Is the IR Rabbit Hole worth it??

Greg Ferguson said:
The sound being used to create an IR doesn't come from a guitar or instrument. It's a very short burst of sound in a very controlled environment that causes the cabinet and speaker to react to that sound. The microphone captures it then the sound stops before the walls, floor and ceiling have a chance to reflect the sound back and be captured.
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One question. Since a 1024 point IR is 21ms., and sound travels 1 foot per ms., wouldn't surfaces within 10ft cause reflections in the IR? 2048 IR's would be double that.
 
They can so they use partitions and gobos to help isolate the cab. Cliff has some interesting notes about it and the work they do to try to control it.
 
Regardless of getting into 3rd party IRs, like it or not, the whole CAB block experience is one big rabbit hole, just because there's so much trial and error involved, and the CAB block has such a dramatic impact on the sound. Just last night I discovered the power of the 'Align' function in the CAB block. I was trying to dial in a cab for my Tweed sound and had an OH 3rd party IR I had purchased years ago, and two Legacy cabs including the old 2X12 Gold 30 Far-Field from Jay Mitchell I've always liked to blend in. As the Looper was repeating my chord riff, I wasn't completely happy with the sound and was just getting ready to tap the arrow down button to audition the next one in line and decided to mess with the Align feature. Moved the 'default' distance by several mm on one blend and hit the sweet spot and I'll be damned if I didn't 'take the red' pill and stumble into Tweed ecstasy!!! Best cab for my purposes I've ever heard in my life. The ironic thing is I could post it on this forum and due to differences with my guitar, drive settings, amp settings, etc., many others would think it sucks. If you've jumped into the Fractal experience, you've jumped into an infinite rabbit hole, like it or not. But it's damn fun. Great sounds out of the box, but can you get an extra 2% of inspiration with that next knob turn or IR PayPal purchase? Many times, yes, but diminishing returns at some point. I just try to treat it as an evolution rather than a revolution from a time investment perspective. And then Cliff releases a new kick ass firmware version!
 
BrienHBrown said:
Regardless of getting into 3rd party IRs, like it or not, the whole CAB block experience is one big rabbit hole, just because there's so much trial and error involved, and the CAB block has such a dramatic impact on the sound. Just last night I discovered the power of the 'Align' function in the CAB block. I was trying to dial in a cab for my Tweed sound and had an OH 3rd party IR I had purchased years ago, and two Legacy cabs including the old 2X12 Gold 30 Far-Field from Jay Mitchell I've always liked to blend in. As the Looper was repeating my chord riff, I wasn't completely happy with the sound and was just getting ready to tap the arrow down button to audition the next one in line and decided to mess with the Align feature. Moved the 'default' distance by several mm on one blend and hit the sweet spot and I'll be damned if I didn't 'take the red' pill and stumble into Tweed ecstasy!!! Best cab for my purposes I've ever heard in my life. The ironic thing is I could post it on this forum and due to differences with my guitar, drive settings, amp settings, etc., many others would think it sucks. If you've jumped into the Fractal experience, you've jumped into an infinite rabbit hole, like it or not. But it's damn fun. Great sounds out of the box, but can you get an extra 2% of inspiration with that next knob turn or IR PayPal purchase? Many times, yes, but diminishing returns at some point. I just try to treat it as an evolution rather than a revolution from a time investment perspective. And then Cliff releases a new kick ass firmware version!
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Awesome! I hear you on pursuing that 2%---even if it is NOT the same 2%
others would appreciate for their purposes. :)

I just enjoy learning, and have had similar revelatory experiences with Fractal
in my short time with it. Some quibble about the deep editing capabilities, but
having access to them can part the clouds just as easily as it can become a quagmire.
I'm good with that trade off.

P.S. Also pretty cool that you have not exhausted the possibilities in the years you
have been using this gear. :)
 
I think vendor IRs are kind of like guitars and other gear that you already have. It's great to get another guitar, but do you really need it?
That said, I have bought IRs back when I had the Ultra and I'm not really impressed with what I tried. They're kind of dark, some overly bright, and some just had odd tonalities. These days, the Axe comes loaded with lots of excellent IRs on board so that you can get great sounds with what's already on board.
Now that I have my legal disclaimer out of the way, I did hear some great samples from York, so I took a chance. The sounds that I got sounded like the cabs and speakers that I owned mic'd from the sweet spot. So I tried a few more familiar sounds and got hooked. There's at least five amps modeled in the FM3 that I've owned and the level of detail is astounding. With the accuracy of York and Fractal, I feel like I'm really in a guitar shop buying/trying amps and cabs that I wouldn't have access to.
I have no doubt that there are other IR vendors who make fantastic IRs, but I've bought most of the York catalog at this point and don't regret any of the purchases. If York didn't exist, I think I'd still be perfectly happy with the FM3 as is. But since York does exist, I'll admit that I'm more excited about seeing a new cab IR than I am about Cygnus.
 
It's not worth it in the sense that you can waste a lot of time and money if you go into it blindly hoping to find something you like.
If you know what you want, whether from personal experience or researching cabs and speakers, it's worth purchasing 3rd party IRs. The Factory cabs are great but are typically limited to one mix or mic position. IR packs will give you multiple mics and positions.
 
TravisG406 said:
The stock ones are great, if you want to try some IR purchases I highly second York Audio!
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100% agree. For whatever reason my go-to stock cabs are the Legacy 189 (4x12 G12M Creamback mix CEL) and Factory2 947 (4x12 Trad V60 57 OH). However, I did buy the YA Friedman pack. Great tones throughout.
 
RevDrucifer said:
I rely on the IR to get 85%-95% of the way there. If it’s not sounding good with everything on the Authentic tab at noon, you’re most likely not going to tweak you’re way out of it and you’re better off moving to another IR.
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Counterpoint: I'm mostly playing an EJ strat these days, my first strat in decades. I've spent a lot of time searching for those Grail IRs where everything at noon on most amps wasn't super trebly and thin.

No more, at least this month.

Instead, I "plug in" an IR I have some (possibly erroneous) reason to think might work for this amp, or that sound in my head, or one I want to check out, then I ADJUST THE AMP UNTIL IT SOUNDS GOOD or I'm sick of it. Just like I would of I plugged into a real cab. Doh!
 
I’m sure Cygnus will be great but I think the FM3 sounds fantastic as is. Every time I buy a different York cab IR, I feel like I’m getting a new cab. One man’s perspective. :)
 
After I got the FM3 and saw all the amp tweaks,
I thought I would give the amp modeling a real test by trying to put together a Neil Young 5E3 sound.
I was shocked at how well it went -- even as a total newbie.
My biggest surprise was how much I liked this IR combination:

2x12 Double Verb 160 1 ML
1x12 Deluxe Tweed1 160 D AB

Essentially any combination of open-backed
2 x 12 Oxford 12L5N ( from the Magnavox 280)
1 x 12 Jensen C12N ( from the Tweed 5E3)

Some combinations work/align/sound better than others

I have tended to be partial to the Beyerdynamic 160 in the brightest position
But it depends. Just about any of the mics and positions
-- except the Shure 57 (surprisingly) -- seem to suit me at times these days.
I added a 120 Hz proximity frequency bump to the ribbon mic - as a extra faux Shure 57
-- my funky hack

I would like to find similar IR's using
a vintage Sennheiser MD409 U3 and a Shure SM57 - (Neil Young's combination)

I also added a "Hi-Quality" transformer preamp for the mic and spin those knobs a bit.

But, what surprised me the most is that I have never been a big fan of
1) Jensen Speakers
2) open-back cabs
3) Oxford speakers.
But then again, I had never heard the old early small-gap Oxfords from the late 50's and early 60's.
Those are the old Oxfords that Dr. Z is reproducing for some of his amps.

But, I really do like this combination of both IR's -- for a lot of things.

Once I got the correct speaker/cab IR's,
and set up a Deluxe Tweed with 6l6GC's and 12ax7 RCA's
suddenly, a guitar with P90's started to sound a lot like Neil.

I think my favorite flame on Neil's sound was something about throwing a pignose into a dumpster. :tearsofjoy:

If I ever get the preset just right, I will put it out there -- maybe after Cygnus.

It should really be done on an Axe FXIII though.

So, yeah, what was the question? Rabbit-hole something?
 
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acwild said:
I’m sure Cygnus will be great but I think the FM3 sounds fantastic as is. Every time I buy a different York cab IR, I feel like I’m getting a new cab. One man’s perspective. :)
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I have no quibbles with the sound either. :)

But..... if I could experience an incremental bump with a select
3rd party IR (or pack) AND Cygnus I may not be able to handle it. ;)
 
PumpkinKing86 said:
I would say no, the rabbithole isn't worth it. I spent too much money on IRs in the Axe-FX II days, got thousands of them to only use a couple. I got really tired of IR producers coming out with new versions of stuff they had already shot before because "this time I did it right, the old IRs don't sound good compared to the new stuff!" and then it's just another damn IR of Vintage 30s or Greenbacks in Mesa or Marshall cabinets – the last thing we need more IRs of! Then some of them started saying crazy shit like pickups don't matter and you should just buy more IRs to change your sound. 🙄

There's plenty of stock cabs that are fine to great. My gripe is I'd like to see more IR mixes instead of single mic stuff. IRs take a lot of CPU and using multiple IRs can take up processing power real quick. But you can make a mix in Cab Lab as a single IR and regain CPU that way. Searching stock IRs kinda sucks too; I wish they showed up as nested folders in the IR browser to make endless scrolling less painful.

Anyway, that's my two cents. YMMV
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Totally agree with all of this. Especially the multiple mix blends in one IR. I recently bought the Jen Bogren (Amon Amarth, Opeth, Katatonia) IR pack and it definitely gets the job done. Mic blends and light EQ in the IRs. Works great for my metal mixes, especially since the albums he produces are major influences.

I think the huge list of IRs in the FM3 is more than enough. Stick your head in the rabbit hole but don't go climbing into it or you'll go crazy.
 
No not really. Bought a few IR'S over the last 10 years. Say 50 box accumulated. Ended up using IR's of an OH mix of the speakers I used in "real life" before, in different variants. So no use at all to test 1000's of IR's. G12H30 and G12M25 and that's about it for me.
 
If I purchase IR's it will be in search of a specific cab, speaker and mic. There is already plenty of IR's in the FM3 for me to guess at and try out randomly. So far, I've been following my old speaker habits. Greenbacks or v30's w/JBL'S (Zappa 4x12s)). I always loved the E130 JBL. But it sounds different in a ported 2x15 Dual Showman cab as opposed to a 1x15 open-backed Vibroverb Cab. I have always like mixing dissimilar speakers. Woody/Flutey-Bell harmonics, Raunchy/Clean, Alnico/Ceramic, Mid-range/Wide-range, 12"/15". The old vintage Fanes had a certain attitude-mild-raunch-mid-formant thing (Jethro Tull, early Rush, Mark Knopler.) I have suddenly noticed that I like certain mics and am now more curious about what other mics have been used for certain sounds. Now, if I look for matching a sound -- getting the speakers and mics right comes first. That is a matter of research. Before, in the non-modeling world, I would look to modding the amp more than changing out the speakers. I love the alignment tool, mic spacing and the mic preamp in the Cab. I've noticed that if I get the speakers right, the typical amp for the sound makes more sense and dials-in in a way that seems expected -- or known. Eventually I expect to experiment across amp+speaker genres. I liked the Cornford with Neil Young's speakers for a novel grunge sound. For me it is more about experimenting with speaker cabs that I couldn't afford -- an old Marshall Pin-stripe, or larger Bass cab -- or the latest super-tight metal cab, that I would not explore otherwise. I am guessing (hoping) that, at least in the beginning, my Cab searches will be more genre/function/research-oriented and then finally more educated experiments -- after I get a better fix on things. I've never bothered with 10" speakers. I will see what they can do. I might look to some of the boutique builders like DrZ for some possible combinations. I will probably check equipboard for certain players and look for unusual speaker setups. For me, the wealth of IR's and speaker cab combinations is going to be an education on how many of the expected amp sounds are achieved. Once I get a better idea of what is typically done, I'll start looking around for good-sounding but unexpected combinations and aberrations.
 
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If I could filter out the IR's that used the same speaker model (e.g. G12M25, G12C, EV12L, Jensen C12N, etc. )
And then, perhaps, cabinets of the desired type. (e.g. 1x12, 2x12, 4x12, etc.)
The CAB IR picking process would become much more methodical and efficient -- for me.

I would very quickly realize what IR's I wanted to purchase.

The wiki "Cabinet Models List" does help -- sometimes.
But, that is a slow, error-prone way to do it.
 
Searching IRs by parameters like speaker brand, speaker size, IR maker, mic, mic position, mic distance, etc, would be great. However, IRs are made by tons of people, and don't contain that info, much less in a standardized way, so text search is probably the best we can do at this point.

Providing fields where we could enter our own info like that might be helpful, but who's going to do that for all the factory cabs, much less each person's collection of third-party stuff?
 
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