REAL MIC vs IMPULSE RESPONSE

Which of these takes sounds more real or better to you?

  • The first take on the SoundCloud clip and TEST A in the high quality files.

  • The second take on the SoundCloud clip and TEST B in the high quality files.

  • The sound the same.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Wow I'm not good with compliments but let's just say that I try and keep a scientific approach. :) I'm very happy that it has been so successful.
 
Damn I missed this, but there was no question to me that B was the real deal & A was the crappy lifeless sounding IR. But it’s not even real Amp in the room tone anyway so ...
Baaaa, look at your face!! Just kidding!! I wouldn’t have noticed any difference between the two if they were played back to back & there was no mention that one was an IR & one was mic’d. I doubt anyone would if not presented with the question.
@Mikko I’m thinking that not everyone, (actually very few) IR creators are at the level you have attained in quality & consistency. I seriously doubt that when he made those comments regarding the last 5% missing in the IR world he had you in mind. If he did, I’d agree with ya, he’s wrong, but I doubt he did. There’s a lot of IR makers out there that are just decent to very good, but not a cut above.
 
Perdikament said:
Damn I missed this, but there was no question to me that B was the real deal & A was the crappy lifeless sounding IR. But it’s not even real Amp in the room tone anyway so ...
Baaaa, look at your face!! Just kidding!!
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Honestly I was afraid that this would happen. :D The whole purpose of a blindfold comparison is so that you don't let your psychology change the way you hear things. So glad that it was joke. :)

Perdikament said:
I wouldn’t have noticed any difference between the two if they were played back to back & there was no mention that one was an IR & one was mic’d. I doubt anyone would if not presented with the question.
@Mikko I’m thinking that not everyone, (actually very few) IR creators are at the level you have attained in quality & consistency. I seriously doubt that when he made those comments regarding the last 5% missing in the IR world he had you in mind. If he did, I’d agree with ya, he’s wrong, but I doubt he did. There’s a lot of IR makers out there that are just decent to very good, but not a cut above.
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It definitely hits me in a sore spot when someone says something about the IR technology when I've spent a lot of time maximizing the technique's capabilities. I don't want to talk smack about the competition since I'm not the only good IR producer out there. That being said I would love for people to appreciate the things that make a good IR. Sure, mic placement is one of the biggest factors but so many IR producers are not into the "raw and natural" IR thing which IMHO is the only correct way to create IR's. If you would do this test with an IR that's not "clean", the differences would be huge. I'm talking +2dB more low end and high end and a middle scoop etc. when the difference here is about +-0,2dB.
 
Hey guys,

Very happy that my original Facebook thread managed to generate this much interest here. It's very obvious that Mikko takes his work seriously, and that this certainly revealed his passion. As expected, for the vast majority of people, IRs are more or less indistinguishable to a real cabinet. This is commensurate with what I've observed over the last decade, and is a huge boon to the home recording musician, being able to happily do their thing without feeling the need to book studio time, or find somewhere to crank a cab up to 11.

That said, I feel like my quoted statement needs some clarification.

IRs are a great recording option for the average person. The convenience alone makes them a super attractive option for getting a very realistic guitar sound on a low budget, or SPL-limited recording circumstance. This is something I've maintained for close to a decade or so, even back when cabinet IRs were in their infancy, and mired by all manner of issues such as less than ideal deconvolving, power amp coloration etc.

My claim was referring acutely to what happens in an end product. A record tracked, mixed and mastered to a professional standard. Under this circumstance I felt that IRs in my own experiences were always found lacking. As mentioned as part of our FB conversation, I've not always found AB tests to be entirely indicative of how the dominos fall in the end, as it were.

That being said, the omitted part here is that when Mikko privately brought this test to me, I was able to pick the real cabinet as being 'more musical' within 3 seconds of auditioning each clip. The differences between them being largely identical to the differences in a prior blind AB test Nolly subjected me to as they were recording the Architects record, where I also unfortunately picked the real cab as being 'more musical'. Now, in both cases this actually made me sad, rather than happy. The intent behind this isn't to establish 'superior hearing' or anything to that effect. It's to simply come to terms and be happy with using a way more convenient technology. I want to be fooled by the IRs. I would much rather reamp at home in near total silence, than driving down to the studio, spending an hour setting up, getting tones, running records, then packing back down. I want the IRs to be indistinguishable from the real deal for my purposes, but unfortunately despite a decade of trying, they still are not.

At the end of the day, I'm happy to call these criteria subjective. IRs in all forms that I've heard and used them in so far do not capture all the nuances of a real cabinet in a real room. By virtue of being a static mathematical model, I'm convinced they are fundamentally incapable of it. That said, I'm more than happy to concede that for 99% of people, those missing elements are either inaudible or not at all a problem. The original statement was not geared toward the majority, nor to disparage the fine work that people like Mikko do. It's simply an expression of a subjective preference that generated a little more discussion than expected!

Peace!
 
Question:
How big is the difference between a real cab + real mic to an IR which does NOT need to be computed in realtime with minimal latency? E.g. in a DAW through an IR-plugin.
I still don't fully understand IRs technically, but I read somewhere (sorry, don't have the source anymore) that in order to achieve low latency with a reasonable amount of CPU usage, one has to compromise and "guess" IR data. Big amount of sciolism unfortunately, but I'd find it interesting how close IRs can get in theory under ideal conditions (IR much longer than 170ms, no realtime computation, ...)
 
I definitely need to back up Ermin here in case people get the wrong idea. Ermin did say "clip B" sounded more musical to him before I told him which was which. Although I didn't feel like it was a night and day difference for him because he did question whether it was a placebo test. That being said, much like Ermin said, he is a bit more demanding than your average person. I think I've read a few critiques from him about 16bit and 48khz not being good enough for audio these days. In case you don't know. Kemper is 44.1khz 16bit and Fractal is 48khz 24bit, so essentially neither should pass his criteria anyways. :) CD quality is 44.1khz 16bit.

I'm defending the IR technology for various reasons but even in the case of there being a difference when using a modeler right now, we are definitely not hearing the full capability of IR technology. In cases like this where I wasn't at the studio (yes this test was done in my bedroom) the room is not ideally treated so I get an IR with a long tail. I just checked now and there's still some information all the way up to 400ms on a close mic. This is a sign of a bad room to be miking anything anyways but just to put things to perspective. The IR loader I'm using is not playing past 170ms. The same thing would happen with UltraRes IR's that only play 170ms. Also most of us even at the Fractal camp are used to minimum phase transformed IR's. All factory IR's are MPT'd. Ideally a higher quality would be the raw format that's also available in the Cab Packs that I've made except for the very first one. The reason we use MPT is to time align all IR's so you can easily blend several IR's together.

Still I must admit that I'm not happy with the test. If you got it right, well you had a 50/50 chance so it might've been luck. Might've been amazing hearing as well. What I'm saying is that I can do better. For me personally it felt like the miked signal was just slightly higher in volume. I need to check levels properly. I need to make the chances harder than 50/50.... THERE IS A PART TWO ON THE WAY!!
 
I feel slightly ashamed for some reason, but I have to admit that in the times where I can distinguish that little extra bit of dynamics in a real mic vs IR that I tend to subjectively prefer the IR as it comes across as more ideal. Only listened to this test on laptop speakers and for whatever reason test B still came across as more pleasing when solo'd, and A seemed more clear in the mix. None of it was for hearing any dynamic difference as it seemed more to do with coming across as a tiny EQ difference weirdly though
 
Close up Mic setup might sound the same as the IR (I've really tried, and I couldn't hear a difference).
But what about a setup with a a Room mic?...

I think that's where the IR might fall short.
Would be nice to see a test on that.

Also, in a room mic setup, The IR won't capture the resonance of the drum snare in the same room, for example or chatter of band mates. And such secondary sounds might be desirable in some cases...
 
FreeMind said:
Close up Mic setup might sound the same as the IR (I've really tried, and I couldn't hear a difference).
But what about a setup with a a Room mic?...

I think that's where the IR might fall short.
Would be nice to see a test on that.

Also, in a room mic setup, The IR won't capture the resonance of the drum snare in the same room, for example or chatter of band mates. And such secondary sounds might be desirable in some cases...
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It will sound pretty convincing but it's like you said. The background noises etc. will not be there. Also a room IR can be very long. Talking about lengths of a second.. while f.ex. the Axe-Fx UltraRes is 170ms so it won't play the IR entirely.
 
Chronos said:
I feel slightly ashamed for some reason, but I have to admit that in the times where I can distinguish that little extra bit of dynamics in a real mic vs IR that I tend to subjectively prefer the IR as it comes across as more ideal. Only listened to this test on laptop speakers and for whatever reason test B still came across as more pleasing when solo'd, and A seemed more clear in the mix. None of it was for hearing any dynamic difference as it seemed more to do with coming across as a tiny EQ difference weirdly though
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Yeah this is kind of my point. To claim that this kind of difference matters enough to stop using IR's is quite a stretch. The test results show that neither sounds more or less real although in this test they weren't 100% the same. Now we're talking about mic bleed as a good thing here but in most cases like live situations it's the exact opposite. So many pros use iso boxes that muffle the sound even more.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that one of these super fine tuned mic ups that are in the Cab Packs might take hours if not a full studio day to get perfectly set up. So let's say that overnight the mic stands will move one millimeter... that will be a bigger difference in sound.

In my original messages with Ermin I was talking about there being other things that are "more off" in modeling a guitar sound. Power amp modeling is still the most difficult thing to model or at least that's the difference between good and bad modelers. When comparing real amps vs Fractal, that's where I need to tweak. Usually I get pretty close though. :)
 
First, have to admit I am listening on a computer, not the best source. The second take sounded more throaty, a bit less glossed to me here. Both sound good and you could think they’re the same after listening more than 10-15 seconds. I wouldn’t hesitate to use either one!
 
The saddest part about this whole thing is, is that 98% of people are going to be listening to their music thru their iTunes account or whatever service they use & will never really hear that extra 2%. Not to mention have the high end audio equipment either. That’s not saying that the extra care shouldn’t be taken though, just that it’s rarely ever going to be noticed, enjoyed nor appreciated.
 
Perdikament said:
The saddest part about this whole thing is, is that 98% of people are going to be listening to their music thru their iTunes account or whatever service they use & will never really hear that extra 2%.
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Didn't Buck Owens mix his songs on car speakers because he knew most of the time people would be listening to his music that way?
 
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