Volume settings.

    Does the volume setting on the cab or any of the post amp effects affect the tone in any way, or is it simply a volume adjustment (not including the Fletcher–Munson effect). I can see where a pre amp effect volume adjustment would change the gain and tone of the amp, but I would expect that the cab and effects after the amp wouldn't affect the tone as you adjust the volume parameter, they would simply change the volume.


    And for you grammar guru's, I still haven't figured out how to use the words "effect" and "affect" so please take it easy on me :)

    Okay, so now my second question, and please take this with a grain of salt. So if changing the volume 'post' amp doesn't affect the tone, why do so many people do it? Here's what I mean, I download a profile, free or paid for, and then I compare it to my own profiles I think wow, that sounds so much better than my profile. But one day I realized, those profiles are simply louder, when I go through and set all of the volume levels to zero dB (like my profiles) all of a sudden we are on equal grounds, and now they don't sound so much better than my own profiles, actually, sometimes I really need to go back and forth comparing my profile to the other profile to actually hear a difference.


    I guess my point is, if you want to compare Profile-A to Profile-B, they really need to be the same volume, and it seems like a lot of people are turning up the volume "post amp" which seems to give an unfair advantage to their profiles when comparing them to other profiles.


    Am I way off base here? Has anyone else noticed this? I don't mean to make it sound like certain people intentionally crank up the volume of their profiles to make them sound better, but, on the other hand it seems to work out that way whether it's intentional or not.

    Quote from timowens


    I guess my point is, if you want to compare Profile-A to Profile-B, they really need to be the same volume, and it seems like a lot of people are turning up the volume "post amp" which seems to give an unfair advantage to their profiles when comparing them to other profiles.
    Am I way off base here? Has anyone else noticed this? I don't mean to make it sound like certain people intentionally crank up the volume of their profiles to make them sound better, but, on the other hand it seems to work out that way whether it's intentional or not.


    Lesson 1 in comparing profiles is: compare with the same loudness.
    I wouldn't assume that professional profilers make their profiles louder for a purpose though.

    1) Loudness ist always having an influence on the way the ear perceives something as "better". No news here - but a lesson to be learned.
    2) Your experience quite clearly shows (once again as I have stated this many times before) why (probably) the factory rigs don't get the appreciation they deserve. Compared with many other rigs, these are considerably quieter.
    3) I have at least noticed that e.g. Andy's profiles (commercial) mostly have an eq post stack that boosts the volume almost to maximum. I don't want to say that this is done on purpose, but the first thing I have always done when I bought a new profile pack was to equal the volumes to my other rigs.
    4) I guess it makes sense to leave some considerably headroom in your profiles. I don't see the point of trying to go for maximum output.

    Quote from Ingolf


    I wouldn't assume that professional profilers make their profiles louder for a purpose though.


    I don't want to assume that either, but I have to ask, then why do they do it? I'm not trying to make accusations, but when I make a profile, if I want to adjust the volume I simply adjust the profile volume, I don't go out of my way to adjust the EQ, cab and/or some post amp effect, it doesn't make sense unless there is a reason for it. Maybe some people think adjusting the cab volume has a different effect on the tone as opposed to adjusting the profile volume, I honestly don't know, but I think it's a valid question. Maybe they are right, I haven't tested this theory, I was hoping someone who knew for a fact would clarify whether one volume adjustment has an effect on the overall tone as opposed to the other would chime in.


    To be honest, the thing that brought this to my attention was the fact that with commercial profiles I almost always clip the output unless I go through and turn down the various volume settings, and that just didn't make sense to me why I need to do that.

    Quote from joerch

    1) Loudness ist always having an influence on the way the ear perceives something as "better". No news here - but a lesson to be learned.
    2) Your experience quite clearly shows (once again as I have stated this many times before) why (probably) the factory rigs don't get the appreciation they deserve. Compared with many other rigs, these are considerably quieter.
    3) I have at least noticed that e.g. Andy's profiles (commercial) mostly have an eq post stack that boosts the volume almost to maximum. I don't want to say that this is done on purpose, but the first thing I have always done when I bought a new profile pack was to equal the volumes to my other rigs.
    4) I guess it makes sense to leave some considerably headroom in your profiles. I don't see the point of trying to go for maximum output.


    I agree with everything you said. But I would add one thing, don't assume that the average consumer understands this, heck, we're just guitar players, not sound engineers. If this is the case, I think it's important to let everyone know, add a disclaimer, whatever it takes, comparing Profile-A to Profile-B is not a simple matter of loading and auditioning each profile, you need to make sure that the 'perceived' volume levels are equal. I'm not a sound engineer but I'm not a dummy either, and it took me a few tries to realize what we are talking about. And I do get your point about the "factory rigs", I will certainly revisit the factory rigs again and pay special attention to the perceived volume.

    I agree.


    One more thing, though, why it's good to have enough headroom on the profiles' volumes: When you put together various profiles as a performance (live use), sometimes you want a sound to be louder than the others. In that case - with no headroom - you would have to lower the volumes of the other profiles.

    Quote from joerch

    I agree.


    One more thing, though, why it's good to have enough headroom on the profiles' volumes: When you put together various profiles as a performance (live use), sometimes you want a sound to be louder than the others. In that case - with no headroom - you would have to lower the volumes of the other profiles.


    Excellent point! I will remember that.

    IIRC, Andy wrote somewhere that he added the EQ (and advised to optionally exclude it) for those who use a Strato. Some time ago, some users were complaining (again, IIRC) b/c his profiles wre not "powerful enough", or something on this line.


    Anyway, your PUs' output will affect the overall volume. It's probably wise when releasing a profile to ensure that even the users with the mildest possible PUs can achieve gratifying results.


    Finally, TBH, I can't feel any "ethical" issue about profiles level: there's no contest to win, and any user would at any rate set the volume where they like it most, wouldn't they? :|


    :)

    Quote from joerch

    One more thing, though, why it's good to have enough headroom on the profiles' volumes: When you put together various profiles as a performance (live use), sometimes you want a sound to be louder than the others. In that case - with no headroom - you would have to lower the volumes of the other profiles.


    Fully agree. Learned that lesson last Saturday night.


    That doesn't make sense to me, I would think that if you are trying to compensate for different pickups you would adjust the volume before the amp, not after the amp, please correct me if I'm wrong.


    I don't know if this is an ethical issue, honestly, for me it's more of an inconvenience, I need to go through multiple steps to make sure that all of the volumes are set to zero before I can truly audition a profile, and when you are talking about 20-60 profiles that is an inconvenience. I was going through some profiles this weekend and some had a post EQ volume set higher than 0dB, some had the reverb volume set higher than 0dB. One time I was auditioning profiles and found the cab volume higher than 0dB. If the end result is the same as simply adjusting the master volume why do people take that extra step to adjust these other volume levels? I would rather think that they believe it affects the tone, why else would they take those extra steps?


    Finally, I have to wonder why there is a volume adjustment for the cab and post amp effects if it doesn't affect the tone, unless there is a level indication at each point of the signal chain what is the point of having a level adjustment when you can't tell what the level actually is at any given point in the signal chain?


    I don't mean to imply that there is something unethical going on here, honestly, I would rather think that I'm missing something, so what am I missing?

    volume before the amp vs after the amp are 2 differt animals.


    Volume before the amp will push the poweramp further, thus distorting quicker. - and Post amp will simply just raise the volume as is by a varied amount you choose. - and this has nothing to do with setting up for differnt guitars. - a PRE EQ is more aimed at that..


    Volume can be misleading in many ways, - perceived volume versus actual volume, and then there is dynamic volume..


    Perceived volume is where an amp sound can sound less than you think, i.e a full cranked amp at bedroom levels will never offer its impactness as actual volume of that amp in the room. your ears are used to hearing something flat out, and then you play the same sound at a different velocity, and of course although its the same, but our minds interpret this differently.


    Actual volume is what it says on the tin, what is the output doing at any state.. (global volume is another word)


    And then Dynamic Volume. - this is about Peeks, i.e take a clean sound, and its actual volume will not be hitting the output hard, but the HARDER you play then the volume will increase.. at the end of the day.. 0DB is 0DB no matter what you throw at it. but controlling the peeks is important, and out minds or ears always want to push a clean sound harder.


    Boosts..I added a lot of boosts, mainly for myself as I like to use the EQ as a boost (my own way) in the X slot. it was a NULL eq. so just was outputting it harder.... The thought process behind this was simple.. if you can dig in to a profile hard on max boost and it does not clip then its good... if it clips before the boost then problems will happen, and nasty digital clipping will occur..and we don't want that, and I understand a lot of guys get this a lot with some profiles, including my own. unfortunately I dont own every guitar the market releases (I wish) and so its a matter testing in what I do have, although this clearly is not enough sometimes..


    Naturally we all have very different setups, guitars and of course ears!. - so what a good volume for Joe, is a bad one for ted. and vice versa. I did change my rigs to remove the output, (basically disabling the X slot) that you can download from my site.


    But here is a tip you can do here and now. - set your clean sensi so your happy..then press X slot, and Lock this. then turn it off. and majority will be the same volume. bearing in mind, that what I wrote above.. perceived vs actual vs dynamic.. can play a big part in the differences. - our ears are very sensitive to a few DB adjustments. and it can make all the difference in the world at such a minimal amount of something extra. - this can be positive and also negative. - however sometimes the dynamic propities of a profile after its capture is not aligned with unity. and cab volume needs to be adjusted, at least this is what Ive found in some cases.. rightly or wrongly my mistake or not...


    The guitar & amp market is one of the biggest collections available (in terms of scope) so the chances of it all being perfect is very slim.. us as players need to make the final 10% by adjusting for our own needs..


    I hope any of this makes sense to you.. and I wish you well.

    Quote from viabcroce

    My reference to "ethic" was about what you wrote:

    and

    :)


    I can't seem to find your second quote in this thread. What is your point?
    EDIT - Sorry, I didn't see the text that you wrote above the quotes.


    I still stand behind what I said, when I'm auditioning profiles any profile that has the volume turned up almost always sounds better than a profile that doesn't, does it not? Wouldn't that give a profile an unfair advantage? Whether the person who made that profile did that intentionally or not is a different subject. I simply wanted to know why people do this. Apparently I was correct, any volume/level adjustment after the amp does not affect the tone of a profile, it simply changes the volume/level.


    The only other reason I can see for raising the volume after the amp would be optimize the signal to noise ratio, but nobody has mentioned that.

    Edited once, last by timowens ().

    in my experience, people goosing the volume to make their profile louder usually ends up being a negative for me, not a positive, because a lot of profiles are pushed into digital clipping territory. IMO, a good profile does not clip when you play it as aggressively as you ever would, plus leaves an additional 3-6 db of headroom in case you need to make adjustments and to leave room for a solo boost.

    Well Tim, not that this is of any importance for our lies, but if you go on talking about an "unfair advantage" I consider this dealing with ethics :)


    Maybe I can't feel your POV just because I always check a rig I play to see how it has been made /how it works or not. so for me its overal volume is just one of its characteristic. I' also say that an amp with reverb sounds much better to my ears... but I've never thought of it in terms of taking advantage over the others.
    In fact, if I want I raise the volume, if I want I add reverb... it's all in your hands, that's why I can't see any advantage here.


    I respect your POV nevertheless, even tho I can't possibly share it :thumbup: