Dialing in tones at home vs. live

[patdixon]

Last weekend I did my first full blown Helix into FOH gig, worked okay - the sound guy said I had great tone. My problem is the level, mostly the OD/Dist were all over the place so I was doing a lot of dancing around between presets. I also tried an FRFR speaker at a friend's house & it was distorted. My most common amp model is a Marshall Plexi Jump / 4x12 greenback cab /57  with the gain below the factory setting.

 

All I have at home for FRFR is a pair of Rockit 5s & of course some headphones but I understand Fletcher Munson & the danger of setting sound that way. Any ideas for balancing the low level / high gain sound at home vs. the high headroom clean sound live? It's almost like you have to fake out the system at home but it's not the same.

 

Any tips/help very much appreciated. Since we use Iem's it seems that headphones would be the same but again, way different.

 

 

 

 

[JarrodNelson]

Thanks for posting this.  I battle the same problem.  I will be curious what others have to say.

 

I've been using the Helix at home and for gigs since about the time it came out.  Here are some things I do that seem to help.

 

1) Minimize the number of presets you use.  Typically I stick to the same preset for a majority of songs, and only use others if I need to nail the tone on a specific song.  

2) Use a Decibel Meter app to balance volume between pedals and presets.  I do this at home where I run my Helix through an acoustic amp (set flat).  This gets me pretty close, but I've noticed even when it's perfect at home, it's not so perfect live.

3) Don't be afraid to make a quick adjustment in rehearsal (hopefully closer to live configuration) or live and save it. 

 

The biggest problem I still have is the volume difference between an amp's clean setting and one with a OD pedal.  I will be watching to see what others have to say.

[cruisinon2]

36 minutes ago, patdixon said:

All I have at home for FRFR is a pair of Rockit 5s & of course some headphones but I understand Fletcher Munson & the danger of setting sound that way. Any ideas for balancing the low level / high gain sound at home vs. the high headroom clean sound live? It's almost like you have to fake out the system at home but it's not the same.

 

Any tips/help very much appreciated. Since we use Iem's it seems that headphones would be the same but again, way different.

 

 

 

 

 

You have grasped the problem perfectly... however, the is no magic workaround. Without EQ manipulation, you'll never get multiple, very different outputs to sound the same. You need to tweak your patches and level relative volumes at the volume at which you intend to use them, through the same (or at least similar) kind of speakers that you'll be running through live. And each different output method...IEMs vs. PA vs. studio monitors, etc. will absolutely have an effect on your tone, and there's nothing you can do about that. What sounds glorious through your IEM's could easily be less than inspiring out front, or vise versa. You could split your chain at the end, and have parallel paths to different outputs, each with an EQ block tweaked accordingly... but perfect continuity is never gonna happen. There will always be compromise. Ultimately you want the best sound going out to the audience, so make sure it sounds good in FOH, then worry about getting a sound you can live with in your ears.

[DunedinDragon]

My approach is going to be different than most, but that's because I have almost as much time working as a sound engineer as I do being a musician, so it's somewhat of a combined perspective that's reflective of both.

My typical stage system consists of the Yamaha DXR12 as my stage monitor positioned behind me  in a backline setup on a half height pole.  My Helix is setup so that I feed the DXR12 from the 1/4" output of the Helix, and feed the FOH from the XLR output.  I've configured the Helix volume control so that it is only affecting the 1/4" output,  Therefore my feed to the FOH is at full volume from the Helix and is gain staged appropriately at the mixing board.  This allows me to control my stage blend with the rest of the band separate from the FOH blend managed by the mixing board.

Generally speaking I dial in my presets by monitoring the signal output of the 1/4" with my Helix volume set at 3 o'clock.  This is the loudest stage volume I could ever imagine needing on stage and I adjust the output of my presets and snapshots by adjusting the channel volumes on my amp models so that the signal level as measured on the mixing board lights is about -8db.  This is quite a bit louder than what I'll ever use on stage since in live performance where my Helix volume will generally set at around 12 o'clock.  But this ensures I have a signal level loud enough when dialing in my patches to get the appropriate responses from other blocks in my signal chain, particularly ones like reverbs, delays and compressors.  It's also at a level that ensures the amp models themselves respond in a fashion similar to their real life counterparts.  The point of all of this is to get as close as possible to the kind of signal and behaviors being sent to the FOH via the XLR output.  Once that's all dialed in, I adjust by ear for perceived loudness that's affected by the tone of clean, crunchy and lead settings so they will blend correctly with the rest of the mix with the instruments and require little adjustment on the part of the sound guy at the mixing board.  All he should have to do is gain stage my signal off of any of my presets to be at unity on the mixing board, then adjust my volume level via my channel fader to mix correctly with the other instruments and voices and sit correctly within the mix.  Once I'm gain staged and mixed at the mixing board I can pretty much be hands off by the sound man for the rest of the performance.  This process has worked perfectly week after week for a long time and across a very wide range of music genres from rock, jazz, blues, r&b, country, funk, rockabilly, etc. and across well over 200 presets.

I've attached a picture of my home setup.
 

[codamedia]

1 hour ago, patdixon said:

All I have at home for FRFR is a pair of Rockit 5s

 

These are just a few suggestions... there are already some great ones provided above, I'm just lending my 2 cents.

 

There is nothing wrong with Rockit 5s.... it's a good start. I'd suggest you setup your tones "as loud as you are allowed to" on those rockits. They should get you to about 90db in a small room and that is enough (likely a little more than enough) to simulate stage volume. 

 

Set your tones up on the Rockits, and test them in the headphones. Better yet... test them in the buds you use for your IEM's. The trick is making them sound good in BOTH the Rockits and the headphones... not one or the other. Neither of those is how the audience hears it, that's why you don't optimize the tones for just one set. Get the tones sounding good in both!  

 

As for initial levels... trust meters, not your ears (ears come in the next paragraph).  The more gain a guitar has the louder it appears, but it is actually quieter and often needs to be turned up. When you use meters you will be surprised at how loud a heavily over-driven guitar needs to be to match a cleaner/crunchier guitar. With clean tones, compression will play the same trick on the ears. Don't let your ears trick you or your lead tones will be far too quiet when you need them most on a stage.

 

Once the tones are taken to the rehearsal room or stage... that is where you fine tune the levels with your ears. A small tweak here and there should be all that is needed. Keep note of these tweaks for when you create new tones and you will soon get quite adept at setting up patches at home and taking them directly to a stage. 

 

FWIW... I set my tones up on two sets of monitors in my home studio. One set is studio grade near field monitors with 6.5" woofer, the other is a 3 way set of consumer grade speakers with a 10" woofer. When I get my tones working on BOTH (as I described earlier) the tones never fail to translate to every FOH and Monitor system I encounter. Techs are usually surprised at how FLAT they get to keep my guitar strip! 

 

[themetallikid]

story of modeling and direct to FOH...its hard to find a good balance and almost impossible to 'perfect' them.  You can use metering to get 'close' or ballpark, but your ears will be the best approach. 

 

Here is something else to consider that I run into.  My band uses our own PA setup so I can setup our stuff and tweak away to make sure the audience is getting what I want them to get with my guitar sounds.  HOWEVER, there are a few places that have in house sound systems....though the sound guys are quality guys (one guy is on the road with Cheap Trick often), the systems are quality systems....and we use the same line of rack/digital mixers....the difference comes in how they gain stage the channel strip.  I especially have issues with lead boosts, as I prefer to boost things from my end rather than rely on a sound guy to pay attention and fader ride me all night. 

 

Lets say for the sake of simplicity that I have everything 'perfect' on our pa, the input gain is at 0.0 on my guitar channel....if I go play with one of the other PA systems and to get his system 'happy' he has boost my channels gain at the board by 3.0db, then every volume nuance I have in my presets (and my lead boosts, which are perfect for our system) will be blown even wider apart and sound like there is a bigger discrepancy than there is....being that I have over 90 song presets and usually use 45-50 in a night, its really hard to reprogram the lead boosts between sound check and start time, so its either roll with the volume issues or work with the sound guy to explain whats happening.  In my case the sound guys get it, and they reduce the gain and raise the fader a bit, and it helps correct the issue....

 

but something to consider with home system vs pa systems that the gain staging at the mixer will affect any volume differences you have with your own rig.

[themetallikid]

Quote

Techs are usually surprised at how FLAT they get to keep my guitar strip! 

THis is my goal as well...other than the level adjustments at the board, the sound techs I've got in my area usually run me flat as well...and occaisionally will make a cut somewhere in the upper mids/lower highs due to speaker differences...but they usually don't have to turn my tones in to a rollercoaster of peaks and cuts to get it right.

[codamedia]

10 minutes ago, themetallikid said:

THis is my goal as well...other than the level adjustments at the board, the sound techs I've got in my area usually run me flat as well...and occaisionally will make a cut somewhere in the upper mids/lower highs due to speaker differences...but they usually don't have to turn my tones in to a rollercoaster of peaks and cuts to get it right.

 

Exactly... I like to make it so they never have to deal with anything extreme... just subtle adjustments.

 

I'm a multi-instrumentalist so I also run a pedal steel, baritone, dobro, acoustic, mandolin, 5-string banjo and a Variax (constant change) down that one line. Techs panic when they first realize that.... but by the end of the first set/show they realize I've got it all balanced they way it should be... leaving them to just make minor adjustments here and there. 

[patdixon]

Thank you everyone, great comments! It's comforting to know that it's not just me being stupid. I'll try some of these ideas and hopefully report back with an idea or two of my own.

[DunedinDragon]

2 hours ago, themetallikid said:

 

Lets say for the sake of simplicity that I have everything 'perfect' on our pa, the input gain is at 0.0 on my guitar channel....if I go play with one of the other PA systems and to get his system 'happy' he has boost my channels gain at the board by 3.0db, then every volume nuance I have in my presets (and my lead boosts, which are perfect for our system) will be blown even wider apart and sound like there is a bigger discrepancy than there is....being that I have over 90 song presets and usually use 45-50 in a night, its really hard to reprogram the lead boosts between sound check and start time, so its either roll with the volume issues or work with the sound guy to explain whats happening.  In my case the sound guys get it, and they reduce the gain and raise the fader a bit, and it helps correct the issue....

 

but something to consider with home system vs pa systems that the gain staging at the mixer will affect any volume differences you have with your own rig.

 

Not to hijack the thread but that's a very odd situation you're having.  Normally changing the trim or gain is simply adjusting the incoming signal so that it pairs up with everyone else's incoming signal via the preamp on the channel.  If you're gain staged at 0.0 and your lead is +2db, it should always be +2db over unity as it passes through the preamp to the faders.  It shouldn't be an exponential rise, just a difference in the rate at which different preamps boost or reduce the base signal, but changes in the incoming signal should still be linear boosts and would indicate that correctly at gain staging time.  The actual volume level for where the guitar sits in the mix is managed by the faders, so if your fader is sitting at maybe -6, your boosted signal should still only be +2db over that.  Unless there's a difference in the FOH speakers or how they have the FOH speakers tuned that might accentuate certain frequencies and create a perceived boost in the signal.

That's just really odd.  I've never encountered that.

[Heavyville]

there is no easy way, but what I can tell you is to adjust all aspects of the patch/tone at the intended volume and source. 

I'm a bit complicated in my approach right now out of maybe stupidity. 

Line 6 gave us plenty of "setlists"  so I use the setlists differently. 

1. Set list one - Studio monitors / Studio sound only.   

copy patch  to set list 2, same location.

2. Set list 2 - Live sound via Mic'd up cab.  ( all patches tweaked loudly - I mean Gig volume and maybe a bit more) ( I don't have FRFR )

     2.a)  I may also set up a dual path here, one going to the amp, one going to FOH if a MIc will not be placed onto the cab, but this has complications now with adding a Cab or IR and now you'll need to replicate that tone potentially or make an IR of the cab your using.

3. IEM mix, because the quality of IEM's is a mess and most things do not translate well onto IEM's from other sources ( unless you got some spanky new Empire Ears IEMS)...

     3.a)   I may have dual patch set up here too, if IEMs are the preferred method for a show, and I would grab the dual path from 2a and mess it up.

 

it's complicated right now, but thats because I cannot find a balance which works for them all.   Going to FRFR for me will help reduce the amount of different set lists i need and tweaking i hope. 

 

I use my ears as the final judgement on volume, although I do use an SPL meter and the meters on my DAW to help speed up the work flow when doing this. 

I like to aim between -6 and -8 db for my patches on a board for live patches. 

 

 

[themetallikid]

7 hours ago, DunedinDragon said:

 

Not to hijack the thread but that's a very odd situation you're having.  Normally changing the trim or gain is simply adjusting the incoming signal so that it pairs up with everyone else's incoming signal via the preamp on the channel.  If you're gain staged at 0.0 and your lead is +2db, it should always be +2db over unity as it passes through the preamp to the faders.  It shouldn't be an exponential rise, just a difference in the rate at which different preamps boost or reduce the base signal, but changes in the incoming signal should still be linear boosts and would indicate that correctly at gain staging time.  The actual volume level for where the guitar sits in the mix is managed by the faders, so if your fader is sitting at maybe -6, your boosted signal should still only be +2db over that.  Unless there's a difference in the FOH speakers or how they have the FOH speakers tuned that might accentuate certain frequencies and create a perceived boost in the signal.

That's just really odd.  I've never encountered that.

Yeah this is something i've experienced often.  I dont know if the 'above' is happening, but I have noticed this.  When we first started (pre-Helix for my) we had a dedicated sound guy, and I would tweak tones at home using headphones/powered wedge (i'm educated enough to adjust and not make the headphones/wedge perfect, but perfect for FOH)...I'd get what would seem like a good lead boost (most presets are +3db gain block at end of the chain before output, maybe not the best approach?) but when I get to the FOH...the lead tones are louder or not as loud as what I had dialed in at home, then having to readjust each preset again using the main rig and doing a quick adjustment on all presets before we start.  

 

Also when those tones were dialed in well with our system when I would play elsewhere it just seemed like they were louder than what we had on our system.  Again, not sure where its coming from, but I have noticed that different systems seem to cause issues with my volume boosts for leads. 

[DunedinDragon]

5 hours ago, themetallikid said:

Yeah this is something i've experienced often.  I dont know if the 'above' is happening, but I have noticed this.  When we first started (pre-Helix for my) we had a dedicated sound guy, and I would tweak tones at home using headphones/powered wedge (i'm educated enough to adjust and not make the headphones/wedge perfect, but perfect for FOH)...I'd get what would seem like a good lead boost (most presets are +3db gain block at end of the chain before output, maybe not the best approach?) but when I get to the FOH...the lead tones are louder or not as loud as what I had dialed in at home, then having to readjust each preset again using the main rig and doing a quick adjustment on all presets before we start.  

 

Also when those tones were dialed in well with our system when I would play elsewhere it just seemed like they were louder than what we had on our system.  Again, not sure where its coming from, but I have noticed that different systems seem to cause issues with my volume boosts for leads. 

 

Yeah, that's making more sense now with the +3db gain block.  When it comes to leads, that's one area where I heavily depend on my ears more than on the signal level or an arbitrary boost.  That's mainly because leads, by their nature, tend to have characteristics that already separate them from the mix by their perceived volume.  In other words I usually depend as much on a change in tonality rather than just a boost in volume to separate them from the mix, mostly by using an effect like a Minotaur, Screamer, Teemah, or a compressor etc.  Although that generally works quite well, I also have to admit I don't get it exactly right all the time and have to adjust a bit when I get with the band.  But once I make that adjustment and save it, it's good from there on whenever I use that preset again on whatever FOH system I'm playing through.

[patdixon]

5 hours ago, DunedinDragon said:

I also have to admit I don't get it exactly right all the time and have to adjust a bit when I get with the band

Exactly. And it's not limited to Helix or FOH systems. So many variables complicate this situation- Guitar / preamp / amp volume, stomp settings, EQ, FOH & other player's ability to listen and adjust on the fly.

 

I appreciate every one of these responses, great info here!

[themetallikid]

On ‎8‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 2:34 AM, DunedinDragon said:

 

Yeah, that's making more sense now with the +3db gain block.  When it comes to leads, that's one area where I heavily depend on my ears more than on the signal level or an arbitrary boost.  That's mainly because leads, by their nature, tend to have characteristics that already separate them from the mix by their perceived volume.  In other words I usually depend as much on a change in tonality rather than just a boost in volume to separate them from the mix, mostly by using an effect like a Minotaur, Screamer, Teemah, or a compressor etc.  Although that generally works quite well, I also have to admit I don't get it exactly right all the time and have to adjust a bit when I get with the band.  But once I make that adjustment and save it, it's good from there on whenever I use that preset again on whatever FOH system I'm playing through.

Yes I do not us an static number for my boost, I only use maybe 4-5 amps in most of my presets, at least the ones with leads in them.  I usually use an EQ boosting 800hz, and either a TS808/Kinky Boost or Valve Driver depending on which amp and type of lead I want.  So those give me the 'tone' change, but I still like to get out front and the gain boost just gives me an extra step on that.  It isn't super different, but I've been debating if there is a better way or should be eliminated. 

 

With 2 guitars its nice to have that extra ride on top during leads. Its not much, just enough....until we use another system, lol.

 

[patdixon]

An update:

 

Using tips above I set my presets to sound decent with phones, rocket 5s & my stage amp. I think I'm good for now. It's hard to use the virtual db meter that comes with Reaper so I just used my ears. One thing that still eludes me is the various stomp levels. The default level settings on say, the tube driver are at 6.5 which I guess is just an arbitrary number, not like a db value. Since I've heard here & at other places that 3db increase is a good place for leads I set it where it sounds right while playing along with a track.

 

The other guitar player (band leader) is always b****ing at me to turn my leads up so I have to crank it but feel more comfortable at a lower level. Really, going foh now it's the sound guys problem but I'd rather have it set correctly so he/she doesn't have to do much as codamedia said above.

 

Thanks again for all the help.