Something Cool I've Been Working On

I find that the IRs I like are so few and far between, I really honestly don't care how they are acquired. I'm just thrilled when I find one that I like. But I do think that this new technique is very cool. I can't think of any other company making a similar product that puts this much effort into R&D. Compare Fractal to Roland. Cliff could think "Oh well, good enough". His constant drive to improve his product is a positive thing, and is the reason for his success.
 
FractalAudio said:
The myopic only see the IR as a capture of the speaker's "unadulterated" response. As I stated before I believe the future is treating IRs as capturing the entire recording chain including mics, preamps, etc. and have pushing in that direction. We have already seen the fruits of this labor in the Producer Pack and OwnHammer V2 IRs. We used mainly PP and OH IRs at Axe-Fest this weekend and the results were stellar. Andy Wood's tone was among the best guitar tones I've ever heard live and we dialed it up in 10 minutes under far less than ideal conditions. It consisted of the Two Rock amp model and the EV 12L Mix IR. When you include more than the speaker response in the IR you can have low-frequency resonances that persist for tens of milliseconds or more. Truncating an IR destroys this LF information. In many cases this LF information loss would probably not be perceptible. In other cases, from experience, it can be extremely noticeable. The bottom line is that you can always remove the information if you don't want it but you can't add back what isn't there.
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The myopic think in terms of what has been done, and not what can be done.

Or, to quote Frank Zappa: "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible"

Keep up the deviant behavior!
 
Getting back to the technical aspects...

* If you treat the whole recording chain as a single unit, you can't mix-and-match. That's why we have separate effects, preamp, amp, cabinet, etc.

* Cliff suggests that if you put the microphone near the speaker, it will hear the speaker louder than the room. That's intuitive, but by the time the reflection arrives at the microphone, it's competing with the relatively quiet resonances of the speaker, not with the very loud initial impulse. Does MLS (or similar) solve this problem?

* Of course IRs should include the bass. As Cliff says, more info is always better. That's indisputable!
 
To all those who don't like the room in the IR, I'm honestly wondering...

Do you feel any CD / recording played in a room would sound better without any reverbs on anything?
Isn't that the same principle?

Let's say I love Richard Marx CDs with huge reverbs on everything.
Will I like it better without those reverbs when played in a huge concert hall?
I don't guess so.
Is it theoretically destroying some of the sound and could it theoretically in some ways sound better?
I guess so too, but not in a way that it would matter so much that I would *not* prefer the original.
Well, it's a guess. Just wondering about your opinion :)

I could attack my own guess here and claim if it isn't about an already known and loved sound, it is an extra reason to go for the theoretically better sound?

Anyway, since one person could prefer a sound that in theory is worse, in the end I guess it's a taste thing.

AlGrenadine said:
How ? UltraRes is not released in any firmware yet...
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By comparing a shorter and a longer IR, cos that seems all it is.
 
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The point is that the speaker that is playing the IR-with-room is itself in a room. So you get two room sounds overlaying eachother. That would be the unwanted thing. They want the speaker in their own room and that only once.

Cliff says the room is part of the tone he wants to hear and doesn't think the real room is much of a problem.

I tend to agree with Cliff. All the respect I have for Jay does not make me like his farfield IRs. I think they sound like ass. Apparently so bad is my room and my speakers that they don't translate as golden as they should... ?

Whatever. It seems everybody likes the Basketweave TV. It sort of became the only one I use nowadays. I'm not going for carbon copying tones from yesteryear, I just want what I think sounds good. "The tone I hear in my head"!
 
But we do this all the time with recorded music. The amp was recorded in a room and we listen to it in a room.

I don't understand how that is largely different from an IR that is "the amp in a room"
 
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Chris Hurley said:
But we do this all the time with recorded music. The amp was recorded in a room and we listen to it in a room.

I don't understand how that is largely different from an IR that is "the amp in a room"
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^This

So much music is listened to on speakers in a room.

Are all records with close miced guitar tracks that we listen to on speakers in a room, wrong?
 
I am tending to agree.

In a live situation if we were to mic a guitar cab, surely this is the same scenario. The microphone is picking up some elements of the room and speaker and replaying those over the PA, and then in turn the same room adds it's own effect. Is this not the same 'room on room' suggestion, regardless whether it is the same room or not? Maybe I am missing something.
 
i've been complaining about the tonal quality of "standard IR's" for years now, and most of the time i was bashed and patted because of that.
i am really stoked about this hires IR thing, though i wish it would be offered in it's full potential...speaking of a designated hardware cab emulation unit,
that does nothing else than emulating cabs, maybe with the CPU power of an axe standard...it has to be kind of affordable i guess.
 
Let me phrase this another way. An IR can consist of the "raw" speaker response plus none, one, some or all of the following:
mic
preamp
room
power amp (e.g. you want to capture the response of a tube amp driving the speaker)
etc.

If you only care about the raw response then a short IR is all that is required. However if you want any of the other elements as part of the IR then a longer IR may be necessary. UltraRes gives you the OPTION of processing longer IRs.
 
So Cliff - will we be able to convert long .wav IRs to UltraRes format? It sure would be nice if I could take my large collection of .wav files and load them as UltraRes cabs into my Axe-fx II. I am assuming since any cabs mixed as .syx files have already been truncated, any custom mixes done with, let's say Axe-O-Matic DSP, would not be candidates for this. As much of a PITA it would be to do all my cabs over again, I would gladly go through the drudgery if it meant more accurate, better sounding results.
 
I, for one, am really looking forward to this. I don't use any 3rd party IR's as I don't want to audition thousands of mic placements or go down the mixing IR rabbithole. IMO, Cliff is doing the work to get great sounds in a shorter period of time so that I can focus on playing my instrument and exploring cool effects rather than worrying about what mic to use on a cab so my tone fits in a mix.

The thing about Jay is that he knows a CRAPLOAD about speakers, but has to make sure that everybody else knows he knows a crapload about speakers, which makes him look like a dick. I've had my run-ins with him before and it's his need to be right 100% of the time that drives me crazy. He yelled at me for defending him in an argument one time. Who insults somebody that agrees with them? Jay does. Apparently, I didn't use the right compliment. Based on my interactions with him, he's a Grade A know-it-all asshole. I don't care if he wins a Nobel Prize for his speaker designs, there's still no excuse to laud it over people. I know plenty of experts in their associated fields that aren't complete dicks, but unfortunately, Jay is not one of them.
 
Sidivan said:
I, for one, am really looking forward to this. I don't use any 3rd party IR's as I don't want to audition thousands of mic placements or go down the mixing IR rabbithole. IMO, Cliff is doing the work to get great sounds in a shorter period of time so that I can focus on playing my instrument and exploring cool effects rather than worrying about what mic to use on a cab so my tone fits in a mix.

The thing about Jay is that he knows a CRAPLOAD about speakers, but has to make sure that everybody else knows he knows a crapload about speakers, which makes him look like a dick. I've had my run-ins with him before and it's his need to be right 100% of the time that drives me crazy. He yelled at me for defending him in an argument one time. Who insults somebody that agrees with them? Jay does. Apparently, I didn't use the right compliment. Based on my interactions with him, he's a Grade A know-it-all asshole. I don't care if he wins a Nobel Prize for his speaker designs, there's still no excuse to laud it over people. I know plenty of experts in their associated fields that aren't complete dicks, but unfortunately, Jay is not one of them.
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I think back to various professors I had in college. There were a couple who acted much the same way (they both had tenure, but don't even get me started on that subject). Some students believed that the only reason they got involved in university teaching was to seek retribution on the innocent for some perceived injustice inflicted on them when they were students. A power trip of sorts. Their priority seemed to be putting the students in their place and making it clear that they were beneath them in knowledge, intellect, and stature. This, while under the pretense that they were selfless servants dedicating their lives to the betterment of society.

The two professors I had who were by far the best educators would never attempt to make you seem beneath them (or call you a neophyte). They enjoyed interacting with their students and found pride in both their students and themselves. JM is, of course, not a professional educator. Any information he volunteers is his choice. But why choose to impart information in such a way? I can't imagining taking that road with my son's education. I think it would fuck him up for life.
 
Dutch said:
All the respect I have for Jay does not make me like his farfield IRs. I think they sound like ass.
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I honestly think an IR of my fart would sound better. In fact, I'm going to create one. I'm serious. I have lots of time on my hands since I can't go to work due to the government shutdown. I'll post it when I'm done, so everyone can enjoy. :)

The question is, do you want any influence of the room, or not?
 
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