Can Your Acoustic Guitar Sound Good Live? - ToneDexter vs Voiceprint
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- čas přidán 7. 06. 2024
- When playing live, acoustic guitars can either be too quiet, or sound unauthentic through a pickup. But there is another way! Today we are shooting out the ToneDexter and LR Baggs Voiceprint to see if it's possible to faithfully recreate the sound of your guitar and amplify it!
» Audio Sprockets ToneDexter Acoustic Guitar Preamp Pedal | tinyurl.com/yhcxfelj
» LR Baggs Voiceprint Acoustic Guitar Response Pedal | tinyurl.com/yzyncbp8
» Check out the full range of Cole Clark Guitars | tinyurl.com/yz35zznd
» Lehle Dual SGOS Switcher Pedal | tinyurl.com/ydvbxlyl
If you play acoustic guitar and do live shows, sometimes a microphone is not loud enough, and sometimes the pickup in your acoustic does not sound authentic enough. So what can you do? Well, thanks to technology you can now use the ToneDexter or the LR Baggs Voiceprint to recreate the sound of your guitar and amplify it without losing the authentic and natural sound of your guitar.
🎥 Looking to watch something else? Check out our previous episode!
» • Tales from the Anderto...
⏰ Timestamps ⏰
» 0:00 Intro Jam
» 0:28 History of Live Acoustic Performance
» 3:58 What is the ToneDexter & Voiceprint
» 6:41 Acoustic Preamp Only
» 7:21 Microphone Only
» 7:49 How does it sound like with the ToneDexter?
» 8:16 How does the Voiceprint compare?
» 8:50 How to Create a Toneprint with the ToneDexter?
» 13:10 How to Create a Toneprint using the LR Baggs Voiceprint
» 16:53 Let's Go Through All the Options Again
» 17:50 Thoughts?
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#Andertons #ToneDexter #LRBaggsVoiceprint - Hudba
I got the Voiceprint. Here's what I like about it:
You can quickly create IR's and do extensive eq shaping on the spot with a phone. Right before a concert, if you happen to be handed a new instrument at that time.
5 band fully parametric eq + Lo and Hi pass. Really essential for shaping the sound for strumming/fingerpicking/soloing etc.
You can store sets on the phone, then quickly load whatever set of voiceprints you need onto the pedal for a performance.
The placement of the phone makes a big difference. Make several voiceprints and chose whatever sounds best to you.
I didn't like the sound of any of the pedals in the video, but I do know that they both can sound much better!
In all honesty, you should have done this with something with just a piezo pickup or at least something that has a much less good pickup system than the Cole Clark! Their pickup system with mic blend is good enough for most live gigs with a good audio engineer. Whereas my Ovation with just a piezo I run through the Fishman Aura Spectrum (the early equivalent of those pedals!) and it gets a lot closer to a miked sound.
That Cole Clark system, even without the mic, is far and away the best in-built piezo/preamp I've ever heard... and I've engineered a lot of guitars.
Have a Kleenex
What's your secret for the Fishman? I got the chunkier older AST and have to use an acoustic-electric Danelectro Convertible with disc piezos and also an Acoustic-electric Resonator with a disc in the cone. I either get crap or feedback 😂
I am a professional musician and gig on average 4 or 5 times a week. I play a Martin DCSRG which has a fishmsn sonitone pick up (piezo), and I completely agree with what you guys said about how this is for the player more than audience. The audience always thinks the guitar sounds great. I don't always think it does. I say that I suffer from what I call 'tone fatigue'. Basically I'll find what I think is a great tone, I play like that for some weeks and I then my ear gets used to it somehow and I start searching for better tone. I have various ways of getting good tone, with pedals, acoustic amps, different di's etc. And I find I just have to change it up occasionally to reset my ear. Who's knows, maybe I'll try something like this next. But I don't know if I'll ever find the holy grail of tone. I wish, but I doubt I will.
Paraphrasing … “I suppose nobody in the audience will be able to tell the difference…”. That’s what my wife says about changing from a Strat to a Tele or a Les Paul. Lol. Even a dreadnought to a parlor or jumbo. IMO, all this gear we buy/use is all for the player’s joy, and hopefully that joy comes through in the playing/entertainment factor. And that makes the listener enjoy it that much more. I have the LR Baggs model and with a bit of critical listening and tweaking with my PA (Bose L1) the sound in the back of the room is indistinguishable from playing in a small room un-amplified. It can get that good. It’s a great time to be a performing musician. Thanks for the great videos!
I absolutely love the way those Cole Clarks look and play.
I own 2.... the one in this video (Fat Lady 2 Redwood on Blackwood) and the Little Lady version.....wow the Little Lady is superb.... both plugged and unplugged..... well worth trying out!
I like the mids and the natural attack of the imaging/IR technology, the bass of piezos, the clarity from mics, and the feedback resistance of magnetic sources.
I have been a professional musician for 25 years and I've been around the world several times playing guitar. I have seen maybe 3-4 guys using some sort of technology like that. Myself, I have used the Aura and acoustic IRs and all kinds of preamps and combinations, but they always end up feeling like listening to a bad mp3 file when on their own. Another thing is, if it feels big, it probably doesn't sound like a mic'd acoustic, but I prefer the big sound anyway, especially when playing solo. In short, no one uses these because they are cumbersome, require more effort and knowledge than most guitarist have or are willing to put time into learning, and the result on a gig is only heard/felt by the player. Most guys are just lazy and go direct and sound terrible and don't care about it. Go to a bar tonight and see exactly what I'm talking about. So thanks for putting out what is essentially an educational piece. For myself I have found that I get best results when I carefully mix a few signal sources, using the best of what each source gives - piezo, magnetic, transducers, mic - all give something different. And most of the time on a gig space and time don't allow for bringing a lot of expensive gear so I just go direct and live with it. Let's not fool ourselves - if no one cares what I sound like but me, if a gig pays a buck and there's little space and the house PA is shite, reverb doesn't work, half the channels don't work, I'm gonna go direct, get what I get and not think twice - focus on playing and delivery and the crowd than what I sound like. Then it's up to the player to make it work. I prefer bringing my own PA, but that of course costs the venues more, and not everyone is ready for that, and I have bills to pay, so those who don't care get the same quality musician (that's me, the given), but with whatever sound THEY invested in their venue.
That Cole Clark sounds great on it's own, most people with a guitar like that will go direct and sound better than guys with piezos going direct, no doubt. The imaging/IRs help piezos, but if you have a nice instrument with a decent system, like that CC, or something with several sources, including a mic, you can go direct and be done with it. And those companies, Fishman, LR Baggs, K&K, D-tar, and the rest need to step up their game instead of recycle decade old technology every few years. Fishman hasn't improved the Aura since it came out, LR Baggs with their DI boxes are great, but how many versions of the same thing, why not a session DI with EQ included... IF anyone is using delay/chorus on acoustic - they're definitely not after raw acoustic tone. The K&K Trinity preamp hasn't changed for what, 30+ years, that thing is good, but can definitely be improved a ton. The D-tar preamps are not even made... There is so much that can be done, but these people either don't see it or it doesn't make financial sense for them to develop stuff. We've been in a rut for a decade at least.
LR Baggs Session DI with EQ? The Venue that came out 12 years ago.
Ben, great as always and HELLO SKINNY! Looking good buddy.
Love the Captain's sincerity. In fact, we kind of got used to how piezo sounds live. That's why Alex Lifeson and John Petrucci even relied on piezo on their electric guitars with a BodyRez or Fishman Aura DI.
I use Nylon strings (Ben has also pointed out on some past videos that he also enjoys piezo+nylon sound) most of the times as a lot of Brazilian songs fits to it, and I don't really feel I need something more than a reverb to make it sound good live.
I would like to see you revisit this subject with the TC Electronic IR pedal and the updated voiceprint also perhaps using a guitar with an under saddle piezo and a Taylor ES2 pickup which customers are more likely to have when using these devices. Perhaps a Martin SC-13 and Taylor 414 as demo guitars.
Glad you covered this. I’ve made a ton of videos about acoustic IR’s on my CZcams channel. For me it has a bright future but I see it more as a pickup enhancer than a direct mic replacement (shoutout to Aura and NUX as well). Also the CC has such an incredible pickup that I feel it would have been better to use a more ‘basic’ pickup.
Which option does NUX have? (always looking for the price, unfortunately).
@@geovannivm NUX Optima Air. I have a demo of it. It’s impressive.
Moly Tuttle uses a tone dexter. That’s pretty much all I need to know about it.
Molly Rules!!!
Very interesting! However, I'm a bit confused as well (or just stupid - you tell me). I think I understand the idea of using IR's, but what if I use an IR that I made using a very expensive U87 to mic up a J-45 in a perfect acoustic environment (professional studio room for instance), would that give me some of that sound when I'd plug in a completely different guitar, like a fairly cheap parlor sized guitar plugged into that pedal, or would it just sound ridiculous? Or would it sound like the parlor, but miced with the U87 etcetera?
Thanks for the excellent comparison video. I bought a Voiceprint before seeing this video or knowing about the ToneDexter. I agree that the availability of the Boost button on teh Tonedexter is a nice feature that i wish the Voiceprint had, but the other "advantages" of tone control and feedback control knobs cited aren't really applicable. The Voiceprint EQ and feedback controls within the Voicprint app are far more powerful and flexible than the ToneDexter knobs. Also the Voicporint is now compatible with Android. While the Voiceprint uses your phone mic for its IR calculation as the default, it isn't too hard to connect it to an external mic - it just takes an interface such as a standard mixer and a couple of inexpensive cables to convert mixer output to USB-C to get into your phone and bypass the phone's internal mic. Yeah, that's harder to do with the Voiceprint than the ToneDexter, but It's nice to not need a fancy external mic to make the Voiceprint. My best results with the Voiceprint were by using the external mic setup with a Shure SM58. In the end what is most important is the sound you get. As an acoustic player I most want to emulate the actual sound, which is usually done best by an external mic, if feedback were not a problem. It seemed to me that the Voiceprint processing of the pickup output in your demos sounded a lot more like your mic than the ToneDexter's processing of the pickup. The ToneDexter tone in fact sounded to me more like being inside a can- maybe too much mids? The VoicePrint seemed to have a few spots in the frequency spectrum where it was a little too bright or edgy, but overall I thought the Voiceprint sounded more acoustic and realistic than the ToneDexter. The nice thing about the powerful EQ tools in the Voiceprint app is you can really shape the tone with its 5 band equalizer and filter and q controls to get it just where you want to be. So I think you shoudld give the Voiceprint another chance and possibly revisit this comparison after really working with it a bit more. But overall great comparison and thanks for doing it!
Can my acoustic guitar sound good live? Why, of course it can... if I hand it to someone who can actually play! :-(
LMFAO
Thanks for the review/comparison it was very helpful. Apparently as of this month the Acoustic Live app is available on android. I agree with most here that the mic sounds the best. I play the mandolin (try to anyways) on a loud stage, small venue especially if there is an electric guitar or bass in the group a microphone just does not cut it IMO. I kind of like the fact that the acoustic DI is wrapped around an app because that makes software updates and new features easier to produce and distribute and is more user friendly (maybe). I have not played with one yet but I found a used acoustic di on musicians friend for under $100. As soon as I try it out I will post an update (if I remember).
Great to see Ben!! I Always enjoy his playing. I so want a Cole Clark!!...Great guitars. These pedals are very interesting and yes they make a difference, with the Cole Clark at least. It takes some of the thinness out of the sensor output.
I'd like to see Ben branch out into some electric reviews...he'd be great! And before anyone says "oh his thing is acoustic"...listen to Tommy Emmanuel totally killing it with a Tele. I suspect Ben could make a decent fist of it too :-)
Ben can and does play electric as well
I really enjoy my Lr baggs
I too, would love to hear how this compares to the Fishman Aural Spectrum D.I. BUT, personally, I thought the L.R Baggs sounded more natural to me. Frankly both seem pretty neat and get you closer to a micd sound than I've heard in a while. Even if it's not completely there, I think it's worth that marginal improvement.
Hard to beat the Aura Spectrum👍
In regards to the Android app - It is much easier to develop something like this for Apple devices because they only have to account for the microphones in each model of phone. Versus on Android there are thousands of different phones with differing microphones that are running their operating system so it is very hard to have a baseline for how to process the sounds it is capturing.
Andrew Huang did a video explaining this concept in reference to app development. For Apple you are designing for maybe 100 devices. For Android it's tens of thousands.
This is why it's an assanine idea to limit a products function to a mobile OS that no longer accounts for half the phones sold today.
Just get an Adeline AD-85 and stick it on. Done! Sounds great!
I play Flamenco, and my first successsful pickup system was the Fishman Aura Pro/Matrix installed in all my Flamenco guitars (mostly Cordoba's, where the exchange with the awful Presys+ was easy), and the Takamine CT4-DX, both very expensive solutions per guitar. But the AD-85 sounds just as good (very accurate), so little or no EQ necessary. Then if I want a little overdrive/crunch I use a Boss OD-200. but a Behringer TO800 is almost (but not quite) as good for my use case.
The ToneDexter seemed to introduce a strong bass, which for me would be unacceptable (the problem with the Presys+ was proximity effect, an awful bass that couldn't be dialed out with EQ.)
So now I only use the Aura Pro preamps as tuner and backup in case the Adelines fall off (hasn't happened yet).
It has been a 30 year struggle, but for me it is over.
It is interesting technology and ideas. I can see acoustic makers wanting to build something like this into the guitar (or maybe even into acoustic amps?).
Already exists on my Martin APC with Fishman Aura+.
I have no interest in buying a IR, but I watched because I really like Ben's playing. Same with Pete on electric.
Will the tonedexter work if the source guitar (with pickup) is different from the target guitar (recorded on mic)? Or do you need to use the same guitar for all the wavewaps?
How do these two boxes compare to the fishman aura spectrum?
I think the TD just needed a little HPF to sound way closer to the mic'd sound. The VP, I just don't know how to work with that tone. I'll probably go with the TD, since I already have some nice mics, and I don't own an iPhone. And have Ben lost some weight? Ha!
I definitely think this was the wrong guitar for the video given how good the Cole Clark pickup system is. I've been to a couple of shows recently where performers used higher-end modern Gibson and Martin acoustics with piezos that sounded terrible. It wouldn't make sense to test these with bargain bin pickups, but I do want to know what the ToneDexter can do with the piezo systems used by the big brands.
For real! I think about 95% of acoustic players I see in live plugged in situations sound like absolute s**t honestly. And a lot of the time that's with pretty expensive guitars! To this day, it's still a genuinely rare thing to hear an plugged in acoustic player whose guitar sounds anything like an acoustic guitar. I hope these IR things catch on as they get more affordable, I'm sick of hearing that "pub piezo" sound haha
I wish both units would be available as VST3 / AUv3 plugins.
They all sound decent but the Baggs let's itself down by going down the novelty route. I feel a proper mic for capturing the guitar first instead of the phone would yield much better results. However a straight mic always sounds better IMO. The tonedexter seems the next best choice tonally. Being honest though, for gigs, the crowd won't know or care so any decent electro acoustic straight into a decent PA sounds just fine.
Fishman Aura Spectrum kills piezo quack as well!
My question is ; how do you get a Cole Clark to sound any good when it's not plugged in...
That piezo on that guitar sounds pretty good. Would’ve made sense to use something with a more ‘standard’ shitty quacky piezo sound
Thanks for the comparison! I do wish you had used a better sounding acoustic with a basic pickup (UST/SBT). The Cole Clark already has a great pickup, but the guitar isn’t incredible unplugged. It’s resulting in less of a “wow” factor and IR’s that are a bit flat.
I thnk these are useful only if you have an awful pickup system (think Barcus-Berry dot long ago.) With a good pickup system (as in the video) there is not much difference that can't be fixed with a little eq. IMO
Honestly I think the tone of both units were worse than just the guitar’s pickup. Yes, there was some simulation of natural string character, but other than that the tones were anemic, dull, and didn’t help reproduce the squashed dynamic range of a piezo pick up.
Maybe as these develop further they will improve in a big way. For now, I think a good parametric EQ and some reverb will produce a more interesting, albeit non-natural sound.
lr bags sounds better love how you can use your phone is so much more practice tbh instead of always reaching down
You left your hand on the guitar during the taps lol, instead of pulling off :)
Had good luck with a Fishmen aurl di images
Funny how the piezo sounded the best...
The Tonedexter sounds much better in the samples on Bens own CZcams channel.. sounds like there is something amiss here. Mic position maybe?
Cole Clarks don't need any tone editing pedals except maybe a little reverb. What you need is 1. a good guitar with nice fresh strings 2. a good amp/ sound system. If you have a crappy piezzo pickup then yes these pedal are useful, but for the 3-4% gain on a solo gig.... maybe its worth it (personal preference), but playing in a band.... leave them out. For recording..... never use any pedals..... good mic.... good engineer/producer and away you go!! Although these pedals are quite good fun for wasting time during Covid lockdowns!!!!! I do agree, some of the older guiatrs (even Martins, Matons, Taylors) have crappy pick ups.... change the pick up!! Cole Clark will sell you a pick up.
Can you do a follow up to this using something like a Martin Road Series guitar that has a better acoustic sound but worse pickup system?
I did an acoustic gig the other night and all 3 of us performers used Road Series Martins (entirely by fluke) and sounded OK, but nothing like as good as they surely could.
Agreed.
I have the Martin E10D Road series and the Voice Print pedal. It's night and day when you bypass the pedal. It now sounds as good as my Martin D-15m with an LR Baggs Anthem pickup (which also runs through the V.P) I thoroughly recommend the Voice Print
What would it cost me to get Ben to the States and follow me around while playing guitar? Even a bad day wouldn't be that bad
Yeah you probably should have used a 500quid Tanglewood or something for this.
I still prefer the LR Baggs Anthem and Lyric Pickups to either of the I.R options. But with a Piezo I could see the Tonedexter working well. As I understand it, the Tonedexter can work with just about any acoustic instrument. Can't the Neural DSP do something similar for an acoustic?
My view would be, recording an IR from a different acoustic guitar would give better results. The Cole Clark is best for its own pickup, other acoustics would be better for acoustic sounds, IMO. Sad but true, Android hardware and software aren''t made by one company, so consistent results are impossible across brands. Apple controls their hardware and software, resolving any issues themselves, so they win the audio game.
The tonedexter sounds much better than the L.R Baggs but still maybe only half way to the real sound of a mic'ed acoustic
I totally agree. The LR Baggs sounded way too hollow.
What about a Pod Go with acoustic ir’s?
I think acoustic IR’s sound best when they are made from the actual guitar.
@@aaronshortmusic maybe when your play live the difference between the actual sound and the ir is not so obvious. When recording it is.
@@jips123 It can sound weird live as well. Also the PodGo only supports short IR’s. The HX Stomp would be better.
Liked the piezo pick up better than either of the tone pedals or the mics....that's jus me though
nothing compares to the sound of the microphone.
the nux optima air does the same thing for 150€
1. Microphone
2. Piezo pickup (unfortunately)
3. Lrbaggs (barely better than the tonedexter)
4. Tonedexter
For live play I don’t care for the sound of either pedal or any IRs at all. They all sound “hollow” and “far away” and it takes away all the attack and dynamics of the pick attack on the strings.
Great demonstration. An improvement would be to have done this in a room that had a better sound. This room is terrible for this type of demonstration, imeo. Curious if the master builders at Two Notes have a better design and product roll out in store for acoustic IR boxes.
iPhone as a studio microphone ???? Come on! This LR Baggs product is a misnomer. The Tone Dexter sounded fine to me.
What the hell?!? The best sound was the in-built Col Clark preamp/pickup! I've never experienced that nor heard of anyone who has. The sound was richer and more balanced than the mic or either of the two external processors. Speaking of processors, the Tone Dexter sounded awful. It's a tossup as to whether the mic or the LR Baggs was the better of those two.
You really need to do this test over again with a normal piezo-equipped guitar because 1) most of us don't have a Cole Clark (though now I wish I did) and 2) I suspect the processor was trying to treat an already great sound and only ended up overemphasizing certain frequencies. Or the IRs were not well captured. Or both.
Please sound like Rory Gallagher I think he deserves it, he earned it.
Cheapest solution: Acoustic guitar with a piezo pickup into a EQ pedal like a BOSS GE7 to shape the frequencies then that into a PA.
The Aphex Aural Exciter / Big Bottom is a great and fairly cheap pedal to bring back the best in what the amplified sound of an acoustic guitar lacks, due to the poor pick-up system. I prefer that thing over something like a GE-7 because of all the extra stuff (DI, phase shifting and some other things). Unfortunately, I never found a good demo of this pedal, but I won't gig without it.
TC Play Acoustic does a great job for a lot less money with Body Res and has vocal harmonies too.
Please do sound like George lynch without busting the bank
Want your guitar to sound good live? Buy a Maton!
Agreed!
Sorry, but the Tone Dexter and the Voiceprint all sound plastik, and they are far away from the microphone sound. The piezo is the 2. best option.
First
Pity they used a Cole Clarke for this. Nice pickup but they sound like rubbish acoustically, imho
Disclaimer: I haven't watched this yet but I wanted to say I have a Taylor 214ce and a ToneDeq and I feel like that gives me an incredible live sound
Amazing video, all the units sound like shit... no robot can eq still like human. Both sound very weird with very big dips in the spectrum.. Also the whole system trust in the phone mic? Haha... Is much more cheaper to buy just an EQ pedal and remove the honkyness. Or you just rent 2 hours of an studio and put a good mic on it an record with your guitar pickup at the same time, ask the engineer to match the eq curves and thats as far as you can go. Matching the eq doesnt match the hardness of the attack of guitar pickup or piezo, is not enough with just matching the eq response.
Tonedexter sounded god-awful, Baggs was a bit better but both seemed to have some weird artifact. Mic sounded best, preamp direct sounded second best (and was quite good) and the two IR boxes were pretty awful with Baggs being better.
cant say either of them sound great... the mic feed sounds brilliant...the pedals sound cack
It’s not really a great video representation tbh. The Tonedexter in person is incredible.
Bluegrass players are pick-y?
Honestly they both ruined the Cole Clark sound and I never really listened to a Cole Clark before this.
I own 2 CCs.... the one in this video (Fat Lady 2 Redwood on Blackwood) and the Little Lady version.....wow the Little Lady is superb.... both plugged and unplugged..... well worth trying out! Cole Clarks don't need any pedals eccept maybe some reverb. Video didn't do the guitar justice - surprising for Andertons!!
Danish Pete. Captain Lee. Rob Chappers. Digital John And now, Epileptic Ben.