Your IR experience, good/bad/ugly?

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ZEN Amps

ZEN Amps

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Morning gents. IR discussion, and I'm talking for recording exclusively. I think an IR into an FRFR monitor or PA is a whole different story - making it feel like you're in the room with a nice cab is very difficult.

Even though I was a cab-miking diehard for decades, in recent years I've experiment a lot and taken IR captures of our entire cab collection. I use them in conjunction with a reactive load that is based on the Aiken design (a beefier, tweaked version of the Suhr basically) and although no two things are truly identical - to my ear the recorded tones are indistinguishable. I couldn't say which is which when switching between them, nor can anyone else I've pestered with the experiment.

"Feel" can somewhat enter the equation, but if the load's impedance curve and overall design is robust there seems to be no discernible difference for most amps. Speaker breakup isn't really accounted for in a traditional static IR, but this overused term is maybe the topic for another thread.

Anyway this is my take, but I'm aware that many others either haven't had this experience, or don't like IR's for some other reason. So if this is you tell me about the hows and whys, what you have/haven't tried, or is it based on the recording of others etc?
 
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Suhr took a good estimate as to what impedance curve of typical greenback speakers look like and built an analog equivalent in a box (rumor has it he copied someone else but that’s a whole different subject). IRs are just characterizations of the same thing just electronic and not fixed.

Introduce an oddball amp into the mix and now it doesn’t play nice with the status quo speaker or IR and the amp is to blame instead of the very apparent realization and fact we have molded a set of tools and tube circuits that all can be dialed in to sound the same and called it the status norm by confirming they sound the same.

I respect IRs but there’s nothing better than nice mic pre’s and mics and the mic’s become necessary when you have a real unique and badass amp you need to record or for when you need to record the interactions of two mixed speakers in a single cab.

I’m just a black and white mic person. 57 and a 121.
 
glpg80 said:
Suhr took a good estimate as to what impedance curve of typical greenback speakers look like and built an analog equivalent in a box (rumor has it he copied someone else but that’s a whole different subject).
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Let's hear more about this...
 
I record pretty much exclusively with IR's, and play my amps through a reactive load + IR's for fun all the time.

The trouble with IR's is that you have to find the right one (or multiple blended together more likely) before they'll really pop out at you as inspirational. But before you get there, you tend to go through a lot of crap that flat out sounds terrible. A lot of people (understandably) quit before they get to the promised land and walk away thinking IR's are just poor sounding on a conceptual level. Basically most of them sound awful when you first start to experiment with them but you can get them sounding incredible if you find the right ones and blend/tweak them in a way that works for you.

And while IR's seem to have an extremely wide scope of quality, everything from absolute dogwater to truly inspirational, real cabs on the other hand are totally different to me. Their scope is way narrower. When you just plug right into them, they're good for getting a good-to-decent sound in the room, and just throwing an SM57 in front of them will go a long way. However, while tweaking everything to sound top notch is doable, it takes a good bit of work and you have to redo that work every time you do anything at all to the setup. And finally, with real cabs you have to contend with the necessity of high volume.

Considering all that, once I put in the work to find and then really tune / blend my IR's to sound exactly how I wanted, I started liking playing through them more than real cabs.
 
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chumbucket said:
Let's hear more about this...
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Supposedly it was designed by someone else and posted on a forum somewhere. Suhr released his reactive load and it was found to be a copy (how closely I’m not sure) of the forum posted circuit.

What forum, where, and when I have no clue - this is just rumor and I have no way of validating any of it. Not my place to say otherwise just stating it’s been discussed before.
 
I use a Captor X and use the IRs that came with it, and feel like I get decent results for my needs.
 
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I’ve been using my kemper almost exclusively for the last couple of years. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying the IR world again.

Before I got used to the feeling of the kemper and the close mic sound, I struggled. Now going back to IRs I’m amazed at the dynamics I’ve been missing with a real amp. There is this extra bounce and squish and connection and naturalness. Makes it easier to play in a more lively and rock way. As opposed to always ending up playing tight metal with my kemper.

But, an element could be the kemper profiles. Even though I’ve got hundreds.

Definitely have to find the right IR. That takes time. I’ve been using reverence in Cubase to load up dozens and flick between them.

Load box is probably important. I’m using Rivera Rockcrusher and I suspect it is not as good as others. Keen to try the Suhr and/or Fryette.

Seeing you have this great load box and seem so into it, why not produce and sell that first. Good experience before your amp. I’m in Australia if you need a beta tester!
 
I own and have auditioned hundreds, maybe thousands of IRs. Ownhammer, Celestion, Bogren, ML Soundlab, Otto, York, AxeFX, Quad Cortex.

The problem is always finding the right one. The only IRs I will use anymore are the ones where you can change the mic placement, or mic blend in real time. The ones in Neural DSP Nameless (IRs shot by ML Soundlab) are great. I've also gotten some great results with the GGD ones with adjustable faders. Everything else is a crap shoot, trying to find the Goldilocks zone.

The best results I've had so far were with the St Rock React IR (the first one) into GGD Cali and Goldstack.

But when it comes to mic'ing a cab, it's just so much easier IME. Find the right mics, find your blend between the two or three, and it just sounds right.

With all that being said, I prefer the IR work flow. It gives you some flexibility to change the sound up after the recording is done. Especially with Neural or GGD, where you can change the mic or cab or placement after the fact. You can't really beat that kind of flexibility. And the ability to record silently is great too. I have a VHX one the way and I'm excited about trying the direct record function with it. But the more I dial in these Neural DSP plugins the more I wonder if all the extra expense and effort is worth it.
 
Love the idea, hate having to go through dozens variations on a single speaker and decipher the naming scheme. Just don't have time for it.

It was useful to test out a speaker before buying it though.
 
I've made IRs for years.

I have approached it different many times.

What works in one situation doesn't necessarily work in another.

It can be pretty complicated even if it doesn't seem like it should be.
 
Soundstorm said:
I own and have auditioned hundreds, maybe thousands of IRs. Ownhammer, Celestion, Bogren, ML Soundlab, Otto, York, AxeFX, Quad Cortex.

The problem is always finding the right one.
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ners said:
Love the idea, hate having to go through dozens variations on a single speaker and decipher the naming scheme. Just don't have time for it.
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There are certainly lots of good commercial ones out there, but with literally thousand of options I agree it can be hell navigating them.

For this reason DIY is a great way to go - you can only blame yourself then if the tone sucks!
 
Soundstorm said:
I own and have auditioned hundreds, maybe thousands of IRs. Ownhammer, Celestion, Bogren, ML Soundlab, Otto, York, AxeFX, Quad Cortex.

The problem is always finding the right one. The only IRs I will use anymore are the ones where you can change the mic placement, or mic blend in real time. The ones in Neural DSP Nameless (IRs shot by ML Soundlab) are great. I've also gotten some great results with the GGD ones with adjustable faders. Everything else is a crap shoot, trying to find the Goldilocks zone.

The best results I've had so far were with the St Rock React IR (the first one) into GGD Cali and Goldstack.

But when it comes to mic'ing a cab, it's just so much easier IME. Find the right mics, find your blend between the two or three, and it just sounds right.

With all that being said, I prefer the IR work flow. It gives you some flexibility to change the sound up after the recording is done. Especially with Neural or GGD, where you can change the mic or cab or placement after the fact. You can't really beat that kind of flexibility. And the ability to record silently is great too. I have a VHX one the way and I'm excited about trying the direct record function with it. But the more I dial in these Neural DSP plugins the more I wonder if all the extra expense and effort is worth it.
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Good info!
 
Ugly. I called up the IRS store and asked for some killer cloned Greenback profiles. I got profiled all right, in the form of an audit
 
I'm a huge fan of the load box/IR approach. With the Suhr Reactive Load and hosting the IR in my DAW, I can make changes after the fact quickly and efficiently without having to re-amp a whole track or album. I can also record cranked 100w amps silently at night.
 
I think they’re incredible. Love em. I bought a Suhr RL when they first came out (around 2016 I think) and have never looked back, still use it every time I play. The last few years I’ve used the Bogren IR’s and I settled on 2 primary ones from that panned left & right and I hardly ever change them, basically never. I really like the Bogren IR’s, it’s not only the speaker captured but the mics, preamps, etc that he uses. They (Fascination Studios) record, mix and master a shit ton of metal bands and do better mic placement and recording setup than I can for sure.

I just received the Redseven Evo Reactive Load and will check that out this weekend.
 
Love mic’d cabs and love IRs.

Both sound amazing. Playing tube amps is what inspires me, so the more often I can do that, the more I write and enjoy creating music

I’ve heard IRs sound much better than some mic’d tones too IMO
 
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