Helix Cabs orgin - Redwirez BIGBox?

[zolko60]

Like thousands od other Helix users I had a feeling that Cab DSP blocks are not good enough. So I used to search better sounding IRs. While searching through Redwirez Big Box I discovered that Helix Cabs are in fact Redwirez cab IRs. They does not sound exactly the same - maybe mixes of different mic position, maybe compressed with some loose algorithm but having experience in using IR's and studio cab micing, I am almost sure I can hear the same cab captured. I mean the same cab the same method, path and postprocessing - this what IR capturing is all about. Eg. Helix 4x12 Greenback 20 is Redwirez BasketweaveG12M20s and so on.
Anybody with the same feeling?

[cruisinon2]

Good luck selling that theory. A subjective evaluation of what two things sound like, is exactly that....subjective. The fact that they sound "the same" to your ears, proves nothing. Unless you hack the code and show them to be identical, it won't hold up in court. Two companies. Two products. 

[zolko60]

Thank you. Looking at two photos one can feel it is the same picture, doesn't he? IRs like a digitized photos or other soundfiles - you can alter them, process them but to some degree there is a feeling this is this and not something else.  So I am asking people who did compare them and can share their experience. I am not conspiracy detective. Just curious and always willing to check if I can trust my ears.

[Kilrahi]

27 minutes ago, zolko60 said:

Thank you. Looking at two photos one can feel it is the same picture, doesn't he? IRs like a digitized photos or other soundfiles - you can alter them, process them but to some degree there is a feeling this is this and not something else.  So I am asking people who did compare them and can share their experience. I am not conspiracy detective. Just curious and always willing to check if I can trust my ears.

 

That's an analogy which ignores a lot of the differences between sound and photos. Particularly in this case, both groups were TRYING to make the most accurate version of the same thing.  

 

In some respects it's like saying your Aunt's version of your grandma's apple pie tastes the same as your mom's version of your grandma's apple pie.  Of course they do. That was the whole point.

 

Line 6 has indicated in every single situation that they create all of their own versions of amps, cabs, effects, etc.  By the way, I happen to be one of the ones who likes them . . .

[zolko60]

Oh, really? They indicate?
So why when I load eg "2x12 Double C12N" Cab with R121 mic, 3.0 distance I can make almost the same sound mixing Redwirez TwinJensenC12N-R121-CapEdge-3in.wav, TwinJensenC12N-R121-Cone-3in.wav and a little bit of TwinJensenC12N-R121-Cap-3in.wav?
Did you ever use impulse responses of the same cab type made by different people in different studios? I did. It is always totally different story.
 

[DunedinDragon]

I do own the Redwirez big box collection though I can't say I directly made any comparisons to the Helix stock cabs.  I suppose that's because the purpose of having them wasn't to compare them to anything but to explore them for possible uses in my patches.  Because of that I was MUCH more interested in the mic positioning alternatives in the Redwirez that went beyond what could be accomplished with the stock cabinets.  IMO the stock cabinet mic and mic positioning alternatives were pretty limited especially in comparison to what was offered in the Redwirez collection as well as probably the broadest range of speakers and cabinets I'd ever seen available.

In short I was focused on all the wider sonic possibilities Redwirez offered more than if they matched the limited alternatives offered with Helix cabs.  That, and of course their MixIR utility that would provide me with a workable way of combining IRs.

[Kilrahi]

3 hours ago, zolko60 said:

Oh, really? They indicate?
 

 

Yeah. They do. I can't speak to the rest of your question, but Line 6 has always described it as an in house process. 

 

I mean, if it wasn't WHATEVER, but they describe it that way.

[rd2rk]

I also own the Redwirez Big Box. IMO, they sound really good. The L6 cabs also sound really good. Could it be that both companies made REALLY GOOD IRs from very similar cabs with very similar mics, using similar techniques, and THAT'S why they sound similar?

 

Other companies make IRs from similar cabs with similar mics using different techniques, and some of them sound different. SURPRISE!

 

Bottom line, there's very little percentage in L6 stealing Redwirez IRs and claiming them as their own. In fact, if they were using Redwirez IRs it would be a marketing advantage to properly license them and advertise them as such, like Scuffham does with S-Gear. Redwirez, though not currently en vogue, makes really fine IRs!

 

FWIW - I own the Big Box and IRs from Ownhammer, Rosen, 3 Sigma, TwoNotes and Kazrog. All fine products with slight differences in sound that make them all useful in different situations. It's a GLORIOUS rabbit hole!

[zolko60]

What I hear Helix cabs are mixture of the different mics placements relative to the speaker cap axis. This is why when I need more "on my face" sound free from phase interference I look elswere. Hx Native install weights 20MB while single Redwirez cab collection @24/48 IR is 6-10MB. Divide it by the number of "saved axis mics placement's". Let's assume 2/3 of mic distances" are on the fly DSP interpolations. It's still 2-3MB per cab. There are 30 cab's - 60-90MB. When squashed with 10:1 lossy compression it could fit the installer.

[DunedinDragon]

28 minutes ago, zolko60 said:

What I hear Helix cabs are mixture of the different mics placements relative to the speaker cab axis. This is why when I need more "on my face" sound free from phase interference I look elswere. Hx Native install weights 20MB while single Redwirez cab collection @24/48 IR is 6-10MB. Divide it by the number of "saved axis mics placement's". Let's assume 2/3 of mic distances" are on the fly DSP interpolations. It's still 2-3MB per cab. There are 30 cab's - 60-90MB. When squashed with 10:1 lossy compression it could fit the installer.

 

Well you hear wrong.  Helix cabs are not a mixture of mic placements relative to the speaker cab.  They are dynamic, programmatic model implementations that simulate the behavior of IRs and that's why they take up less DSP usage than does a typical IR.

[zolko60]

1 hour ago, DunedinDragon said:

 

Well you hear wrong.  Helix cabs are not a mixture of mic placements relative to the speaker cap.  They are dynamic, programmatic model implementations that simulate the behavior of IRs and that's why they take up less DSP usage than does a typical IR.

How can I check Cabs use less DSP? When the DSP usage is almost full I can add either one Cab or one 1024 IR. When full I can not add neither Cab nor IR.
EDIT: I got it! It's opposite to what you claim. When I exchange Cab with 1024 IR in heavy loaded Path, my choice of Dynamic DSP block count is 4 instead of 3 and 8 instead of 7 in case of Modulation block.
Checking "dynamic, programmatic model implementations that simulate the behavior of IRs" shoud be simple . When I have some more time I will capture Helix Cab to IR and compare them side by side to find out what it means.

Edited: Speaker "cap" instead of "cab" axis. Sorry for misleading.

[arkieboy]

My experience is that a 1024 IR block - which my ears say is more than enough to reproduce the frequency response of a speaker cabinet* - uses less resources than a cab block.

 

Moreover, if you have multiple amps in your preset, you can swap out the IR loaded into your IR block on a snapshot-by-snapshot basis.  Which is a huge saving over having two cab blocks.

 

----

 

*if you dig into the interwebs you can find the physics to back this up.

[Guitarmaniac64]

Line6 folk has more or less confirmed that stock cabs is created out of a netrual IR and than they use software calculation aka EQ curve to mimic the sound of the moved mic position backwards in center posistion of the cap that will say we dont have off axis or move towards the edge of the cone like Redwirez REAL IR's has.

 

Oh and b.t.w zolko60 when you post an idea on the ideascale thread here on the forum it is meant for the users to find a link of that idea on ideascale as if you post it here with no idea on ideascale (yes i searched for your ideascale and all other new ideas in that has been posted lately and sadly never got it to ideascale) it wont get upvoted.

Iit is a stupid thread that needs to shut down plz MOD lest do it? 

[Guitarmaniac64]

On 11/23/2018 at 1:52 AM, DunedinDragon said:

I do own the Redwirez big box collection though I can't say I directly made any comparisons to the Helix stock cabs.  I suppose that's because the purpose of having them wasn't to compare them to anything but to explore them for possible uses in my patches.  Because of that I was MUCH more interested in the mic positioning alternatives in the Redwirez that went beyond what could be accomplished with the stock cabinets.  IMO the stock cabinet mic and mic positioning alternatives were pretty limited especially in comparison to what was offered in the Redwirez collection as well as probably the broadest range of speakers and cabinets I'd ever seen available.

In short I was focused on all the wider sonic possibilities Redwirez offered more than if they matched the limited alternatives offered with Helix cabs.  That, and of course their MixIR utility that would provide me with a workable way of combining IRs.

I have done a comparison of many of the "cabs" with same distance of the mic

 

However i think it was a problem with the closest positions as on either the IR's or the stock cab you could'nt get the exact same distance.

To my ears they sounded fairly close but i felt the IR's sonded more like a real cab but when i made som high cuts on the stock it got closer to the IR's

 

BUT if i added that high to the IR's the IR's sounded even better than without a high cut.

 

Oh i might say that you notice the difference between stock cabs and IR's way better on distorted and high gain tones then you do on clean tones.

 

Hence why so many non high gain players say they dont hear the difference between stock cabs and IR's.

YOU CAN get great high gain tones out of stock cab but you are very limited to few options and always a ribbon mic.
The studio standard SM57 is not an option there you find IR sounding much better.

[codamedia]

8 hours ago, Guitarmaniac64 said:

Oh i might say that you notice the difference between stock cabs and IR's way better on distorted and high gain tones then you do on clean tones.

 

Hence why so many non high gain players say they dont hear the difference between stock cabs and IR's.

YOU CAN get great high gain tones out of stock cab but you are very limited to few options and always a ribbon mic.
The studio standard SM57 is not an option there you find IR sounding much better.

 

I don't know for certain... but IMO the stock cabs seem to provide "center mic position" only... that's how it sounds to me. You can adjust the distance, but not the movement between center/cone/edge. A ribbon such as a 121 pulled back a bit can get around the shrill tones that position can have, but not a '57. Again, just my opinion. 

 

I am predominantly a clean player with a touch of dirt.... even I need to avoid the '57 on the stock cabs, even though on an amp I wouldn't hesitate to use one between cone & edge. I have a couple of nice "go to" IR's for simplicity. I use the stock cabs when I can afford to experiment, but stick to the IR's for the most part.

[zolko60]

On 11/24/2018 at 12:19 AM, arkieboy said:

My experience is that a 1024 IR block - which my ears say is more than enough to reproduce the frequency response of a speaker cabinet* - uses less resources than a cab block.

 

*if you dig into the interwebs you can find the physics to back this up.

In marketing texts Cabs are advertised as: Helix HX Hybrid cabs represent a new approach to the speaker cabinet capture process. They provide the same resolution and low-end accuracy as a 2048-point or higher Impulse Response, while only using roughly the same amount of DSP power as a 1024-point IR.
As I understand IR resolution, making more samples IRs helps only with with longer reverb tails. However Cab block has early reflection reverb built in, so making this with IR could actually require 2048 samples IR.
 

On 11/24/2018 at 12:19 AM, arkieboy said:

Moreover, if you have multiple amps in your preset, you can swap out the IR loaded into your IR block on a snapshot-by-snapshot basis.  Which is a huge saving over having two cab blocks.

Thank you for this tip. I did not think about that while building my presets.

 

On 11/24/2018 at 9:20 AM, Guitarmaniac64 said:

Line6 folk has more or less confirmed that stock cabs is created out of a netrual IR and than they use software calculation aka EQ curve to mimic the sound of the moved mic position backwards in center posistion of the cap that will say we dont have off axis or move towards the edge of the cone like Redwirez REAL IR's has.

I don't belive such a being like "netutral IR" exists. Several companies claimed they have neutral "no mic" IR. Fake. no mic = no IR (in acoustic realm)

 

On 11/24/2018 at 9:20 AM, Guitarmaniac64 said:

Oh and b.t.w zolko60 when you post an idea on the ideascale thread here on the forum it is meant for the users to find a link of that idea on ideascale as if you post it here with no idea on ideascale (yes i searched for your ideascale and all other new ideas in that has been posted lately and sadly never got it to ideascale) it wont get upvoted.

Iit is a stupid thread that needs to shut down plz MOD lest do it? 

I was not approved on ideascale at the time. It is hard work to find out which idea is already submitted. However if you find any of my ideas worth to be voted, please take it as yours ;)
Speaking of IR's - I would like to have 256 samples IR loader for EQ curves.

[arkieboy]

7 hours ago, zolko60 said:

In marketing texts Cabs are advertised as: Helix HX Hybrid cabs represent a new approach to the speaker cabinet capture process. They provide the same resolution and low-end accuracy as a 2048-point or higher Impulse Response, while only using roughly the same amount of DSP power as a 1024-point IR.
As I understand IR resolution, making more samples IRs helps only with with longer reverb tails. However Cab block has early reflection reverb built in, so making this with IR could actually require 2048 samples IR.

 

(about the hybrid cabs) I didn't know that.  Cool.  Makes sense.  Having said that I still think they use slightly more resource than the 1024 block: one day I'll be bored enough to devise an experiment that could confirm or deny it! :-)  I do think its about time I properly got to grips with the cab blocks though. 

It is also my understanding that if the IR is longer than required to mimic the frequency response of the cab, it would begin to add reverberation to the signal.

 

And to IR switching, it was pointed out to me by someone on VGuitarforums.  1x1024 IR block switched by snapshot is =definitely= less resources than two cab blocks!!

[arkieboy]

7 hours ago, zolko60 said:

low-end accuracy as a 2048-point or higher Impulse Response

 

And I definitely need to listen carefully to the bottom end and see if I can notice the difference here.  I have some great cans that should be able to reveal the difference - pity my ears are shot from 35 years of rock and roll!

[kdog]

On 11/22/2018 at 10:51 AM, zolko60 said:

Like thousands od other Helix users I had a feeling that Cab DSP blocks are not good enough. So I used to search better sounding IRs. While searching through Redwirez Big Box I discovered that Helix Cabs are in fact Redwirez cab IRs. They does not sound exactly the same - maybe mixes of different mic position, maybe compressed with some loose algorithm but having experience in using IR's and studio cab micing, I am almost sure I can hear the same cab captured. I mean the same cab the same method, path and postprocessing - this what IR capturing is all about. Eg. Helix 4x12 Greenback 20 is Redwirez BasketweaveG12M20s and so on.
Anybody with the same feeling?

This cannot be true, the Helix stock cabs do not sound anywhere near as good as the now dated Redwirez IRs.  LOL.

 

[zolko60]

You could be suprised when you try to replicate my experiments. I was.

[amsdenj]

The advantage of IRs is that you can have a completely different IR for mic position and distance. Helix cab models appear to have no support for mic position and appear to emulate mic distance by modifying a single IR with EQ. But moving the mic to cap, cap-edge, cone, cone-edge can have a huge impact on the tone. Helix cabs seem to be pretty bright, perhaps because they used a cap IR in order to get the most high end, and then rely on high-cuts to adjust. This is not the same as cap-edge or cone mic positions, or off axis. 

 

The cab models also have early reflections which add some room to the tone. Redwirez has IRs for room mics which you can use mixIR to blend with other IRs to get a similar effect.

 

It's really all about the tone you need. IRs provide a lot of flexibility, but at the cost of constructing and auditioning a lot of different choices, many of which make pretty subtle differences.  If you can get a tone you like using Helix cab models, then don't fret too much about what you might be missing from some optimized IR. Focus instead on playing more. That said, I use IRs for all my patches as I simply prefer them over the cab models.

 

 

[zolko60]

Yeah, but in hardware DSP devices your computing and storage resources are limited. This is why you have to use IR mixes. What if you mix all cab IRs avialiable on Earth? You will get flat EQ curve with high and low rolloff. :D

[kdog]

16 hours ago, amsdenj said:

It's really all about the tone you need. IRs provide a lot of flexibility, but at the cost of constructing and auditioning a lot of different choices, many of which make pretty subtle differences.  If you can get a tone you like using Helix cab models, then don't fret too much about what you might be missing from some optimized IR. Focus instead on playing more. That said, I use IRs for all my patches as I simply prefer them over the cab models.

 

Actually, it's pretty simple: You have something that s*cks but is easy and something that doesn't but requires slightly more effort. You decide what type of artist you are. ;)

 

[gunpointmetal]

12 minutes ago, kdog said:

 

Actually, it's pretty simple: You have something that s*cks but is easy and something that doesn't but requires slightly more effort. You decide what type of artist you are. ;)

 

The cabs don't suck anymore than a lot of IRs out there. 

[rd2rk]

1 hour ago, kdog said:

Actually, it's pretty simple: You have something that s*cks but is easy and something that doesn't but requires slightly more effort. You decide what type of artist you are. ;)

 

 

I presume (based on your use of the winking emoji) that you're being sarcastic, as opposed to making a statement that anyone who likes the Helix cabs is lazy and a tasteless, second rate artist?

[Kilrahi]

5 hours ago, rd2rk said:

 

I presume (based on your use of the winking emoji) that you're being sarcastic, as opposed to making a statement that anyone who likes the Helix cabs is lazy and a tasteless, second rate artist?

 

I'd hope that was meant. I bought a few IRs the other day and tried them out. I liked them.

 

I usually use stock cabs though, and for the life of me I can't fathom all of the seeming hate, or at least "meh" feeling people seem to have for them. I seem to be able to dial in a bunch of sounds I like.

 

I like Hawaiian pizza too though. Maybe my ears are one of God's mistakes.

[rd2rk]

3 minutes ago, Kilrahi said:

I usually use stock cabs though, and for the life of me I can't fathom all of the seeming hate, or at least "meh" feeling people seem to have for them. I seem to be able to dial in a bunch of sounds I like.

 

I like Hawaiian pizza too though. Maybe my ears are one of God's mistakes.

 

Horses for courses.

 

Having been born and raised in NYC, I know that liking Hawaiian Pizza is a sin, but....I'm an imperfect human!

[Guitarmaniac64]

On 11/25/2018 at 1:52 PM, zolko60 said:

In marketing texts Cabs are advertised as: Helix HX Hybrid cabs represent a new approach to the speaker cabinet capture process. They provide the same resolution and low-end accuracy as a 2048-point or higher Impulse Response, while only using roughly the same amount of DSP power as a 1024-point IR.
As I understand IR resolution, making more samples IRs helps only with with longer reverb tails. However Cab block has early reflection reverb built in, so making this with IR could actually require 2048 samples IR.
 

Thank you for this tip. I did not think about that while building my presets.

 

I don't belive such a being like "netutral IR" exists. Several companies claimed they have neutral "no mic" IR. Fake. no mic = no IR (in acoustic realm)

 

I was not approved on ideascale at the time. It is hard work to find out which idea is already submitted. However if you find any of my ideas worth to be voted, please take it as yours ;)
Speaking of IR's - I would like to have 256 samples IR loader for EQ curves.

Oh a sort of "neutral" IR is pretty simple to create.

You know there is such thing called omnidirectional mic? wich is said to be "flat"

Also sometimes called meassurement mics as you use those to meassure your studio room before you do acoustic treatment.

 

Anyway you can create a sort of neutral IR with just an EQ curve that is mimic a specific speaker in a specific cab like 1x12

 

Ideascale is very SLOW page and really painful to use i.mo

 

It also contains 1000's of doubles as nopbody even care to search if it is already there.

 

But people whouse to enter the post in here instead of ideascle dont have a chance to get it upvoted and way less chance to see it in Helix in future updates.

There has been some discussion over at TGP about the input impediance and the respons from Eric from Line 6 was (It has very few upvotes on ideascale and other thing is more wanted on ideascale for Helix)