So Many Cabs...

touch33

touch33

Experienced
Newb XL+ User, and I’ve finally taken the plunge and purchased a few Cab packs (as well as downloaded the FAS “Christmas” packs) so I now have literally THOUSANDS of IR’s on my laptop and 1024 totally-virginal User slots open on my Axe.

Question 1: what’s the best (time-efficient) way to decide which IR’s get saved onto my XL+?

Question B: on the ML packs, what is the meaning of the “Alloy” identifier?

Question Last: I’ve noticed a lot of references indicating that the intelligent matching of AMP:IR is crucial, i.e. don’t expect a 10” Oxford to work well with a dimed 2 kilowatt “FlameThrower III”. So when creating presets is it “pick your amp, then audition 750 IR’s to find your fave” or is there a Better Way?

Thanks in advance for helping to flatten my learning curve!
 
touch33 said:
Question 1: what’s the best (time-efficient) way to decide which IR’s get saved onto my XL+?
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Axe-Manage Cabs under the "Tools" menu in Axe-Edit... check out Chris's video on it, it's a good way to familiarize yourself with it:



touch33 said:
Question B: on the ML packs, what is the meaning of the “Alloy” identifier?
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I believe "alloys" are mixes of two or more mics done live "at the board" and then captured as a new individual IR, rather than taking two or more IRs of individual mic positions and mixing them in Cab-Lab after the fact.

touch33 said:
Question Last: I’ve noticed a lot of references indicating that the intelligent matching of AMP:IR is crucial, i.e. don’t expect a 10” Oxford to work well with a dimed 2 kilowatt “FlameThrower III”. So when creating presets is it “pick your amp, then audition 750 IR’s to find your fave” or is there a Better Way?
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Maybe, kinda, sorta, but... no, not really. Auditioning 750 IRs is a great way to get ear fatigue and option paralysis if you ask me. I'd say get used to the EQ response that certain speakers/mics/positions tend to impart, then you can make a more targeted, "ah, this sound needs a little X to it," and you'll go find the IR that can impart X from a much smaller set. Also, for me at least, I tend to have sessions where I go hunting for IRs, pick a few I kinda like of a given cab (using Axe-Manage Cabs), then add those to user slots. Next time I'm building a preset and go, "I want a alnico IR I think", I have maybe 10 or so on my axe to flick through and just pick the one that suits. In reality, you'll tend to get to a point where you just go, "this is the IR I like 99% of the time anyways" and just start with that probably ;)
 
Thanks for the link and suggestions. As an Old Sound Man I think I tend to mentally “pre-select” IRs by the “capture mic” and/or combos thereof based on what I’d probably throw at it in the studio (“121 too ribbony, 57/421 up close might work nicely, 87 a few feet away for some air...”).
 
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You can try yek's guide as a starting point. Granted it describes factory cabs, but it is a good starting point. Auditioning a bazillion cabs is just not my up of tea. It would lead to madness.
 
Going through hundreds of irs at random or even just the factory cabs at random got me nowhere and is very discouraging. What I do now when trying a new amp model is
1) read Yeks guide and check the speaker and factory cab recommendations
2) google the actual amp and find out what type of speakers come stock
3) google to find out what prominent artists using that amp use for speakers.

Now that you have a speaker type or two you can move on to auditioning using cab manage and put your mic knowledge to use.
 
Geezerjohn said:
You can try yek's guide as a starting point. Granted it describes factory cabs, but it is a good starting point. Auditioning a bazillion cabs is just not my up of tea. It would lead to madness.
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His Amp Guide and Drive Guides are VERY good starting points for all things FAS, but I wasn’t aware they’d also done a Cab Guide. Will find & download - have you a link?

Hat’s off to Yek and Simviz for some pretty amazing work.
 
touch33 said:
His Amp Guide and Drive Guides are VERY good starting points for all things FAS, but I wasn’t aware they’d also done a Cab Guide. Will find & download - have you a link?

Hat’s off to Yek and Simviz for some pretty amazing work.
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There is no cab guide. The amp guide has suggested cabs. Sorry for the confusion.
 
ah Ive found no away around auditioning tons of IR's then of course you choose a different amp and booooooooom start over. Its why I often stick to good old factory cabs, Most of the time I end up finding cabs that while different actual cabs, sound similar to me. I think we all have a basic 'sound' in our head that we keep floating back to.
 
if you don't know what speaker/cab you like in the physical world you're in for a long road of figuring it out in the box. if you already know what you like it's painless.
 
jlynnb1 said:
if you don't know what speaker/cab you like in the physical world you're in for a long road of figuring it out in the box. if you already know what you like it's painless.
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One of the great attractions of the XL+ is to find new ways to get exposure to amps and speakers and drives and effects and everything else - which is the point of this post.

I already know what an EVM-12L sounds like...
 
It will be interesting to see how many more replies (and great suggestions) this post gets now that it’s been moved out of the XL+ “General Discussion” and into the more-specific “Cabs & IRs”...
 
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It brings on ear fatigue, but I go through lots of cabs when trying to get a sound. I usually make a bunch of versions of a preset and then go back the next day and listen for which ones I still Iike after resting my ears. I have ended up pairing combinations I wouldn’t have thought of, like Brit 800 with a Hiwatt or Plexi with a Rumble.
 
IR's are a rabbit hole for sure. I've bought a ton of Ownhammers, Cab Packs, The Amp Factory, CabIR and Celestion IR's. My IR folder contains 45735 IRs. I think when the Ownhammer Studio mix came out in 2013 or 2014, 3rd party IRs was really needed to get the most out of the Axe Fx 2. But with the updates since then I find that there's absolutely no need any more. The factory IRs are really, really good these days and gives plenty of options for the absolutely majority of use cases. I've gone back and use the factory IRs for almost all of my presets. I really like factory #60 for instance for anything Marshally and otherwise I tend to stick with simple choices from Yeks excellent guide. Unless you're looking for something really unique or specific and you know exactly what you're looking for (like a 4x12 with Altec Lansing 417-8H speakers to emulate Randy Rhoads for instance), I would stick with the factory IR's.

On how to audition though, in reality it's really, really hard. To do it properly you really need to let your ears settle - and that's probably a good 5 minutes worth of playing time, for every change. And then you have to remember the last cab from 5 minutes ago and how that differs. If it's for recording, you need to record with the IRs and see how they fit in the mix. The easiest way to do this is probably to re-amp with the Axe Fx 2. You record a reference track and capture the unprocessed guitar track that you then feed back through the Axe Fx 2 and can then play through different IRs and see how they fit in the mix. If it's for live use and you're running through FoH, you would really need to do the same thing, play with the band at volume, record the track and then listen back through the FoH speakers which IR you prefer in the mix at volume (which could well change from venue to venue). You can also get a sound engineer that understands all of this that can do it with you and can hear your mix and depending on that what type of speaker + mic combo would work for you. All of this is obviously too hard for most of us, which again why I've gone back to using a few factory cabs I really like and stick with them. I'm obviously a bit slow and it took quite a few IR purchases to realize this. I'm also fully prepared hearing something awesome around the corner and finding myself buying yet another IR pack I don't need and won't end up using :).

It's all fun trying stuff out though!
 
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Excellent reply, Johan - thx for sharing your experience and insights.

I think you (and others) are 110% correct that it takes some effort (a serious amount thereof) to find That Sound, especially in context of how it’s going to be used.
 
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