Any tips and tricks to share?
I tried using Logic Pro's Impulse Response Utility to make some IRs of my Bluetone 4x10 but only one of them turned out to my liking. I blame it on mic positioning (plus not having anything better than an AT2020) but interested in learning if there's more to it that I should consider.
I think two good things to have in mind are to work out how they are intended to be used and then having a reference to compare your results with. Because of the interactions and behaviours involved, there’s always going to be SOME kind of compromise. So identifying how they are going to be used can maybe help narrow down what the best approach will be for capturing them.
From there, I’d recommend micing the cab up normally and just getting tones you like. Our ears get used to sounds very quickly, and when volume is involved we get tired and start to doubt decisions we’ve made.
I make pretty big packs (every speaker at a full range of positions with several mics). For your kind of situation, I’d recommend this:
- put your preferred mic dead centre on each speaker and reamp a DI through your rig just to identify which speakers you like best and what the tonal profile of each one is
- once you have a favourite speaker, try micing some different positions. Listen back a few hours or a day later so your ears have time to reset.
- eventually you’ll have an idea of what to expect and how to adjust things to capture what you’re hearing in the room.
- once you know that the mic’d tone is exactly what you’re looking for, I’d start looking at making IR’s.
The best approach for IR’s will depend a bit on what gear you have available. The most important thing IMO is having the reamped DI tracks through the cab mic’d normally to reference against and to make sure you’re getting a 1:1 result. This will typically mean tapping a DI signal from the amp while the cab is connected, but there may be other use cases to consider (maybe you want an amp+reactive load tone to match the mic’d tone, which will make the tone in that situation more accurate, but less accurate for other chains).
EDIT: Also one other thing thats handy to think about - Its kind of like a maths equation where your source and IR are going to contain some of the same elements and some different stuff. The trick is to cancel out the stuff you don't want and to be left with the stuff you do want. So you think about whatever your source tone is and what the result is and then try to give yourself the cleanest IR possible.
I usually use a 3s sine sweep which may be slightly overkill, but using a sine sweep over a noise blip will give better signal to noise results. Also make sure you aren't distorting anywhere in the chain as IR's can't reproduce these behaviours and itll lead to weird results.
