State of Epicicity
Fractal Fanatic
I’m someone who struggles with traditional IRs often sounding harsh and dull, and I think the problem is due to unusual resonances in my guitar itself.
So for me the most effective solution is two fold: capturing IRs from plugins that simulate a movable mic in front of a cab, where I first find the sweetest spot I can, with the least harshness and greatest character for my application, then applying a high level of Smoothing in the cab Block to remove any sort of “phasiness,” if you will. I also like to trim IRs to remove extra room sound, often to a length of 512. To my ears, this creates a warm yet present sound not overwhelmed by the IR creator’s room.
With this method, I feel like I’m matching the IR to the unusual frequency peaks and valleys of my guitar, making everything else about dialing in tones pretty effortless. The Cab Blocks I’ve set this way are the basis for me to create sweet tones that require no EQ at all with my guitar, because the IR spot I’ve captured, combined with the way I’ve refined it with Smoothing and trimming, takes over those duties. I still like EQ as a character altering tool if I want, but it’s never necessary just to yield a pleasing sound, just a different sound.
For me, with this method, EQ goes from being a utilitarian necessity in the way a mix engineer might have to use it to correct an inherent problem, to a creative tool in the way that same engineer might use it to create a particular feeling, to enhance an aspect of a performance.
Another method to approach IRs that do not gel with your guitar might be to use EQ blocks immediately after the Input Block to match the guitar to the IR first, more closely to align your guitar to whatever guitars the IR creator used to find their sweet spots. This of course would just have to be entirely by ear until you find that harshness and phasiness disappear.
I feel the converse is true, that if I were to find the sweet spots on a real cab and mics with my guitar and capture themss as IRs, that those IRs would then sound harsh and phasey to others who try them. To me an IR cannot have empirical sweetness; I think it’s entirely contextual, like every other thing in audio engineering. One has to flow with the source, and one size does not fit all.
It’s akin to the refrain I heard repeatedly on early episodes of Pensado’s place, where engineers would balk at the idea of creating presets, because to them each sound source creates its own context so severely that they believed it really ought be treated entirely as its own ball of wax. To me an IR is an audio plugin preset in this context.
This is just my own theory about it, and I could easily be misunderstanding something fundamental, but this occurred to me after experiencing many situations in which a player with good ears would post a recording via YouTube or SoundCloud as well its Fractal preset, and it would sound great with them playing, but it would sound dull and wrong and harsh and stupid when I plugged in, although I was copping the same licks and riffs, playing through the same preset with the same IRs.
So for me the most effective solution is two fold: capturing IRs from plugins that simulate a movable mic in front of a cab, where I first find the sweetest spot I can, with the least harshness and greatest character for my application, then applying a high level of Smoothing in the cab Block to remove any sort of “phasiness,” if you will. I also like to trim IRs to remove extra room sound, often to a length of 512. To my ears, this creates a warm yet present sound not overwhelmed by the IR creator’s room.
With this method, I feel like I’m matching the IR to the unusual frequency peaks and valleys of my guitar, making everything else about dialing in tones pretty effortless. The Cab Blocks I’ve set this way are the basis for me to create sweet tones that require no EQ at all with my guitar, because the IR spot I’ve captured, combined with the way I’ve refined it with Smoothing and trimming, takes over those duties. I still like EQ as a character altering tool if I want, but it’s never necessary just to yield a pleasing sound, just a different sound.
For me, with this method, EQ goes from being a utilitarian necessity in the way a mix engineer might have to use it to correct an inherent problem, to a creative tool in the way that same engineer might use it to create a particular feeling, to enhance an aspect of a performance.
Another method to approach IRs that do not gel with your guitar might be to use EQ blocks immediately after the Input Block to match the guitar to the IR first, more closely to align your guitar to whatever guitars the IR creator used to find their sweet spots. This of course would just have to be entirely by ear until you find that harshness and phasiness disappear.
I feel the converse is true, that if I were to find the sweet spots on a real cab and mics with my guitar and capture themss as IRs, that those IRs would then sound harsh and phasey to others who try them. To me an IR cannot have empirical sweetness; I think it’s entirely contextual, like every other thing in audio engineering. One has to flow with the source, and one size does not fit all.
It’s akin to the refrain I heard repeatedly on early episodes of Pensado’s place, where engineers would balk at the idea of creating presets, because to them each sound source creates its own context so severely that they believed it really ought be treated entirely as its own ball of wax. To me an IR is an audio plugin preset in this context.
This is just my own theory about it, and I could easily be misunderstanding something fundamental, but this occurred to me after experiencing many situations in which a player with good ears would post a recording via YouTube or SoundCloud as well its Fractal preset, and it would sound great with them playing, but it would sound dull and wrong and harsh and stupid when I plugged in, although I was copping the same licks and riffs, playing through the same preset with the same IRs.
