the difference between 170ms and 500ms IR lenghth

this sounds correct in theory but the truth is another...

the "problem" is, we can not talk about "baked in ROOM sound" in longer IR's as there is
actually no room sound in the traditional sense, you won't hear any kind of reverb, hall etc.
at least when talking closed micd cabinets.

there is something different and i am trying to find out what it actually is.

i think it's how the mic picks up reflections from the room, the speakers and the whole cabinet itself.
this seems to be a very dynamic and somewhat random behaviour due to frequency buildup and canceling.

can this be simulated with longer IR's, possibly but i guess that's not the whole story, longer IR's might just
be a part of this.

i did some experiments with extremely small rooms and room sizes, this seems to go into the right direction
but there is still something missing.

if you want to try this out, go to the CAB room tab and set the "Room Level to 100%" "Room Size to 1.00"
and "Mic Spacing to 1-5%"

you won't hear any "reverb" but the sound will change drastically, imho to the better, but as i said there is still
room (haha ;)) for improvement.

the problem is, with this or a similar setting you will lose some clarity and this what does not happen with a real CAB+MIC
setup, you'll get that "3D" sound without losing any clarity.

thinking a bit further, being able to set at which frequency range the room parameter in the cab block will "operate"
might be a proper solution, basically like setting a high/low pass filter but for the "room"

regarding how sound waves travel i think that this should be a "low pass" style setting as, IIRC low frequencies
have more energy than high frequencies, means low frequencies will "remain longer" and affect the signal
more drastically than higher frequencies.

in simple words, adding a very very small "room sound" to the lower frequencies only would be an interesting
aproach and might lead to that "3D, extra clear micd cab sound"

maybe this can be even calculated percentally, where the amunt of "room" is decaying more and more towards the
upper frequency range.

just a few thoughts...
 
Soultrash said:
the "problem" is, we can not talk about "baked in ROOM sound" in longer IR's as there is
actually no room sound in the traditional sense, you won't hear any kind of reverb, hall etc. at least when talking closed micd cabinets.

there is something different and i am trying to find out what it actually is.
Click to expand...
The difference is the room reflections arriving at the mic. Even if the IR isn't long enough to capture anything that sounds like reverb, those reflections still get to the mic—bouncing off the walls, ceiling, floor and back, at the speed of sound—and changing what you hear. The room changes the way the cab sounds, just like the cab changes the way the raw speakers sound, even though you don't hear it as a reverb or echo. It's still all about sound reflections.


Soultrash said:
i think it's how the mic picks up reflections from the room, the speakers and the whole cabinet itself.
Click to expand...
Yup.


Soultrash said:
this seems to be a very dynamic'''
Click to expand...
Actually, it's very static.


Soultrash said:
..and somewhat random behaviour...
Click to expand...
It's not random at all, though the complexity of the reflections can make it seem that way.


Soultrash said:
can this be simulated with longer IR's
Click to expand...
It can be captured with longer IRs (and greater mic distance). The issue is that you then get an IR that is influenced by a room, but you listen to it in a different room that adds its own influences.


Soultrash said:
i did some experiments with extremely small rooms and room sizes, this seems to go into the right direction but there is still something missing.
Click to expand...
The difference is that you hear the cab in the room with both of your ears. Each ear is pointed in a different direction, and each one hears reflected sounds arriving at different levels and different times. That's the "3D" thing. It's pretty hard to hear any 3D with one ear plugged. :)


Soultrash said:
if you want to try this out, go to the CAB room tab and set the "Room Level to 100%" "Room Size to 1.00" and "Mic Spacing to 1-5%"...

the problem is, with this or a similar setting you will lose some clarity and this what does not happen with a real CAB+MIC
setup, you'll get that "3D" sound without losing any clarity.
Click to expand...
It happens with real cabs, too. Reflections reduce clarity.

Try listening to a cab outdoors in an open field. It won't sound very "3D," but it will have more clarity.


Soultrash said:
regarding how sound waves travel i think that this should be a "low pass" style setting as, IIRC low frequencies have more energy than high frequencies...
Click to expand...
Yes.


Soultrash said:
...means low frequencies will "remain longer"...
Click to expand...
No.


Soultrash said:
...and affect the signal more drastically than higher frequencies.
Click to expand...
Yes.


Soultrash said:
in simple words, adding a very very small "room sound" to the lower frequencies only would be an interesting aproach and might lead to that "3D, extra clear micd cab sound"
Click to expand...
I haven't tried that. But my first thought is that rolling the higher frequencies out of the picture would reduce 3D detail.


Soultrash said:
just a few thoughts...
Click to expand...
Thoughts are good. :)
 
@Soultrash your description fits the definition of early reflections.

That is why you are not perceiving it as traditional reverb.

This tutorial shows how early reflections provide separation in the 3D sound field without sounding like reverb.

 
@Rex
thanks for the input!
as for the "3D sound" i was actually refering to a mic'd cab signal, even if the track is mono it still sounds very 3D, less static
and "alive" it's hard to explain as "3D" might be misleading but i miss this when using IR's.

another thing that makes recorded cabs stand out is the clarity i had mentioned before,
IR's can sound extremely harsh or boomy very quickly.

another example for the 3D sound is when double tracking guitars. a mic's cab double tracked and panned hard left/right
sounds extremely natural, spacey, 3D. do the same thing with IR's and it sounds nothing like that, it's much more
sterile and flat. the mic's tracks melt together the IR tracks kind of run on their own. that's way too many periphrases i know! :D

as for rolling of the high frequencies, this will of course reduce 3D detail but i was not talking about the direct signal
but more about the reflections. again. it's hard to explain for me, imagine having the extreme raw signal of the cab and then mixing
the reflections into this signal. thinking of these reflections being a "reverb" just for the sake of understanding you would set
low frequencies to 80%, mid frequencies to 50% and high frequencies to 10% "reflection" this way the higher impact of low frequencies
from the reflections to the signal could be simulated. the values are of course only "clues"

i am pretty sure there is a way to calculate this accurately though.

@barhrecords
yeah, this seems to be it, i just do not understand how these still affect the sound so drastically especially when the
microphone is placed so close to the speaker and considering the extreme volumes coming out of the speaker hitting the mic.
somehow these reflections still manage to "sneak in" to the mic signal...
 
@Soultrash you've somewhat answered your own question: "considering the extreme volumes coming out of the speaker hitting the mic".

That same high SPL sound is bouncing off of room boundaries and returning to the mic at significant levels in the form of early reflections.
 
haha yeah! :D

i've been playing around for hours now and the closes i can come to the desired sound is using the
cab block room settings as posted above. for some reason it is crucible to set the rom size to the lowest setting,
i wonder how it would sound if this value would go even lower, not sure though how the values translate into time,
maybe having the room size represented in ms, starting at very low values would bring some more options to this parameter.

the thing i do not understand though is why these "reflections" seem to be absent in the IR.
listening to the 500ms IR's there is a difference to the 170ms IR's but it's not a big thing, you can basically only hear it when it's isolated like in the clip i posted.

that 3D sound is still absent, so it could be "captured" with even longer IR's?
 
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I don't have access to my Fractal right now, but I would think the Multidelay block could be setup to simulate early reflections.

Should give you more control than the room sim in the Cab block.
 
barhrecords said:
I don't have access to my Fractal right now, but I would think the Multidelay block could be setup to simulate early reflections.

Should give you more control than the room sim in the Cab block.
Click to expand...

will try that!

Solarfire said:
Ahh.. reverb by definition is reflection.
Click to expand...

of course, but what does everybody think of when hearing the word "reverb",
extremely short almost inaudible early reflections or a big roomy sound? ;)

i didn't wanted to confuse people, which obviously did not work (;)) so i used the term reverb carefully
 
Yeah sound waves travel at roughly a foot per millisecond, so a 170 ms sample can still capture early reflections from surfaces up to roughly 80 feet or so away. In smaller rooms the sound waves are fast enough to bounce around the room many times during the sample. You'd pretty much need an anechoic chamber to completely remove the room element, but that would sound very weird and unnatural. People say walking into such a chamber can really blow your mind. The fact that you see walls all around you, but there is no sound coming back is supposedly quite jarring.

Try using the high quality ambient reverb mode at 100% wet, but turn the time and size way down. It can do some pretty cool psycho-acoustic kind of things to the sound.
 
yeah this sounds logical but for some reason the effect is pretty minimal, or actually not present in IR's,
in fact most IR's sound like they were actually recorded in an anechoic chamber to me.
i know they weren't but that's the "feel" i get from IR's, static,dull, lifeless.

about the reverb that's exactly what i tried to do but it does not sound right.
for example with the "small room" when i set it to a very very short reverb
this automatically adds almost half a second of delay in sense of latency
(i play a note and it comes out of the axe half a second later),
when i increase the reverb the delay disapperas, shouldn't it be the other way around?

in general the reverb block seems not to fit, even the minimal values are still "too much"

i'll do some more research...

EDIT:
my ears are gone, if anyone is interested to check what i dialed in so far here's the preset.
i am using a custom IR but any good balanced 4x12 IR should do the work. do you hear any difference
when engaging/disengaging the "REVERB" block? maybe the setup is even completely wrong...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fma9kldnb4sjffy/DAS METALL_FINAL.syx?dl=0

btw. i had a few more thoughts about the whole IR thing. it seems like not many people see this like i
do and i was thinging about why. this may be silly but when i listen to what people are doing with their
AXE FX II's it's kinda obvious. most patches use reverb, delay etc. so maybe the "direct, dull lifeless"
sound of IR's is not as present to them as it is to me. i mostly use very simple presets and simple routings jsut as i would do recording a real amp/cab setup so maybe...
 
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Soultrash said:
...for example with the "small room" when i set it to a very very short reverb
this automatically adds almost half a second of delay in sense of latency
(i play a note and it comes out of the axe half a second later)...
Click to expand...
Something's not set up right. Reverb doesn't add any noticeable latency...especially a very very short Reverb.
 
this was before i made the patch, the setup was verx simple, amp, cab, reverb in a row no routing nothing...could be a BUG.

the preset i posted works fine
 
@Soultrash in that vid I posted in post #23, he uses the Renaissance Reverb plug from Waves. That plugin lets you mute the reverb and hear only the early reflections. The entire lesson is about adding only early reflections, not reverb, to add 3D space.

It's a good video for demonstrating early reflections and for learning to hear what early reflections without reverb sound like.
 
unix-guy said:
Did you have Pre-Delay turned up?
Click to expand...

funnily pre delay was all the way down but it sounded like it was set to a higher value.
i did a reset on this parameter, turned it all up and back to the lowest setting again, this time it sounded
different but i still had a delay, strange...

barhrecords said:
@Soultrash in that vid I posted in post #23, he uses the Renaissance Reverb plug from Waves. That plugin lets you mute the reverb and hear only the early reflections. The entire lesson is about adding only early reflections, not reverb, to add 3D space.

It's a good video for demonstrating early reflections and for learning to hear what early reflections without reverb sound like.
Click to expand...

yeah, this seems to be the key to the sound i am looking for, though i was not yet able to recreate it in the reverb block,
even at lowest settings on a small room reverb it's "too much".

maybe if enough people speak for it @FractalAudio could add a special "early reflections type"
into the reverb block that has the proper settings available.

what do you think?
 
@Soultrash I think a series of very small delays with the correct amplitude would work.

That's why I thought maybe the multi-delay block? I won't have access to program my Fractal rig for another week so I can't prototype it right now.
 
yeah i have kept this in mind but i have no clue about a correct aproach using a delay, not a big FX tweaker here,
most of my sounds only involve an AMP+CAB block :D
 
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