Load/IR box with Tube Amps Vs. Modeler

drumdude said:
I like the way you fellas think 👍🏻 .
SO not to throw a curveball into the discussion , but , which load box ? , Suhr IR , UA Ox ? (Which is double the price )
Seems UA hasn't updated the OX in a long time and are focused on their pedals (don't really wanna invest in an abandoned platform) ...any suggestions ?
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I’ve had the Suhr, Ox Box, Driftwood RL and now the St. Rock IR II. I’d recommend the St. Rock to anyone looking for the best load box right now. It has a bunch of nice features including an attenuator and is the best sounding to me.

I used the Suhr for a long time but its impedance curve scoops a good amount of mids. It’s not bad sounding but it doesn’t sound the most natural compared to the St. Rock II, which has two switchable impedance curves.

Stay away from the Ox Box, it’s a crappy product imo. It does not model any impedance curve, the forced WiFi connectivity is spotty and overall it colors the sound too much.
 
pipboy90 said:
I used the Suhr for a long time but its impedance curve scoops a good amount of mids. It’s not bad sounding but it doesn’t sound the most natural compared to the St. Rock II, which has two switchable impedance curves.
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Agree 100%. I feel the mid scoop is
excessive and to my ear sounds horrible. St. Rock is on my list.
 
acceptance said:
I don't know the technical stuff, but it would seem that if the suhr for example matches the impedance curve of a greenback, it will color a v30 IR. Either way, all I can say is that my own experience (Suhr, Rivera, two notes), they all color the sound in some way. I'm also one of the few that dislikes the Suhr for that matter.
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You could say that, yeah. Every cab has two major impacts on tone. One is the impedance curve of the cab and its effect on the amp, and the other is the overall EQ filter the speakers apply to the tone.

And yes, the Suhr's impedance curve of an old Marshall 4x12 with Greenbacks is going to be different than the curve of an old Marshall 4x12 with V30's. It's also going to be different than if you took the same Greenbacks and put them in a Recto 4x12 cab, etc.
 
pipboy90 said:
I’ve had the Suhr, Ox Box, Driftwood RL and now the St. Rock IR II. I’d recommend the St. Rock to anyone looking for the best load box right now. It has a bunch of nice features including an attenuator and is the best sounding to me.

I used the Suhr for a long time but its impedance curve scoops a good amount of mids. It’s not bad sounding but it doesn’t sound the most natural compared to the St. Rock II, which has two switchable impedance curves.

Stay away from the Ox Box, it’s a crappy product imo. It does not model any impedance curve, the forced WiFi connectivity is spotty and overall it colors the sound too much.
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Thanks man , I hadn't even heard of the St. Rock , I shall investigate 😁👍🏻 !!
 
acceptance said:
Agree 100%. I feel the mid scoop is
excessive and to my ear sounds horrible. St. Rock is on my list.
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Can you elaborate on this mid scoop? Is this a mid scoop you hear on one of the RLIRs IRs? The impedance curve of the Suhr RL and the St. Rock in one of its modes looks pretty similar to me. What setup were you using? Because all of that matters.

The way I use the Suhr RL is with Amplitube and MixIR3 and literally 100s of 3rd party IRs from Ownhammer, York, Boutique Tones etc... If an IR sounds excessively scooped, I can just pick another speaker, another cab, another mic, another mic placement, another mic mix. It's really endless the amount of control you have.

So to say the Suhr RL's mid scoop is excessive and sounds horrible is hard for me to understand. I'm sure you experienced the horrible sounds, but there are so many variables in the chain. Maybe it was the IR itself that was scooped. Maybe it was your amp or guitar or pickups that are scooped.

Impedance curves are important and a good load box should be based on real impedance curves unlike the OX for example, but after that, your tone is being filtered by so many elements in the chain. It would be tough for most people to be able to tell the difference between the curves of good RL boxes after everything else gets factored in. In a mix forget about it, probably nobody can tell the difference between legit impedance curves consistently. At least not enough to say one sounds horrible and the other sounds amazing.
 
rushcentrale said:
Can you elaborate on this mid scoop? Is this a mid scoop you hear on one of the RLIRs IRs? The impedance curve of the Suhr RL and the St. Rock in one of its modes looks pretty similar to me. What setup were you using? Because all of that matters.

The way I use the Suhr RL is with Amplitube and MixIR3 and literally 100s of 3rd party IRs from Ownhammer, York, Boutique Tones etc... If an IR sounds excessively scooped, I can just pick another speaker, another cab, another mic, another mic placement, another mic mix. It's really endless the amount of control you have.

So to say the Suhr RL's mid scoop is excessive and sounds horrible is hard for me to understand. I'm sure you experienced the horrible sounds, but there are so many variables in the chain. Maybe it was the IR itself that was scooped. Maybe it was your amp or guitar or pickups that are scooped.

Impedance curves are important and a good load box should be based on real impedance curves unlike the OX for example, but after that, your tone is being filtered by so many elements in the chain. It would be tough for most people to be able to tell the difference between the curves of good RL boxes after everything else gets factored in. In a mix forget about it, probably nobody can tell the difference between legit impedance curves consistently. At least not enough to say one sounds horrible and the other sounds amazing.
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I am confused by the mid scooped statement also. The Suhr and Fractal are known to have the most accurate impedance curves, both modeling a Greenback cab. There is no extra scoop that is happening, beyond what would naturally happen if plugging directly into the same cab.
 
So I’ve been using the Torpedo Studio for years. I’ve heard recording of most every load box out there.

I have the new RedSeven Amp Central coming soon so looking forward to that.

For Two Notes, the Studio gave me better tones direct than the Captor’s did for sure.
 
rushcentrale said:
Can you elaborate on this mid scoop? Is this a mid scoop you hear on one of the RLIRs IRs? The impedance curve of the Suhr RL and the St. Rock in one of its modes looks pretty similar to me. What setup were you using? Because all of that matters.

The way I use the Suhr RL is with Amplitube and MixIR3 and literally 100s of 3rd party IRs from Ownhammer, York, Boutique Tones etc... If an IR sounds excessively scooped, I can just pick another speaker, another cab, another mic, another mic placement, another mic mix. It's really endless the amount of control you have.

So to say the Suhr RL's mid scoop is excessive and sounds horrible is hard for me to understand. I'm sure you experienced the horrible sounds, but there are so many variables in the chain. Maybe it was the IR itself that was scooped. Maybe it was your amp or guitar or pickups that are scooped.

Impedance curves are important and a good load box should be based on real impedance curves unlike the OX for example, but after that, your tone is being filtered by so many elements in the chain. It would be tough for most people to be able to tell the difference between the curves of good RL boxes after everything else gets factored in. In a mix forget about it, probably nobody can tell the difference between legit impedance curves consistently. At least not enough to say one sounds horrible and the other sounds amazing.
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I probably shouldn't say "excessive and horrible" — at least that was my subjective opinion. I didn't like the Suhr at all. I was using it to create NAM captures. So it was not really a matter of IRs as all the the models sounded totally different than the Rivera captures for example, everything else being equal. And to my ear the Suhr models were consistently boomy and trebly, lacking mids. The rivera was the opposite, being overly middy, and I didn't like it either. Maybe it is the impedance curves, but I suspect there are inherent limitations and you can only expect so much from this sort of tech. All that being said I maintain the most important thing is whether you like the sound you get, as high accuracy and transparency seems difficult to achieve.
 
Shask said:
I am confused by the mid scooped statement also. The Suhr and Fractal are known to have the most accurate impedance curves, both modeling a Greenback cab. There is no extra scoop that is happening, beyond what would naturally happen if plugging directly into the same cab.
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Maybe it's because I run V30s?
 
acceptance said:
I probably shouldn't say "excessive and horrible" — at least that was my subjective opinion. I didn't like the Suhr at all. I was using it to create NAM captures. So it was not really a matter of IRs as all the the models sounded totally different than the Rivera captures for example, everything else being equal. And to my ear the Suhr models were consistently boomy and trebly, lacking mids. The rivera was the opposite, being overly middy, and I didn't like it either. Maybe it is the impedance curves, but I suspect there are inherent limitations and you can only expect so much from this sort of tech. All that being said I maintain the most important thing is whether you like the sound you get, as high accuracy and transparency seems difficult to achieve.
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I see. Making NAM captures is a different thing and yeah there are limitations to that tech and a few things that can go wrong in the process.

I thought we were talking about straight up amps through a load box and into IRs in which case you're just playing your amps through someone else's cab. And the people that are making these IRs right are doing it with nice speakers, nice cabs, nice mics in good environments. There's no modeling going on with that.
 
rushcentrale said:
I see. Making NAM captures is a different thing and yeah there are limitations to that tech and a few things that can go wrong in the process.

I thought we were talking about straight up amps through a load box and into IRs in which case you're just playing your amps through someone else's cab. And the people that are making these IRs right are doing it with nice speakers, nice cabs, nice mics in good environments. There's no modeling going on with that.
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IRs are models too. But my criticism wasn't due to the limitations of amp modeling technology. The same goes playing straight into an IR. If you get a couple different load boxes you will see what I'm talking about. They all sound different. If I recall correctly most of the load boxes available use the greenback impedance curve. That's why I'm interested to try the Saint Rock as it uses the v30.
 
acceptance said:
IRs are models too. But my criticism wasn't because of the limitations of guitar modeling software and technology. The same goes playing straight into an IR. If you get a couple different load boxes you will see what I'm talking about. They all sound different.
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Yeah point taken and you're right IRs are models. And yeah I know that load boxes sound really different. My thing is, if you got 2 good load boxes with good curves and are playing them with good IRs, once your recordings are in a mix you're not gonna be thinking one curve is great and one is horrible. It's all gonna be pretty similar.
 
acceptance said:
I probably shouldn't say "excessive and horrible" — at least that was my subjective opinion. I didn't like the Suhr at all. I was using it to create NAM captures. So it was not really a matter of IRs as all the the models sounded totally different than the Rivera captures for example, everything else being equal. And to my ear the Suhr models were consistently boomy and trebly, lacking mids. The rivera was the opposite, being overly middy, and I didn't like it either. Maybe it is the impedance curves, but I suspect there are inherent limitations and you can only expect so much from this sort of tech. All that being said I maintain the most important thing is whether you like the sound you get, as high accuracy and transparency seems difficult to achieve.
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What is funny is I normally find modelers and captures to be far too mid heavy, lol. They can sound like a cardboard box. Many times the captures are made without a cab, so they lose the impedance curve interaction and come out sounding flat and mid heavy.
 
rushcentrale said:
Can you elaborate on this mid scoop? Is this a mid scoop you hear on one of the RLIRs IRs? The impedance curve of the Suhr RL and the St. Rock in one of its modes looks pretty similar to me. What setup were you using? Because all of that matters.

The way I use the Suhr RL is with Amplitube and MixIR3 and literally 100s of 3rd party IRs from Ownhammer, York, Boutique Tones etc... If an IR sounds excessively scooped, I can just pick another speaker, another cab, another mic, another mic placement, another mic mix. It's really endless the amount of control you have.

So to say the Suhr RL's mid scoop is excessive and sounds horrible is hard for me to understand. I'm sure you experienced the horrible sounds, but there are so many variables in the chain. Maybe it was the IR itself that was scooped. Maybe it was your amp or guitar or pickups that are scooped.

Impedance curves are important and a good load box should be based on real impedance curves unlike the OX for example, but after that, your tone is being filtered by so many elements in the chain. It would be tough for most people to be able to tell the difference between the curves of good RL boxes after everything else gets factored in. In a mix forget about it, probably nobody can tell the difference between legit impedance curves consistently. At least not enough to say one sounds horrible and the other sounds amazing.
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This is a good comparison vid:
 
pipboy90 said:
This is a good comparison vid:
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This is awesome!

Yeah they all sound different. I wouldn't be able to accurately pick them out in a lineup with any consistency though. Although I hear some are darker and some are brighter, to my ears they all sound pretty great. Maybe I'm easy to please.
 
acceptance said:
IRs are models too. But my criticism wasn't due to the limitations of amp modeling technology. The same goes playing straight into an IR. If you get a couple different load boxes you will see what I'm talking about. They all sound different. If I recall correctly most of the load boxes available use the greenback impedance curve. That's why I'm interested to try the Saint Rock as it uses the v30.
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No speaker has an inherent static impedance curve. An impedance curve is the measure of an emergent characteristic of a particular speaker cabinet loaded with speakers.

To understand an impedance curve, you have to understand how a tube power section works. Take a solid state amp. Solid state amps typically have what's called a very high damping factor, which means a very high degree of control over exactly what the speaker is doing at all times. Imagine a guitar string. Lets say you glue a very small machine over the whole string that can fully control the string to rotate it 440 times a second, creating an A note, after which it can stop vibrating whenever you want. At any time, you can stop the machine on a dime, you have full control over exactly what all parts of the string are doing at every microsecond. You have total control over the guitar string. That's kind of how solid state amps work.

Now compare that to just plucking the string with a pick. The 440 Hz A note still plays but you really have minimal control over how long it rings out without manually damping it with your hand. A tube amp behaves more like that. While a solid state amp can kind of grab the speaker by both sides so to speak and manually move it back and fourth very fast with a high degree of control, a tube amp more or less just "plucks" the speaker, and from there the speaker just kind of rings out however physics allow. The volume of air inside the cab dictates the resonant frequencies of the cab, which dictates how freely the speaker can vibrate at a given frequency. The less a given frequency is impeded by the speaker cab, the louder that frequency is going to resonate when the tube amp "plucks" the speaker at that frequency.

The impedance curve of any given cab is a measurement of how freely the speakers in that cab will resonate at any point in the frequency spectrum.
 
So here's a question to take things yet again in a Slightly different direction lol.
If the load box is simulating the power section of the amp (which I'm assuming this is the case yes ?) and the IR's are handling the cab ,does the difference in amp wattage come into play as much ?? (Ie are you going to get similar results with a little 20 water as a big 100 watter ?) I mean , is the load box essentially turning the amp into a 'preamp' at that point ? (Again , never tried this type of setup tube amp/load box)
 
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