Just wondering what people reckon are the best IRs for guitar and bass use?

I have a Hotone Ampero floor amp modeller and multi effects unit, and looking for some good cab IRs to load into it. I keep hearing of OwnHammer and Choptones as the ones normally referred to. OwnHammer stuff seems widely available on the sister site, as is the Choptones stuff for Overloud's TH-U, but nothing in terms of IR sample packs.

I tend to prefer that clean, warm tubey goodness from amps like the Vox AC30, Matchless DC30, Fender Hot Rod DeVille, using effects for the drive and boosts, just in case hit affects peoples views on what IRs work well with these kind of amp modellers.

 

for Fenderish tone I'll usually go to the Supercabinet in Overloud THU first, specifically the Jensens speakers packs. Route the pedals to DAW and use TH-U on PC first. You can always bounce/export a wav file from a combination you like with options for lengths, samplerate, stereo/mono and load the IR to the pedal later. I think it's the best workflow and enough tweakbility and mic/pre/speaker selection to get a good one that works with the patch on the pedals rather than randomly browsing through selection of ready-made IRs.

IR Pack that I think the best for Fender-style tone is from York Audio, all their Fender pack are premium sounding stuff, fav is the 1966 Blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb Original 2x12 Oxford and Bassman 410 1960 Jensen Alnico P10Q . I also like Valhallir CS Les 59' Bassman 4x10 pack shared at sister site not long ago.

Pedals though have their specific IR length to get the best out of it, you probably need to check that first, not familiar with the Hotone Ampero. All packs have information about their compatibility with the hardware written on the info pdf that of course can be manually edited in DAW.

This guy likes the York Audio too :

 

Last edited: Aug 3, 2023

I haven't seen anything Valhallir come up for ages. Just searched and couldn't see this one.

 

can't post the link, but this is the title of the post. Could help you with the search. You can hear from the demo on the page, it sounded super good.

 

I don't have super strong opinions on the matter, only a slight preference for CabIR if it's betwen York Audio, OwnHammer and CabIR. CabIR give you a bunch of 'ambient' room IRs for some of their packs and plenty mic mixes.

 

Oh Leo, I was searching for Valhallir Les as the keywords. Got it now

 

Are there any CabIR stuff out there in the wild to trial against the others?

I've grabbed one or two York Audio, OwnHammer, Bogren, Neural DSP, and ML Sound Lab just to trial them against each other to see which I prefer before buying something.

 

zzzzz I saved it wrong then on the folder. It's been like that forever, gonna leave it because a lot of project tied to it. lel.

 

Most of the time I'll go with Valhallir or York Audio > Melda MCabinet.

I've spent hundreds of hours tweaking every possible parameter of every guitar related plugin on the market and I still haven't found the tone that will melt my face.

Guess it's time to start a gofundme for an amp.

 

It's an interesting topic and I like to experiment with all of the latest guitar stuff, but I always end up going back to my Kemper for ease of use and sound quality.

 

+1 for MCabinetMB. I have it set up with two bands to have different IRs for the lows and highs.

 

For what is worth, I tried OwnHammer IRs and sound great. But there's so many options to choose even for every cab model I found the Celestion IRs to be a sweeter spot for me. Several single mics and a few mixes.

Yeah, it's sooo complete.
You can even freely apply dynamic EQ, for instance, to tame the famous low-mids of powerful metal tones when using palm mutes.
Can also import/exports IRs, the list is endless...

 

Last edited: Aug 4, 2023

I usually find the "regular" IRs from Ownhammer etc. very lacking and regularly containing a ton of fizz, mud and bad frequencies in the 2K to 7K range, combined with a lack of good "air". The whole issue with impulse responses actually annoyed me tremendously for years. However, after methodically going through each impulse that I had stored on my HD, I found that f.e. impulses of the speaker edge or impulses that mix close mics, room mics, far mics etc. often sound far superior, regardless of the brand. Rosen Digital is one of the brands that released nice mix-ready impulses. Also, the IR loader actually does make quite a difference. Just compare Nembrini's loader with Nadir and SIr2 and you will see that they sound very different.

 

Sup people, first post here

Can someone give me the tldr summary of WHAT cabs i should be Generally trying in Ownhammer - there are so many folders that I tend to look for 'summary' and use those - without having to spend AGES trying all the others. I dont know what 99.89% of them mean.

 

Familiarise yourself with the naming scheme. IRs are usually sorted/named after the microphone used and the recording position. If you know you don't like the sound of a 906 mic and you don't like the sound of anything that's been recorded from more than 4 inches away and you don't plan on making your own IR mixes anyway, then you can safely skip those. Or just stick with the mixes that came with the IR pack.

 

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for IRs to load into a Plugin, but rather to load into the user IR blocks on my Hotone Ampero (MP-100) amp modeller and multi FX pedal, thpugh answer may normally be the same, but juts thought I'd mention in case people go down the rabbit hole of editing IRs in a plugin and so on

The Ampero does have decent ish stock IRs, better than my Line 6 Pod HD has anyway, but user IRs still seem way better

 

Interesting. I did previously try a Kemper (not sure which version) but whilst the tone was good, it always felt like there was a distance or separation in the sound and it never felt like the amp was in the room with me. I seem to get more of that 'in the room' feel even with my Ampero than I felt with the Kemper.

 

Well, MCabinet has an export IR function. But I assume you don't wanna mess with editing in general. In that case, my preferred IRs are:
- Celestion
- York Audio
- A few free packages (like those classic s-pres-high.wav for metal, don't remember the package)

Many people talk great about Bogren IRs, but I haven't tried them yet.

BTW, what are Hotone's IR block specs? bits, duration, frequency...

 

I like York Audio his mixes are great
But there is alot of IR vendors where you can find good IR's
Ownhammer, Bogren, Drums & Tones, Kaltenhallen, Valhalla, Live Ready Sound, Choptones, Redwirez (If you know how to mix several IR's and use impediance curve IR's) Get Good Drums, ML Soundlab, Otto Audio Otto Cabs, Lancaster Audio, 3Sigma, Sonic DNA, and of courser speaker makers like Eminence Digital, Celestion digital, etc etc etc.
Oh and John Petrucci has released an IR pack where you can get IR of the same setup he used on his 3 latest records and some bonus IR's aswell.

 

With sister, you can try most vendors.
On my side, i stick with OwnHammer because i love the way they are made.
And each release is raising the bar.

My fav IR for now (metal) is this one (from "OwnHammer (r)Evolution Debut Bundle")