I tried Captures for the first time

DrewJD82 said:
This is why profiling/capturing never appealed to me. It’s like the guitarists who spend all this time getting their dream tone in their man cave then move the rig somewhere else and all of a sudden it sounds like ass, except you can’t tweak your way out of it with a profile.

IMO, the digital realm opened up endless possibilities. It seems entirely daft to me to limit those possibilities. I’d just use a regular amp if I wanted limitations.
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Traditional (component) modeling is obviously more flexible when it comes to adjusting the results at the modeling level available to the end user than a snapshot method.

Though there are a number of name recognition based artists who employ the snapshot methodology in a live setting successfully.

I think a successful application of either type of modeling approach mainly comes down to how someone is applying the technology.

However it’s difficult to beat a higher sampling rate when it comes to recreating nuances.
 
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DrewJD82 said:
This is why profiling/capturing never appealed to me. It’s like the guitarists who spend all this time getting their dream tone in their man cave then move the rig somewhere else and all of a sudden it sounds like ass, except you can’t tweak your way out of it with a profile.

IMO, the digital realm opened up endless possibilities. It seems entirely daft to me to limit those possibilities. I’d just use a regular amp if I wanted limitations.
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You'd use a real amp if you wanted huge balls.
 
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I still think Cliff’s going to introduce Fractal‘s own take on capturing, but with the addition of adding the actual tone-stacks of the amps. Even if they only introduced the existing tone-stacks they have in an AxeFX, you may not have the exact tone stack of a JCM900, but I’m sure an 800 tonestack would work well enough. It’d still be more than a static ‘this is what you have to work with’ situation the Kemper/QC currently provide.
 
DrewJD82 said:
I still think Cliff’s going to introduce Fractal‘s own take on capturing, but with the addition of adding the actual tone-stacks of the amps.
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Screenshot from 2022-10-03 17-22-21.png


Fractal has supported Tone Matching ever since the Axe-FX II, IIRC - which, while not exactly capturing/profiling, does pretty much what you describe.

Haven't really played much with it myself, but apparently it's a very underrated feature on these units.
 
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DrewJD82 said:
This is why profiling/capturing never appealed to me. It’s like the guitarists who spend all this time getting their dream tone in their man cave then move the rig somewhere else and all of a sudden it sounds like ass, except you can’t tweak your way out of it with a profile.

IMO, the digital realm opened up endless possibilities. It seems entirely daft to me to limit those possibilities. I’d just use a regular amp if I wanted limitations.
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This is why to me it's better as a plug-in, for use with recording.
 
James Freeman said:
Warning: This post contains PERSONAL OPINION.


I'm not impressed.
The Gain, Tone Stack, Presence (negative feedback) and especially Master Volume controls don't behave anything like on a tube amp.
It's one dimensional, there is only one sound in it, no matter how I fiddle with the knobs.
I've also tested for 'swirl' and bias excursion that all Class AB long-tail PI tube poweramps have, yeah, forget about it.
In essence, it's a single sound fuzz box with a shaping EQ.

IK has made captures accessible to everyone and when everyone tries captures the hype will inevitably cool down and a new era of understanding will arise.

Yours truly,
The friendly party pooper, know-it-all, Helix shill, James Freeman.
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Until you find that one capture that has all of those consideration baked in to the capture. IMO the feel of the capture/profile is a very large part of what makes them great.
 
Lysander said:
View attachment 1172

Fractal has supported Tone Matching ever since the Axe-FX II, IIRC - which, while not exactly capturing/profiling, does pretty much what you describe.

Haven't really played much with it myself, but apparently it's a very underrated feature on these units.
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The problem with Tone Matching is that whenever there is a major firmware update all of your Tone Matches are no longer good and need to be redone. :stirthepot
 
Lysander said:
Huh? For real?!

That's... not great.
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Yup
It was bad at times some years ago. I had 100 TM (tone match) presets, and had to make a note of when the firmware updates `broke`the TM., so i could go back in time when i needed those.
This is one of the things why i don`t miss the weekly updates from Fractal, he is messing with all the amps all the time..sure for the better, but be ready to tweek your presets
 
Devil's advocate: while profiles/captures aren't fully interactive, you may not need them to be.

For many amps, you are typically going to dial in a "sweet spot" and not really deviate too much. Especially in the course of a song. So if you profile/capture a specific tone and that tone is awesome, you don't really need to adjust the tone stack. And while you can't adjust the tone stack or gain, you should be able to add pedals or EQ to impact the tone, just as you would with a real amp.

My biggest problem with profiles (haven't used QC) is not the fixed nature of the gain/tone stack but the fixed nature of the speaker cab/mic portion. The amp could be dialed in for a killer sound, but if the profiler ran it through a crappy speaker or did a bad job miking it, then it's going to suck.

I think that's why I liked MBritt's stuff the most, he generally used a consistent speaker and consistent miking technique. From there I could GENERALLY add some post EQ or adjust the gain up or down slightly to account for pickups. It still felt overall kind of limiting because the speaker types were fixed, but it was better than the roll of the dice most other profilers had.
 
Jarick said:
Devil's advocate: while profiles/captures aren't fully interactive, you may not need them to be.

For many amps, you are typically going to dial in a "sweet spot" and not really deviate too much. Especially in the course of a song. So if you profile/capture a specific tone and that tone is awesome, you don't really need to adjust the tone stack. And while you can't adjust the tone stack or gain, you should be able to add pedals or EQ to impact the tone, just as you would with a real amp.

My biggest problem with profiles (haven't used QC) is not the fixed nature of the gain/tone stack but the fixed nature of the speaker cab/mic portion. The amp could be dialed in for a killer sound, but if the profiler ran it through a crappy speaker or did a bad job miking it, then it's going to suck.

I think that's why I liked MBritt's stuff the most, he generally used a consistent speaker and consistent miking technique. From there I could GENERALLY add some post EQ or adjust the gain up or down slightly to account for pickups. It still felt overall kind of limiting because the speaker types were fixed, but it was better than the roll of the dice most other profilers had.
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I can’t say for certain, because I don’t have the capture unit yet. But I’m thinking for the Badlander (should Mesa ever accidentally ship it to me) would require just six captures at most: clean, crunch and crush for both single coils and humbuckers. Maybe eight, because you can get a F’ing ballsy AC/DC crunch with the Clean with the gain wound all the way up.

So yeah, I’m not stressing about the static nature of captures.
 
As it is with plenty of the amp models in Helix, once the knobs are set I don't touch them, I'll use Pre EQ (in the form of an OD or EQ block) and some post EQ (usually baked into an IR to make things simple) to make any adjustments.

Static captures wouldn't bother me if it's a sound I'm going to stick with. I'm pretty good at EQing myself out of a paper bag :bag but if I wanted to tinker and try new things, sorting through OPP(rofiles) would be like rolling the dice with OPP(resets) - someone else's sweet spot with someone else's guitar, etc..
 
Alex Kenivel said:
As it is with plenty of the amp models in Helix, once the knobs are set I don't touch them, I'll use Pre EQ (in the form of an OD or EQ block) and some post EQ (usually baked into an IR to make things simple) to make any adjustments.

Static captures wouldn't bother me if it's a sound I'm going to stick with. I'm pretty good at EQing myself out of a paper bag :bag but if I wanted to tinker and try new things, sorting through OPP(rofiles) would be like rolling the dice with OPP(resets) - someone else's sweet spot with someone else's guitar, etc..
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Yeah me to on my QC, the cab block is sooo good..just slide the 57 a bit, or the 121 if i need more bite, or less bass
 
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