Clean vs distorted levels

    I balance clean and distorted levels with Clean Sense. This mostly works fine, and I can get a natural transition when turning the gain dial. I think I've even set it so that the clean levels are slightly louder than they naturally would be, to even things out a bit. Nice feature when adjusting gain in a live situation.


    However, a few odd rigs behave differently; the cleans will be much louder than should be expected when dialing down the gain. A couple of these rigs is "London Trem Drive - MD421" and "Rocker Dirty - Woodpecker".


    Any ideas why this would be? It's not a big problem when making presets, but not how I'd like for it to act if adjusting it live. Just trying to make sense of it! 8)

    reducing the gain means reducing the amount of saturation/compression/limiting of the signal.
    clean signals have an extremely wide dynamic range, so the peak volume is higher than with distorted sounds.
    Balancing this against the perceived volume can be tricky, but is exactly what you would get from traditional amps.

    Quote from DonPetersen

    reducing the gain means reducing the amount of saturation/compression/limiting of the signal.
    clean signals have an extremely wide dynamic range, so the peak volume is higher than with distorted sounds.
    Balancing this against the perceived volume can be tricky, but is exactly what you would get from traditional amps.


    Not sure I'm making myself completely clear :) Yep, clean sounds are obviously much more dynamic. I wouldn't agree that clean sounds have higher peak limit though....that would be impossible in an amp. A few amps, like the ones I mentioned, have a very different balance between clean/distorted than the rest. As I decrease the gain to minimum, headroom is increased considerably. Other amps acts like I would expect (and how I calibrated it with Clean Sense), keeping the same peak limit. And thus sound louder as gain and saturation/compression is increased.

    Adjusting clean sense helps even out the volume but I think your asking too much for it be the complete answer.


    For offending profiles I adjust the cab volume and save.

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    But I'm really curious why some very few profiles acts very different from the rest.....


    And adjusting the gain control on such a profile doesn't work in a live situation, as more gain attenuates the amp.

    When you adjust clean sense in a way that clean sounds appear a little louder than 'they naturally would be', that's a choice you are , given by the clean sense parameter.


    As a consequence, when you turn down the gain, the resulting clean sound might increase its volume as a consequence.


    I am confident you will find a pleasant setting. Probably you have to turn down ckean sense by a bit.

    Quote from ckemper


    I am confident you will find a pleasant setting. Probably you have to turn down ckean sense by a bit.


    Yep, that's exactly what I've done. Works like a charm. My point is that there are some odd profiles that act very different from the rest. A couple of these profiles are "London Trem Drive - MD421" and "Rocker Dirty - Woodpecker" ("Rocker Dirty - SM57", on the other hand, works as expected).


    Try adjusting gain from clean to distorted on these compared to others. They actually attenuate when going into distortion. Or boost when going into clean, if ya want (Clean Sense on 5 with single coils for me).

    Edited once, last by Trazan ().

    This is a real phenomenon. Add "5150BLOCK" to the list of rigs that exhibit this behavior, but you have to reduce the amp profile's Gain to put it back into crunch range to hear it. Even with Clean Sense at -12 db, turning on a stomp spikes the volume. If you play with the stomp's Volume parameter, turning it up gets more distortion (as expected) but attenuates overall volume (not expected). This is not how a real amp behaves.

    Check the profile's "Direct Mix" value, when this is higher than zero then it's adding the clean value to the mix which should result in the volume being slightly louder as you lower the gain (same as summing two values), but here at least it seems to go up in volume disproportionately as you lower the gain.


    Perhaps the way this direct mix value is calculated should be changed slightly.

    Quote from meambobbo

    This is a real phenomenon. Add "5150BLOCK" to the list of rigs that exhibit this behavior, but you have to reduce the amp profile's Gain to put it back into crunch range to hear it. Even with Clean Sense at -12 db, turning on a stomp spikes the volume. If you play with the stomp's Volume parameter, turning it up gets more distortion (as expected) but attenuates overall volume (not expected). This is not how a real amp behaves.


    Yes, this appears to be an issue with some profile and not others. Very bizarre. On some rigs when you reduce the gain everything is in balance, on others you reduce the gain and the clean sound is double the volume of distorted and still distorting even with gain on zero even turning down the clean sense all the way. IMHO, there's something wrong with the profiles which react in this way.

    Maybe there's some confusion here, I'm talking about the Amp Block "Direct Mix" parameter (and then adjusting the gain control for the amp) not a stomp setting.

    No, we're talking about the same thing. I'm using the Stomp to overdrive the amp, adjusting the amp gain via the stomp's volume. When the amp is fully overdriven and is completely saturated, I hear no clean tone in the signal. So I think the Direct Mix is set to 0% on the patch in question, although I haven't been able to check the rig yet.

    Same "issue" here !


    I've fixed my Clean Sens @ 0dB to avoid volume increasing while turning down gain , but on some profiles it's not working,.


    What is strange is that all of my profiles are commercials from TAF and on some , clean volume dont increase when turning down gain (ex: Diezel VH4 Profiles) but somes get loud clean volume (Fender Deville)


    I'll ask Andy if he have any idea about it.