Jim Lill: "In-the-room tone doesn't matter" and he's absolutely right

GuitarBilly said:
Long story short, when we're in a room playing the guitar, getting the rig to sound good in the room is important and inspiring. End of story.

All the other stuff he added on is irrelevant to the fact that everyone likes their rig to sound good when they're in their room playing it.
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I think Jim Lill's main point is that appreciating good in-the-room tone is fine when it happens to sound good, but chasing in-the-room tone is a fool's errand. And it is.

Oh you got your in-the-room tone sounding great? That's nice. Now move your head an inch in any direction. Hey look the tone is completely different. Better start tweaking knobs again. Also, if you ask somebody to listen to your in-the-room sound with you while you play, they're going to hear something completely different than you do because they're standing in a different spot. That's just how guitar cab tone works. Now let's take that rig and put it somewhere else. Completely different tone, better start tweaking, etc.
 
If an amp doesn't sound good in a room its probably not going to sound good mic'ed either :idk

Who is "chasing in the room tone anyways? What does that even mean? Seems like this video is answering a question that no one was asking for the sake of youtube ad revenue/inciting forum bickering
 
spawnofthesith said:
If an amp doesn't sound good in a room its probably not going to sound good mic'ed either :idk

Who is "chasing in the room tone anyways? What does that even mean? Seems like this video is answering a question that no one was asking for the sake of youtube ad revenue/inciting forum bickering
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You know the deal. I LOVE amp modeling. But it has introduced a layer of "discussion" and over-analysis that cannot be overstated enough. All these oscilloscope readings but zero clips of people actually playing guitar :hmm:rofl
 
Since he's already established that guitar/pickps/amp/in the room sound/etc. don't matter can we just cut to the chase and do the video on how the only thing that matters is the sound guy/engineer?


Or wait, need to get to the video that the only thing that matters is the listeners ears

why stop there, its not their ears its the brain


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spawnofthesith said:
If an amp doesn't sound good in a room its probably not going to sound good mic'ed either :idk

Who is "chasing in the room tone anyways? What does that even mean? Seems like this video is answering a question that no one was asking for the sake of youtube ad revenue/inciting forum bickering
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In my experience this is completely, totally false.

Every single time I've setup a rig to sound great through a PA or into a recording console, it sounds like trash in the room. Setup a high gain amp to sound just right, full and clear through the monitors, and in-the-room it will sound small, boxy, garbled, and so mid heavy it's like playing through a megaphone. Setup that same rig to sound great while you're standing in front of the cab, and through the monitors it will sound bloated, sibilant, and just all around gross.
 
GreatGreen said:
In my experience this is completely, totally false.

Every single time I've setup a rig to sound great through a PA or into a recording console, it sounds like absolute trash in the room. And vice versa. Setup a high gain amp to sound huge and clear through the monitors, and in-the-room it will sound small, garbled, and so mid heavy it's like playing through a megaphone. Setup that same rig to sound great while you're standing in front of the cab, and through the monitors it will sound bloated, sibilant, and just all around gross.
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This has never been my experience :idk


If we're talking dialing in a guitar amp played alone vs. in a band mix sure, but that's kind of beside this particular point
 
spawnofthesith said:
This has never been my experience :idk


If we're talking dialing in a guitar amp played alone vs. in a band mix sure, but that's kind of beside this particular point
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I'm just talking about dialing in guitar amps in isolation, just listening to the guitars for tweaking. The mics I use are nothing fancy, just an SM57 or two, and maybe a ribbon mic every now and then.
 
I like his videos/style a lot more than many of the YouTubers (ToneWars, ToneJunkie, etc.) that blather on forever, and ever, and ever, and ever.
 
GreatGreen said:
Oh you got your in-the-room tone sounding great? That's nice. Now move your head an inch in any direction. Hey look the tone is completely different. Better start tweaking knobs again. Also, if you ask somebody to listen to your in-the-room sound with you while you play, they're going to hear something completely different than you do because they're standing in a different spot. That's just how guitar cab tone works. Now let's take that rig and put it somewhere else. Completely different tone, better start tweaking, etc.
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While you're not wrong-wrong (I agree the sound changes as you move around the room)... I think it can be overstated.

Our brains are actually really good at decoding the ambience of our environment and discounting a lot of the little changes that happen when you move your head inch by inch, it's part of the psychoacoustic processing that we've been doing since the day we were born.

If the tone changed totally inch by inch, we'd never be able to evaluate anything about our tone by being in the same room as our cabs and listening. And I know from experience that I can - after years of playing guitar, I know how to dial in my gear based on how my amp sounds to me out in front of it in the room so that it'll sound the way I want to a mic directly in front of it. It's a skill that most people pick up over time, though we all know people who through cloth ears or inexperience just don't get it.
 
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