

 

[molul]

As a final note, acoustic sim is designed to make your electric guitar sound like acoustic, there is no need for amp or cab blocks after it.
Unless of course you are going for an amplified acoustic sound?

Oh, I think I misunderstood your message then. I would rather not use neither amp not cab with the acoustic sim, but I thought you meant I should enable the cab in order to get rid of the noise.

But maybe the right approach would be identifying the noise frequency that is then boosted with the acoustic sim, and turn it down as much as possible with an EQ block before the acoustic sim. Would that be right?

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Oh, I think I misunderstood your message then. I would rather not use neither amp not cab with the acoustic sim, but I thought you meant I should enable the cab in order to get rid of the noise.

But maybe the right approach would be identifying the noise frequency that is then boosted with the acoustic sim, and turn it down as much as possible with an EQ block before the acoustic sim. Would that be right?

There isn't going to be a specific frequency. You could (1) use acoustic sim in combo with like a high shelf that would allow you to reduce the huge 40db boost in high frequency or (2) use a parametric EQ to effectively copy curve James posted earlier, but reduce the high end boost or if you need something as dramatic as the cab block, use acoustic sim in combo with a low pass/hi cut EQ block which would give you same ability to really cut all the hi frequencies.

Anyway you slice it, reducing noise will also make the acoustic sim sound (even) less realistic.

 

[molul]

Oh that's unfortunate. I wasn't aware that using an acoustic sim introduces am inevitable noise.

The good thing is that it's not noticeable while playing with the whole band, so I guess I'll settle with what I currently have.

Thank you all for your help!

 

[fretworn]

I don’t know about the helix… But on a fractal you can go get an impulse response of an acoustic and use it in the cab block, and/or tone match to an acoustic guitar (recording).

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I don’t know about the helix… But on a fractal you can go get an impulse response of an acoustic and use it in the cab block, and/or tone match to an acoustic guitar (recording).

Which is still just going to be a filter that boosts high frequencies ( and noise) by a lot.

 

[fretworn]

Which is still just going to be a filter that boosts high frequencies ( and noise) by a lot.

Fair enough lol

 

[Bob Zaod]

Oh, I think I misunderstood your message then. I would rather not use neither amp not cab with the acoustic sim, but I thought you meant I should enable the cab in order to get rid of the noise.

But maybe the right approach would be identifying the noise frequency that is then boosted with the acoustic sim, and turn it down as much as possible with an EQ block before the acoustic sim. Would that be right?

This is the one I used to set up my acoustic sim patch. I just tweaked it some to my taste and it's actually pretty decent for a sim.

 

[molul]

I tried the acoustic sim a bit more the other day. Definitely much less noise when using single coils.

 

[Will Chen]

Which is still just going to be a filter that boosts high frequencies ( and noise) by a lot.

No, not at all. The Line 6 is an emulation of the Boss Acoustic simulator which boosts highs by a huge amount and has a high noise floor. Using an IR of an acoustic is a very different thing and doesn't achieve it's tone by simply boosting highs unless perhaps doing some type of tone match. You can get much better results using an IR than the acoustic simulator.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

No, not at all. The Line 6 is am emulation of the Boss Acoustic simulator which boosts highs by a huge amount and has a high noise floor. Using an IR of an acoustic is a very different thing and doesn't achieve it's tone by simply boosting highs unless perhaps doing some type of tone match. You can get much better results using an IR than the acoustic simulator.

What is the IR doing? It's not magic, it's a filter.

 

[Will Chen]

What is the IR doing? It's not magic, it's a filter.

Correct, but it's doing a very, very different thing than what the Boss AC sim is doing.

 

[molul]

No, not at all. The Line 6 is an emulation of the Boss Acoustic simulator which boosts highs by a huge amount and has a high noise floor. Using an IR of an acoustic is a very different thing and doesn't achieve it's tone by simply boosting highs unless perhaps doing some type of tone match. You can get much better results using an IR than the acoustic simulator.

I see. Would you happen to have any recommendation for an acoustic IR?

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Correct, but it's doing a very, very different thing than what the Boss AC sim is doing.

That "thing" is still necessarily going to involve large signal boosts. Might be a little less noisy by being more narrowly tailored. But you can't boost 25+db even narrowly without increasing noise floor quite a bit.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I actually don't see the need for any such dramatic boosts in case no amp/cab is involved. I mean, the original Boss units were made to be used in front of a typical electric guitar amp, hence meant to compensate for the rather brutal high cut of common guitar speakers. That's why there's such a massive high boost. Once you bypass the cab (and ideally the amp as well, which usually isn't tailored to amplify a kind of acoustic signal), you should be much closer to the overall frequency response of a typical acoustic guitar already - no, it still won't sound like one as there's plenty of finetuning missing, but at least any dullness will be greatly reduced already.
When done with that, you might want to fool around with acoustic IRs. I think 3 Sigma Audio at least once was sort of wellknown to have some decent ones, not sure whether that is still the case (you could possibly find some free ones, too).

In case you have a DAW, a matching EQ and some recording of a nice soloed acoustic, you could as well try to roll your own IR - but I'd rather not elaborate on that as long as I don't know anything about those prerequisites.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I actually don't see the need for any such dramatic boosts in case no amp/cab is involved. I mean, the original Boss units were made to be used in front of a typical electric guitar amp, hence meant to compensate for the rather brutal high cut of common guitar speakers. That's why there's such a massive high boost. Once you bypass the cab (and ideally the amp as well, which usually isn't tailored to amplify a kind of acoustic signal), you should be much closer to the overall frequency response of a typical acoustic guitar already - no, it still won't sound like one as there's plenty of finetuning missing, but at least any dullness will be greatly reduced already.
When done with that, you might want to fool around with acoustic IRs. I think 3 Sigma Audio at least once was sort of wellknown to have some decent ones, not sure whether that is still the case (you could possibly find some free ones, too).

In case you have a DAW, a matching EQ and some recording of a nice soloed acoustic, you could as well try to roll your own IR - but I'd rather not elaborate on that as long as I don't know anything about those prerequisites.

I agree with much of this, though I've never heard any attempt to make a solidbody guitar sound like an acoustic to be remotely realistic. Even taking a solidbody with piezos and applying one of those 3sigma IRs or similar doesn't ever sound that great.

I've never seen an IR intended to be used to make a solidbody sound like an acoustic. All I've seen are IRs that are meant to make an undersaddle acoustic/electric sound like a mic'ed acoustic.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Here's one I made https://www.dropbox.com/s/7kb2ibthlyriyb0/acoustic maker.wav?dl=0