How do you approach working with IRs?

[molul]

I loved the updated cabs in Helix's 3.5 firmware, but I've always been curious about using the IR block. My problem is that, in my head, it implies testing hundreds of files one by one, unlike using Helix cabs where you can easily change and move the microphone.

I wonder how people actually work with them, in case there's a shorter path I could learn.

I've heard many good things about York Audio IRs, for instance. Now, I'm not a cab expert at all. How could I know which specific IRs would fit my usual amps (Line6 Clarity for cleans, Brit 2203 for crunch, Revv Gen Red for hi gain)?

 

[Chocol8]

A good IR vendor will include their recommended mix’s for each cab. I generally start with those and only try the others if there is something I want different.

 

[KingsXJJ]

I would suggest starting it simple. Let’s use York Audio as an example. They’re well liked and well done.

Try to start with the IR packages “baseline” this is usually the vendor’s offering that will be generally pleasing and useful in a lot of situations. For me, with York Audio it’s the Mix 1 file. Made with multiple mics and blended to offer an approximation of them at their best together. If desired, tweak it… use low and high filters to tune it to your ears and gear. Once you have an idea of what you find great or not so great about it move on to another file based on that. Too dark? Try a brighter one. Too bright? Yep, a darker one. Also once that’s sorted, you can go in and try single mic IR’s. You might fall in love with the sound of a certain ribbon mic. Or condenser. Or dynamic.

Pretty soon you’ll be able to zero in toward your sweet spot. Remember your choices. You can likely extend at least part of that to other York Audio packages. Although vendors vary somewhat in their approach you learn to recognize how and adjust what you learned from YA.

There’s more but that should get you started and hopefully someone else can add their take. They may even have an entirely different opinion!

Good luck and try to have fun. It can be very rewarding when you find a gem.

 

[paisleywookiee]

From the side, so as not to startle them.

 

[sashimi]

I bought 4 or 5 york IR packs and I do like them, but I have completely stopped using them, and I really only use the helix 112 electrovoice cab for everything now. I enjoy playing way more when I’m not thinking about cabs or IRs, and that one just works for me. It has a nice direct sound with good mids that don’t get phasey like many IRs sound to me, especially ones made from a cab with more than one speaker. I am more into clean to vintage breakup sounds and fuzz though, not metal.

But if you do want to experiment with york IRs, start with the $1 mesa pack, it’s good, cheap, and it only comes with 5 mixes, so not option overload. It’s pretty safe with all their IRs to just pick one of the first few mix files and dial your amp in to taste. Don’t fall into the trap of quickly auditioning one after the other without dialing in your amp. They all sound similar but a little different, and eventually none of them will sound right, like repeating a word over and over until it doesn’t make sense anymore. If you find one you like just stick with it and stop thinking about it, is my best advice.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I use York packs a ton with most stuff, and with Helix Native I’ll mix that with their really great stock cabs.

 

[DrewJD82]

When I used IR's I only bought York's for the last couple years. Less IR's and better sounding ones than any other company's offerings....ask me how I know-

I find the most 'clear' sounding IR I can, before I even touch the knobs on the amp (unless it's a Mesa Mark). I'd quickly scroll through them while hitting open strings and wait until the fishbowl sound went away then nail it down to the one that doesn't have any noticeable boosts in the lows, mid or highs. Sometimes that went quickly, sometimes it took more than I wanted it to.

Now with Fractal's DynaCabs, I literally do this-
(timestamped)


I know the general area on a speaker I start when mic'ing a cab IRL, so I do the same thing in the Fractal and after using those cabs/mics for a while, there's a lot of familiarity. I dick around a bit with the guitar later in the vid, I'm not even sure I'd tweak that tone unless I had to for a mix and I didn't even touch the amp knobs. Half a second is pretty efficient for picking out an IR/mic position!

 

[ian_dissonance]

I’ve only bought IRs from guys that make records and then I pretty much limit myself to their “mixes” unless I’m really not hearing what I want when I’m mixing. If I’m going to sift through 145 incremental SM57 IRs and then another 145 incremental other mic IRs I’d rather just spend a day mic’ing cabs. When I was building tones on Helix I had 1-2 IRs I would audition, but after the new cabs I think I got what I wanted faster there.

 

[laxu]

Most people just go through the limited set of e.g York Audio IRs and never touch any of the individual mic files.

If you want to go down rabbit holes, there are IR mixing tools like Cabinetron, or you can buy e.g ML Sound Lab MIKKO 2 which has a lot of cabs and a movable mic system more advanced than Helix.

But ultimately if you are getting results you love out of Helix cab sims, just keep using those. I think they sound good. I pretty much always use a dual mic setup with them for a fuller sound.

 

[molul]

But ultimately if you are getting results you love out of Helix cab sims, just keep using those. I think they sound good. I pretty much always use a dual mic setup with them for a fuller sound.

I actually like what I hear from Helix cabs, but I see so many people saying "I use X amp together with Y IR" that I wonder if I'm missing an improvement

 

[laxu]

I actually like what I hear from Helix cabs, but I see so many people saying "I use X amp together with Y IR" that I wonder if I'm missing an improvement

I think a lot of people just don't have the will to take the time to figure out something that works for them so they just find an IR vendor they like and pick from their mixes.

Buy a York Audio pack or two and try for yourself.

 

[ian_dissonance]

I actually like what I hear from Helix cabs, but I see so many people saying "I use X amp together with Y IR" that I wonder if I'm missing an improvement

My experience with the new cabs is there isn’t better or worse, just different.

 

[Mooselake]

I would tend to agree with sticking with the curated mixes that, at least in the ones I've picked up, tend to come with the packs, as a starting point. But in the interest of full disclosure, the whole process quickly began to annoy me and I wound up finding one or two that worked reasonably well and stuck with them. Then when Line 6 redid the Helix cabs a couple years back I just started using those and tbh have been more satisfied with those. I don't have golden ears so I found the perceived-quality-of-outcome-per-unit-of-effort to be higher with those. But I get that some people have more aural perception/better aural taste than I do, and I can understand why the "chase" for just the right IR can be a lot of fun.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I find the whole "pre-mixed" IR thing totally opposite to what I'm looking for, the same goes for individual IR's which for me goes back years (like the old Guitarhack and Catharsis IR's). Having limited control over the IR means you end up brute forcing everything else to conform to that and its quite a different approach to how you'd dial a tone in the room (where you'd adjust the amp, cabinet, mics, mic position, preamps etc) all together to hone in on what you're after. Curated mixes makes it sound like there is simply some combinations that sound good, and others that are totally unusable, like its some kind of video game cheat sheet. It really doesn't work like that, it's entirely about context. Any IR can be "mix ready" depending on what the intention is.

It's the same reason I have little use for presets, or anything touted as "mix ready" - without knowing the context (which will be different EVERY time) its impossible to know what's right. It's like trying to add seasoning before you even know what you're cooking, or who for.

For me, the best options are the ones that give you the most freedom to adjust mic position. If you can't hone in on the sound, you'll probably get about 80% of the way there and have to rely on heavier processing to make up the rest. There are so many options now that give that kind of freedom, I think its just a case of finding ones you vibe with.

 

[[Nathan]]

Been using helix the last few days. I know I like a 57 on a cab so I’ll put a 57 dead centre and roughly dial in the tone on the amp. I’ll play it a bit and it’ll almost inevitably have too much harsh top end. From there I’ll move the 57 from the centre to where the new balance sounds good, usually only 3-10% off centre. Once that’s in place I’ll stick to amp dials. It would have to be seriously borked for me to revisit the IR at that point.

This is for quick patches but if I was mixing it would be a similar process but I’d think about the mics a bit more and not just default to a 57

 

[EOengineer]

FWIW the emphasis on IR use in Helix is most likely driven by a couple common scenarios:

1. Helix cabs were the weak link for a long time, so I spent a painful weekend auditioning 1 billion impulse responses, found a few, and I’m never changing anything ever again. Get away from me. I don’t need no new stinking helix cabs.
2. I have a super specific impulse response I like, can’t reproduce it elsewhere.

The York stuff is amongst the best out there, but as Fractal and Helix push further into these amazing interfaces they’ve started, the old antiquated workflows are IMO becoming obsolete.

What I’d love to see is some standardization within the cab/mic IR world where I could import a York Audio Mesa Pack, for example, and still navigate the IRs using my familiar Helix or Fractal interface.

Probably not happening anytime soon.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

What I’d love to see is some standardization within the cab/mic IR world where I could import a York Audio Mesa Pack, for example, and still navigate the IRs using my familiar Helix or Fractal interface.

There's a desperate need for this, even in the plugin world. Quite a few have done their own takes on it, but they're usually closed systems and often part of a kitchen sink modelling suite (with a few dedicated cab only options too).

I'm not 100% convinced that any platform has yet got the volume normalisation (when interpolating between different IR's, not the overall output level) right yet, and I'm a little curious how much impact MPT has when dealing with big amounts of interpolation (often these cab engines aren't just blending between 2 consecutive horizontal IR's but it can be 8 or more being blended all around. Annoyingly, everyone seems to have their own idea on how many positions to capture, both in terms of real estate on the speaker, as well as what increments they are using. Interpolation works well generally speaking, but the preferred method for it might depend on the number of captures you are feeding into it. Amplitube actually has a nice feature that I haven't seen a great deal, where you can set it to snap to the nearest captured IR, so you're always getting an IR as captured rather than a blend between several.

Overall the experience is a lot more intuitive and enjoyable than dealing with individual files and folders though, but it would be amazing if someone is able to really nail the feel of micing a cab up with software. As things stand I think the attitude, is "well most customers have never mic'd a real cab and have no real world expectations on what to expect" and IMO that's regressive and not giving customers enough credit.