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Finding myself trying to move away from IRs since the Stomp announcement


njglover
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When I first got the Helix, way back when it came out, I spent hours messing with tones and hours sampling IRs (after not getting what I wanted with the stock cabs) trying to match up the modeled Dual Rec tone with my actual recorded Dual Rec tone. But there's a few patches where I've had to use both paths just to have enough DSP on account of how much DSP the IRs take up and I've seen a few people posting here about how they've gone from IRs back to just stock cabs for simplicity. Then the Stomp was announced and I thought hey, that would make a great backup unit if I could only cut down to a single amp+cab block. Since then, I've been experimenting with the stock cabs trying to match what I have with IRs and I think I've finally found something that works for that particular patch, anyway. Was trying to match an Ownhammer IR that was a 57+412 mic combo on a 412 Mesa cab with boosted mids, eventually settled on the Uber V30 cab with the 409 mic. With headphones, I can still tell the difference, but after plugging into my FRFR and auditioning them, there is almost no difference aside from slightly more mids on the stock cab (which is a good thing, IMO).

 

Long story short, anyone else finding themselves moving to the stock cabs in an effort to simplify their setup? Are you learning any interesting tidbits along the way?

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I have no problem with the stock cabs, and still use a number of patches that have them...but for the last few months, for any new patches, I've been gravitating more towards IR's. They're just less work. I don't have to spend nearly as much time futzing with high and low cuts, distance parameters, etc... it's all baked in. Less tweaking, more playing.

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My experience was similar to yours, @njglover. For a long time I've been a die-hard IR guy. This was way back in early 2016 since I got my Helix. I thought Helix sounded great, of course, then were all these folks saying IRs really make it sound better and more natural, so of course, I tried some and liked them. Never looked back and fine tuned my IR usage down to a science - and in the meantime, learned a lot about mics, cabinets, speakers, mixing mics, and so on. I could dive into a 700+ OwnHammer IR pack and pull out the 3 or 4 IRs I wanted because of the mics, mixes, and speakers they used. All knowledge I didn't have a lot of when I first got my Helix.

 

Then the Stomp came out and I got one, but it was released without an editor so you couldn't load IRs and I wasn't looking forward to having to use the stock cabs. But in doing so, after the 2+ years of experience I gained with using IRs, I was pleasantly surprised when I applied that to the stock cabs - this time with more education, and thought they sounded great!

 

So ... long story  short, I'm now a stock cab guy. Convert from the IR hassle, and don't plan to look back, with maybe a few exceptions (like acoustic sim IRs).

 

Helix stock cabs are great! I wish they had a way to mix mics without using a split path and two cabinet blocks (dual-cab doesn't do it since the cabinets are panned hard-left and hard-right with no option to change that - which is not the same thing). That's about the only thing lacking with the stock cabs, but I can find the right sound I want with the parameters available - mics, distance, cuts, and early reflections.

 

Part of it is also what you're ears get used to. Occasionally I'll go back and pull up one of my IR presets. It just doesn't sound right. :-)

 

Note, however, based on a few pretty full presets, stock cabs take up more DSP than a 1024 IR slot. I've had presets where I could put in an IR but not a cab because of DSP usage.

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39 minutes ago, bsd512 said:

Note, however, based on a few pretty full presets, stock cabs take up more DSP than a 1024 IR slot. I've had presets where I could put in an IR but not a cab because of DSP usage.

 

That's really interesting. Maybe it's just because I've never used the 1024 IRs? I think the stock cabs take up less DSP than the 2048 IR blocks, anyway. I definitely agree about the dual cab block, though. Really wish that a) an amp+cab block could have a dual cab and b) panning could be adjusted on dual cab blocks.

 

1 hour ago, cruisinon2 said:

I have no problem with the stock cabs, and still use a number of patches that have them...but for the last few months, for any new patches, I've been gravitating more towards IR's. They're just less work. I don't have to spend nearly as much time futzing with high and low cuts, distance parameters, etc... it's all baked in. Less tweaking, more playing.

 

I dunno, I spent hours (quite literally) going through just about every single IR in my IR packs to find the one I wanted. Even then, I ultimately ended up using high and low cuts because it was just too trebly and nasty coming out an FRFR. Less options to futz with once you have picked an IR, but so many more options in terms of actually picking an IR. In that sense, the stock cabs are easier since you can just mess with it on one block. I think in either case, once you know generally what you are looking for (ie once you've done the initial futzing), there's not much you need to tweak after. For example, with IRs I nearly always cut up to 100-130 Hz and down to about 7.3 kHz and lower the volume to -21.5 dB. Generally I look for an IR with a 57 on it. With the stock cabs, I generally put my cuts about the same, put the reflections somewhere between 25-35%, and might mess with the mics and distance but usually gravitate toward one of the Neumann models (67 or 87) or, more recently, the 409, 57, or 421 models. Never messed with a 409 in real life, but it seems to have a smoother top end and almost a blend between the 57 and 421 sounds, so it's a pretty nice choice for my purposes. I guess the point is, in some ways stock cabs have fewer options to deal with.

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2 hours ago, bsd512 said:

My experience was similar to yours, @njglover. For a long time I've been a die-hard IR guy. This was way back in early 2016 since I got my Helix. I thought Helix sounded great, of course, then were all these folks saying IRs really make it sound better and more natural, so of course, I tried some and liked them. Never looked back and fine tuned my IR usage down to a science - and in the meantime, learned a lot about mics, cabinets, speakers, mixing mics, and so on. I could dive into a 700+ OwnHammer IR pack and pull out the 3 or 4 IRs I wanted because of the mics, mixes, and speakers they used. All knowledge I didn't have a lot of when I first got my Helix.

 

Then the Stomp came out and I got one, but it was released without an editor so you couldn't load IRs and I wasn't looking forward to having to use the stock cabs. But in doing so, after the 2+ years of experience I gained with using IRs, I was pleasantly surprised when I applied that to the stock cabs - this time with more education, and thought they sounded great!

 

So ... long story  short, I'm now a stock cab guy. Convert from the IR hassle, and don't plan to look back, with maybe a few exceptions (like acoustic sim IRs).

 

Helix stock cabs are great! I wish they had a way to mix mics without using a split path and two cabinet blocks (dual-cab doesn't do it since the cabinets are panned hard-left and hard-right with no option to change that - which is not the same thing). That's about the only thing lacking with the stock cabs, but I can find the right sound I want with the parameters available - mics, distance, cuts, and early reflections.

 

Part of it is also what you're ears get used to. Occasionally I'll go back and pull up one of my IR presets. It just doesn't sound right. :-)

 

Note, however, based on a few pretty full presets, stock cabs take up more DSP than a 1024 IR slot. I've had presets where I could put in an IR but not a cab because of DSP usage.

 

One thing that made me feel old was I'm just uninterested (though the real reason might be terrified) of messing around with IRs. Conceptually I get their power, but because it's so foreign to the traditional approach of guitar - amp - effects that I learned on, I never touched it. The modeling approach was easy peasy to me because it just mimicked the traditional approach better than the traditional approach.

 

Fear of an IR is still not a good reason to avoid them, but it's good to hear that there's nothing necessarily weak about going with the traditional approach.

 

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Not me, as I've been getting better at mixing I've thought that I might try getting a killer mix with the Helix Cabs, and I can get a good tone with them, but the IR's usually beat the hell out of them in a mix. 

 

There's some really nice stock cabs for playing around on the vintage amps, like the Divided by 13, the Trainwreck and the Matchless amps, but my music is usually 100% high gain tones with some trippy cleans (how very original), and with the stock cabs there's like only a couple of cabs that work on a high gain tone, that pisses me off, because it's not like there's this cab that works better in this setting and this other cab that works better in this other setting, there only a couple cabs that work with a high gain tone and the rest just suck. And then the ones that work they're noisy-er than what would be their IR counterpart and require more EQ work.

 

Then with IR's it's a bit of a pain to test them with the Helix if you want to mix 2 or more IR's together and want to compare the tones A/B, so what I've learnt to do is, I load up the DAW with some DI tracks, load up an amp sim like the X50v2 or Recabinet 5, test out my IR combinations there and when I've settled I load that into my Helix, set it up for reamping mode, and tweak my tone to fit the mix while I listen to it with the rest of the instruments, sort of like what I would do with VST amps but slower.

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I guess we like what we like and whatever it takes to get the sound you want. Most of my presets are high gain, though, and I disagree that there are only a few cabs that sound good with high gain. Actually, I used to think the same thing, until I was forced to delve into them again with the Stomp. For example, I never would have thought to pair the 2x12 Interstate with an ENGL amp, but with the right mic, distance, etc, it sounds great. I used to think that the folks that kept claiming the Helix stock cabs were good must only play through Fenders. I was wrong. :-)

 

Whatever gets you your sound, though - I'm not trying to make a convert out of you. I'm just relaying my experience of once being a die-hard IR guy that now uses just the stock cabs and love them. I will say that I'm rarely thrilled with the stock cab defaults choices when you pull up an amp+cab. I almost always change the mic, distance, etc, and often the whole cab.

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I think a lot of this really depends on how you use your Helix as well as which Helix you're using.  I could see myself orienting toward the native cabs if I were to be using the Stomp due to the limitations.  But I'm in the same boat as Cruisinon2 in that I pretty much exclusively use IRs in my everyday use.  The reason being that I play a very wide range of genres and for the most part use a preset per song, so I build a LOT of presets.  That being the case the IRs are just quicker and a LOT less work.  No parameters to mess with and if I want to try something different on a patch I simply dial to a different preset that has all the parameters built in.

 

As to the size of IRs and the limitations on 2048 multiple cabs, that's really just not relevant to me.  I briefly tried multiple 1024 IRs and they seemed fine, but then what's the point?  A good portion of my IRs are multiple mic'd cabs and provide the same benefit for the most part.  So why go to the bother.

 

I guess for myself, since I gig at least once a week and sometimes several times a week I'll take any approach that lessens how much time I might need for tweaking a patch.  And that's what IRs do for me.  I'm just more of a practical guy than a cork sniffing tone hound.  I just want to Git 'Er Done....

 

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3 hours ago, Kilrahi said:

 

One thing that made me feel old was I'm just uninterested (though the real reason might be terrified) of messing around with IRs. Conceptually I get their power, but because it's so foreign to the traditional approach of guitar - amp - effects that I learned on, I never touched it. The modeling approach was easy peasy to me because it just mimicked the traditional approach better than the traditional approach.

 

Fear of an IR is still not a good reason to avoid them, but it's good to hear that there's nothing necessarily weak about going with the traditional approach.

 

 

Huh, I'd think that would actually make you like IRs more. They seem more traditional to me in that I think, "Here is a cab that I know I like with a mic and positioning I know I like." The reality, for me, was that most of the people making the IRs aren't using the exact cab I like or putting the mic exactly where I wanted it, of course, so YMMV.

 

1 hour ago, bsd512 said:

I guess we like what we like and whatever it takes to get the sound you want. Most of my presets are high gain, though, and I disagree that there are only a few cabs that sound good with high gain. Actually, I used to think the same thing, until I was forced to delve into them again with the Stomp. For example, I never would have thought to pair the 2x12 Interstate with an ENGL amp, but with the right mic, distance, etc, it sounds great. I used to think that the folks that kept claiming the Helix stock cabs were good must only play through Fenders. I was wrong. :-)

 

Whatever gets you your sound, though - I'm not trying to make a convert out of you. I'm just relaying my experience of once being a die-hard IR guy that now uses just the stock cabs and love them. I will say that I'm rarely thrilled with the stock cab defaults choices when you pull up an amp+cab. I almost always change the mic, distance, etc, and often the whole cab.

 

That Interstate 212 was a close second, honestly. I was specifically looking for a good cab to pair with high gain as honestly I think there are plenty of good choices for clean sounds and even mid gain. I generally go for a mids-forward sort of high gain (a la Lamb of God), which I think is probably a little unusual in the genre but I like to be heard. For that, the Cali V30 would do fine, but I liked the Uber V30 a little better. The Interstate 212 was a little light on bottom end for me as was the Cali IV 112, though all of those could probably work in context with other things going on. I wasn't as keen on the more scooped-sounding cabs, but I might still use those for doubles in a recording situation so things sum to mono well. In short, definitely pays to think outside the box sometimes.

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