Why i stopped using IR to record.

  • Thread starter Thread starter frthib
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frthib

frthib

Active member
i've been collecting impulse response since the file s-pres-high appeared. forever.

i had to learn and do a ton of tricks to make it somehow work for me, but im always in doubt about how does it sound, how it is made, etc.. all the while having a couple of mics available but not using then since "its harder having a good tone with them".

turns out it was a mix of lazyness, user error, gain staging, mic placement, overuse of eq and basically general cluelessness (?) that made it suck.

i learned that after deciding to place my cabs in a separate room with a long speaker cable and xlrs and hear through real monitors, not headphones, what i played.. turned out i relied on post eq way too much. the starting tone was terrible. micing isnt that hard with quality gear tuned to its best.

it was great, didnt have to use bullshit eq, console, multi band compressor, saturation, etc.. nothing. if i didnt liked the sound i turned the knobs on the amp or moved the mic a bit

its an expensive lesson, hard disk full of useless ir files, but now i feel great knowing i can create something unique without using pre digested impulse response files
 
.. i'll add one thing, most of you must know but i didn't.

recording a loud amp in the same room while you "monitor" the whole mix with headphones turned up to 11 is a terrible idea, you'll go deaf and it will sound like crap, you'll eq it way too bright and sharp to make it pop out over the real amp.

bad bad idea.
 
it's pretty much that, no eq, custom jca22h, no boost, a simple 57 on my diy 112 with a beaten 90's v30. I added a post reverb (sunset studio) to make it sound nicer.

i recorded not loud at all, just enough so the cab "thud" on palm mutes

not saying it a GREAT tone at all, but it takes literally no time once it's set up and doesn't sound weird like IR does sometime.. (related to how the IR was made)



edit : i put pillows on the wall in front of the cab to try to tame some reflection, it's a weird room with tiles on the floor
 
frthib said:
it's pretty much that, no eq, custom jca22h, no boost, a simple 57 on my diy 112 with a beaten 90's v30. I added a post reverb (sunset studio) to make it sound nicer.

i recorded not loud at all, just enough so the cab "thud" on palm mutes

not saying it a GREAT tone at all, but it takes literally no time once it's set up and doesn't sound weird like IR does sometime.. (related to how the IR was made)



edit : i put pillows on the wall in front of the cab to try to tame some reflection, it's a weird room with tiles on the floor
Click to expand...

 
ahah same style, i just played "something".. if i compare the two, yours sound clearly professionnal, mine obviously lacks polish, is full of grating eq notches, one take and everything but i feel its a better starting point than a "mix ready" ir who's eq arent made with my setup and context in mind.

i hate the feeling of having to unbake the cake to fix an ingredient
 
frthib said:
ahah same style, i just played "something".. if i compare the two, yours sound clearly professionnal, mine clearly lacks polish, is full of grating eq notches and everything but i feel its a better starting point than a "mix ready" ir who's eq arent made with my setup and context in mind.
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These days, I record all guitar tracks DI signal into ReaperDAW, then run the signal back out into whatever gear I wanna a try to get a specific tone/sound.

That track was my SLO preamp into JCM800 power section, via passive loop.

The only speaker I prefer to record with is a Scumback BM-75, and I'll mic with an SM-57 and sometimes blend in an AKG-220.
 
im in my first steps of properly recording, its a brand new world and i have so much to.learn..

DI recording and sending that to the amp to better get how things work together will be an important step, thanks for remind it to me!
 
VonBonfire said:
Digital guitar must be destroyed. Thank you for doing your part.
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IR have a something that once you've heard you cant unhear it.. it call it the ear stuck to the speaker tone.. it lacks "space" or something. its hard to describe but make it annoying once your brain learned it.

and worse, everybody use the same irs, since speaker and cab is maybe 80-90% of the tone, everything sound almost exactly the same.. so boring.
 
I need a real v30 in life always. I don’t want a recording to be perfect . Just close to the truth of what my guitar sounds like . I like some speaker aggression
 
Techdeth said:
I need a real v30 in life always. I don’t want a recording to be perfect . Just close to the truth of what my guitar sounds like . I like some speaker aggression
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Every track I post here is nothing more than a "riff tape", as we used to call them back when all we had was a 4-track Tascam Porta5 to lay down ideas.

Only difference is, I add a little context with a YouTube drum track and some rudimentary bass.
 
frthib said:
IR have a something that once you've heard you cant unhear it.. it call it the ear stuck to the speaker tone.. it lacks "space" or something. its hard to describe but make it annoying once your brain learned it.

and worse, everybody use the same irs, since speaker and cab is maybe 80-90% of the tone, everything sound almost exactly the same.. so boring.
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Just tell guitar people you come into contact with "don't capture me bro" from now on.
 
IR’s have their uses but I’d never use them for a final track. Even the best of them have this hard to define yet impossible to miss “almost there but not quite” aspect to how they sit in a mix. Dialing in an amp through an IR also just doesn’t work the same as the real deal. It’s like 2D vs 3D or something.
 
Bardagh said:
IR’s have their uses but I’d never use them for a final track. Even the best of them have this hard to define yet impossible to miss “almost there but not quite” aspect to how they sit in a mix. Dialing in an amp through an IR also just doesn’t work the same as the real deal. It’s like 2D vs 3D or something.
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I think it majorly depends how the person captures the IR. There’s a handful of methods out there. Some DEFINITELY sound better than others.

Also if someone is recording their amp with a reactive load vs non reactive. And if there’s a weird impedance curve on a load box. If someone records with a captor vs a st rock the results are going to be pretty different. I went down the rabbit hole pretty big after having babies in the house and having to record silently lol.

I think now I have it down to as realistic as possible where it’s non discernible most of the time.
 
frthib said:
it's pretty much that, no eq, custom jca22h, no boost, a simple 57 on my diy 112 with a beaten 90's v30. I added a post reverb (sunset studio) to make it sound nicer.

i recorded not loud at all, just enough so the cab "thud" on palm mutes

not saying it a GREAT tone at all, but it takes literally no time once it's set up and doesn't sound weird like IR does sometime.. (related to how the IR was made)



edit : i put pillows on the wall in front of the cab to try to tame some reflection, it's a weird room with tiles on the floor
Click to expand...


That sounded alright but that's what Mics sound like. The one huge difference is that IR's sort of even the peaks and you lose dynamics. I play differently through an IR and I find that more importantly, my amp doesn't sound as good loaded down and going into an IR. You can get pro results though but you also run into the problem of not being able to make a decision and forever tweaking. ( like plugins) My preferred method was always doing a guitar tent or gobos around a speaker cab, attenuate down minimally and then monitoring off noise cancelling recording headphones. Just to hear yourself but you will feel the thump in the room with you. I think small cab rooms can cause pressure issues too so I like the gobo or tent idea because you still have room for some air to escape and pressure to be released. I also like a second mic just filling out the sound. So I'll get 90% of the sound from the 57 but that 10 or even 15% from another mic. I use a cascade fathead for this because a Royer 121 is not in my budget these days.
 
I really like using IR's, but I've never found any one single IR I liked enough to want to use on its own. For me the key to good tone with IR's is finding a blend of a few of them that compliment and smooth each other out, and finding the right reactive load setup.

If I had a separate soundproof space big enough for a few cabs and a dynamount system, I'd love to get into mic'ing real cabs but even for somebody as crazy as me with a roomful of big iron amps (I say that as if I'm not in good company on this forum lol), getting really into cab mic'ing seems like an even bigger commitment.

@Bram576 is also totally right about how the business of IR's and reactive loads is just as fiddly as real cabs can get though, and just as easy to get wrong. The right reactive load makes a HUGE difference and it takes time to figure out which one works for you. Like for example, I find the impedance curve on the Suhr RL is one of the best in the industry, HOWEVER, the Suhr's I/O is less than ideal as it's a very high impedance system for some reason, so a better way to run it is by using a separate dedicated Line Out box for your amp -> Interface connection, while plugging the Suhr into the Line Out box's cab jack so you can just use the RL as a dummy cab for its impedance curve while also getting the benefit of the line out box's higher impedance signal.
 
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