Amp in the room sound

T

thepacifist20130

Inspired
Hi folks,
Let me preface this post by saying there is a reason I am posting this in the lounge section - which is that this topic has been done to death in the product forums.

I am one of those folks that is not satisfied with my tone - but only from a perspective of needing an “amp in the room” tone. As well, I understand that a lot of folks like their setup, including FRFR or running the device through a tube power stage.

However, the point still remains that technically, cab IRs are not amp-in-the-room simply because the IR has to be obtained through mic’ing the cab with the impulse as an input.

My question is - can a cabinet response not be modeled vs recorded? I guess this is analogous to the the difference in approach of an axe-fx vs a Kemper.

Now I’m a completely noob when it comes to the technology that goes behind creating these devices so pardon the question if it comes across as silly - but I’m genuinely interested in knowing if this is a possibility.
 
You can’t model sound realistically bouncing off the room behind you from a single speaker in front of you.

The simple answer is to use a real guitar cab in a room where it will actually bounce off the room. It’s called amp in the room, but its really cab in the room.

That said I get the AITR effect from a full range fully modeled signal out of a full range speaker when it’s loud enough to bounce around the room in the same way as a cab would.

A simple mistake people make when comparing is to put their real cab behind them shooting at their ankles then put an FRFR wedge in front of them aiming at their face and ears directly. Then they say it sounds different. Yup. Put your ears directly in front of that guitar cab and you’d make some changes there.
 
chris said:
You can’t model sound realistically bouncing off the room behind you from a single speaker in front of you
Click to expand...
You don’t need to right? Or am I missing something? As long as a (hypothetical) device models a cab accurately (I.e. modeling a speaker itself and the interaction with the cab) the FRFR should take care of the reflections.

To put it another way - a cab is putting out the same signal irrespective of whether it’s in a bedroom or a concert hall. If that relationship of the output to the input is modeled correctly, the remaining variables (environment) are also what a cab would be subject to - which is fine.

Also, thanks for the suggestion. With all due respect, I’d disagree that you’ll get an amp in the room tone with an IR. The IR itself models the sound at a specific point in space, and is near field. It may be pushing air equivalent to a cab, and no doubt it may be the best we have. And my question may not have an answer. In which case, IMHO, we still don’t have a AITR solution.

Again - your suggestions to getting close to AITR are well taken. The question I’m asking is more on the technical side to understand/discuss if this a thought worth thinking through by experts in the field (aka Cliff).

You could possibly also baseline the FRFR itself where Fractal could design their own FRFR.
 
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thepacifist20130 said:
In which case, IMHO, we still don’t have a AITR solution.
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A modeled one? No we don’t. That’s why the current answer is to use a real cab.

There has been much discussion about this with cliff chiming in. See if you can search and find it here. May provide some insight that’s already been shared.
 
You might want to try far-field IRs, that's the best simulation of a "cab in the room" you can have right now. They're still not 100% the same to a real cab though cuz they're captured at a certain angle and the dispersion pattern (and other characteristics) of the FRFR speaker you'll use to reproduce them are different than those of a guitar cab.

Read this thread to understand a bit more and to find a few IRs to try:
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/properties-of-reflection-free-irs.2047238/
 
thepacifist20130 said:
The question I’m asking is more on the technical side to understand/discuss if this a thought worth thinking through
Click to expand...

It's for sure worth working out, "amp in the room" sound just equals a preferential amount of very short space stereo imaging, that's it. It's adding the spatial relation element between
what was captured by the mic for the impulse response and the device reproducing the modeled sound, so you get the missing element of comb filtering and spatial imaging you would get sitting 3 feet away from an amp. The IR was captured right up on the grill, nobody plays with their ear up on the grill. You can do it lots of ways with differing results. You can use two different IRs panned and aligned to preference, you can use two of the same IR panned and misaligned to preference, you can use a short delay in parallel to one IR, you can use comb filters in parallel at interlocking time ratios, you can use slow shallow phaser/flanger in parallel for insane motion realism, parametric EQ in parallel for room node simulation (PEQ in parallel, scoop mids, boost lows and highs, makes phase inference with the dry IR at those points to smear the boost and cut points, try it out :D) etc. etc etc.
 
It's a mic'd up cab sound vs cab and your ear. I'm not sure there is a mic as good as your ear on the market. It's just going to sound different. Put a cab in the room and be done with it. People have been chasing this for ages.
 
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