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Why low and high cuts necessary?


tourultimate
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Hey guys, sorry, a little late to the party. I've been away for a while. Yes I have been commenting on this "Fizz" issue since the X3 days. You guys are missing one important thing here, and I'll say it again, Tube Amps are fizzy!! I call it "Tube Sizzle". You can hear it in every professional recording and it's not a studio trick. That is how actual tube amps sound. Yes it's true I have access to a plethora of Isolated guitar stems from many many many professional recordings. Please don't ask me where I got them because I can't say. Anyway . .  here is an example of some of the best guitar tones from some professional recording you might recognize. These are unaltered, direct stereo guitar stems. I couldn't put this on YT because I didn't want to get flagged so I put it on my server.  

First up:  Eddie Van Halen, then Keith Nelson & Stevie D from Buck Cherry, then Joe Perry (Aerosmith), then K.K. Downing & Glenn Tipton  (J.P), and finally, Slash.

https://www.glenndelaune.com/guitar-stems.mp3

My point is this: if you would hear these guitar tones by themselves and din't know where they were from would you think they were good?? Don't get rid of the fizz guys!!

 

I prefer your use of the word tube "sizzle" instead of "fizz" for the frequencies in a tube amp that you want to keep. To me "sizzle" more accurately implies part of the natural character of a tube amp rather than the more pejorative "fizz" which I have seen so often used to describe a more artificial digital sort of artifact particularly present on older or low-end modeling devices. Maybe splitting hairs but just trying to differentiate between three things - "sizzle" = the positive mid-high frequency characteristics of a tube amp that you want to retain that help it both sit in and cut through the mix, "fizz" = the frequency characteristics of a modeling device that can give you an unpleasantly "artificial" vibe, and lastly "incorrect EQ" =  the areas in the frequency range that may not necessarily sound "digital/artificial" but are boomy, muddy, spikey, or brittle, jump out of the mix unnaturally, and exhaust a listener's and player's ears and should be attenuated. 

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Line6 may have made a useful compromise with the Cab models. Different mic choices and positions require sampling and storing different IRs. That takes time and memory space in Helix. A compromise would be to capture the speaker IR with the mic positioned at Cap so it gets the maximum amount of high frequency content, and then use high cut to adjust from there. That will sound different than the same mic and speaker IR captured at cone or cone-edge, but maybe the difference isn't that great and the engineering compromise is good enough.

 

Luckily we have the choice with Helix. I tend to use blended IRs that are pretty warm, ribbon mics and positioned at cone or cone edge. Then I don't need much high cut. But I can easily see taking the opposite approach: SM57 positioned at cap or cap-edge, and then use high cut to taste.

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I can quite happily get along with the Line 6 cabs that come installed with Helix. I also have a stack of IRs from various retail and free sources on the web. Some of those are very good, but life is too short to be trawling through folders full of impulse response files. I actually don't mind spending time with EQ to get a better result.

What I don' t really comprehend about this is why the ability to move the virtual mic off axis, along from the cone to the edge, beside the distance from the speaker, is not already available. The reason I find this odd is because way back in late 2004 when I had the PODxt Live and GearBox, although there were only 4 mic options, the SM57 did have both on and off axis available. This also carried through to my POD HD500 with POD Farm albeit with 8 mics, the Shure 57 models were on and off axis.

Digital technology has come a long way since then. I have a copy of IK AmpliTube on my iPad which allows the positioning of 2 different mics at different places, likewise the amp/cab set ups in Logic Pro and even the humble GarageBand allows you to modify the microphone placement. O.K. I know my examples are not using IRs but...

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