Farfield IR's

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Hi,

I'd like to experiment with farfield IR's get more of an amp-in-the-room feel to live tone. I play high gain/metal and I've read SP's old post on Speaker Resonance and plan to use the OH Mesa Recto Cab (V30) as my NF cab (from his pack, not the one included in the Axe).

Question is, do I need to match the cab? For example, find a farfield IR of a Mesa V30 - or does it not matter?

Also, does this work particularly well for high-gain/metal or will it sound muddy? I can understand how effective this would be for Marshall rock tones/leads and Fender like cleans - but something tells me the FAS Modern might end up sounding a bit muddy, especially if you reduce the NF by -6db as suggested in SP's thread. (I would just try and see, but I'm at work and interested!)

Hope you can help!

Simon
 
It's not said that a FF IR is the better way in theory to get an in the room sound.

Consider that the monitor that you use is sitting in your room and adds your room to what you hear, so then you have the room from the IR plus your room, so the room is two times there. Confusing!

If it sounds good for you and cuts through, it's good.

There's some threads where Scott talks about how he combines the JM FF IRs with other cabs...still something that works. Maybe your point to start?
 
I never had much luck with FF IRs, and I play a lot of high gain stuff. To be frank, it just made the sound a lot more wooly and undesirable. Invariably, now some dudes will show up and say it's the bee's knees.

Try it. If you like it, go nuts and post the results.
 
Only solution I found that gives you a real amp in the room is driving a "real" cab with a power amp. I am using a Matrix GT1000FX driving 2 NL12 cabs (feels like a 4x12 slapping me around). You can drive any cab with the Matrix. Another very popular cab that folks use with the Axe and a power amp is the Port City 2x12 wave.

The other power amp solution that seems to be popular with axe users looking to push some air with a cab is the Fryette power amp.

You can mix and dance until the cows come home but IMO no FRFR monitor will ever give you a real live cab pushing air in the room feel.

Lots of threads on the subject in the amps and cabs section Amps and Cabs
 
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I think its possible to attain the amp in the room sound with IR's and a neutral monitor. But I personally think it requires high skill in acquiring the IR's and high skill in setting the SPKR page of the amp block.

To be skilled enough to capture room reflection free far field IR's and then be skilled enough to adjust the amp block speaker parameters correctly is a pretty steep hill.

As LVC said, the amp in the room feel is attained the easiest with a power amp and guitar cab.
 
I think its possible to attain the amp in the room sound with IR's and a neutral monitor. But I personally think it requires high skill in acquiring the IR's and high skill in setting the SPKR page of the amp block.

To be skilled enough to capture room reflection free far field IR's and then be skilled enough to adjust the amp block speaker parameters correctly is a pretty steep hill.

As LVC said, the amp in the room feel is attained the easiest with a power amp and guitar cab.

Agreed

I love the tone and feel I get out of my Q12 FRFR monitor.

That being said, sound and experience are two different things. Feeling the air pressure smacking you around from a cab that is "cooking" at a gig cannot be replicated on stage with an IR (IMO of course :mrgreen)
 
I'll try it and see what happens! I've got some club gigs coming up that I thought that approach could work for to get a real present and thick tone, rather than one you can just hear through the PA.

I've not gigged with the Axe at all yet, so I'm a bit concerned about it sounding like it's just "playing through the PA", at these smaller gigs rather than it sounding like it's really there and part of the band. I have looked at the Matrix before and considered the power amp/cab route but I'm not sure I can afford it.

(Hopefully that made some sort of sense, haha.)
 
Far field IRs are the bee's knees!

IMO, FF IRs sound best without being mixed with another IR if its the 'amp in the room sound' you're after. What is important when doing this though is getting the mic position to suit a given amp - moving the mic by as little as a few centimetres can change the sound of the IR in a very obvious manner, despite being a few metres from the cab. A FF IR of the same cab can be either tight and bright or dark and fat depending on where you capture it - just like NF IRs. While I'm not really a metal player, I do use FF IRs for high gain and love it - its just a matter of finding the right cab with the right mic position to suit the amp you want. The speaker page is also important, but mic position more so IMO.
 
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What I've done previously is to set up a patch that goes from the AMP block directly out to a power amp/4x12 sitting a few feet away directly in front of me and also thru a CAB block into a FRFR speaker, then proceeded to find an IR and/or combinations of IR's that match the sound of 4x12 from that vantage point. If you have a reference while your auditioning/playing with IR's to get the '4x12 in the room' you may find you nail it much quicker that way.
 
Wow have been doing a deep-dive into FF IR's lately and found this thread from 2013....@antcarrier I'm still curious as to what your doing with them these days....?
 
The vast majority of FF IR's are horrible because they were not captured correctly, have tons of reflections which gives that god awful, wooly, muffled phasey sound. There is a great thread on TGP by Jay Mitchell about far field IRs. He offered a couple of his IRs plus a really bad one that has lost of reflections for comparison. The far field one sounds great & has none of the characteristics you would normally associate with far field IRs. They are 1-12's so I don't know how they would work with high gain. He does also offer a 4-12 Marshal FF IR but I didn't like it. Because there are 4 sound sources & 1 mic, there are still some phase issues but nowhere near what most FF IR's have. I'm not sure if he is still offering the IR's but you need to PM him to request them per post #40 of the thread. Here's a link to the thread: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/ir-properties.2047238/
Fractal also has some free FF IR's that are very near reflection free here: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/free-far-field-session-2-cab-pack-for-axe-fx-users.151232/
 
Wow have been doing a deep-dive into FF IR's lately and found this thread from 2013....@antcarrier I'm still curious as to what your doing with them these days....?

Hi! I'm still capturing FF IRs whenever I have the chance to do so. I have captured thousands of them over the past 6 or 7 years and have learned a lot about the process, and over time refining my methods to get better results. I don't use any other kind of IR, in any situation, and am very satisfied with the tones I can get using FF IRs.

Lately I have been capturing reflection free IRs at distances from 2-4 meters that work really well :)
 
Hi! I'm still capturing FF IRs whenever I have the chance to do so. I have captured thousands of them over the past 6 or 7 years and have learned a lot about the process, and over time refining my methods to get better results. I don't use any other kind of IR, in any situation, and am very satisfied with the tones I can get using FF IRs.

Lately I have been capturing reflection free IRs at distances from 2-4 meters that work really well :)
Hey, are these IR’s you’ve been caputuring available for me to buy somewhere? I’m on the FF IR train now and would love to try some of these out that you’ve been capturing.
 
Hey, are these IR’s you’ve been caputuring available for me to buy somewhere? I’m on the FF IR train now and would love to try some of these out that you’ve been capturing.

Hey man, thanks for the interest. They aren't yet, but probably will be in the future. IR capture has been a long term side project of mine, but I'm mostly focused on writing music. I'd still have to figure out some sort of website type thing, and sort out legal-businessy-things (neither of which I know anything about) before I can sell anything. Once I've finished recording an album, I'll probably stick that and IR collection up on a website all at once, or something. Hopefully, when it's eventually done, that will help recoup some costs of the IR project- it's ended up being very expensive to do. Fun, though :)
 
Hey man, thanks for the interest. They aren't yet, but probably will be in the future. IR capture has been a long term side project of mine, but I'm mostly focused on writing music. I'd still have to figure out some sort of website type thing, and sort out legal-businessy-things (neither of which I know anything about) before I can sell anything. Once I've finished recording an album, I'll probably stick that and IR collection up on a website all at once, or something. Hopefully, when it's eventually done, that will help recoup some costs of the IR project- it's ended up being very expensive to do. Fun, though :)
Sounds good! Hopefully you can get it all figured out because I’d love to try them! There’s definitely a growing demand for them, that’s for sure.
 
Hi! I'm still capturing FF IRs whenever I have the chance to do so. I have captured thousands of them over the past 6 or 7 years and have learned a lot about the process, and over time refining my methods to get better results. I don't use any other kind of IR, in any situation, and am very satisfied with the tones I can get using FF IRs.

Lately I have been capturing reflection free IRs at distances from 2-4 meters that work really well :)

Fantastic to hear you are still pursuing the craft of acquiring FF IR's, refining the process, and seeing tangible improvements and results. It says a lot that you are using them exclusively for your current project.

"gigsup" on The Gear Page has some interesting FF IR's I've been playing with, in particular the AC30 ones. It's encouraging to see interest and progress in this area.
 
There has certainly been a big learning curve since the beginning, involving a lot of happy and unhappy accidents. It is cool to see that a few others are now gathering FF IRs too. It's certainly a fun project that has given me sounds that I really enjoy to play.
 
I use two FF Bogner IRs that were floating around years ago, mixed at about -25db to just add some air to the sound.
 
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