How to boost / lower patch levels without altering tone?

[bc05]

Hey guys

 

I'm looking to set an even volume for all my patches and was wondering what is best practice to do this?

The ones that have IR's built in I adjust the volume on the IR's but there must be a better way to do this that will apply to ALL patches including the ones built with stock cabs?

 

Cheers

[rvroberts]

I'd love to offer a technical solution to you.  But I don't think one exists!  The problem is complex.  The observed "loudness" of a patch is not just some metered value.  It has as much to do with the sound itself and the fact that your ears hear different frequencies differently and that again changes depending on volume.  So I'm afraid the best you can do is get in a decent sized space and adjust your levels against a sound you decide to call your reference level.  Its a time consuming process and you probably need to do it twice as your ears get tired.  You need to do it at the type of level you are going to play at - it will not work at every level.  That's again just the physics of hearing.  You should adjust your overall global EQ while playing at level too.  Then you will be in the ballpark.  Then you need to do a rehearsal with your band and make more adjustments because some sounds will get lost in the mix more than others and you will need to either boost or EQ them some more to hear them well without being excessively loud.  I've done all the above, and depending on the stage, I still need to make on the fly adjustments.  So all my patches end in a volume pedal.

That means the FOH guy still needs to be on the case because what I hear and what he hears are not necessarily the same thing.

There is a Fetcher Munson patch that offers some help - http://line6.com/customtone/search/?submitted=1&family=helix&search_term=fletcher-munson

Can't say I used it - I just did it by ear at volume - but will test it soon to make some new patches.

You can also read this - http://line6.com/support/page/kb/_/general-faq/studio-tone-vs-live-tone-and-the-fletcher-muns-r448

[zooey]

Besides rvroberts' comments on how to judge how loud a given patch is, couple things about how to actually adjust the level of a patch:

 

- The level of the final output block is a universal place to adjust volume that applies pretty much any time.

 

- If you want a pedal or other manual controller to adjust volume too, you'll need to do that somewhere else, since a given parameter can only be controlled by one thing. An easy way to do that is to add a Simple EQ block right before the final output block, and adjust its level.

 

- I'll typically adjust the volume of a block whose parameters I'm changing for other reasons to make sense for what those changes are doing. For instance, if one snapshot turns up amp drive, I'd usually adjust the channel volume to either compensate for that, or if I mean for the gain change to also increase volume, like for solos, so it does that by an intentional amount.

 

- Some people try to have each block be roughly unity gain, i.e., same level bypassed and not, on the theory that you're less likely to clip something in the chain that way. I don't do that personally, among other reasons because you sometimes want extra gain before the amp, which makes the whole thing a bit meaningless.