Thoughts and guidelines on how many speaker IRs to run on one scene

Luth2000

Luth2000

Inspired
I'm playing around with a Pat Metheny style preset, and decided to engage all four IR spots (two pairs of stereo). Sounds pretty good in a sparse mix. Curios how many of you use more than two IRs at a time. Thx!
 
I generally just use one IR. The only time I would use 2 or 3 would be for recording, or when I import a preset that has a few IRs saved in it.
 
I am perpetually out of CPU so if I like the sound of multiple IRs at once, I will combine them in CabLab. Unfortunately, that rules out using factory cabs...
 
I always run 2 IRs. I have found it just sounds better to me to have 2 different IRs mixing together. I strongly dislike IRs with 'whistle frequencies' or that sound like they were recorded with the mike shoved into an empty paper towel roll tube or a didgeridoo. Mixing can help with that.
 
I use 2 but each one is a mix of four. I’m on the fm3.
Mix is 2 mics + 2 room mics. Mics are the same the rooms are left and right.

Rooms are mixed low. It’s just to bring some natural « air » on the irs
 
Roland said:
I do what I would do with a real cabinet: use a ribbon and a dynamic mic in different positions on the same speaker. Then I use that same speaker/mic set up on EVERY scene and preset so that the audience (and the desk engineer) get continuity.
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+1 on eliminating as many variables as possible, particularly mic choice and position. Dynacabs are great for this because you know exactly what you are getting and have a lot of control.

I currently use two IRs, one left and one right. I’m trying to achieve a natural “hearing the amp with my own ears” tone. I approach from the standpoint of us as human beings basically using two ears, which means using two mics.

First mic is a ribbon at max distance to capture a full tone without needing to mix mics, off-center (around 7-8ish) to mimic a natural listening angle.

Second mic is almost the same, just a little different horizontal position. When possible, I use a dynacab pack to move to a different spot on the speaker at the same distance from the cone. With a stock dynacab, I put the position a little higher (like .5 higher).
 
I generally use the same impulse response pair across all of my live presets.

When mixing, I use anything.

Leon discusses this here regarding the live context.
 
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cant say i agree w leon on this one. in a cover band doing a wide variety of songs, not switching up cabs seems a waste of the modeler's potential
 
PSea said:
cant say i agree w leon on this one. in a cover band doing a wide variety of songs, not switching up cabs seems a waste of the modeler's potential
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You would lose cohesion and possibly a bit of the audience. Not worth the hassle.
 
PSea said:
cant say i agree w leon on this one. in a cover band doing a wide variety of songs, not switching up cabs seems a waste of the modeler's potential
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In theory the sound system is supposed to be tuned to the room so that it will faithfully reproduce the sound from the mixer. Then the mixer is used only to actually mix the signals from the band and not to correct for the room acoustics.

In practice I think this is unrealistic and the mixer will need to be used to compensate for how the mix sounds in the room during sound check.

Changing IRs during a performance introduces two issues for the person doing sound. The band mix may need to be adjusted to accommodate a very different IR. Also, the IR change may result in an issue with the sound in the room requiring further adjustments.

The person doing sound may not be too happy being surprised with different sounds each time you decide to flip to a preset with a different IR.
 
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