Input level calibration matters more than which capture you picked
@nightshiftmix · · 1mo
The .nam metadata carries input_level_dbu and output_level_dbu, and most people never look at either.
If you feed a capture a signal hotter than the one it was trained on, you get more distortion than the amp made, and it is not the same distortion — you are pushing the model outside what it saw in training. Quieter, and a drive pedal capture goes flat and lifeless.
This is why two people can load the same capture and disagree completely about whether it is any good. They are not hearing the same model. Check your interface gain, and check the metadata is actually populated rather than left at a default.
2 replies
@quietamp · 1mo
Agreed on the principle but I think you are overstating it slightly. Calibration matters enormously for a drive pedal capture, where a couple of dB moves you across the whole useful range of the thing. For a clean amp capture it matters much less — the model is close to linear in that region, and being 2 dB off gets you a slightly different volume rather than a different sound. Worth separating the two cases rather than telling everyone their levels are wrong.@olathecaptures · 1mo
Fair, though I would rather people overcorrected here. I have had captures returned as bad which turned out to be someone running a hot interface into a model trained at a sensible level. The metadata fields exist. Fill them in when you upload and most of this disappears.
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