Headphones, Monitors, Line6 and Guitar Port

My ears don't like using full cup headphones for hours. I switched over to my studio headphones a couple of weeks ago and recently I've noticed my ears are feeling a tad uncomfortable. I don't have the volume cranked. My working theory is that the full cup headphones seal against my head and the vibrating air has nowhere to go but against my ear drum. Over time listening fatigue sets in.

Full cup headphones are great for removing distracting sounds and preventing your monitor mix from spilling out into a mic when recording. I won't want to use them for hours and hours for all my digital playing, though.

I was using the headphones because my studio near field monitors currently sound like crap. They are churning out way too much sustained resonance in the bass and low mid-range frequencies. Everything sounds boomy. The reason for that is where I have them. Audiophiles will cringe. They are currently weight bearing supports between two shelves in a brick and board bookcase. The boards essentially become resonating panels, similar to the wood top of a guitar. (Did I mention I haven't been recording for awhile?)

So I need to get my monitors pumping out pristine sound. Step one will be to decouple them acoustically from the shelves. Space is at a premium, so I'll likely keep them on the shelf but isolate them acoustically from the wood. Things like the Auralex MoPad Monitor Isolators should do the trick nicely.

Spectral Analysis

Once the major boomy stuff is eliminated I can get to work with the equalization of the room. I've loaded up TrueRTA and taken it for a spin. The sound/noise generation gets out through the firebox fine, but the inputs don't seem to feed the spectrum analyzer. Ideally, I'd plug my Behringer measurement mic into the firebox (it needs phantom power) but I might end up routing through the Mackie mixer and using a dual 1/4 inch phono plug to 1/8 inch stereo plug adapter cable I have to feed the PC's mic input. It's sub-optimal but better than nothing. I fired off a tech support question about it to the TrueRTA vendor, but no answer yet.

Line6 Pod Farm

I was crawling around on amp modeling and discovered a forum site where the afficianados hang out... guitarampmodeling.com ... they seem pretty bent on the metal and heavy rock sounds though (as do many amp modeling vendors, at least in their demos).

I was looking for setup ideas on the Carlos Santana sound for a guitar, and caught a mention of Line6, and the fact that they have a Mesa Boogie amp in their model lineup (the amp used to produce that distinctive sound). So I blitzed over to see what they had, and they are launching a new plugin product, Pod Farm, that is Cubase compatible. It's priced the same as Amplitube 2 in the platinum version (the version that includes the Mesa Boogie amp).

They seem to be much broader in their focus than simply metal. They make a whole line of innovative guitars and amps and guitar processing hardware. I was impressed. Their community seems active and they appear to ship regular expansions on their products.



Guitar Port

They also have an affiliated "learn to play guitar" site that I thought was particularly cool. Check out guitarport.com - it's a mix of tips and articles, lessons, tabs and tracks you can jam to that have various guitar parts lifted out. I might join just to practice my virtual guitar chops on the keyboard. It also seems they also have amp model presets engineered around the guitar sounds of specific artists and tunes.