Best way to replicate gig volumes at the work bench.

[Bill Mountain]

I struggle with building and tweaking pedals at my work bench in my basement at night when the kids are asleep.

Then when I get together with my band I'm finally able to crank it and I'm not happy about something.  Too shrill.  Too Dark. Too buzzy.  Etc.

Then when I get back to my work bench and I use my little SS combo or mixer and head phones it sounds how I designed it too.

I'm thinking I need to replicate the effects of high volume during the prototyping phase.

Any ideas?

[deadastronaut]

With my marshall avt275

i can unplug botht the speakers, and  use the preamp with a headphone out...kicks ass..,.quietly.

[alanp]

There is a psychological effect that makes the same sound different at differing volume levels, I forget the name.

[Mark Hammer]

There's actually two different things to be compensated for.  One is the way in which the equipment behaves at high signal amplitude.  That includes not only saturation and headroom characteristics in the circuitry, but also speaker behaviour at different SPLs.  The other is the way in which your ears/hearing functions at different SPLs.

To some extent, I suppose the latter can be mimicked by headphone levels (though obviously not recommended, for hearing-loss reasons).  The harder one is the first part.  Maybe you need to make yourself one of those enclosed speaker boxes, that let a person run the amp loud, and stick a mic in front of the speaker, so that recording/mixing levels can be set without drowning out everything else.

[wavley]

Sounds like what you need is the psuedoacoustic infector, it basically solves all of your audio needs.

http://www.rane.com/pi14.html

[Quackzed]

quick and dirty way is use an eq pedal... crank up the amp at home , get it/set it where you're happy and leave it, then dial in a sound that's as close as you can get with your little ss combo at bedroom levels , THEN use an eq pedal into the combo to fine tune it to match the gig rig... compare and repeat. then you'll at least have a 'somewhat similar' freq response. things like headroom/harmonics and speaker response/resonance etc. will keep you from getting 'very' close, but at least you'll have some idea of what the differences are and you can try to guestimate a bit when tuning pedals... get a better feel for what translates into what from little combo to big rig...
oh,look up fletcher munson curve , thats the term i believe alanp was thinking of; how your ears hear loud vs. soft sounds differently...
but if you could get the same sounds from a cranked 100watt stack as a cute little practice amp with just eq then well... you'd be jimmy page!!! 

[aron]

Bill, you are mentioning something all of us go through. I don't care about how it sounds at home as much as at the gig, through the band. So my testing is with the band. I'm really liking my modified ROSS for the more smoother lead tones.

[Bill Mountain]

I'm also thinking that my amp doesn't sound good loud either.

When in doubt I know that a Rat or BMP D+ will work live.  I should just use these pedals as benchmarks and compare my builds to them when tinkering.

[mth5044]

At gigs, mic your workbench amp 

[JustinFun]

The other thing playing in here is that what sounds good solo doesn't necessarily work as well with the other frequencies generated by band members. This is why the giant-killing fuzz in your bedroom turns into 'where did my guitar go?' When you step on it in rehearsal (see: big muff and uglyface for obvious examples). In contrast more mid/upper-mid heavy stuff sounds less impressive on the headphones but cuts through nicely in a band situation. Has anyone ever tried a rangemaster in headphones and thought 'that's my tone!'? But put it in a band situation and it makes sense.

How you deal with that in a practical sense I'm not sure, other than to try and take note of how and why things don't work, and fiddle and mod until they do.

[davent]

Could you use an easy to tweak breadboarded version of the pedal while rehearsing with the band so you can adjust on the fly?
dave

[aron]

That breadboard idea is good. I used sockets for some of my pedals and swapped caps in and out.

[Fender3D]

...
I'm thinking I need to replicate the effects of high volume during the prototyping phase.

Any ideas?

lol
ask my neighbors... 

[CodeMonk]

There is a psychological effect that makes the same sound different at differing volume levels, I forget the name.

Psychoacoustics

[J0K3RX]

http://www.jedistar.com/Attenuators.htm   Maybe?

[Johan]

Dummyload on your amp with a line out going into computer. Then download the free version of Line6 amp Farm and use one of the speaker cab simulations.. gives you a sound not too unlike the real thing at any level.
j

[karbomusic]

There is a psychological effect that makes the same sound different at differing volume levels, I forget the name.

Fletcher-Munson curves describe it. Something to always be aware of and is why louder often sounds "better" even though the source hasn't changed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves

And as Mark mentioned, the speakers and the amp breaking up some at higher volumes makes pedals sound better. Never a bad thing IMHO to have several components working together. I'm pretty lucky to be able to crank it up some when testing so I've never really had issues by the time I showed up at rehearsal with a new build. However, on more important builds/designs, the breadboard goes with me along with an A/B test box. I think I posted this a few months ago:



Lastly, context is everything. For example when recording/mixing, what sounds incredible solo'd usually sounds like crap in the mix and vice versa. The same is true in pedal building, those massively tight lows you worked so hard to tweak can become a hindrance when the bass player and drummer show up.

[CodeMonk]

What about building an isolation cabinet?

[doctorzylo]

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/msg/4912085089.html

[Kipper4]

Not exactly an Iso cab. more like an amp iso box.
I dont think i'd be too happy putting the whole amp in a flight box. It'd get warm in there.
Hence why people put the cab/speaker in an adeqautly insulated treated box.
I might be worrying too much but i'd still be worried about smoke...........