New Friedman IR-X preamp

[hemmelight]

I've found that I generally prefer the HBE sound as well. Instead of using the BE mode on the Axe-FX I'll just turn the gain down on the HBE and use that. When I had the IR-X I found it difficult to balance the mids and treble. I wanted bite and snarl without harshness, but it was usually a compromise.

Different IRs certainly helped but ultimately I sold the pedal as I thought the Fractal models were close enough for me anyway. I loved the feel of the IR-X pedal, though. It definitely had a nice "analog" character that was very reactive and dynamic feeling to play. Said it before but if they ever release an IR-Plex it will be very hard to resist. Especially with all of those bright cap options.

 

[Jarick]

I'll try to do some frequency response tests later today because I'm curious about the IR-X high cuts. Previously there were no high cuts but with the new version they added that feature, and I have a feeling it's always on no matter the setting (which is probably just adjusting the cutoff frequency).

I'm also probably going to pick up a Boss IR-2 to mess around with that and compare.

 

[JiveTurkey]

That would be cool. I'd like to understand what is going on. My feeling is that whatever filtering is going on is happening in front of the preamp so even if you hit it with a treble boost there are limits to how bright and saturated it will get.

This guy did an AB with an IRJ and the IRX sounds like it has a blanket over it. Thats exactly what I hear. Even pumping massive amount of treble boost into the front its still dark. If it was as simple as boosting frequencies over 5K it would be a non issue.

Return it and get something else. Belaboring this thing for 3 weeks is not necessary. If it doesn't do the thing you want; dump it.

 

[GuitarBilly74]

Return it and get something else. Belaboring this thing for 3 weeks is not necessary. If it doesn't do the thing you want; dump it.

Yeah this. Just get something that works better for you. No point in fighting it.

I didn't have any of these issues with the IR-D but everyone is different.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Yeah this. Just get something that works better for you. No point in fighting it.

I didn't have any of these issues with the IR-D but everyone is different.

I agree, but there are only two other options, and they may have the same thing going on. Its not like there are a million tube pedal preamps with DI out.

I tend to fight with gear a lot. And a lot of that fight is for my own dumb use cases reasons There are also pieces I've fought with and then came around on to really love.

The IR-whatevers are super specific in their form factor and functionality. If you don't like how they feel or sound; form factor means nothing. I'd give the Syn-1 a go and get on the module merry-go-round for a bit if you want to stay in this general ballpark but have a lot more flexibility with the types of amps you can use.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I would 1000% mount a Syn-1 on a board and a multifx on top of that ***insert pic of Kemper toaster pedalboard here***

 

[rocknrollshakeup]

That would be cool. I'd like to understand what is going on. My feeling is that whatever filtering is going on is happening in front of the preamp so even if you hit it with a treble boost there are limits to how bright and saturated it will get.

This guy did an AB with an IRJ and the IRX sounds like it has a blanket over it. Thats exactly what I hear. Even pumping massive amount of treble boost into the front its still dark. If it was as simple as boosting frequencies over 5K it would be a non issue.

Both are sounding great to me.

The IRJ definitely has a more nasal upper mids thing going that puts it more into the modded JCM 800 category. It reminds me of my old stock JCM 800 when I’d boost it with a TS9 and RAT in fact.

I have to say based on that review, I prefer the IRX for the stuff I like to play these days as the J has too much cutting nasal honk for me. But I do crank the mid knob to ten on my IRX when I use Channel 2, and even Ch1 at times.
But I like the more neutral mids of the X more because then I could hit it with my J rocket Rockaway or other EQ/drives so I can control the amount of mids I’m getting. I don’t notice any weird preamp filtering that you are describing.

Both are sounding plenty bright to me in that video comparison, but I don’t have the IrJ to compare directly. In fact I have to be careful to not allow my IR X to be too bright.

But yeah dude obsessing for a month over something that’s not clearly working for you, for whatever reason, is not an efficient use of your energy.

 

[Mongillo19]

Its been two weeks, but point noted.

If you buy through musician friend and talk with them before buying they often discount it to essentially BF prices. Atleast they did during my last spin with syn

 

[JiveTurkey]

Synergy doesnt have the power amp modeling or IRs.

And this boondoggle has taught me I don't want an "almost" version of a famous amp.

I'm sorry to bother everyone with my nonsense on this. This weekend I will have the time to thouroughly test it. I need to figure out where the filtering is happening. If its just a post gain roll off, I should be able to fix that. But what I suspect is happening is that there is roll off before the gain stages.

Its really nothing more than it claims to be, a way to get the BE100 sound direct, in a stage friendly format. Of course its not like a real be100, it doesn't have sat or hbe options, no presence knob, but it does that one sound pretty well.

The XLR on the back has cab emulation. The Sag knob helps bridge that poweramp gap. Probably about as well the digital side does in the IR pedals.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I have a negative taste in my mouth now about the reduced feature set of the modules. I've heard negative reports about half the synergy moduels that they don't quite stack up to the real thing.

None of it is going to stack up to the real thing in an in person ideal situation though. Someone may be able to trick you on YouTube but physics are going to physic. You have to get that out of your system from the jump unfortunately.

 

[Jarick]

Did some measurements of the IR-X and can confirm that there is a low pass filter on all outputs in all configurations.

The three way switch seems to affect the SLOPE of the low pass filter, not the frequency cutoff:
Middle ~ 27 db / octave
Left ~ 22 db / octave
Right ~ 18 db / octave

Rolloff seems to happen right around 3.5 kHz, so not sure what the cutoff frequency technically would be.

I did measure a similar rolloff with the following configurations:
Balanced out with IR bypassed
Balanced out with a null (flat) IR
Send out (no power amp sim)

Unfortunately I don't have an earlier version of the software to roll back and see if an earlier version also had a roll off.

I also did one quick measurement of the Axe FX 3. Same guitar and cable and all that. No IR or high cut. There is a roll off but it's much milder.

Here's a visual comparison, with some heavy frequency smoothing for clarity.

Blue = IR-X cut left
Red = IR-X cut middle
Green = IR-X cut right
Purple = Axe 3 no cut

Didn't include the other outputs as they all had the same overall EQ shape.

 

[KingsXJJ]

The results don't seem to make sense. Can you double check?

Been staring at it for 20 minutes and the groupings don't make sense.

Send should have less cut that the direct modes. I cant see a pattern besides there is a software bug.

I sure would like to know asap if a firmware will address this. And if it was just a bug or intended. Does any one know which version introduced this and if previous versions are available? I’ll look around a bit…

 

[KingsXJJ]

Did some measurements of the IR-X and can confirm that there is a low pass filter on all outputs in all configurations.

The three way switch seems to affect the SLOPE of the low pass filter, not the frequency cutoff:
Middle ~ 27 db / octave
Left ~ 22 db / octave
Right ~ 18 db / octave

Rolloff seems to happen right around 3.5 kHz, so not sure what the cutoff frequency technically would be.

I did measure a similar rolloff with the following configurations:
Balanced out with IR bypassed
Balanced out with a null (flat) IR
Send out (no power amp sim)

Unfortunately I don't have an earlier version of the software to roll back and see if an earlier version also had a roll off.

I also did one quick measurement of the Axe FX 3. Same guitar and cable and all that. No IR or high cut. There is a roll off but it's much milder.

Here's a visual comparison, with some heavy frequency smoothing for clarity.

Blue = IR-X cut left
Red = IR-X cut middle
Green = IR-X cut right
Purple = Axe 3 no cut

Didn't include the other outputs as they all had the same overall EQ shape.

View attachment 34891

I’ll take the Axe’s high frequency output and the IR-X’s low end… please.

 

[GuitarBilly74]

There's definitely no cab simulation in the Send.
I've a/b the IR-D into my Dirty Shirley fx return vs the Dirty Shirley own preamp and it's pretty much identical.

 

[Jarick]

There’s no cab on any measurement. I loaded a null cab aka no impulse. But that generally matched ir bypass outside volume difference.

Low end bump doesn’t matter. Not measuring the low frequency shape. Look at the high frequency rolloff slope.

 

[Jarick]

What I'm asking is why the lopass software toggle woiuld have any affect on the send, which is supposed to be a direct preamp output?

In your chart, the lopass filter affects the send output in a similar way as it does the DI output.

It just plain does. The low cut apparently is not on the cab, it's on the preamp itself.

Here's a fresh set of measurements.

Signal chain is Telecaster > IR-X input > IR-X output > UAD Apollo input > Room EQ Wizard

I used the RTA feature of REW to record PEAK frequency response, then smoothed the response.

Here you can see all three settings recorded with both the send (no power amp sim or IR) and with the output (power amp sim but IR bypassed). The low cut definitely impacts the output in a consistent manner.

You can also see the power amp adds a low frequency bump as well, but again that's not really what we're measuring here.

 

[Jarick]

And if you're curious, same settings on the output with the IR bypassed vs not. Of course adding an IR rolls off the high end further.

Now all that to say, it's not necessarily wrong that the high frequency is rolled off. It's possible that's what the amp is supposed to do with its tone stack. But it is odd that there's a switchable cut in the preamp, apparently.

I have a suspicion there may be a bug, but maybe that was there all along? Again would need to roll back the firmware to check.

 

[Jarick]

Stay tuned...going in for extra credit...

 

[GuitarBilly74]

I belive you, but why would toggling the cut switch affect the send in any way?

The low cut is before the loop. Deep, Presence and IR is after.

The Send goes to through the ADA converter because Friedman wants to make updates in the feature that will include basic effects etc. It's not an analog out, but there is no IR in it.

 

[Jarick]

Okay last one for the night.

Friedman IR-X - balanced output with IR bypass (power amp sim, no cab), channel 2, knobs at 5
Fractal Axe FX 3 - Friedman BE V1 amp model, no cab, knobs at 5
Quad Cortex - Friedman BE amp model, no cab, knobs at 5
HX Stomp - Friedman BE amp model, no cab, knobs at 5

Here I did less smoothing, honestly I could do practically no smoothing and you'd see the super steady rolloff.

Anyways, you can see the IR-X definitely rolls off much quicker than the digital modelers. The three modelers are really close in terms of frequency and slope roll off, so you likely wouldn't hear much difference there (not to say there wouldn't be audible differences elsewhere).

For S&G I extended up to 30 kHz. I'm not sure how accurate that is or isn't, but interesting that the Fractal has a very steep cutoff and the other two just do there own thing.

And again, this isn't saying IR-X is worse than the others...it just definitely has a more noticeable high cut. Some people might call that analog warmth? I dunno.

If someone wants to send me their Friedman BE-100 amp I'd be happy to run that through as well

Also, this is why I can't sell anything...for the twice a year I get extremely curious.