Hi,
I've cross posted this in a few places, but I thought I would post here as my primary guitar tone weapons are IK Products.
I've been using my custom DIY pedal board exclusively now for a couple of months for practice (yet to gig with it). I'm generally really happy going all amp modeling, and using the band board and IEMs for practice. I'm also happy with it though FRFRs and PA systems etc thus far in my experiments.
My single biggest gripe is getting the levels matched across my patches, especially from song to song. I wanted to spend some time this weekend trying to develop a process to get the levels dialed in reliably other than "by ear."
I'm using Reaper as a VST host and using LiveConfigs along with some scripts I wrote (with some help from Chat-GPT as I'm not super familiar with LUA or the Reaper API). I use Amplitube with and without Tonex primarily to make all my tones and am happy with both products. The tones are organized in to sort of cascading groups of 8. I have 8 sort of master banks (not actual banks in the midi sense, but I'm having trouble coming up with a better term). Within each of those, I have 8 sub categories which I'm doing by song, and within each song there are 8 patches available. Within an individual "song" or group of 8 related tones, level matching by ear isn't a big deal. Typically, I only have 2-4 tones that I use in a song, and they all tend to be fairly related. Aside from a tone for solos, which I raise up a bit, I'm trying to get the perceived loudness to match and that's not that hard to do by ear.
Where things get tricky, is going from a group of patches from one song to another. For example, if one song is mostly clean and slightly dirty tones to another where it's largely overdriven tones. I'm finding in practice I have to sort of change my overall output level from song to song. That's to say that the patches used in one song might be set well to match one another, but the overall level in the mix that was setup for one tune isn't translating that well from song to song and I find myself (and my other band members) having to change my level in our mixes to compensate, or needing to change the overall output from my board to compensate. Both are annoying and frustrating.
I want to come up with a process where I can more easily match my collections of tones to one another in terms of perceived loudness. Sort of a power RMS kind of output (I think).
My thoughts are to try the following:
1) Stick a compressor / limiter plugin on the output(s) of the whole setup, and use it to sort of set a threshold and basically lower everything a little bit pre-fader. What I don't like about this is it crushes the dynamics with clean tones especially, making it hard if I need to play light to have the nuance come across in those parts. Also, my albeit brief experiments get levels that "look" okay at the meters, but of course sound very different in terms of perceived output as it really doesn't account for the timbrel differences and the compression making overdrive sound louder. I don't know if anyone has ideas on how to maybe improve this as a work flow?
2) I have a nice EXTECH SPL meter. I was thinking about just setting it up at like 1m away from my FRFR combo and picking an output level (maybe like 80db C weighted sort of average target), playing some parts with each patch on the same guitar in the same pickup positions, recording the values and adjusting accordingly. I suspect, I won't get a good match from an ears perspective just because the results match on the meter though.
3) I have a calibrated measurement mic, REW and alternatively IK's ARC. I've only used the former to make filters for hi-fi and monitoring setups to correct for room and placement issues. I've never used ARC. I'm wondering if either have tools to look more at perceived output power to help me compare my patches / presets.
4) There are some plugins for reaper designed to match loudness levels, I've not used those either before. They aren't real time tools, but I could record a dry guitar and then run it though as a media item vs playing through the presets and then use those analysis tools (maybe?) to help give me some guidance on adjustment.
I've only tried a bit of the ideas of the above. Like most adults who play music recreationally with a band, my time is limited by boring adult type things. I'd rather be playing and writing than fiddling with modeled amp / effect output levels. I'm game to try anything, but if anyone has some guidance on a process that might reliably help get me a little more dialed in on volumes, that would be most appreciated.
Sorry for the long post, brevity is not my strong suit.
