Re-opening the Nebula for cabs discussion

giancarlo said:
AeternusEternus is doing an awesome job, testing and testing our tools and comparing. If he will find bugs we'll fix them.
Click to expand...

And YOU guys are fucking AWESOME. I do want to publicly thank you for all of your help. You've spent a lot of time on me, and you've taught me a lot I didn't know before.

I think it's just my lack of experience with sampling that allowed room for error. This is such an intricate and delicate operation, and since NAT and Nebula are so powerful, you can't afford to make the tiniest mistake. They're almost TOO powerful, haha.
 
Interesting test, but the impulse track is louder than the other two and it is clipping on the palm mutings, which makes this test not 100% accurate since we need to compare the dynamics... any chance to have a SIR track (instead of Boogex, which is not totally transparent) with a lower volume and avoiding clipping?
The amp track is clipping too in a pair of points (less than the boogex track, tho).

Thanks for your time.
 
To my ear, this nebula program sounds nothing like the previous ones. The troubling high-end on those was just too obvious. This sounds not much different from the actual cab in clip 2 frequency-wise
 
Wild Hades said:
Interesting test, but the impulse track is louder than the other two and it is clipping on the palm mutings, which makes this test not 100% accurate since we need to compare the dynamics... any chance to have a SIR track (instead of Boogex, which is not totally transparent) with a lower volume and avoiding clipping?
The amp track is clipping too in a pair of points (less than the boogex track, tho).

Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...

The impulse track WAS done with SIR.

The sounds were originally very quiet, I had to do as much boosting as I possibly could on the master bus. I probably pushed it a little too hard, but Cubase didn't show any clipping. Ultimately, though, impulses are out for me. I don't care to toy with them anymore. They can't win.
 
I just did a run with my first self-created cab session. I'm not sure I'm doing it right, but, I used one of the dynamic templates.

Cab Session 1
-Template_dynamic_1c (5K - dir)
-1 Repeat, 7 steps at 2db
-64bit, enhanced mode, mono
-63% (Att) was checked, but I don't know what it means.

cs11.PNG

cs12.PNG

cs13.PNG


http://www.myspoonistoobig.net/neb/gtr-050809-neb-cs1.wav <- Nebula
http://www.myspoonistoobig.net/neb/gtr-050809-cab.wav <- Real cab recording

http://www.myspoonistoobig.net/neb/CS1-I5-9100A.rar <- The Nebula .n2p and .n2v

When I opened this session, I added +40 to the gain on the sampler, and hit "sample." When it was done, I loaded Cubase, loaded my sample track, and turned 8505 up until the output didn't clip even once. I played it through the cab, mic'd it, and then applied Nebula to the dry signal. I adjusted the volume on 8505, and did not change a single parameter in Nebula.

So my possible errors/variation factors here could be the 8505 volume, the +40db on the sampler gain, and any of the session's settings. If you think I could stand to do something a little different, let me know!

What I notice about this test is that there's a lot of speaker hum (low volume, extremely close and loud microphone, sorry, it's too late to do anything loud) in the real cab, but virtually none in the Nebula program. But when NOTHING is running through the cab, it's got that hum. It seems loud, but it's inaudible unless I walk over and put my ear directly in front of the speaker. It exists in the same capacity when there is or isn't a signal running through it.

My thoughts = This is fucking dead accurate, but the lack of speaker hum makes me wonder about what I'm doing wrong regarding the low end. In a previous sample, we noticed that the Nebula program didn't have the cab thump we heard in the real recording, and it seems to be missing here as well. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
 
abyssofdreams said:
Hmm that's interesting...
Indeed there is less lowend on the Nebula track. Very strange. So the added harshness is due to lacking lowend or something?

I'm of no help :(
Click to expand...

Everyone's thoughts are important here. This is a brainstorm thread! The more ideas I get, the closer I may come.

It's possible that some previous added harshness was from a lack of low end so it messed with our perception a little, but it was more likely a fault in my own sampling somehow. You can really hear in some previous examples how it was like a boost on the high mids and highs.

But, do you hear any harshness here? I don't, I hear an exact replica, sans the speaker hum. I don't want the speaker hum there anyway, though, so somehow this program is magical and more awesome than I had hoped.

If I can learn the inner workings of NAT, and learn a general rundown about the templates, I can probably get even closer to a real cab situation.
 
AeternusEternus said:
What does this mean? Can you explain it? I've never even looked at Curve EQ before.
Click to expand...

Oh yes of course.

Basically you can "record" or capture the frequency response of any audio you monitor with CurveEQ. You can match and apply these captured values to any given audio and CurveEQ automatically alters the bands based on what you've captured before.

A = source file
B = destination file

In a nutshell CurveEQ takes the frequency response of A and applies it to B.

It is not too accurate but can give some fairly useful pointers.
 
So, the real cab sample has a bump in those low frequencies when compared to the nubula sample.
right?
 
I think that's right, kass, but I'm not sure. If that's what it means, then it could be the hum itself causing the variation, which certainly isn't a controllable thing. If I turned the microphone down, and did the SAME test at the same volume, we should see reduction in the bass frequencies (if I'm right). I also wonder if adding 40db of gain had something to do with it. But the peak signal was at -46db, so I had to do something, haha.

But man, that's a really flat response for the mids and above.
 
Mancha said:
To my ear, this nebula program sounds nothing like the previous ones. The troubling high-end on those was just too obvious. This sounds not much different from the actual cab in clip 2 frequency-wise
Click to expand...

I have to agree with this. I'm not hearing the brittle high end/harshness that was present in the previous tries. This sounds much better. Could it be that we (and by we, I of course mean YOU :) ) are making progress? Definitely keeping my eye on this thread, as I'd love to finally put Nebula to use. This is very encouraging!
 
It could be the lack of low-end creating the impression of harshness, for sure. Listening to the real cab, there is a lot more cabinet thump and that seems to create an impression of smoothness. Otherwise Nebula isn't too far off. Wonder how we'd get around rectifying that.

I also agree that this is closer than we (and by we I also mean YOU) have been in the past. But the lack of low has been consistent with our past tries as well if you guys recall. This might be something giancarlo would have to weigh in on, because we'd just be stabbing in the dark trying to figure out where it's coming from. Provided AE gets all things as matched as possible between the real cab clips and the neb programs, we should be seeing something closer in the lows.
 
grywolf627 said:
I have to agree with this. I'm not hearing the brittle high end/harshness that was present in the previous tries. This sounds much better. Could it be that we (and by we, I of course mean YOU :) ) are making progress? Definitely keeping my eye on this thread, as I'd love to finally put Nebula to use. This is very encouraging!
Click to expand...

We are definitely making progress here, guys. Make no mistake about it. That flat response you saw up there with that Curve EQ is proof. Now I just need to gather some thoughts about fixing the low end. It could be as simple as turning the mic down a little, or turning the power amp up a little bit. Both ideas will be tested.

Once testing with this 1960A gets that final 5-10% accuracy, my friend has a late 70s Marshall cab with V30 speakers that I can sample. PLENTY of mics to choose from. MD421, E906, E609, 57, I5, BLUE mics, a Neumann or two, etc.

There isn't a single Mesa cab in sight, though :(
 
Dang, I was so scared my NAT having some kind of bug you've found here but now I'm convinced the prog works fine and something is terrible wrong with the setting you use (never/rarely been in the expert mode) or how you record these clips. I'm way out of help now expect saying the most that curve eq shows is 60/120 Hz hum. When you remove that hum (from orig cab recording) things start to look like the Nebula recording actually has *more* low end than the cab - which of course is wrong because the prog works perfect. So...wrong session again, number of kernels etc. Haven't sampled cabs lately, but tried yesterday a "Clean Pre (1 kernel) - smooth1 - TEST" session (only 47s long) and it worked real well without any side effects. I'm interested to know which session(s) giancarlo would recommend with cabs.

Mikko
 
Mikko Vainiala said:
Dang, I was so scared my NAT having some kind of bug you've found here but now I'm convinced the prog works fine and something is terrible wrong with the setting you use (never/rarely been in the expert mode) or how you record these clips. I'm way out of help now expect saying the most that curve eq shows is 60/120 Hz hum. When you remove that hum (from orig cab recording) things start to look like the Nebula recording actually has *more* low end than the cab - which of course is wrong because the prog works perfect. So...wrong session again, number of kernels etc. Haven't sampled cabs lately, but tried yesterday a "Clean Pre (1 kernel) - smooth1 - TEST" session (only 47s long) and it worked real well without any side effects. I'm interested to know which session(s) giancarlo would recommend with cabs.

Mikko
Click to expand...
Well, wait a second. If that's a 60/120 hum and it's removable, then how can I remove it? Because I sampled the cab with that hum there. The Nebula program is going to see like it has more low end, but that's because the hum was sampled.

..right? I dunno.

How I can be sure this hum doesn't happen anymore? *EDIT* I've never done anything to try and fix it, so that could explain something about all of these bassless Nebula programs.
 
I think all this investigation must be done by the Nebula developers, not by a simple user of the program.
Nebula 0 - AeternusEternus 1

At the moment, nebula cabs sound very, very thin compared with impulses and real cabs.
 
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