I am actually quite happy nowadays with regard to Amp Sims, but they either sound very dry (like a close-miced cab) or the reverb effect sounds artificial and not like a real room. I have been doing recordings for some time now (always with sims) and that room effect has always been lacking.
A friend of mine who is a rather horrible guitar player has lately recorded himself with a cheap mic in his bedroom and I noticed that there was something to the quality of the sound that I have been missing, mostly the room effect.
Is there any reverb that can come close to it? I have tried Valhalla Room, yet that also sounded rather artificial to me in that context.

 

why not a cheap mic in the room recording your guitar on speakers ? I mean speakers or amp it's the same

 

oh shit just read the end of your message, i'm redondant but that proves the point.

i have a 20euros 2nd hand mic in my room for this

 

Trying to capture the room resonating with the instrument could possibly be achieved by feeding the signal through a speaker into another room, placing two mics at a wide distance and re-recording the guitar and room. I have no idea if this would work, but it might.

 

The main problem with mics is that my neighbours are complaining as soon as the loudness exceeds normal conversation levels. Consequently, I was looking for an "in the box" solution.

 

hi there
it is possible to emulate the atmosphere of a room, a place with impulse responses, there are many vst plugs in
that allow to load them in a daw it works fine, for reverberations it is particularly good for your ears, more natural,
it depends on your tastes the sky is the limit you can even make your own impulses (your amp your guitar etc)
google is your friend

 

Record the ITB signal and then reamp it at normal listening levels with whatever mic you have through the amp or even played through one of your monitors. Blend to taste or use both, panning them for a bigger sound if it works in the context of the song. You could also turn up the amp when your sensitive neighbors leave the house, if they ever do! Also, panning a mono guitar and routing it to a stereo reverb send can also lend a little air.

 

As far as in the box, I would also recommend Altiverb. A trick to use with Altiverb (and other reverbs) is to load multiple instances with slightly different settings to emulate different mic placements around the same room and pan them in different spots. Also with this trick I sometimes find it useful to do this: Pan 1 instance hard left and 1 one hard right. Then use a send or whatever your DAW has to bring a little bit of the left reverb over to the right side, and delay it by milliseconds. Same with right to left. This will further emualte real acoustics because if you are standing in a room, your left ear picks up a little of what your right ear picks up, but just slightly delayed. Sometimes this trick makes the room sound a little more realistic to me. I only have 3 mics, all different types, so to stereo mic a room with a different left and right mic will caus an off balance sound I usually don'y want. I will record the left and right side in separate and use this trick of creating an artificial crossover to stick the two takes together better. A Full description of this technique is here: https://www.creativefieldrecording....-trick-for-creating-acoustically-sound-clips/

Another option is to play the guitar out of your speakers at a normal conversation level and move the mics very close to the speakers. Because the speakers are so quiet you should still pick up a lot of room noise. You may not get the same sound as blasting the speakers into the room and micing that but I think you could work with that.

Another option may be to play the song in your car and mic it in there. If you don't have a laptop then you could use your phone. It will have a certain sound but I often like that sound. I room mic my entire mix with my phone and layer it in. For me it works. It gives a lofi, distorted sort of quality.

 

If you are using an amp sim then also use a 3rd party IR loader that lets you use multiple IRs at once.

Then get a pack from Ownhammer, they will include IR's of all the main positions on the speaker, but they also do behind the cab, a few feet out from the speaker, or all the way in the back corner of the room.

And I agree, blending in a bit of room tone adds something nice to a guitar tone.

Reverbs that come close will be convolution. You can find a bunch of free convolutions people have recorded that can add nice space and realism to a dry sound. OpenAir and EchoThief have some really cool IRs.

 

https://www.liquidsonics.com/software/seventh-heaven-professional/

...Not "artificial", not "sterile", easy to use, impressive sound, can do much and always sound good.

 

Any cheap reverb?

 

Seventh Heaven, $69 (less possibilities than the "Pro" one, gorgeous sound, Ilok3 needed)

Reverberate 2, $125 (a world of possibilities, with Fusion-IR presets tremendous sound not "sterile" like the vast majority of other convolution reverbs that are beautiful at first and disappointing at last).

Demo them, you'll see by yourself (unfortunately the Seventh Heaven series needs Ilok, but it's worth it ; Reverberate 2 doesn't need Ilok)