Some thoughts on Impulse Responses & "in the room" tone

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Deny Watanabe

Member
So I've looked at some speaker on-axis vs off-axis frequency response charts and there's usually a steep highs rolloff above 5kHz. So I was thinking, most (if not all) IRs are taken close miked and on-axis, so no wonder it's nearly impossible to get an "amp in the room" tone from them. Our listening position is definitely off-axis, plus room ambiance with emphasis on the early reflections from the floor (considering bottom cabinet or combo amp).

So with that in mind, probably miking off-axis, adding the treble rolloff and some ambiance should do the trick, no? I wonder if anyone has tried doing this.
 
Amp in room is the sound of an amp in the room, its nothing to do with IR's honestly. Take a typical combo amp in the room, from the typical playing position. Sounds subjectively good right ? Record that amp, with any number of mics, and then play it back through a speaker system. Doens't sound same as the amp did. Recorded guitar tones, and modeled tones using IR's simply sound different than an amp in a given room.

Ideally, if you had enough mics, and captured enough IR's, and then had enough monitor speakers set up around a room, you could probably achieve something pretty close to how the amp sounded at a given listening position, but that isn't very feasible.

Realistically, amp in room is just kind of silly. Millions of listeners, including guitarist, have enjoyed millions of collective hours of listening to decades worth of classic albums and none of those tones are "amp in room". They are the sound of a recorded guitar, or a guitar plugged into the board etc if you want to get picky lol.....

No album your play sounds amp in room, hardly any concert you go to, unless in a small gig using an amp in the room, sounds amp in room, it sounds like mic'd cab through the PA, but seemingly the audience isn't bothered.

Amp is room just isn't going to happen for anything but an amp in the room, BUT, the good news is if you want the exact sound of a guitar cab in a given room, its as simple as plugging your Axe into a power amp and cab, and boom.... amp in room
 
lqdsnddist said:
Amp in room is the sound of an amp in the room, its nothing to do with IR's honestly. Take a typical combo amp in the room, from the typical playing position. Sounds subjectively good right ? Record that amp, with any number of mics, and then play it back through a speaker system. Doens't sound same as the amp did. Recorded guitar tones, and modeled tones using IR's simply sound different than an amp in a given room.

Ideally, if you had enough mics, and captured enough IR's, and then had enough monitor speakers set up around a room, you could probably achieve something pretty close to how the amp sounded at a given listening position, but that isn't very feasible.

Realistically, amp in room is just kind of silly. Millions of listeners, including guitarist, have enjoyed millions of collective hours of listening to decades worth of classic albums and none of those tones are "amp in room". They are the sound of a recorded guitar, or a guitar plugged into the board etc if you want to get picky lol.....

No album your play sounds amp in room, hardly any concert you go to, unless in a small gig using an amp in the room, sounds amp in room, it sounds like mic'd cab through the PA, but seemingly the audience isn't bothered.

Amp is room just isn't going to happen for anything but an amp in the room, BUT, the good news is if you want the exact sound of a guitar cab in a given room, its as simple as plugging your Axe into a power amp and cab, and boom.... amp in room
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No offense, but have you even tried or are you just repeating what others, supposedly experts, say? And if you have, why are you so sure that because you weren't able to achieve the desired result, no one else will? That would be somewhat arrogant, wouldn't it?
 
Deny Watanabe said:
No offense, but have you even tried or are you just repeating what others, supposedly experts, say? And if you have, why are you so sure that because you weren't able to achieve the desired result, no one else will? That would be somewhat arrogant, wouldn't it?
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Hmmm, I've currently got 12 different sets of monitors and cabinets at home right now, only been playing and recording for about 35 years now, spend literally hours each and every day talking and experimenting with this stuff, own probably 100,000 IR's on my hard drive with every crazy "far field" etc pack produced since the first days off modelers, and I my area of speciailization when doing my Doctorate was on psycho-acoustics so I do understand a good bit about auditory perception...

Have you tried ? Or did you just look at a frequency response graph and think you stumbled upon some epiphany that has eluded the rest of the industry.... (no offense)
 
Deny Watanabe said:
No offense, but have you even tried or are you just repeating what others, supposedly experts, say? And if you have, why are you so sure that because you weren't able to achieve the desired result, no one else will? That would be somewhat arrogant, wouldn't it?
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The whole cab in the room horse has been well and thoroughly beat to death in numerous posts on this forum.

They will never sound the same because of physics.

I think @lqdsnddist hit on all the relevant points.

Feel free to experiment and let us know how well it works.
 
Deny Watanabe said:
So I've looked at some speaker on-axis vs off-axis frequency response charts and there's usually a steep highs rolloff above 5kHz. So I was thinking, most (if not all) IRs are taken close miked and on-axis, so no wonder it's nearly impossible to get an "amp in the room" tone from them. Our listening position is definitely off-axis, plus room ambiance with emphasis on the early reflections from the floor (considering bottom cabinet or combo amp).

So with that in mind, probably miking off-axis, adding the treble rolloff and some ambiance should do the trick, no? I wonder if anyone has tried doing this.
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Try it out.

Then look up far-field IRs.
 
lqdsnddist said:
Have you tried ? Or did you just look at a frequency response graph and think you stumbled upon some epiphany that has eluded the rest of the industry.... (no offense)
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Yes I did and succeeded, but wanted to check if anyone had done it without having to rely too heavily on convolution reverbs, apparently not.

I feel like "amp in the room" is almost a forbidden topic around these parts, maybe because everyone has their own opinion on what it should sound like. No wonder, everyone's taste, gear, rooms and ears sound (end perceive sounds) differently. Also most of us try to make our amps sound like our heroes' recorded amp tones, which perhaps makes the term lose a bit of its meaning.

So what I'm really looking for is making my modeled tone sound like my amp tone which is tweaked after my favorite recorded amp tones. Fair enough? Question stands, personal preferences, perception and experiences aside of course.
 
Proper reflection free Far field IR’s help a lot with getting the “amp in the room” tone. They sound way more natural and have a more realistic frequency response than close miced IR’s do. All I use now are Jay’s reflection free IR’s he shared, and also @gigsup IR’s he shared on TGP. Going back to the typical NF IR’s with reflections in it is awful once you get used to the RF FF ones.

You should give this thread a read: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/ir-properties.2047238/
 
Fenderbendr said:
Proper reflection free Far field IR’s help a lot with getting the “amp in the room” tone. They sound way more natural and have a more realistic frequency response than close miced IR’s do. All I use now are Jay’s reflection free IR’s he shared, and also @gigsup IR’s he shared on TGP. Going back to the typical NF IR’s with reflections in it is awful once you get used to the RF FF ones.

You should give this thread a read: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/ir-properties.2047238/
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I'd love to buy that IR pack, but that thread is 57 pages long and I ain't going through that amount of intellectual masturbation just to get a link.
 
chris said:
Are these close mic’d?
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No idea, but aren't most of them? Let's take a classic example like Back in Black from AC/DC and not focus on the fact that it's the combination of multiple takes, on second thought maybe picking a live recording would prevent the hysterical screaming about multiple takes, so let's take that same song in its "Live at River Plate" version. It still sounds nothing like the typical close miked guitar tone, has plenty of body and bite and no fizz whatsoever. The theory behind the reasons why that is is less important than how it sounds, which ultimately is what I'm interested in.
 
Deny Watanabe said:
No idea, but aren't most of them? Let's take a classic example like Back in Black from AC/DC and not focus on the fact that it's the combination of multiple takes, on second thought maybe picking a live recording would prevent the hysterical screaming about multiple takes, so let's take that same song in its "Live at River Plate" version. It still sounds nothing like the typical close miked guitar tone, has plenty of body and bite and no fizz whatsoever. The theory behind the reasons why that is is less important than how it sounds, which ultimately is what I'm interested in.
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So you essentially don't want the sound of an amp in the room, you want the sound of the amp in the soccer stadium, as heard via the finished release which by the way had a ton of production value added..... ?
 
lqdsnddist said:
So you essentially don't want the sound of an amp in the room, you want the sound of the amp in the soccer stadium, as heard via the finished release which by the way had a ton of production value added..... ?
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How are your posts useful when you're more interested in challenging other people's ideas and their wording than actually contributing?
 
Deny Watanabe said:
I'd love to buy that IR pack, but that thread is 57 pages long and I ain't going through that amount of intellectual masturbation just to get a link.
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You might actually learn quite a bit by doing so.

From what you’ve written so far it sounds like you are actually chasing closed mic tones, even that live performance which was likely closed mic’d and sent to the PA then tweaked by the live and studio engineers.
 
Just setting aside the amp in the room argument, in answer to your OP, yes, people have tried that.

For me it's simply about getting inspiring tones, regardless of how accurately it mimics an amp, cab, mic or whatever. So along the lines of your OP, I find an IR that sounds in the ballpark of what I like, and (usually because it's close mic'd) roll off highs starting above around 5KHz, maybe cut deep bass a bit and add some low-mids around 250Hz. Also add a little room ambience.

All of this can be done in the cab block and/or amp output graphic EQ.
 
My personal experience with chasing the amp/cab in the room has been consistently as follows:
1) Hear about some new idea/theory on it, switch on the Axe-FX
2) Spend a couple of hours trying this new idea out
3) End my session thinking I did pretty well, save my super preset and go to bed (to my now very annoyed wife)
4) Wake up the next day, and my super preset sounds like crap because my ears have now had a rest

My experience with dialling in a preset for studio live use is as follows:
1) Dial in the tone that I want to use for live/studio and save it (takes a couple of minutes usually)
2) Go to bed knowing that in the morning the tone won't change, it will still work for that purpose (even though it doesn't always sound like I have the physical amp right next to me)

This is my personal view on it, I think it can be a very frustrating path to follow and my Axe gets me the results I need for studio/live, so I resolve to spend less time chasing the room sound now. The ultimate solution would be to stick a real cab to your Axe-FX, but I haven't tried that so I have no experience there.
 
Deny Watanabe said:
I'd love to buy that IR pack, but that thread is 57 pages long and I ain't going through that amount of intellectual masturbation just to get a link.
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They’re totally free, and you don’t have to read the whole thing, just up to post #40(see the fine print in Jay’s post). ;).

Here’s: a link to @Gigsup’s RF FF IR’s of a 4x12 with G12-T75 speakers, and a 2x12 with Celestion Gold’s: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?posts/28799261/

Just convert them to .syx using cab lab, and they will work with the AX8. Give them a try, you might be surprised at how the sound.
 
Well, imo. Adding and mixing different mics and mic positions and using EQ, compression, exciter, reverb definitely helps you to get that something extra. My opinion is solely based on using mesa cab IR's with the official Mesa Boogie mic presets in Two Notes WOS.

  • The (studio) preset that I liked the most has two closed mic'ed mic's (cnd tube 67 and Rbn 122, slightly of center) and two very far and of center cnd 87 mic's.
  • The other (world tour) preset (that I never use) is more of a life recorded sound. It has two on center closed mic'ed mic's (Dyn 57 and Rbn 160) and two very far away mic's. One centered and one not (2x Rbn 160).

Maybe you can try this.

Both presets use a bit of reverb but optional (preset) Eq, Exiting and Compression.
Obviously those presets were made by professional sound engineers and engineers from Mesa Boogie. They capture the sound of the cabs really really well. I would never came up with those settings myself... so now instead of using my actual 4x12, I use a load box and my mesa mark v and play through my studio monitors all the time and have loads of fun.

I think (since I bought the presets and have the actuall 4x12 cab) I will make an IR of it for personal use and use it in the FM3 when I get it.
 
Deny Watanabe said:
How are your posts useful when you're more interested in challenging other people's ideas and their wording than actually contributing?
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I don’t know man, and it’s not a popularity contest by any means, but I’ve posted about 5,000 times on this forum and I’ve had over 5,000 “likes” on my posts so apparently some people seem to feel I know what I’m talking about and see value in it....

For that matter, ideas should be challenged, it’s part of the scientific method. You put out an idea, research etc, in a journal article and then it’s peer reviewed where people try to find fault in your method, conclusions etc. If everything stands up to scrutiny then it becomes accepted and the field advances.

Likewise, wording matters. If someone is talking about a given subject but not expressing what they want, or referring to it incorrectly, no one knows what they are after. If someone talks about an amp in room tone bit they actually want the sound of an amped cab mixed with stadium ambiance, they may not really be seeking the sound of an amp in the room. I’d honestly hate to be a room with Angus playing his rig at stadium volume lol.
 
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