Impulse Watch !

fremen

fremen

Axe-Master
Vendor
Discovering the existence of impulses a couple of years ago really helped me to improve my sound (check this thread, btw : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5740 - thank you !). Some days ago, hippietim posted this : viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5742 , and I can't agree more to all that have been said by everyone here. After all, audiophiles says that the more critical part of any hifi system is the speakers ;) I admit, I'm a su**er for good impulses, I tested hundreds of them for my album, and I'm doing the same for the Axe-Fx. Note that first and foremost, I search for impulses which works for hi gain type of sounds, as I'm a mainly a metalhead

So, I suggest that on this thread, all impulses addicts like me share links to new (or less new) impulses. To start, here's 6 links I find useful :

1) One impulse from CatharsisStudios, a very good one imho :
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/prod ... beefy.html

2) 4 other CatharsisStudios, I like the third one :
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/prod ... -hawt.html

3) fredman-style impulses, again from CatharsisStudios, very nice :
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy ... ulses.html

4) Metalstatic recto cabs impulses :
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy ... -baby.html

5) Metalstatic recto cabs impulses, second batch :
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy ... ulses.html

6) Last but not least… 972 original impulses here !
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy ... la610.html

I already converted all of them to Axe-Fx format, and I can upload the conversions if someone wants them. I just need to finish testing the 972 impulses pack… It's a huge one, and the variations between adjacent impulses in each sub-folder are often very minimal (probably Recabinet style, ah ah), so I'm in the process of selecting those I found useful for me. It's worth the long testing process, because some of these sounds PHAT :p
 
Here's some conversions of CatharsisStudios and Metalstatic impulses. I added 25 IR made by AeternusEternus, pre-selected from the first 100 or so I had the time to audition... Only 865 more to test :? :lol:
 
Awesome work Freman... I was on the UM forum (Andy Sneap), and I tried to post a question to this thread because the clips sounded pretty good.... but I couldn't post a question... anyhow I went ahead and IM/Myspaced him a question to see if he could do a longer IR (20ms)... because each IR that I saw was only about 2-3kb, instead of the usual 9-10kb.

Edit: Just checked my inbox and he responded that he would do it for his next impulses!!! Awesome!

P.S. I wonder why I can't post to that thread? Any ideas? Do I have to pay or something?
 
strange, I've never had problem posting here, as long as you're registered and logged, you should be able to do it
Not that my threads had big success there, my metal is too soft, too old school for there guys :lol:
 
Soultrash said:
here we have over 900 IR's!
the only problem...someone needs to convert these into AXE format.
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I can see another potentially deal-breaking problem: nobody will have time to properly audition all these IRs.

Consider your dilemma if someone offered you a choice from among 900 physical speaker cabinets. To make this equivalent to the IR evaluation process, let's say you're provided a couple roadies to move the cabs into place and connect them, so you would not have to do any physical labor. How long do you think it would take just to play through (i.e., neglecting all the changeover time) all those cabs? If you spent a woefully inadequate 15 minutes with each cab, auditioning 900 of them would consume 225 hours. That's almost six weeks of full time work @40 hrs./week. At the end of the process, how in the world would you go about selecting, say, the top ten? If you had recorded clips of each one - recognizing that a close-mic'ed clip really sounds nothing like the cab sounds to the player - you could at least vaguely remind yourself of the sound character of each one, but you'd potentially consume another 40-hour week or so narrowing down the field. And, at the end of the day, what you'd have for your trouble would be a highly tentative selection of the top few cabs. If you'd spent a few more minutes with each one to learn how to best tweak the amp controls - and, adding another parallel to the Axe-Fx, identifying which amp sounds best with each speaker - you could easily end up spending several months on this kind of project, and still have less than 100% confidence that you had successfully separated the wheat from the chaff. In the end, what are the odds that you'd find a magic cab that transforms all your tones into pure bliss? Or even that you'd be confident that you've truly identified the best ten for the range of sounds you want to create? Common sense says the odds are not in your favor.

Consider that auditioning IRs will consume as much "strap" time as the above process, and add in the uncertainty of not having a clue as to the origin of an IR (which could help narrow down the choices in advance), and I see no way that there is any purpose in having hundreds of completely unknown IRs available. I can manually create an IR with my wav editor that looks and sounds like a speaker of some configuration. The possibilities for creating and processing IRs are infinite. And we've only got a finite amount of time to use them.

My recommendation: thoroughly audition the factory IRs. Spend some real time identifying which amps work best with each IR and tweaking the amp parameters to dial in your sound. Be highly selective in identifying user IRs to audition. Knowing the speakers, cabs, test equipment, and test environment from which an IR was taken will be very helpful. At some point, you have to stop auditioning, narrow down your choices - even though that process is inevitably arbitrary - and play. The possibility that there is some "magic" IR out there just waiting for you to discover it is a rabbit hole.

just my $.02....
 
Jay Mitchell said:
I can see another potentially deal-breaking problem: nobody will have time to properly audition all these IRs.
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Well I did. I cheated of course, I only kept those labeled "No COMP", as for the others, the author used compression with his preamp during the capturing process.
Which left me with 320 or so impulses. I recorded a 15 secs rhythm/lead (with everything I need : palm muting in open E, a quick chordal riff and then some lead) with my Axe in Wavelab, with cab sim off. Looped that, and tested those 320 impulses through Boogex. Going from one impulse to the next one is instant in Boogex, with just one click. (BTW, a no-cab Axe recording through Boogex or the same Axe patch played live with the same impulse in its cab module sounds the same...)

I'm experienced enough to know, within seconds, which IRs won't work for me. So I went through a pre-selection process which took me 2 to 3 hours, after that I was left with around 20 impulses that deserved longer testing. This time I took my guitar and loaded them in the Axe. 45 min later and I had made my mind about those I'll keep in my "best of" folder

But, I understand what you mean about the stock IR, some are really good. I just need more options ;) 90% of my go-to patches uses custom IRs
 
fremen said:
Jay Mitchell said:
Well I did. I cheated of course, I only kept those labeled "No COMP", as for the others, the author used compression with his preamp during the capturing process.
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This goes to what I said about knowing the details of the origin of an IR and using that information to enable you to be highly selective in deciding which IRs to audition. Speaking for myself, I would never bother auditioning an IR if I did not have detailed, believable information about how it was acquired, nor would I audition one that was acquired in a way that I know cannot not accurately capture the sonic signature of the speaker.

Which left me with 320 or so impulses. I recorded a 15 secs rhythm/lead (with everything I need : palm muting in open E, a quick chordal riff and then some lead) with my Axe in Wavelab, with cab sim off. Looped that, and tested those 320 impulses through Boogex.
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That process would reliably indicate how an IR sounds with one specific combination of signal path/control parameter settings. It would not, OTOH, establish that you could not have gotten much-improved results from any given IR with some tweaking to amp settings.

When you evaluate a physical cab, I presume you would not make the final "no-go" decision without first determining if different amp settings could improve the sound. I submit that the evaluation of IRs is no different. Whatever settings you used to make your test recording were arrived at while playing through some kind of physical cab or cab sim, and the sound of that cab and/or sim had a major effect on your decisions. The resulting choice of settings will, by definition, always tend to favor those IRs that have substantial similarities to whatever you used to create the test track.

It is possible - I would argue highly probable - that there are IRs with much different characteristics from your original reference that would sound "bad" with the settings you chose, but that would potentially be among the "best" for your purposes with a small amount of parameter tweaking. The problem is that there is insufficient time to engage in such a thorough process, and that shortcuts such as the ones you have chosen ensure that some number of potentially viable IRs could "fall through the cracks."

I'm experienced enough to know, within seconds, which IRs won't work for me. So I went through a pre-selection process which took me 2 to 3 hours, after that I was left with around 20 impulses that deserved longer testing.
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While that is a viable process, hopefully you see that it has several arbitrary components, and that the results are not 100% definitive.

But, I understand what you mean about the stock IR, some are really good.
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I really can't speak to that - except for the three factory IRS that I generated - as I've never auditioned the factory IRs. My Axe-Fx purchase decision was only made after I had established that the option of uploading user IRs would be provided in the near future, and every IR I use is one that I have acquired myself. It is precisely because I deal professionally with the types of issues involved in creating authentic IRs that I caution others to think carefully before initiating a process that can potentially consume large amounts of time and ultimately produce a non-definitive result.
 
lilbman said:
Jay,
Can you share some more of your
personal ir's with us?
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Personally, I hope he will. Jay's IRs are excellent. But since he does this kind of work for a living, it's kinda like asking Warren Buffett to share out some of his investment portfolio. :)
 
At present, there is no group-provided site for sharing presets, IRs, etc. If/when a replacement for Axechange appears, I will upload the IRs that had been there before.
 
Jay Mitchell said:
At present, there is no group-provided site for sharing presets, IRs, etc., and I am not inclined to use my resources for that purpose. If/when a replacement for Axechange appears, I will upload the IRs that had been there before.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. Just complimenting your
work. Maybe more in the future?
 
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