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IRS, what irs do you recomend me?


migueledge
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I've tried 3 Sigma and liked their IR's. There are a few companies that do really good work. It also comes down to organization a bit too, 3 Sigma has typically around10 great sounding IR's in a pack and then a company like Ownhammer will have IR packs with every mic distance etc; this adds up to a lot more files to choose from, which can be good but going through and testing a ton of IR's isn't for everyone. 

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I'm an IR fan and have RedWirez, OwnHamnmer and 3Sigma.  I started out by trying their free IRs, which is how I ended up buying theirs, so I recommend that.  This site has links to download a lot of IRs, which I did and never looked at (too many to try!). To my ears, the different companies have a distinctly different overarching flavor, even for similar cabs and mics so the specific IRs you choose will really depend on the sound you want.  So - try the free ones to narrow down what sounds good to you.  Good luck!

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https://www.celestionplus.com/free-download/

 

 

After all the IR's I've bought this free download is the one I use for pretty much everything

 

I've never bought any, but out of the three free demo packs I got, the Celestion one is the only one I use. The other two were Allure and Ownhammer. I'd guess it's strictly a matter of personal taste. I have to say, with the Ownhammers, it's a matter of option overload; dozens of versions of the same cab... and sometimes the differences were so subtle that they were barely perceptible. You can lose perspective after a while; at least I did. And btw, the majority of IRs that I use are still the stock Helix cabs.

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I've purchased Redwirez and 3 Sigma.  So far, the 3 Sigma have worked better for me an the patches I'm building.  I stuck with cabs I know (Mesa V30s and Fender Twin), and I blend them to get the sound I like.

 

The Redwirez packs are, for me, overwhelming.  If you *know* that you want the sound of an Orange cab with Vintage 30s taken at 1" directly on the cone, then Redwirez might be for you.  

 

If you just want to try a few IRs, and you know what kind of cabinet you want, then go 3 Sigma.  It's $7.  You can't buy a cheeseburger at 5 Guys for that.  

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I have OwnHammer, Redwirez, and Celestion.  They each have their own distinctive characteristics in my opinion.

 

OwnHammer tends to add the most coloration to the tone of all three, therefore the differences in sound tend to be more distinctive between different styles of cabinets, mic, and mic placements.

 

Celestion tends to be the most pure.  In other words, less cabinet effect, more speaker effect.  But these also blend together nicely in parallel path setups and come with some interesting options for blending in room mic's for open back cabinets.

 

Redwirez is easily the most comprehensive.  Not as much cabinet coloration as OwnHammer, but enough to be useful.  The value of Redwirez is the comprehensive list of mic's and mic placement options (cap, cone, cone edge off-axis as well as distance).  For myself this tends to be the most useful as I'm kind of a geek in this area.  Tons of options here so you really have to know what you're doing or you'll get lost in the maze of possibilities.

 

I'm the first to admit that IRs aren't for everyone.  Without a certain amount of knowledge about speaker characteristics, mic characteristics, and mice placement characteristics you can spend an awful lot of time trying to zero in on what's going to work best for any given patch.  IRs work for me because I'm kind of old school in this regard having cut my teeth working in recording studio environments back in the 70's and 80's where this type of thing (cabinet, mic, mic placement) went on a lot and was a key part of capturing the right sound for the guitar on a given cut.  If you can do this right it can often eliminate the need for further EQ, and it will certainly diminish it and give you a more natural sound.  But you really do need to have a bit of a geeky nature and some OCD helps also to really appreciate this stuff.  In my case I'm far more interested in getting the right core sound of the guitar as I tend to use fairly minimal effects, so this works for me.

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For me Cabir.eu and Ownhammer are the goto IR's when I need tight control. For quick results but with less control I use Rosen Digital. To my taste Rosen Digital is better than 3 Sigma Audio because of the IMO less pronounced lows.

 

And don't forget the Allure Pack - good stuff.

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Btw, if you buy IR before you have checked out EVERY cab that's in there and mixed up the mic, you should consider going back and doing that.

 

People end up with these huge collections, and if you're like me, you might only need a small handful of cabinets for "your tone" anyway. I only regularly use about 4 (including, now, the brand new Matchless ones in 2.20).

 

And... dual cabs... check them out!

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I spent a good deal of time finding which Redwire and Ownhammer IRs I liked.  Im glad I did it as they sound really good to me.

 

The Celestion, Allure, and Sigma packs seem like a blessing in that there are less options to explore, and a lot of people seem to be enjoying them.  I think I'd rather have started with these as the RW and OH files can be overwhelming.

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Btw, if you buy IR before you have checked out EVERY cab that's in there and mixed up the mic, you should consider going back and doing that.

 

People end up with these huge collections, and if you're like me, you might only need a small handful of cabinets for "your tone" anyway. I only regularly use about 4 (including, now, the brand new Matchless ones in 2.20).

 

And... dual cabs... check them out!

 

 

This!  

The only IRs I use are for my acoustic sounds.  As for the cab IRs, none of them are going to give me the control I want - Dynamically variable mic angle and positioning (in relation to the speaker cone).  No, it's not available in the stock cabs now but I'm hoping it will be one day. I simply do not believe that it will be a "night and day" difference between third party IRs and the stock cabs and cannot see any reason why there could ever be such a difference.  I also don't like the idea of IRs being so static.  To change mics you need to change IRs.  No thanks.  

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Spent some time today with the Celestion IRs I picked up during a couple of their sales. First time I've had a chance to do that, and I have to say, it was fun, even though the initial audition process was a pain. I can't even conceive of trying to do that with the, what is it, 8000+ files in some of the​ larger packs from other companies.

 

I started by picking a semi-random cab from the semi-random collection I have, and listening to all the mix files at the top​ level, ignoring all the other options. That wasn't because I knew they were clearly the best sounding ones, I have no idea without listening too them all, but I really didn't want to get paralyzed any more then necessary by too many choices.

 

Of those, I thought liked the 'all mics + room' variant best, so I loaded that version of all the cabs I had into my Helix, and tried them with some of the patches I've been working with lately. Those patches either have snapshots from pretty clean to pretty driven, or they're built to just turn the guitar down for that same range.

 

Net was that I tried a bunch of different kinds of sounds through that set of cabs. Mostly I liked​ ones with more fullness and body to them, and some seemed really quite good. It seemed easier to get a natural amp sound with them then with the built in cabs. I ended up with no hi cuts, and low cut fairly low, like 70 Hz, just to conserve amp power. That's never been possible for me with the factory​ cabs.

 

So, after I take break to reset my ears and thinking, I'll see what I think of the few patches I saved. Hopefully I wasn't completely out to lunch first time through. It's super easy to lose perspective after a while, at least for me, so who knows.

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Yeah, all well and good, but when I came back to this later, everything I did seemed way too bright. Back to high cuts again.

Still think it sounds good, and the different IRs give you a bunch of variations you can't really get with standard EQs.

But solve the world? For me, no.

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