Neural Quad Core thing demo

lysander

I wasn’t singling out Rabea and yes I agree wih you, too many variables, but obviously someone who has a lot of gear and who’s doing a demo will optimise a lot of these variables to make the gear sound as good as possible.
And if something still doesn’t sound right in post production of course they’re  gonna try and improve it there too and they’re not gonna then edit the video and say ‘oh by the way I eq-ed the shit out of this ‘ - all these things add up.
I’m not saying they’re trying to misrepresent the gear, just that this the natural flow of things.

WiresDreamDisasters

lysander said:

I wasn’t singling out Rabea and yes I agree wih you, too many variables, but obviously someone who has a lot of gear and who’s doing a demo will optimise a lot of these variables to make the gear sound as good as possible.
And if something still doesn’t sound right in post production of course they’re  gonna try and improve it there too and they’re not gonna then edit the video and say ‘oh by the way I eq-ed the shit out of this ‘ - all these things add up.
I’m not saying they’re trying to misrepresent the gear, just that this the natural flow of things.

I think you'd be surprised.

A lot of the time when you do these sorts of videos, you don't have time to agonise over the tone of things. Especially at Rabea's level where you're a content machine. A lot of the time what you're hearing is warts-and-all by sheer virtue of the fact that they don't have the time to make it sound amazing. Stick a mic on it, and call it done.

Maybe I'm super slow, but the ThorpyFX Fallout Cloud video I did took me a full 16 hour day start to end. That's starting with nothing, and ending up with a written and produced song and video, as well as a little bit of blurb and walkthrough of the pedal itself.

You couldn't do that every single day or week without cutting some corners somewhere.

lysander

Fair point, I know it’s very time consuming but it’s also their main job. The better stuff sounds the more likely they are to get hired again.
Rabea has a separate guy to do the editing for him btw. 

handsomerik

I think you'd be surprised.

A lot of the time when you do these sorts of videos, you don't have time to agonise over the tone of things. Especially at Rabea's level where you're a content machine. A lot of the time what you're hearing is warts-and-all by sheer virtue of the fact that they don't have the time to make it sound amazing. Stick a mic on it, and call it done.

I would have thought by this point considerinb the amount of content they produce and put out that they have professional video editors doing all the work post filming. 

Teetonetal

I don't think they agonize or spend much time fixing demos. They just most likely have got used to setting up gear in their environment and in a way that works quickly for them.

Presenting unrealistic demos is a sure fire way to not being credible.

Would suggest that your own gear, room, sound preference and ability is more likely to be the difference.

TTBZ

Rabea has someone else edit his videos so that will save him a bit of time to spend more on dialling it in and writing the tracks. Also it doesn't really take long to edit this sort of demo video in the way most people present them. With my internet it'd probably take longer to upload all the footage to send to someone else I'd imagine most people just have presets, go-to IRs/mic positions all ready to go, template projects etc to streamline the workflow. 

fretmeister

There may be trouble ahead. Dum di di di dum

Jetfire

But Rabea has done a gushing post about his... 

FarleyUK

Jetfire said:

But Rabea has done a gushing post about his... 

What a shock. 

Doug Castro - who isn’t coming across very well, IMO - just announced there are two hardware components they have had to replace due to ‘tester feedback’. Looks like Keith was indeed referring to the QC. 

So, still no announced date, still shipping with limited functionality, still very limited comms from Neural (and Doug acting like a bit of a prick to his customers).  Meanwhile, they have £200 from me sat in their account while I wait for them to get their shit together. 

Methinks I’ll be cancelling the preorder over the weekend and getting my deposit back - the new Axe FX3 I received is superb, so that’ll do for now. 

digitalscream

FarleyUK said:

Jetfire said:

But Rabea has done a gushing post about his... 

What a shock. 

Doug Castro - who isn’t coming across very well, IMO - just announced there are two hardware components they have had to replace due to ‘tester feedback’. Looks like Keith was indeed referring to the QC. 

So, still no announced date, still shipping with limited functionality, still very limited comms from Neural (and Doug acting like a bit of a prick to his customers).  Meanwhile, they have £200 from me sat in their account while I wait for them to get their shit together. 

Methinks I’ll be cancelling the preorder over the weekend and getting my deposit back - the new Axe FX3 I received is superb, so that’ll do for now. 

Yeah. While I was initially quite interested in this unit, these problems - added to the release of Helix 3.0 - mean that I'm going back to Helix-land with a Stomp (and I've pre-ordered the Harley Benton GPA-100 for a cheap, effective pedalboard -> cab setup).

guitarblaster

WiresDreamDisasters said:

lysander said:

I wasn’t singling out Rabea and yes I agree wih you, too many variables, but obviously someone who has a lot of gear and who’s doing a demo will optimise a lot of these variables to make the gear sound as good as possible.
And if something still doesn’t sound right in post production of course they’re  gonna try and improve it there too and they’re not gonna then edit the video and say ‘oh by the way I eq-ed the shit out of this ‘ - all these things add up.
I’m not saying they’re trying to misrepresent the gear, just that this the natural flow of things.

I think you'd be surprised.

A lot of the time when you do these sorts of videos, you don't have time to agonise over the tone of things. Especially at Rabea's level where you're a content machine. A lot of the time what you're hearing is warts-and-all by sheer virtue of the fact that they don't have the time to make it sound amazing. Stick a mic on it, and call it done.

Maybe I'm super slow, but the ThorpyFX Fallout Cloud video I did took me a full 16 hour day start to end. That's starting with nothing, and ending up with a written and produced song and video, as well as a little bit of blurb and walkthrough of the pedal itself.

You couldn't do that every single day or week without cutting some corners somewhere.

I really like Rabea so this isn’t taking anything away from him but everything he does sounds great exactly because of the production. It’s the opposite of warts and all! So much so, I feel like you’re barely hearing the product. Marshall could send him an MG15 and it’d sound like a Friedman on the video. Companies aren’t paying him all this cash to knock out ‘it is what it is’ demos! 

TeleMaster

I agree. The stuff he puts out must be edited in post, maybe even verified by the company. I just can’t see these companies paying people without them appropriating the videos and sounds. 

digitalscream

TeleMaster said:

I agree. The stuff he puts out must be edited in post, maybe even verified by the company. I just can’t see these companies paying people without them appropriating the videos and sounds. 

That's really, really not how it works.

FarleyUK

Just cancelled my preorder. 

Anyone care to guess how long it will take for Neural to refund my deposit...?

TeleMaster

digitalscream said:

TeleMaster said:

I agree. The stuff he puts out must be edited in post, maybe even verified by the company. I just can’t see these companies paying people without them appropriating the videos and sounds. 

That's really, really not how it works.

Which part? The ‘appropriating’ is meant to be ‘approving’ by the way. Some strange autocorrect. 

I would be very surprised if they just let the people they send their stuff to just put out videos of the stuff sounding like shit without them approving it before they pay them. And I’d be very surprised if the sounds aren’t EQ’d in Logic after. I don’t see how the guitar tracks can sit so well in the mix otherwise. 

Happy to have my cynicism proved wrong!

fretmeister

FarleyUK said:

Just cancelled my preorder. 

Anyone care to guess how long it will take for Neural to refund my deposit...?

Up to 7 days would be reasonable.

More than that would be a problem.

digitalscream

TeleMaster said:

digitalscream said:

TeleMaster said:

I agree. The stuff he puts out must be edited in post, maybe even verified by the company. I just can’t see these companies paying people without them appropriating the videos and sounds. 

That's really, really not how it works.

Which part? The ‘appropriating’ is meant to be ‘approving’ by the way. Some strange autocorrect. 

I would be very surprised if they just let the people they send their stuff to just put out videos of the stuff sounding like shit without them approving it before they pay them. And I’d be very surprised if the sounds aren’t EQ’d in Logic after. I don’t see how the guitar tracks can sit so well in the mix otherwise. 

Happy to have my cynicism proved wrong!

Well, all of it, really.

First off, they choose demonstrators who are good at what they do, and appropriate for the gear. The "good at what they do" bit isn't limited to being a good player, but also having good production values (and being popular enough to justify the expense of dealing with them). The "appropriate for the gear" bit is critical; Neural wouldn't send a QC to That Pedal Show any more than <Average Pedal Maker> would send a vintage tremolo pedal to Keith Merrow.

No YouTuber out there - particularly the bigger ones - would accept an approval stage on their videos. Putting a video together is already an onerous task; a half-hour video is going to be 10-12 hours of work if not more even with an optimised workflow (including researching the gear, figuring out how to get the best out of it, shooting the main video, shooting B-roll, editing footage from multiple cameras, and writing/mixing any demo songs). The possibility of that being wasted after the fact makes it very much not worth it.

When a demonstrator/reviewer gets a bit of gear for a sponsored spot, they'll also be given the talking points the manufacturer wants to hit on, any notes on usage they might deem useful, and things to avoid. There will also be a clause in the contract for the demonstrator to halt the process if they find that something's not working as intended (or as desired), or if they find that it's just not good enough or appropriate for them to show on their channel. That happens right at the beginning of the production process (the "research" bit).

It's worth noting that this whole process isn't limited to music gear; it's the same for tech demonstrators, makeup channels, whatever. It's a very well-known and mature process.

In short, if the results aren't going to be good enough, the video doesn't get made. Unless, of course, the demonstrator in question is sufficiently big that they don't have to worry about a manufacturer blacklisting them (eg subscribers in the millions rather than tens-of-thousands, like Linus Tech Tips).

Finally...there is always going to be some compensatory EQ for solo tracks, not least because it has to get past YouTube's audio processing more or less intact, but it's largely based on "making the end video sound like it did in the room". And yes, there's always going to be DAW processing involved when fitting it into a mix, but that would go for anything that has more than one instrument in it, and can hardly be a surprise to anyone. The test isn't "how does this sound raw in a mix?", but rather "how does it fit in a mix with all the normal things you'd do with any guitar track?".

WiresDreamDisasters

TeleMaster said:

digitalscream said:

TeleMaster said:

I agree. The stuff he puts out must be edited in post, maybe even verified by the company. I just can’t see these companies paying people without them appropriating the videos and sounds. 

That's really, really not how it works.

Which part? The ‘appropriating’ is meant to be ‘approving’ by the way. Some strange autocorrect. 

I would be very surprised if they just let the people they send their stuff to just put out videos of the stuff sounding like shit without them approving it before they pay them. And I’d be very surprised if the sounds aren’t EQ’d in Logic after. I don’t see how the guitar tracks can sit so well in the mix otherwise. 

Happy to have my cynicism proved wrong!

Source Audio just sent me a C4 pedal for absolutely free, because they were impressed with my Collider and Ventris videos, and they want me to do more content for them.

They are happy for me to just do my thing. Because they like it. They don't need to micro manage me, they don't need to put words in my mouth, and they certainly don't need to approve my videos.

They like my stuff. I'm guessing Neural likes Rabea's stuff, and they also don't need to be heavily involved in his videos. They trust him to just do his thing.

WiresDreamDisasters

guitarblaster said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

lysander said:

I wasn’t singling out Rabea and yes I agree wih you, too many variables, but obviously someone who has a lot of gear and who’s doing a demo will optimise a lot of these variables to make the gear sound as good as possible.
And if something still doesn’t sound right in post production of course they’re  gonna try and improve it there too and they’re not gonna then edit the video and say ‘oh by the way I eq-ed the shit out of this ‘ - all these things add up.
I’m not saying they’re trying to misrepresent the gear, just that this the natural flow of things.

I think you'd be surprised.

A lot of the time when you do these sorts of videos, you don't have time to agonise over the tone of things. Especially at Rabea's level where you're a content machine. A lot of the time what you're hearing is warts-and-all by sheer virtue of the fact that they don't have the time to make it sound amazing. Stick a mic on it, and call it done.

Maybe I'm super slow, but the ThorpyFX Fallout Cloud video I did took me a full 16 hour day start to end. That's starting with nothing, and ending up with a written and produced song and video, as well as a little bit of blurb and walkthrough of the pedal itself.

You couldn't do that every single day or week without cutting some corners somewhere.

I really like Rabea so this isn’t taking anything away from him but everything he does sounds great exactly because of the production. It’s the opposite of warts and all! So much so, I feel like you’re barely hearing the product. Marshall could send him an MG15 and it’d sound like a Friedman on the video. Companies aren’t paying him all this cash to knock out ‘it is what it is’ demos! 

I'm not sure I agree with this really. His full song production videos you might have a point, but so many of his gear review videos are him with whatever bit of kit it is, just playing some riffs and licks in mono. He might EQ a bit to tame some harsh frequencies, and he might do some sidechain compression to allow his voice to cut over the music. But by and large what I hear in his videos is pretty much a 1:1 as to how the thing in question sounds in my hands also. I'm thinking particularly of his Boss effects demos that he did a while back, but it seems to be a general thing IMHO.

I think the amount of post processing he does is probably minimal, and the amount of editing he does amounts to pretty much topping and tailing the interesting bits of his performances.

And I doubt companies are paying him "all this cash" - a friend of mine spoke to him about videos in the past, and the price was around £300-£500 per video as I recall. Hardly a lot of cash for the amount of work they take.

TeleMaster

Okay. It does seem strange that in an age where marketing and public perception is almost more important than the product itself, that companies would give up so much control, but I’m happy to see that they do actually allow artists to have a good element of creativity.