Speculum Speculorum
Power User
I'm experiencing interesting results.
Scott Peterson has, for a long time, talked about direct recording and the close-mic IR simulation needing a touch of verb to give it a less "vacuumed" sense of space. I never really went that far into it, as I play predominately heavier music and the current thing is to have a pretty dry direct sound. But, after recent comments on another thread, I started thinking about how all my favorite heavy music recording engineers talk about room sound, and how I like sense of space in the real world, and so I started giving it the ol' college try. One of the biggest "problems" I've had with IRs is they can sound pretty sterile, so I'm always interested in ways to improve - and hell it's just a little change, so why not?
Now, this might be a whole bunch of horse pucky, but I'm pretty sure Scott is onto something here. I started with a regular room (large in this case) and brought the time down to like 2 seconds or so. Then I started adding in room until I started hearing reverb when playing quite loudly - I backed off until I could just hear a change in my sound without reverb - with the heavy stuff I'm sitting at like 0.5% or so - cleans a little bit more. Bass around the same 0.5% thing.
Well heck. Unless my ears are deceiving me... it's very subtle, but it's there. I've still got to work this up into a short mix, but based off of listening to double tracked guitars and some bass, I'm liking what I'm hearing. It sounds more like isolated guitar tracks from pieces I enjoy than just an IR, which can sometimes sound a bit flat and sterile to me.
So, my challenge to you high gain guys like me who are recording with IRs (like me) is give it a shot and see what happens. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on the matter.
Scott Peterson has, for a long time, talked about direct recording and the close-mic IR simulation needing a touch of verb to give it a less "vacuumed" sense of space. I never really went that far into it, as I play predominately heavier music and the current thing is to have a pretty dry direct sound. But, after recent comments on another thread, I started thinking about how all my favorite heavy music recording engineers talk about room sound, and how I like sense of space in the real world, and so I started giving it the ol' college try. One of the biggest "problems" I've had with IRs is they can sound pretty sterile, so I'm always interested in ways to improve - and hell it's just a little change, so why not?
Now, this might be a whole bunch of horse pucky, but I'm pretty sure Scott is onto something here. I started with a regular room (large in this case) and brought the time down to like 2 seconds or so. Then I started adding in room until I started hearing reverb when playing quite loudly - I backed off until I could just hear a change in my sound without reverb - with the heavy stuff I'm sitting at like 0.5% or so - cleans a little bit more. Bass around the same 0.5% thing.
Well heck. Unless my ears are deceiving me... it's very subtle, but it's there. I've still got to work this up into a short mix, but based off of listening to double tracked guitars and some bass, I'm liking what I'm hearing. It sounds more like isolated guitar tracks from pieces I enjoy than just an IR, which can sometimes sound a bit flat and sterile to me.
So, my challenge to you high gain guys like me who are recording with IRs (like me) is give it a shot and see what happens. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on the matter.