Hello guys long time since i made a post here, i was suffering triying a lot of impulse responses because with them it has a dark or dull tone. Recently i tried to place an eq instead the cabinet simulator with low and high pass filters and cutting the commom frequencies in amp sims and the results are day and night but i think that this method is rare and i ask myself how many of you can get a decent tone with impulses and i can't get one (if you are asking yourselves, no, it's not the guitar cause i've made test with 3) . I hope you can help me.

 

well a cab IR is an eq setting if u will. if your tone is too dark why not dial in some presence or highs? maybe you have some problem with your hearing if you find all IR's dark. a distorted amp sound without a cab is horrible man

 

So you used an eq instead of cab sim. That means you recorded the line output of a real amp/ an amp sim without the cabinet part then put an eq, is that right? Because if not you could be putting a cab IR on top of the built-in cab of the amp sim.

That said, some IRs are just dull because of the mics or mic technique or sampled speakers. maybe you're not choosing the right combination? I use IRs all the time and they do sound like what you would expect from the description.

edit: forgot the question. Yes, it's valid. Everything is valid, specially if it sounds good. Speaking of sound, uploading an audio sample of what you're talking about might help.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2021

what i notice is that eq had more clarity but sounds thin, the impulse lacks of clarity is like a downgraded sound

 

You guitar sounds fine to me. It's soloed but if it was supported by a bass and drums then the guitar won't sound so thin in the context of a whole mix.

Just treat it how you normally would in your mixer chain and it shouldn't bother you in the mix where you won't notice how thin it is because the bass guitar will give you the rest of the frequency range where your guitar left off giving the illusion it's thin.

 

Trying to fill in the lower frequencies with guitar will only compete with how much space you have in your mix to begin with. Just put a bassline playing the root note alongside your guitar track, you will see it magically sounds more natural in the mix.

Sure palm mutes sound good in the lower frequency range but it still has to be EQ'd reasonably next to your bass guitar channel or it will just result in ugly mud in the context of your overall mix.

Lower frequencies are less forgiving of frequency overlap than everything after 200hz & up, imo.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2021

i usually compare with a superior drummer presets and the eq method fits more in the mix than cabs, with cabs i always fight with the bass to find it a place in mix

 

Also this OP, if you plan to use amp sims and impulse resonses then leave out the real amp out of your chain and go directly into your plugins.

Record a separate track also so you can re-amp your signal in case you aren't happy with the amp, cabs and fx plugins you used. So you will record 2 tracks at the same time, one into a bare channel with nothing but your direct signal and one recording your amp and effects.

If you record your real amp then pile on amp sims and cabs sims on top of that then that's asking for your signal to sound like ass by default, imo. Either you record your amp or you go directly into amp/cab sims. One or the other.

 

Sounds like a normal IR to me, it seems you just don't like the sound of it. Most cab IRs you find around come from large cabs, so it's normal for them to have more thump than no cab at all and therefore sound "duller" in comparisson, add a high pass filter and you might come closer to what you're looking for, but i'm pretty sure your issue has more to do with the mic/speaker type, and sadly that's just trial and error. It's not a matter of wheter you can make an IR sound great, but rather finding the right IR for the song, and if the EQ thingy works for yours...it just works.

 

See, BOOM! Suddenly it's not so thin and sounds entirely natural in your mix. When you take the magnifying glass off your soloed track and then compare how it sounds in the overall mix, it magically sounds like it fits. Don't get me wrong the rough mix still needs polish but the point still stands that you don't notice the guitar as thin in the mix as you do when it's soloed.

By itself the guitar track will always sort of sound like ass by itself because you always remember your favorite records with basses, drums and vocals also accompanying the mix but now you're writing it and seeing how awkward each track is on it's own and that's fine actually.

It's supposed to not sound right on it's own, so to say. That matters less anyways, its the overall mix that matters.

Shit even sometimes I will solo a certain part and not only does it sound off sonically, it sometimes sounds off rhythmically too because the other elements were adding to it's rhythm & timing which I cut out and now it sounds wrong but if I added it back then it would sound right.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2021

That's what I thought too, he probably hasn't found the cab sims that he likes best or that sound closer to the records he grew up listening to.

His first cab sounded like a Peavey 5150 but his second cab sounded like 80s Thrash to me and maybe that's not what he's going for, or maybe it is. It takes time to sift through and find the decent ones and they are hard to find when there are so many to choose from.

 

basically i found that eq is a super fast way to reach the tone, and you are right i made the test with an 5150 sim, i've spent lot of hours choosing the right cab and try with different companies and always is the same (ir loose the clarity when i hit the notes )

 

I always EQ my bare signal then EQ between the amp/cab sim and fx pedals I use and then EQ after that too.

First corrective eq to cut out the highs and lows then to balance the sound and then after that to color the sound and at the end of the chain I may do another round of corrective EQ sometimes but not always, just to cut whatever frequencies may have built up around the extremely high and low frequency ranges to remove any potential mud.

Peavey 5150 and 6505 are some of my all-time favorite amp heads, pair that with the bridge pickups and you have all the clarity you could ever want. They work so well for rock/metal, imo.

Try some Engl sims too, I find some clarity in those too while still sounding pretty heavy. I use the Lancaster Engl cabs.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2021

I don't know how to go technical like these guys, but from listening to the tracks above, from the way you EQ things, IMO you are trying to get the guitar sound like you usually hear from an amp (pre-amp + poweramp + cabinet), while IR is all that plus a microphone and mic-preamp. The last two (mic and pre) also has characters, frequency responses, hi/low roll offs also mic-pre has its thing. I've been having this problem when I first switched to the amp sim world after years of just listening to the cabs (not the recordings of guitar) and slowly learning to consider all that and get an idea how to get the best of the IRs.

I suggest try combining few IRs, at least add another for "Room" or "Far" IRs. Most good IR packs include that kind of IR for any cabs they recorded. It will add some "dimension" to the sound and make it appear more natural. Also be aware of the phase when combining IRs. While directly EQing can also works, I think you can get a more realistic "recorded tone" from the combining IRs if you do it right.

Another thing from mixing standpoint, for me I only give guitar the midrange of the sonic spectrum, I cut alot of the highs and lows A LOT to make it fit with the rest of the instrument, it WILL sounds like shit on its own, but most of the time it sounds normal in context of all other instruments. There are certain important frequency ranges of the guitar that you need to keep, the rest sometimes just harshness you don't need, EQ that out. Trying to fit the whole guitar tone into the mix never works, atleast for me.

 

This is pretty much how the first "cab simulators" worked in products like Rockman, Line 6 Pod, Sansamp etc. What type of tones are you trying to get and what IR packs have you already tried?

 

IRs are fine, but I've also used dynamic EQs like Pro-Q 3 or Nova to replace them occasionally. It works, and the possibility to tune the dynamics in specific frequencies is a big plus.

Impulse based cabinet sims are basically just EQ snapshots as well, and most of them have no dynamics at all...

There are no rules, honestly.

As for the soloed guitar sounding thin, that's also perfectly normal. I've often made the mistake of trying to make guitars sound, in a mix, as full as I'd expect them to sound when soloed. It doesn't work, most of the times.

There are some Led Zeppelin multitracks floating around the web. Go get them and check out the guitars. It's really eye opening. They sound sooo thin and cold when soloed, and so full in the mix context...Well, it's Jimmy Page...

It's all about the arrangement, and having the skills to make instruments complement each other instead of clashing with each other.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2021

I don't like irs very much either. But I have never been into metal and also not into more traditional rock styles - I like fuzzy alternative guitar tones (fuzz pedals, big muffs, etc) and I have always found it harder to achieve them with irs at the end of the chain than with just equalizing. This is an interesting read to inspire experimentation.
https://reverb.com/news/8-famous-guitar-tones-that-were-recorded-straight-into-the-board

 

owhhammer, ml sound, neural dsp, bogren and other may i can say all brands but there are so many choices and i'm really tired. I mean the test that i made with band is only presets and it sounded good right out of the box, with ir's you have to first seek the one because one good ir it's not for all your songs. And for sound i don't looking something in particular just something that sits well in a mix

 

EQ is essentially doing what a cabinet does. The problem is, the EQ curve of cabs is usually convoluted with lots of notches. You can find a few videos from FabFilter's YouTube channel illustrating what it looks like when using EQ matching. These can be simplified, but I feel like it misses the life and feel of a cabinet. You'll also want to add saturation to get back harmonics in the high mids to high end if you go this route, however there are better options....

Try out STL Ignite Libra after an amp sim. It allows you to blend up to 8 IR's. You can find it on the sister site, or through STL if you have $49.99. The beauty here is zero latency, and low CPU usage, while being able to blend different cabs, or several different mic positions like you would if you really mic'd a cab in studio. You blend them by dragging a ball around.

I've recorded guitar for releases by going straight into a DI box or line input (and/or tube-pre amp for a little extra life on the way in, especially with unpowered pickups) - into FabFilter Pro G to reduce incoming noise- into amp sim with no cab (Neural DSP Fortin plugins... oh my...TH-U has great amps as well). Now you could stop there. Neural DSP allows you to load two IR's and blend them, along with standard mics, but its a bit limited. I ended up turning off the cabinet section and going into STL Ignite Libra, and blending 4 IR's that included some close, far, and rear mic's from OwnHammer, I believe. You can drag around to find the sweet spot in the mix.

After that, depending on genre, another noise gate might be necessary, a Pultec style EQ (or 2..), light compression on the guitar buss to glue and catch peaks, effects to taste, and you've got some great tone.