MLSoundLab

Tell me about it. I still keep getting recommendations from POD HD users to make my IR's usable with the HD.

The educational side is exactly what this is about and it's a great time to be a guitar geek when reaching "professionals" is relatively easy. There's one thing I think we need to discuss that I'm a little bit afraid of talking about but here goes: much of the IR length being good/bad has to do with the quality of the IR itself.

Bare with me - I'm not hear to bash other IR producers but rather talk about the tests that I've made and the findings. A full length IR f.ex. 500ms in this example contains raw data of a mic up in a room. Now let's say that the room is in many ways no ideal for miking cabs and there are many reflections and almost like a really loud reverb in it... this would happen if you shoot IR's in a small room with no treatment. This kind of an IR will most likely sound better when you're only hearing that 20-40ms instead of the full 500ms. This does support what Pete said that it's better to control the tail of the IR with a reverb.

However the situation with IR's that f.ex. I make is that my room is built to be the perfect size for a cabinet and treatment has been added where needed but not so much that the "air can't move naturally". So I pay a lot of attention to make that tail very nice. Remember that the highest quality reverb plugins are IR based reverbs like Waves IR-1. This is what we're essentially talking about here - you're cutting away that super realistic room sound and replacing it with a reverb effect that will not be the same quality.

Yes we're talking about a very small thing here. Still I believe that the only way to get to the next level of modeling is to do multiple small enhancements everywhere you can and in the end the enhancement will be much bigger.

I'll try and steer this conversation back on topic. :D

When posting this I didn't even think about the video being taken as a "Helix doesn't support long enough IR's" type of thing. I'm cross-platform with my gear so I'm always just thinking about technology in general and what can be done to make it better. @brue58ski said it best. We as guitar players enjoy gear and technology and that's always been a part of being a guitarist whether we're talking about advancement in tube amps, pickups, modelers or even guitar strings. Choosing to ignore this is a subjective choice which you can make but I think I was at least capable of proving that there is semi-important information that's missing if you're using IR's shorter than about 200ms.

The limitation in modelers is processing power. I'm sure that with Pete's Suhr amp this is also what it came down to - having more power to run a longer IR would've made the amp more expensive. Same thing with the Helix and 42ms - how much more expensive would the Helix be if it needed to be powerful enough to run 8,192 sample 170ms IRs to get most of the IR sound. I'm more of a problem solver so I'd rather dive in and play around with the tools available like trying to find a reverb setting that simulates a longer IR tail.

So today I saw a video of Pete Thorn talking about his new IR loading Suhr amp and he said his amp supports 20.5ms IR's. Helix supports IR's up to 42ms which is twice as long. Now why does someone like ML Sound Lab (that's me) have IR's up to 500ms in the Cab Packs? I wanted to show you what this is all about and here's a video so you can find out too:

Now I understand that we're not all used to listening to the snap that the IR makes but this is the raw data that you'll find in the IR and it's the best way to demonstrate this. Playing with a shorter IR will feel "tighter" while a full length IR will feel "smoother" and the poll results I got years ago were 50/50 meaning that half of the people actually preferred the tight feel of a short IR vs the more realistic and smoother full length IR.

Have you guys ever tried an IR loader that uses more than that 42ms of IR length?

@aaronbrito No one has at any point questioned whether your story is true or not. I'm actually very happy about you being honest about what happened now because I did give you the best customer service and went to lengths to make you a happy customer. Once you started posting on forums about me being a bad person even after I was very kind to you, that's what I have a problem with.

There are two things that you're saying that are dishonest 1) you didn't originally tell people that you got a special deal from ML that was almost exactly the same deal that you're mad about and 2) there has never been a 50% off sale. There was an easter egg hunt on the website and that was by design - an "easter egg". Here's the official definition of an easter egg:

"An unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software or on a DVD, included as a joke or a bonus."

4 hours ago, aaronbrito said:

Still stand by those words and believe the LT would've been a wiser choice for me.

 

Anyway, the main lesson I learnt here is to be patient and not to trust vendors who say they have no plans for sales. Cheers guys. Thanks for the feedback.

 

 

Okay that does it - since you really wanted to take part in the egg hunt that you missed out on I'll create you a different kind of hunt and the prize will be A FREE CAB PACK!!!!

I will give you a Cab Pack for free with one condition. This condition will be the hardest thing I've ever asked of anyone but here it goes - find one person on this forum who agrees with you after hearing this full story. Just one real person will do. The person has to be someone neither of us knows and not a fake account person. We need a real name and personality behind this one mystery person. Let the game begin.

On 3/31/2019 at 5:24 PM, Verne-Bunsen said:

@MLSoundLabGood grief, just watched your Silver Jubilee video, sounds amazing! What platform did you record the audio for the video on? Is the Helix version built on a Helix Marshall model platform or is it something like GD’s custom amps that are a different amp with a trick IR? Regardless, sounds fantastic in that video.

So far I've been lucky with getting the existing amp models matching the real tube amps. They just need to be tweaked in a weird way - many will have middle on full and bass on zero etc. but it's doable. Right now I'm working on an amp that's proving to be a bit trickier so I might have to using some additional blocks but I try not to use IR blocks for CPU and block space purposes. Thank you for your kind words! For audio I use Cubase 8.5 - (didn't get along with Cubase 10) and video is done using Premiere.

Basic courtesy from my dealing with most vendors up to now has been that a grace period of one month is offered with purchases - ie if a discount/ sale happens in that one month the difference is refunded or the same sale terms are offered to the customer

Hiya it's Mikko from ML Sound Lab chiming in. We've received quite an overwhelming response from the Helix crowd. What we do is match the Helix to sound like real tube amps from my personal amp collection. We've done a Mesa Boogie Mark V and a Marshall Silver Jubilee and a bunch of cabs as well. If you're interested I highly recommend you check them out here: https://ml-sound-lab.com/search?q=helix

Here's a quick video showing how great our results are:

On 3/11/2019 at 3:46 PM, VirtualGuitars said:

 

Totally worth the $60.  I am very happy with my purchase as this is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  My absolute favorite amp!

Thank you so much. :) The feedback for essentially all packs has been completely positive.

That's 20% off the second pack, not the third. So that should make it ~$60,67 for two packs. I wish we all just had the same currency. :S

19 minutes ago, spikey said:

 

 

I wish you would say the same for the pricing as well ; ) 

There's actually a discount going on this very moment. Get two packs and the second one is 20% off. But I'm sure you meant the price is too low right?

So happy to see you guys talk about one of my personal favorite amps of all time. Timing couldn't be better as I just matched the Helix to sound exactly like the real amp from 1987 and released a pack for both the cabinet and amp sounds. Here's a demo of the amp sounds completely raw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGWlsWnNtqo

And here's me going through the Cab Pack (which is also from '87, remember that the design of a modern V30 is radically different sounding to these actual cabs from over 30 years ago):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c8AtFWISS4

Your guitar tone consists mainly of 1) guitar 2) amp and 3) cab and out of those three the cab is actually the most powerful tool in shaping your tone. You don't need to dislike the stock cabinets to be interested in IR's. After all the option of loading in IR's is what took all modelers to the next level as far as realism goes.

With a good IR you'll spend under 5min tweaking a preset and it'll sound a lot better than tweaking a preset with a bad cabinet section for hours. That's the simplest way I can put it. :)

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bfibnuenvsp7bwo/ML Sound Lab FREE Recto.zip?dl=0

Try it with this better free IR as well: http://bit.ly/MLSoundLab

So I've been tweaking modelers for a long time and the way I build presets is pretty unique. I have a bunch of real tube amps around and there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of capturing that sound and recreating it perfectly with a modeler. Anyways have fun with the free sample of an ML Sound Lab Amp Pack and if you want to hear more about it please visit: http://www.ml-sound-lab.com

8 hours ago, silverhead said:

Thanks for your generosity in making these available for free.

No worries. I want everyone to get a taste of how good your modeler "can be". And also to show you that it doesn't require a super complicated preset. I was able to get the sound by boosting the bass and mids and tweaking the sag and master. After all it's pretty simple but you just have to understand what all of these knobs do. I don't think these are the same revision Rectifier but you can make it sound like an old Recto like mine is.

Here's a FREE PRESET AND IR to make your Helix sound like my real Dual Recto. In the video you'll hear a comparison between Helix and Axe-Fx III. I can definitely get them both sounding just like my Recto:

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bfibnuenvsp7bwo/ML Sound Lab FREE Recto.zip?dl=0

That's exactly it. There really wouldn't be a market for "presets" or "IR's" and so on if people didn't feel they were getting better results with them. I know I use my huge IR collection as a quick fix all the time. I don't really have to tweak for more than 2-3 minutes to get a realistic amp sound no matter what the modeler is. Also things don't have to be so complicated as I see some people even create tutorials on YouTube about how to create a good guitar sound with the Helix and using over a dozen blocks to get this one awesome sound. It definitely does not have to be that complicated. Just look at this video that I shot today and I'm only using the amp block with my own IR's:

I think you're asking multiple different questions that I would answer differently.

AMP EQ: If you've ever owned Marshall amps you'll know from experience that the EQ doesn't really do much unless you have a Silver Jubilee. With Marshalls it's usually more about the balance of master and drive and that'll give you brightness variations.

LOW CUT, HIGH CUT: There's no general rule of always using these. I recommend using them with a PA to get more volume with low cut, it'll give you more headroom. High cut will take care of some PA speakers nasty top end. I never ever ever use high or low cut on recordings. Your high end will be buried into cymbals and your low end will blend with bass. This obviously relies heavily on you using a good IR.

I'd like to add another "perspective" to this debate. These modelers are tools and ultimately in the right hands I believe you can get amazing results with both. At the same time in the wrong hands you can make the most powerful units sound really bad as well. I don't understand these posts from some people in here containing a long video of using just one modeler and then saying "I can't get these sounds from the Helix". No offence but chances are that you couldn't get them from the Fractal either. I believe that a big part of the learning curve in every modeler is that guitarists are now forced to learn how to tweak good guitar tones or purchase tone packs.

I don't think it's a debate of "which one sounds better". If both can sound like real tube amps then there's no other comparison besides specifications and features and how they fit the specific user's needs.

I would also advice you not to use any EQ settings "just because". Ideally a good IR will have mics placed in such a natural way that you don't need to "polish a turd". Obviously some PA speakers don't sound nice distorted in the super high range which is when you'll run into nasty sounds that you can avoid with a high cut. Also low end takes a lot of power to produce for some PA speakers so you will get more volume by using a low cut. Both of these cases are just for using certain PA speakers... generally just have hicut and lowcut off!

I use the Axe-Fx III, Helix LT and also the Kemper pretty much every day for tweaking guitar tones so I would say that I have a good sense of what they are capable of. Here's a comparison of the same exact guitar tones recreated based on a real tube amp on the Helix:

And the same done one an Axe-Fx III:

So ultimately in some cases "you can" make them perform in a very similar way. I think you would have a hard time saying which is which in a blindfold situation. The way real tube amps are tweaked is very different to how some of the "older" modelers are tweaked. It's not just about bass, middle, treble and gain. The amount of master, drive and saturation highly affects the overall brightness of all of these things and on certain master settings you'll find that bass, middle and treble don't do anything at all. This is realistic and I think both the Fractal and Helix work this way. Tweaking these modelers is not as simple as a result. So yes, having 5 times more amp models is definitely an advantage but there's a lot of versatility in every single amp model especially with Fractal and all the advanced controls. The advanced controls that I use the most on the Fractal are the graphic equalizers and low and high cuts inside the amp block. You can essentially do this with a Helix and EQ blocks but sure it would look nicer if it was all done inside the amp section. :) In the right hands you should easily pass as a real tube amp using either of these modelers.

Yeah I mean it's unprotected digital goods we're talking about here. The problem with sample IR's is that if that IR is meant to be impressive then it's most likely one of the best IR's in the pack. If it's not then it might not impress too many people. I probably don't have to explain the risks of giving away most of the best IR's for free. And 29.99€ is $34.45. It's a store in Europe and our currency is the euro. :) But sure this is the digital age... just imagine someone going to a guitar store looking for a tubescreamer and demanding a mini tubescreamer for free before they make the decision to get the big tubescreamer?

Hey and thank you, the problem got solved quickly. :)

Hmm... so if you're unhappy with another IR producers work... shouldn't that have the opposite reaction? :D Won't really comment on other people's work but it should go without saying that "not all IR's are created equal". I would gladly debate that we at ML shoot the most realistic, clean and authentic IR's and that's just because of the IR shoot method has been tried and tested and fine tuned for about 8 years and we've been a big part of the further development of the IR format into mic+di shooting and raw non-minimum-phase-transformed file formats. Still most of an IR producer's job is to know how to mic up cabs well and that takes years of practice. I've had a self-built 4x12 sized xyz-axis microphone robot for 3 years prior to Dynamount creating that xy-axis robot which is what pretty much every other IR producer is using. If you've ever miked a guitar cab you'll know that a guitar speaker sounds completely different if you f.ex. pull the mic straight up or to the side. The best mic positions are usually somewhere in-between "straight up" or "to the side" and most IR producers never even try those positions. Try the freebie and if it's not at all your thing then you'll at least know: bit.ly/MLSoundLab