joe gore
In this edition of Recording Dojo, our columnist sheds light on the differences between decibel measurements, and offers a breakdown of real-life equivalents of basic sound level values.
Starting this month, I’d like to bring some clarity to some widely misused audio terms that engineers struggle with, especially when it comes to mixing and mastering. Do you know what a dB is and/or how it got its name, or understand the difference between dB, dBu, dBA, dBSPL, and dBFS and how they inherently apply to your recordings? Tighten up your belts, the Dojo is now open.
I’m going to start with our old beloved friend, the VU (volume unit) meter. Officially introduced in 1939, the purpose of the VU meter was to provide a standardized way of measuring and representing audio signal levels, and it immediately gave audio engineers and producers an increased ability to make broadcasts and recordings with substantially more consistent loudness levels.
Once it was standardized by ASA (later, ANSI—American National Standards Institute), the VU meter became a cheap and indispensable tool for measuring how much signal was being sent to broadcast transmitters. Essentially, the VU meter works by having a calibrated response time (ballistic) of 300 ms and reflects an inferred average of any peak that occurred within that time window. While it reflects speech in an intuitive way, it falls short with accurately registering very fast transients (like drum hits, claps, fast staccato attacks, etc.). Thus, every decibel of change is not accurately reflected by the meter but averaged (Fig. 1). It wasn’t long until engineers realized that short bursts of +3 VU on analog gear wouldn’t trigger distortion or affect the overall perception of loudness.
In fact, the VU meter was really designed to help the engineer get their audio signals to hover around 0 VU (which equals to +4 dBu, or 1.228V RMS) and what most of us call “0 dB.” This is further reinforced by the design of the meter’s scale range since standardized VU meters range from -20 VU to +3 VU (23 VU entries, in all). However, the majority of the meter’s real estate deals with the last six entries at the top of the scale (-3 VU to +3 VU).
“It immediately gave audio engineers and producers an increased ability to make broadcasts and recordings with substantially more consistent loudness levels.”
Decibels, Decibels, Everywhere!
Let me define the decibel—it is one 10th of a “bel,” named after Alexander Graham Bell (which is why the “B” in “dB” is capitalized). But what’s a bel? It is just a logarithmic unit of measurement relative to something else. We don’t actually hear decibels; we measure them because they approximate the human ear’s logarithmic perception of amplitude (aka loudness). This is known as dBA.
So this is what we mean when we’re talking about how “loud” or “noisy” something is, and also what audiologists use when measuring how well we can hear. What?!
Here’s some basic values for you:
20 dBA: whisper
40 dBA: home computer fan
60 dBA: normal conversation
80 dBA: inside an airplane
90 dBA: lawnmower, hair dryer, blender
95 dBA: prolonged exposure can cause slight hearing loss and tinnitus
100 dBA: motorcycle, construction site, normal stereo at max volume
110 dBA: rock concert, jackhammer
125 dBA: pain threshold; prolonged exposure will cause hearing loss
135 dBA: air raid siren
140 dBA: pain threshold; permanent hearing damage possible
150 dBA: handgun
180 dBA: possible death, rocket launch
But wait, isn’t this also known as dBSPL? I wish! They’re so close but so far away. You see, sound pressure relates to the variations in atmospheric pressure caused by the sound, and SPL (sound pressure level) is the pressure level of that sound measured in decibels. The crucial difference is that dBSPL treats all frequencies equally because it uses Mother Earth’s atmosphere as the gauge for measurement, and dBA doesn’t. It focuses on frequencies that humans most easily perceive—thus, it uses our outer and inner ear to gauge and measure the SPL. To put a finer point on this, using dBSPL will give much different readings if there are frequencies below 1000 Hz, whereas they are both very similar for any frequencies above 1000 Hz.
Next month, I’ll continue down this path and we’ll be using decibels to measure watts, volts, and SPL to definitively answer the age-old question: Is a 100-watt amp twice as loud as a 50-watt amp? See you next time. Namaste.
One player’s lifelong obsession with the ability to have worlds of sound beneath our feet. And, by the way, it’s our annual pedal issue.
I’m a pedal freak. I have been since I bought my first one: a used MXR Distortion + for about $20. At the time, I was hunting for the sounds of my classic-rock guitar heroes—especially Hendrix’s Strat tones and the raw, grinding fuzz on Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills. (I realize the latter isn’t popular with a lot of players, but for me, the voice of James Gurley’s guitar is still sonic nirvana!) I don’t know that I’ve ever really achieved those sounds, but the purchase of a Big Knob Tone Blender in 2020 did finally get me very near Gurley’s grizzly-bear-on-acid bawl.
Over the years, my passion for pedals has not diminished. I haven’t counted lately, but I’ve got at least 100 in easy-to-access plastic boxes, and 11 or 12 on my ’board at any time. Sure, I enjoy purely organic guitar tone, too, and spent nearly a decade touring with just a couple guitars, a Marshall, and a tuner. But to me, pedals are not a gimmick, as I’ve heard some players and critics disparage them. They are a key to potentially uncharted sonic terrain, or at least, a rarified zone where the inspiration for new songs or epic solos awaits. I once had a vicious argument with a fellow journalist and guitarist who dismissed pedals as a crutch. If pedals are a crutch, so are electricity and amps.
“If pedals are a crutch, so are electricity and amps.”
The usual suspects on my pedalboard these days range from bread-and-butter effects (an MXR Phase 95 and an EHX Stereo Pulsar tremolo) to the elite (a Red Panda Particle 2 and a one-of-a-kind Big Knob Burns Buzzaround clone) to the awesomely outlandish (a Mantic Flex Pro and a Pigtronix Mothership 2). It’s a constantly changing lineup, depending on the gig and my impulses. Because I’ve not yet been able to pin down my perfect pedalboard lineup, like XAct Tone’s Barry O’Neal does in this issue’s “A Pedalboard Pro’s Dream ’Board.” My setup is one-dimensional. When I do figure that out, and I feel like I’m getting close, I’ll adopt a multi-tiered board and finally hide the power supply where the sun don’t shine, providing even more real estate for sound boxes.
I also owe pedals a debt beyond the creative yield they’ve provided. They helped get me through the pandemic. After watching David Gilmour’s Live at Pompeii concert repeatedly, I was inspired by his array of BK Butler Tube Drivers to go on an overdrive and fuzz spree. The joy of the chase and the sounds that resulted relieved my boredom and depression. In addition to a Tube Driver with the variable bias mod, I acquired the Tone Blender and Buzzaround clone, a TC Electronic Zeus Drive, a Joe Gore Duh, and, post lockdown, an MXR Duke of Tone. I love them all, I know exactly how I enjoy deploying them, and I am open to acquiring more. And don’t get me started on my adoration of delays and reverbs, and how they alter the space-time continuum!
All of which brings me to our annual pedal issue, or, as I like to think of it, my potential fall gear shopping list. I love this issue for its coverage of so many stompboxes from every category, and how the contributors and editors here at PG—and especially our veteran Gear Editor Charles Saufley—are able to distill, with color and character, the essentials of so many new stomps into an easily digestible consumers’ guide for guitarists. To say nothing of the cover by our Managing Editor Kate Koenig, which evokes the spirit, pun intended, of pedal collecting—where sounds sometimes seemingly from another world both echo the past and lead toward the future of tone.PG's Joe Gore is giving you the chance to WIN his "Filth" pedal in today's Stompboxtober giveaway! Enter below!
Filth fuzz
Man, I love those mad scientist fuzzes with too many knobs! I’ve collected them for decades and used them on a zillion sessions. It got to the point were people were hiring me specifically to make those sort of farting, fried-circuit tones.
But the downside of those complex fuzzes is that they’re a little too wide-ranging, with many settings you’ll probably never use. It’s easy to spend 20 minutes dicking around with the dials without nailing the perfect tone. I’ve always wished for a wild, highly variable fuzz that was a bit more “curated,” with easier access to the tones you’re likeliest to use.
That’s what inspired the Filth Fuzz. It’s only got four controls, but it’s a cornucopia of cool, quirky, and usable fuzz flavors.
The drive and level controls do what you’d expect. But unlike many fuzz drive controls, this one sounds great throughout its range. Extreme settings are molten-lava thick. Lower settings are like…slightly cooled lava, maybe?
But the real action is in the two sliders. They’re tone controls of a sort, but not in the usual way. Most fuzz tone controls are tone-sucking passive circuits situated downstream from the fuzz effect. But here, the sliders alter the voltages at the transistors, radically changing not only the tone, but also the timbre, response, attack, sustain, and compression. In other words, the sliders radically alter the fuzz’s core character, as opposed to simply EQing a single core tone.
Joystick control and three reverb algorithms unlock seemingly infinite combinations of reverb and distortion.
Articulate distortion with killer fuzzy edges. Deep, inspiring reverb algorithms. Relatively free of digital artifacts and cheesy overtones.
No presets. Joystick is way too easy to knock out of place in performance. Hard to get back to precise settings.
$299
Walrus Melee
walrusaudio.com
Artists have used guitar effects for instruments other than guitar for a long time. And with a joystick taking center stage on the enclosure, Walrus’ Melee, which combines three reverb algorithms and a distortion circuit, looks like it was designed in explicit acknowledgement of that fact. You see, it’s not easy to control a joystick precisely with your foot. So, the presence of the joystick—which blends distortion and reverb in seemingly infinite combinations—makes the pedal seem intended as much for use by synth, laptop, and keyboard artists as guitar players.
That may be true. But even if it were fact, it would do nothing to diminish how cool the Melee is as a pure guitar effect. Melee’s distortion is rich and often old-school fuzzy. Its three reverb algorithms—ambient, octave-down, and reverse reverb with feedback—are awesome, too. And with switches to change effect order, alter decay time, and select EQ emphasis, the tone-shaping options are many. But it’s the joystick that makes the Melee extraordinary and makes it such a deep well of possibilities.
Free-Form Interactions
Walrus’ Melee is far from the first joystick-controlled effect pedal. Walrus already has a dual-joystick fuzz/tremolo in its line in the Janus. A prototype of former Premier Guitar editor Joe Gore’s excellent Filth Fuzz used a joystick before he recognized the perils of fuzz-crazed users stomping it to death. Visionary companies like Devi Ever and Dwarfcraft have also given the joystick a go.
“The distortion is remarkable. It’s articulate and communicates individual string detail clearly, even at high-gain settings.”
Though unorthodox, Melee’s use of a joystick-centered design is a relatively elegant application. The only potentiometer is the master output volume. Situated below the master volume, there are three toggle switches. The topmost toggle controls the tone profile of the pedal—switching between progressively less bright settings. Curiously, the least bright setting is situated in the middle position, and a rotary knob might have been more effective here. Even so, the three EQ voices work well within the context of the fuzz voice. The middle toggle selects the range of reverb decay. It’s essential, given how expansive the Melee’s reverb can sound. And while the longest decay setting is incredibly fun, the shortest decay range can be indispensable at extreme fuzz settings. (The decay switch, by the way, can also be re-purposed to select reverb modulation level by holding down the bypass footswitch.) The third toggle re-orders the reverb and distortion effects, and it vastly expands the Melee’s range of sounds. I love the hazier, more mysterious textures of situating the reverb before distortion. Players that like more precision and control over picking dynamics might prefer the distortion in front.
The already impressive range of sounds afforded by those controls is made exponentially larger thanks to the very sensitive joystick. Pushing the joystick along its vertical axis increases the distortion gain. Moving it from left to right increases the reverb mix. The spaces in between are home to many blends of the two effects, and interacting with the control is a satisfying process akin to shaping clay.
Cross-Pollination Yields Beautiful Fruit
As cool as Walrus’ interface is, it’s only as good as the effects behind it. The distortion is remarkable. It’s articulate and communicates individual string output clearly, even at high-gain settings. But it can also sound searingly fuzz-like—evoking mid-’60s classics like the Fuzz-Tone and Fuzzrite. That combination isn’t easy to find. And Melee’s ability to walk the line between those two worlds is impressive. It’s also critical when working with reverbs as intense as the Melee’s can be.
Each of the Melee’s reverb algorithms is distinct and powerful. The reverse reverb with feedback was a logical launching point for me, given my own My Bloody Valentine predilections. And many settings uncannily evoke MBV sounds—particularly with the joystick in the upper-right quadrant or in the shallower reaches of the upper-left quadrant. Unlike a lot of reverse reverbs, the Melee’s feels fluid and cohesive. Shoegaze devotees would serve themselves well by investigating the Melee for this function alone.
The ambient reverb setting seems mostly free of the cloying high-octave tonalities that can evoke bad TV dramas. Instead, Melee’s ambient reverb setting is more cave-like in its reflections, which meshes nicely with the fuzz at long decay settings, but also creates a nice wash in the trail of heavy fuzz at low decay settings. The octave-down algorithm, meanwhile, will thrill any composer who loves to incorporate doomy, fractured textures as a bed for slow melodic movements. It also delivers treats like haunting, dolorous foghorn tones that sound magnificently terrifying coupled with deep, slow vibrato dives.
The Verdict
Melee is an overflowing source of sound and texture. How well it works for you as a guitar effect depends on your style and mode of performance. Experimental guitarists that work outside the performance constraints of footswitch-activated effects and can situate the Melee on a tabletop, stool, or, heck, a fancy, ceremonial side-stage plinth, will delight in the hands-on nature of the pedal’s interface. More kinetic stage performers may have a hard time avoiding accidental displacement of the joystick.
Melee’s most promising guitar applications probably exist in the realm of non-traditional rock stage presentation and in the studio, where the Melee’s intuitive functionality can be explored more freely. But in any situation where you can make the Melee’s idiosyncratic design work for you, its brilliant fuzzy distortion and varied and expansive reverb voices make it a tone-crafting asset with huge potential.