Do y'all hate amp demos using IRs?

[DrewJD82]

I think after seeing this discussion a few times over the years, there’s a pretty easily-seen split between the two camps and it’s mostly in the people who mic amps regularly want to hear a mic’d cab and don’t really mind IR’s much at all, while the guys who mainly just play and don’t bother recording at all want to hear what it sounds like in a room.

Easily understandable, for the dudes just jamming in the room (and that’s not a negative-tinted “just”) it means fuck all what it sounds like with a 57 1” from the cab and for the dudes who mic cabs regularly and have experience with it, there’s a certain amount of audio information you can gather that you simply cannot from a phone vid.

 

[Deadpan]

Many IRs are mixed or altered. This could skew perception.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

those in the room mics always sound horrendously awful. If things are mic’d as you would in the studio it’s at least somewhat consistent amp to amp. The cab is and SHOULD be a factor. If you are using a crappy cab that doesn’t mic up well then the amp isn’t going to sound as good as it could in the room either.

I sort of interchangeably post clips using IR’s and micing up. No one seems to mention or mind - the main difference to me is the load being used. Easier than ever to mic a cab up, a 57 costs very little and you can get an interface for £100 or so that can plug into your phone

 

[Elf]

those in the room mics always sound horrendously awful.

Agree, Not everybody can be Jerry McPherson

Edit* Related to this if you go to 2:38 He talks about an experiment he did with different amps same cab with his miking setup.

 

[JiveTurkey]

There's a weird gamut for YT vids I can't be bothered to really invest myself in being annoyed with.

On one hand; you have the all sounds the same crew with demo vids of things all dialed to whatever weird extremes I'd never use to get different things to sound the same.

Then you have the Kyle Bull style; no-BS approach with single 57, no post processing where, shocker; clips all sound the same. Mainly because the person dialing it in is going for similar tones across the board with whatever gear gets in front of them. I don't distrust YT/content creators for this because I do the same d@mn thing in my own house. I think you should use whatever and disclose it to the viewer and let them be the judge.

 

[laxu]

Some relevant videos:





If you want the TL;DW of the That Pedal Show video, Mick Taylor shows how the different mics they use in the room as well as how they are blended together and some VST plugin compression and EQ sprinkled on top makes it closer to what he believes are "the tones he heard in the room." It shows that those miced real cab setups can be just as much edited together as a multi-mic IR.

Loadboxes and IRs get used because they are practical. Not every YouTuber has the space to blare a cab loud regularly. I totally agree that disclosure is the way to go: just tell what you used to record.

The phone cam/mic demos are the absolute worst. Bonus points when it's placed so that it's convenient to see the player, which is completely at odds with hearing the cab. If you want to do that, at least get a room mic you can connect to the phone instead of using whatever mic that is designed for the human voice more than anything.

 

[Iron1]

Im fine with either cause ultimately I’m not buying an amp til I play thru it myself and fall in love with the sound.

The internet plays tricks on us. And some YTers can make the best amp ever sound like a Radio Shack walkie talkie while others can make that same walkie talkie sound like a wall of Soldanos. What matters to me is what *I* can make it sound like.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

I only trust clips recorded with a cell phone, placed somewhere in the room with the cab.

Preferably pointed at the player, not the amp.

 

[Life Eats Life]

I wouldn’t say hate but I want to choke slam
the YT’er thst does not mention he’s employed the damn alarm clock IR’s in his demonstration.

Whatever sounds good.
I look at alarm clock IR’s as an additional “EQ” to the back end of your signal.

 

[JerEvil]

I wouldn’t say hate but I want to choke slam
the YT’er thst does not mention he’s employed the damn alarm clock IR’s in his demonstration.

Whatever sounds good.
I look at alarm clock IR’s as an additional “EQ” to the back end of your signal.

Ok… dafuq is an alarm clock? I’ve not heard that term before.

 

[bgstudio]

Demos of single amps are typically less than useful in terms of what it sounds like in a real space. Very few amps just sound outright bad, and even the ones that do, someone likes somewhere. I prefer demos that ask "what does like sound like out of the box (presumably at noon)?", "what changes about it when I add a boost?", "How quickly can I dial this in and get what I want out of this amp?"

I typically don't need to go through every feature of the amp back to front. If the amp is branded as a metal amp, I don't really care if it can do blues, edge of break up tones. If the amp is billed as an amp that can do it all, then by all means show me that. But at the end of the video, I expect some sense of how easy it was to get what you were looking for out of the amp, and if you didn't jive with it or it missed the mark somewhere, say it. I don't think the use of an IR over a real cab would affect the ability of the reviewer to determine such things. It also helps to have similar taste in music and tonality as the person reviewing the amp.

I like Kyle Bull's approach because he doesn't always like everything and has been pretty clear when he thinks something is lacking or inhibits the experience of the product. See his opinion on the driftwood purple nightmare.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I wouldn’t say hate but I want to choke slam
the YT’er thst does not mention he’s employed the damn alarm clock IR’s in his demonstration.

Whatever sounds good.
I look at alarm clock IR’s as an additional “EQ” to the back end of your signal.

 

[GuitarJon]

This video also has a good real cab vs IR shootout, in short there is no difference:



Regarding the "room mic" thing. Putting a mic in a room will never give you an idea of how an amp sounds in a room where you're actually in a room. Imho it's basically a gimmick.

 

[laxu]

I prefer demos that ask "what does like sound like out of the box (presumably at noon)?"

I hate these. I hate when a YouTuber is reading the manual for a piece of gear on air. I'd rather have the "expert opinion" where they have taken a bit of time behind the scenes to figure out how it all works, and how to get the best results out of it, or to show what it does not do well. I don't want to go on some "unboxing journey" with the YouTuber.

 

[bgstudio]

I hate these. I hate when a YouTuber is reading the manual for a piece of gear on air. I'd rather have the "expert opinion" where they have taken a bit of time behind the scenes to figure out how it all works, and how to get the best results out of it, or to show what it does not do well. I don't want to go on some "unboxing journey" with the YouTuber.

I don't mean actually taking it out of the box on camera, I don't really like unboxings. They end up being all build up and take half the video, and some of them are obviously staged. But, if they can just go, "here is what you get when you plug it in, as if it were just out of the box... everything at noon". Some amps sound pretty good that way, and it lends to the idea that this thing won't take much to dial in. I do think the person should have spent some time with it for sure. Honestly, it makes shooting a video a lot easier if you know what the thing already does, and you don't spend too much time sweeping knobs endlessly. Demonstrate the range of the sweep, and then set it where you already know you like it.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I think amp demos done with the same IR would be interesting, and easier to do, I.e. everything is through York Audio Mesa 2x12 Mix 01. Boom. then you can see how different things really are. Or aren’t. Whenever it’s a physical thing, unless you’ve got it bolted down, it can shift/change. IR’s are a constant.

 

[jdzialak]

IR's can be maddening.
NOTHING sounds better than my 4X12 when I'm in front of it. But I can't mic it to sound as good as the many IR's I own. Especially in my silent studio with my wife working from home.
But I'm not dragging the 4x12 to weekend club gigs, So I use a combo for on
'stage" backline reference and IR's in my IEM's and FOH. I'm mostly miserable...

But It's also why 90% of my YT content is iPhone mic.