Tonal difference between IR sample sizes

[nbiglin]

I saw in the Helix floor manual that the 1024 sample version of IR's will save DSP and will "fade out the IR hallway through." What does that mean? And more importantly, what's the tonal difference between the 2 sample sizes? I feel like my ear can hear a difference but I'm not sure what exactly it is.

[rd2rk]

1 hour ago, nbiglin said:

I feel like my ear can hear a difference but I'm not sure what exactly it is

 

It's a form of confirmation bias. It's bigger, so it must be better!

If you REALLY think it sounds better, and your presets can afford the DSP, USE THEM!

But when you get to the point where the preset is ALMOST perfect, if only you had a teensy bit more DSP, remember, you're one of three people in the world who can hear the difference, and NOBODY can hear it in the mix!

[Ilya-V]

Helix runs at 48Khz I believe.

That's 48000 samples per second.

 

1024 samples is 21ms, 2048 is 42ms.  (1024/48000)

That's some room reverb time where the IR was captured,, the frequency response itself is less than 2ms of the IR.

You will barely hear the difference especially in a mix or with some minor time based effects,, and no, it doesn't add to the realism of the IR.

Personally, I use 1024.

 

Most top quality IRs like OwnHammer are 200 / 500ms,, that's WAY more natural room reverb baked into the IR than you need for convincing speaker tone.

[lungho]

I bought some IRs from 3 Sigma a couple years ago.  In addition to the Helix versions, the package also came with a bunch of different versions for other modelers/profilers. There was a page somewhere on their website that said to use the 48KHz 200ms files with Helix. 

 

Hope that little bit of info helps.