Cabsim IR placement

[PlayinOcean]

Hi all,

 

I would like to use the HX Effects' ability to load IRs in order to go direct. In order to do that, I now have this setup in mind: guitar --> HX --> guitar amp --> loadbox --> FOH.

My initial idea was to loop the signal back from the loadbox into the HX, then add a cabsim IR to the signal, and then send it off to FOH. That way the IR is placed where the actual speaker would be: after the preamp and the poweramp of the guitar amp.

It would be a lot easier however to either put the IR as the final effect before going into the amp input (the amp is running clean) or if needed in the fx loop of the amp by going 4CM.

In either of these cases however, the "speaker" would be in the wrong position, being either in front of the entire guitar amp or in front of the power amp.

Will that affect the ability of a speaker-IR to emulate the response of a cab? Or do the pre or poweramps of my guitar amp not interfere with what a cab-IR does?

 

Hopefully someone can demistify this for me. I would just try it out for myself, but I don't have monitor speakers at home, so I have to know if this setup works before installing everything for a gig.

 

[rd2rk]

23 minutes ago, PlayinOcean said:

My initial idea was to loop the signal back from the loadbox into the HX, then add a cabsim IR to the signal, and then send it off to FOH. That way the IR is placed where the actual speaker would be: after the preamp and the poweramp of the guitar amp.

 

This. As for the other, would you do that in the real world? No.

[amsdenj]

In theory, it doesn't matter where the IR is as long as everything after it in the signal chain is linear. Any block in the signal chain that introduces distortion should be before the IR.

[rd2rk]

2 hours ago, PlayinOcean said:

It would be a lot easier however to either put the IR as the final effect before going into the amp input (the amp is running clean) or if needed in the fx loop of the amp by going 4CM.

In either of these cases however, the "speaker" would be in the wrong position, being either in front of the entire guitar amp or in front of the power amp.

Will that affect the ability of a speaker-IR to emulate the response of a cab? Or do the pre or poweramps of my guitar amp not interfere with what a cab-IR does?

 

 

2 hours ago, amsdenj said:

In theory, it doesn't matter where the IR is as long as everything after it in the signal chain is linear. Any block in the signal chain that introduces distortion should be before the IR.

 

Unless I'm mis-reading, OP is asking if it would sound good to put the speaker cab/IR BEFORE the amp in the signal chain. I think not.

[PlayinOcean]

Thanks for replying. 

I am not planning on introducing any overdrive within my guitar amp. But even without overdrive, the pre and power amp do introduce gain and sound colouring. But will that negatively influence a cab sim?

 

The reason why running the output from the loadbox back into the HX is problematic, is because the signal I send from the HX at instr level (fx send 1) returns from the loadbox at line level. I want to do the send/return within one block and FX loop, but I can only set the impedance level for both fx in and out at the same time. If I change the impedance of the FX loop to line, I then send a line signal into my guitaramp. So either the HX or the amp receives a line signal while expecting an instr signal.

 

There does not seem to be an easy solution to that issue, so that's why I thought of putting the IR somewhere earlier in the chain, where I can actually incorporate it.