Guitar tone competition 2 round 9

[Ermz]

You misunderstand the meaning of my post. My implication is that every single entry I have heard out of all 9 rounds doesn't contain a single tone that in and of itself impresses me - including my own. The latter was said in order to clarify that I am not attempting to demean the skills of all the other entrants at reamping, but more so commenting that the quality of the DIs is crucial, as they are the single common denominator between all entries. The backing track is less than ideal, that goes without saying, but I've never raised much of an issue with it. It is what it is.

You're essentially stating the obvious here. Of course everyone is going to make do with what they have, and I'm sure just about everyone has. It doesn't necessarily imply that the end product of any of those circumstances will be great. At the end of the day there is a limiting factor common to all entries, and that is the DIs. It makes more sense to allude that rather than 70+ people all being poor at reamping, that the common factor - the source, is sub-standard. It was educational in that it coincided with all my prior experiences with reamping, whether internal, 3rd party or otherwise. The kicker here was that it's on a huge scale, so the margin for error on the entrants' part has to be somewhat diminished by the plain variety of entries.

The comment has no bearing on my own entry specifically, so I'm not sure what the point of addressing it was. Lest the impression is that I'm bitter because it got knocked out or somesuch, because it hasn't. Given the cheap nature of the gear involved it was more of an experiment to toss that fish out in the pond and see how far it got before being eaten. I use these opportunities to educate myself and others, illuminate issues that may be plaguing us, dispel myths and attempt to generally attain a higher level of proficiency at the craft - not to blindly mis-direct blame to shelfter my own ego.

So that is to say, no, I am not the culprit here.

 

[lolzgreg]

You misunderstand the meaning of my post. My implication is that every single entry I have heard out of all 9 rounds doesn't contain a single tone that in and of itself impresses me - including my own. The latter was said in order to clarify that I am not attempting to demean the skills of all the other entrants at reamping, but more so commenting that the quality of the DIs is crucial, as they are the single common denominator between all entries. The backing track is less than ideal, that goes without saying, but I've never raised much of an issue with it. It is what it is.

You're essentially stating the obvious here. Of course everyone is going to make do with what they have, and I'm sure just about everyone has. It doesn't necessarily imply that the end product of any of those circumstances will be great. At the end of the day there is a limiting factor common to all entries, and that is the DIs. It makes more sense to allude that rather than 70+ people all being poor at reamping, that the common factor - the source, is sub-standard. It was educational in that it coincided with all my prior experiences with reamping, whether internal, 3rd party or otherwise. The kicker here was that it's on a huge scale, so the margin for error on the entrants' part has to be somewhat diminished by the plain variety of entries.

The comment has no bearing on my own entry specifically, so I'm not sure what the point of addressing it was. Lest the impression is that I'm bitter because it got knocked out or somesuch, because it hasn't. Given the cheap nature of the gear involved it was more of an experiment to toss that fish out in the pond and see how far it got before being eaten. I use these opportunities to educate myself and others, illuminate issues that may be plaguing us, dispel myths and attempt to generally attain a higher level of proficiency at the craft - not to blindly mis-direct blame to shelfter my own ego.

So that is to say, no, I am not the culprit here.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

People said the DIs for the last guitar tone competition weren't great. I didn't see a huge issue until everyone pointed it out later. I think there were a few awesome tones that came out of that one, excluding my own for that matter.

 

[Ermz]

Can't say I'm very familiar with the first comp. That one flew by, but if there were some good reamps, then great. These things can sometimes be deceiving however, as a 'poor' tone, that's masked in the correct way by the backing track can really create the impression of something good. This is something else that's been very evident in the current competition. People voting through some very odd-sounding entries, in the face of being presented with much more fitting ones, simply on account of the fitting entry being a little too low, or the muddy one being more in one's face, or because the fitting one has extremely thin lows, as a professional guitar tone would on a record where there was an actual bass guitar holding down the bottom. The issue is that the point of perception is skewed unless we have a near perfect backing track to work from, so I've disregarded it entirely and just focused on the tones themselves.

To hopefully illustrate a bit on the issue, some of the best DIs I was ever fed were Sly's from that thread he made in the general section a little while back asking for test reamping. I used that as a benchmark, and based a number of other different DI reamps off that general mic position (basically close to the ideal I could find on the harley benton - no other parts of the front face quite sounded as balanced with a single sm57). Now I don't know what the magic factor is. From your account the gear used on this comp was quite decent, and certainly the gear Sly used was stellar. But both are untight in their own ways, yet Sly's managed to one-up just about every other DI I've tried, tight or no. It had a certain response with the amp, a certain fullness and 'squishyness' that I've only had by plugging a guitarist right into a 6505 before. Traditionally there has always been a loss with reamping, whether or not it could be 'measured' in the final product, it was quite evident when compared to plugging someone right in. My assumption is that it's a combination of all factors. The playing style being most important, the actual quality and clarity of the take being a close second, followed by having an extremely transparent gear chain that will retain the 'elusive' something which interacts with the amp in such a magical way. This has been a real important issue for me as of course I rely on DI/Reamping structured recording to cut costs for my clients and to ensure repeatability and consistency. It's been crucial to find the point where that *something* gets lost, and correct it.

Now don't get me wrong. The backing track factors majorly in how these tones are perceived, without a doubt. But if just focusing on the source tracks themselves, there is a little something missing. Some loss of fidelity, clarity, power, something... I knew it as soon as I was there tweaking the amp a little longer than I would've liked, and the amount of post-processing taken to approximate the starting point I got from no post-processing on Sly's. Not only that but as soon as the clearer entries of the competition were criticized as having 'muddy mutes', it became obvious that the performance was at play. Those tones essentially suffered negative commentary on account of the performance, simply because the tone itself provided more musical detail to the listener.

 

[ahjteam]

...

I'll get back to this when the end of the finals start to get near

 

[Dexter_prog]

To me it was between X, Y and ZZ. I narrowed it down to X and ZZ because Y wasn't as good as the other 2, and finally picked ZZ.

I agree with Ermz on not being impressed by any tone at all. I've been impressed with other tones submitted by users that didn't make it, but not with the one in this comp. I think it is a combination of:
- the bass is really low and there's almost no low end
- the composition is not that good to judge a tone (lack of sections with guitars playing chords?)


Another thing I've noted is that many of the most voted tracks in every round where the tracks where the guitars where the most unbalanced compared to the backing track. I mean, in most of those tones the guitars where a couple of dBs louder than they would be in a real mix, probably to make the tone to be noticed more clearly, but I still did not like that.

 

[MarkG]

Congrats to YY!

X was LePou.

Guitar signal path descritpion:
-Both guitar tracks have been double and pan hard left and hard right.
-All four guitar tracks are processed with TSS->LePou LeCTO->Diffrent Impulse (2 with Catharsis pres-high, one with AWESOMTIME and one with MarshallJCM200 SM57)
-A guitar track on each side was processed with ADT (vaccumSound) to slightly alter the timing and the pitch of the track.
-Left and right guitars are then send to two bus where they have been EQ to boost different mid range part of the spectrum with Waves VEQ3.
-These two bus are finally send to the final guitar bus for EQ (Waves q4), slight copression (Waves SSL) and a bit of reverb Waves IR-L with Studio impulse)

That's it.

LePou

XX was Vespiz

Guitars - recording

PT 7.1

-> Lynx Aurora 8

-> Radial ProRMP

-> Peavey 6505+: Green, bright, crunch, gain ~7, low 6, mid 2, high 6, post ~4, resonance 6+, presence 8+

-> Krank Cab (revolution??)

-> SM57, TG201, Beta52, all on-axis on different speakers

-> 57+201 into Chandler Limited TG2, Beta52 into SPL Goldmike

-> Lynx Aurora 8

-> PT 7.1


Guitars - mixdown


Inside PT, some spikes removed with surgical EQ, plus hi/lo-pass ~100hz / ~10kHz.
Nasty 3K scooped from Beta52 tracks (-5db).

-> Lynx Aurora 8

-> Toft ATB24

-> EQ: 8kHz +4-5dB, 4kHz +2dB, 350Hz -2dB (approx.)

-> Lynx Aurora 8

-> PT 7.1 record to track, export audio.

Y was Lumpong_Bayag

(See Picturs for Settings)
Here's the Chain

Guitars:
1.Solo-c
2.8505
3.Pristine Space
4.REQ 6

Guitars Buss:
1.Rcomp
2.CurveEQ
3.REQ 6
4.REQ 2
5.L2

Z was Macymalone

No info submitted

ZZ was Wolfeman

No info submitted

 

[Metaltastic]

Fuck, I can't believe I missed this - FWIW, I honestly would have voted for X

 

[vespiz]

I thought my tone sucked donkey ass.

I tried and I tried, but I just couldn't get it to sound.. right, you know?
Maybe there was .. something going on that Ermz alluded to and I reacted to that?

Who knows, maybe I just suck. Yeah, that's it!

.... why am I even posting??

 

[MarkG]

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/...ar-tone-competition-2-final-round-really.html

 

[Wolfeman]

If anyone cared, mine was 50% Herbert and 50% Valve Junior. OD820 before both, going into my Bogner cab with a single SM57. Didn't do any post EQ or use any plugins, just threw the mic up and liked what I got on the first try. Surprised to hear someone say it sounded digital.

 

[Djabthrash]

Surprised to hear someone say it sounded digital.

Well i guess that was me I think i have a tendency to mix up "smooth" and "digital-sounding". I guess i meant smooth.

 

[arvoitus]

Can somebody please give a opinion on my mix:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3822426/guitartone-arvoitus.wav

I didn't join the competition because i somehow lost the project so i couldnt make a seperate file without backing track.

Please tell me, what can i improve?