Differences between IEM, FRFR, powered cab and amp sounds

[mdoolin]

Hi all, I'm a new Helix user and for the most part loving it. For decades I've been an "old Fender combo and analog pedal board" player, playing in lots of different situations from duos to 5-piece rock to 12-piece R&B horn bands. For the last few years I've been using In Ear Monitors whenever I can, and they're pretty great, they cut down the volume and yet let me hear my tone really well. And that's what led me to Helix - realizing that if monitoring a mic straight off the speaker cone in IEMs was good, maybe getting rid of the mic and speaker would be better yet. And for the most part, it is. I replicated my pedal board layout and signal chain plus the amp and speaker (US Double Vib head with a D130 IR to simulate my Vibrosonic) and with a little tweaking it sounds great in my IEMs.

 

Now here's the problem I'm running into. If I run the XLR out into the PA or a floor monitor, the sound is very bright and harsh and somewhat lacking bass response. I would think that a good quality floor monitor (JBL EON) would sound pretty similar to good quality IEMs (Campfire Audio Atlas) but they're nowhere close. To get me through a gig I put a graphic EQ on the XLR out and rolled everything from 4k up off 6 dB or more and boosted 125 and 250 3db. That seems like a pretty extreme difference between two ostensibly FRFR systems.

 

Another variant on this: I have a 1x15 cabinet with a D130 in it and a little 50 watt Stewart power amp. So it seemed to me that if I disabled the IR in my Helix chain, the combination should again sound pretty similar. But it's even harsher and brighter.

 

Finally, I disabled all the amp and speaker modeling and ran the 1/4" output into my Vibrosonic, so the Helix is just operating as a pedalboard. That works great, except the distortion model that works well in IEMs is, again, harsh and bright, like a can of bees. I switched over to the Teemah overdrive and that sounds great through the amp. But it didn't sound good at all through IEMs or the floor monitor.

 

Am I asking too much of this thing? Ideally, I'd like to have one preset that runs my IEMs and XLR feed to the PA and sounds similar in both, and that I can turn off the speaker model and drive a guitar cab, and turn off both amp and speaker models to drive a guitar amp. It seems like that should work!

 

But at a minimum, I do need my IEMs and the PA feed to sound similar, since that's mostly what I'm doing with the Helix.

 

Thanks in advance for any ideas and advice!

[amsdenj]

Perhaps the difference in sound is what's happening between the Helix XLR output and the JBL EON FRFR. If there's anything clipping in that signal path, you get harsh, bright ugly tone, while your IEMs might sound fine. You didn't say what's feeding them.

 

Check your end-to-end signal path. Run all your blocks close to unity gain (little volume change when bypassed), and make sure the input into the PA is not even close to clipping - keep it down around -12dB or mid scale on the PA meters. You can also use the PA meters to check for unity gain in your blocks and channel volume.

 

Also make sure any effects that were designed for guitar level signals in front of the amp, but used after the amp have the headroom turned up. You can tell these block types simply by the fact that they have a headroom parameter.

 

That D130F is not known to be a warm speaker. Try using a ribbon mic off axis, maybe even middle of the cone, to tame the brightness. Then fine tune with the IR low and high cut to get the mid focus you're looking for.

 

[DunedinDragon]

There may be several factors operating here.  First, you mentioned getting rid of the speaker and mic, but you used a D130 cabinet IR.  You do realize these IR's are created with mics, right?  So the mic used and it's position on the cabinet when the IR is captured will make a difference.  These should all be documented on your IR and the mic and it's position may be feeding into some of the brightness you're hearing.  As AMSDENJ mentioned you may want to use choose an IR that uses a ribbon mic such as a Royer 121 and it's location either off-axis (if available with your IR collection) or further out from cap toward the cone edge.  My preferred setup tends to be mixes that use Royer 121 and an MD421, but that's a subjective thing that may be different for you.

 

Another thing that can happen is the quality of the IEMs you're using as well as the powered speaker.  All of these things feed into the end product of the sound.  You didn't specify which JBL EON you were using.  Some of the older one's aren't terribly accurate like the newer JBL EON612 which will have some DSP contour settings which you need to match up to how the speaker is being used (floor monitor, on stand, etc.).  In any case in my experience there are going to be differences between in ears and powered speakers simply due to their design and what they are designed to do.  Powered speakers are specifically designed for projection over long distances so will sound much more harsh up close than when you get 6 feet or more away from them which allows the speaker and the high frequency driver to blend better.  All in ears are going to sound more like studio speakers than live sound speakers so they will be naturally a bit more mellow.  But I always use the same patches for either and they work fine, but it depends on understanding how to work with modern full range live speakers and the IRs you use with them.

 

When working with modern live full range live speakers many of us employ high cuts and low cuts in our signal paths to take some of the harsh edges and low boominess off of some patches depending on what amp, what speaker, what mic and what mic positions and of course the style of music.  I tend to try to adjust these things best I can with the right mic, mic placement or mic mixes if provided by the vendor of the IR before jumping too quickly  to using high and low cuts.  Remembering, of course that powered speakers in a smaller room and in closer proximity will tend to sound harsher and more bassy sometimes than what they will sound like going through an actual FOH PA setup where the audience will naturally be further away.

 

I use a Yamaha DXR12 due to it's accuracy and consistency with most modern FOH systems in my experience and generally listen to my tones with the speaker at about chest height vertically about 6 foot away both facing the speaker, off axis from the speaker at an oblique angle, and with my back to the speaker to get a good read on it.  Even then I accept a bit more harshness because my experience is it will sound about right once I put it on stage in a real environment.  If I take too much of that harshness out it will sound somewhat dull and lifeless when I get to a live setting.  If you're positioning the speaker as a floor monitor you definitely need to use the DSP contouring option on your speaker (if you have it) to correct for bass coupling with the floor which will make your preset sound more boomy.  None of these things will generally have an effect on your in ears like they do with the live speaker.

 

Hopefully that gives you some ideas of how to best dial in your patches to get what you want.  Again, in ears and powered live speakers will never sound exactly the same, but the difference isn't all that drastic.  About the same as the difference between a live powered speaker and powered studio monitors.

[rvroberts]

As you say, it all sounds great through your amp when you just use the effects.

What you need to do is get the sort of sound out of the amp simulations that you get from an amp so by time all this ends up coming out FRFR - in full range flat response - it sounds like you imagine a good guitar sound to be.

Guitar amps tend to favour the frequencies that make a guitar sound good - that's why you need an amp sim to get any sort of decent guitar sound (well some super clean funk sounds can be straight into the desk)  That's before we think about valve distortion/overdrive, sag etc.

Next you need a speaker.  This is the bit that seems to confuse lots of new Helix users.  You have either Helix cabs or IRs - they both represent a speaker and mic combination.

As a result they need to be EQ'd - just like the real world - well actually in a lot of cases more than the real world - depends on how the IR was made.

A real guitar speaker falls off very quickly below 100Hz, and again there is a drastic drop somewhere beyond 5KHz.  So you more that likely need to duplicate this as the first step to getting a decent sound.  Often a mid kick is also part of the cut through you need.  This all depends on the IR and your desired result, but don't think you can't get a bright Strat sound for example with a high cut at 5K - you can - it just gets rid of all the harshness.

Try it!  You'll find the cuts in the cabs and IRs - or you can do it globally.  Most argue that you should do it per patch - I actually do it globally 100Hz and 5.5K with a slight mid bump (drastic cuts 24-48db slopes), and with amp EQ and the occasional graphic or cali EQ and the cuts on the cabs when I want to tighten the bottom a bit more for example, can get every sound I want and I'm in the ballpark straight away. This way I use EQ to tweak an already pretty good sound. 

 

[mdoolin]

Thanks everybody for your ideas. I think my problem was that I started with the IEMs (since that was mostly what I was planning to do with the Helix) and then that sound didn't work with the other systems. So, I decided to go about it in reverse, starting with the amp and just effects and getting that to sound right (which was easy). Then I added the amp model and IR and ran it to the floor monitor, and with a little tweaking that worked well too. And then, I tried the IEMs, and discovered that they're rather dark sounding. I think they were designed for impressive bass response, which they certainly have. The highs are there, they're just relatively subdued. So then I put an eq on just the IEMs and boosted the highs until the models sounded like they do through the floor monitor.

 

It's going to take a separate EQ to make the separate cabinet work, I suppose because as DundinDragon pointed out, there's no mic involved there. But the IEMs and PA scenario is mostly what I'm doing, and that's working well now. Thanks again!

 

Incidentally, I'm running my IEMs out of the headphone jack and running my monitor mix from the PA into the mic in. I have path 1b separated to take the mic in and go to the 1/4" out while everything else goes to the XLR out. That was one of the selling points for me, that it could replace my pedalboard, amp *and* IEM system. I've used this two different ways - if I get my own monitor mix, I run that into the mic in; if not, I just use an ambient condenser mic onstage to pick up the band.

[jws1982]

When I approach developing a tone on helix that I’ll use to play out or do studio work, I do it in a similar way that I would to mixing a song.

- first, while setting it up, I monitor it through the primary output form that people will hear (typically FOH live).  I get it sounding good through that to start.  I use a couple different PA speakers (Yamaha DXR10 [my primary], JBL Eon One, Alto TS212, etc..), making sure it sounds decent though all.

- I then hook it up in my studio and track with it, making small tweaks to help it sit a little better in a mix. 

- next, take it back to the PA speakers and make sure it still sounds good. 

- drop “send1” into the chain, and send this “FOH” output to it. 

- after send1, add any EQ/Comp/etc... needed to make it sound better in my in-ears, should I use them on a gig. Send that out of the main outputs, or send2. 

 

Just like mixing a song song in the studio, I test my patch on many different sound systems.  My in-ears are never the primary output, as that always leads to a bad sound coming from the PA or other monitors.  If you get your path sounding good through various studio monitors and pa speakers, odds are it will need very little tweaking to sound good in in-ears after that.  

 

When end I don’t use in-ears, I always bring my DXR10 to use as my on-stage monitor.  Also, I don’t completely cut the low frequencies from my tones, because it’s second-nature for FOH sound guys to automatically put low-cuts on guitar tracks.   Double low-cuts can thin out a sound pretty quick. 

[jbuhajla]

I use JBL EON 610s at home to build my presets on. The main PA I play through is a QSC system, and we monitor through IEMs. I initially started building presets using IEMs connected directly to Helix, but I found that the IEMs offered a much better bass response, so when I tweaked the preset based on that, I had very little bass playing through the PA. So I bought myself the JBLs for at home to approximate our main PA (at a cheaper cost). So when I build my presets on the powered FRFR speakers, the presets are close enough on our main PA playing live. Then when we are playing live I just tweak my IEM mix for my personal taste, and we are off to the races. 

[amsdenj]

A couple of general observations:

1. something that sounds good quiet will likely sound good or better when turned up (but watch for low end buildup) - the reverse may not be the case
2. something that sounds good on speakers will likely sound good in IEMs - the reverse may not be the case

So fine tune your patches at gig volume and through the typical FOH FRFR you're going to get, and it will probably sound fine in your IEMs.