NEW Speaker Cabinet Impulse Response Library - Guaranteed to Grow More Hair

[redwire]

Hey there slutz,

Please allow me to introduce myself... I'm a computer programmer and sometimes musician/audio engineer. Like many of you, I've experienced the painful burning and itching of crafting killer guitar tones in less than ideal environments... bedrooms, basements, and tiny boxes filled with equipment scrounged together on the cheap... wives, girlfriends and 9 month old babies that just don't understand your commitment to abusing 60 year old radio technology.. and let's not forget the neighbors with the cops on speed dial.

Like you, I've had the obligatory, brief, and ultimately unsatisfying dalliance with that little, red, bean-shaped doxy we all know, a summer fling with a PDI-03 that I'm still friends with, a torrid two-week affair with a hot piece of Italian code and a drunken one-night stand with an isobox that I'd rather not talk about. But, true audio love had eluded me... until now.

Nowadays, I'm fortunate enough to have access to a first-class studio space in Soho crammed with some of the best gear available. I tell you this, not to gloat. Nay, dear brother, I have not forgotten my less fortunate comrades, plucking away in the trenches. On the contrary, I've expended a considerable amount of time, effort and electrons finding ways to bring an extensive gear collection, a sweet live room and my technical know-how to bear on solving the problems of the home studio and project recordist. Who knows, I may even have something that you pros will find useful.

You see, I do it all for you. Well, you, and the fact that I'm most productive when working at home, just me, my clumsy, sausage-like fingers, a guitar, an amp, and my laptop, so I could use a few solutions, myself. And, oh yeah, the money. I plan on making tens, perhaps hundreds of dollars on this. Well, hopefully, enough to cover the cost of bandwidth.

Which brings me to the point of this rant. Today, I'm proud to announce the launch of Red Wire Impulses, the culmination of many, many months of work and more than a smidge of personal sacrifice...

Using a collection of industry standard mics and a few extraordinary specimens just for fun, we painstakingly captured 9 legendary speaker/speaker cabinets, using up to 9 mic positions at up to 9 different distances. We ran each mic into a Neve 1073, or 1084, preamps expensive enough that your wife would probably divorce you if you bought one yourself, then finally into a Lavry Blue or Prism Sound Orpheus for A/D conversion. We gave the whole glorious mess to buckaroo and perfectTommy, our twin super-computers, who worked tirelessly for weeks crunching the numbers and voila...

...we've produced, for your discerning ears, what is perhaps the greatest Speaker Cabinet Impulse Response Library lower Manahattan -- dare I say -- the New York Metropolitan area, has ever known.

"What's an impulse response?" you ask. Basically, it's a little wav file you load into a convolution plugin to route your guitar signal through. The signal can come from your amp's preamp, the line out on your amp, a guitar DI box, or a dummy load box with a line out to safely get the direct signal from the power amp. The plugin uses the IR to make it sound like your guitar is being played in the space and using the equipment that's sampled in the IR. In our case a well-mic'ed speaker cabinet, in an acoustically treated live room, run through a Neve 1073. It doesn't capture every aspect of the signal chain, but for speaker cabs, it gets really close.You can run your amp on 10, 11 even, and listen to the results at any volume.

If you want great recordings without all the mess, then saunter on over to Red Wire Impulses... sashay if you must. However you get there, just get there. You owe it to yourself, and generations of your progeny. Plus, we have a really nice tutorial and naked pictures of Megan Fox. Ok... so no pictures, but we do have a pretty decent tutorial on how to use your amp with speaker IRs.

Anyway, we hope you like our IRs and find them useful and for the love of all that is Alex Chilton, please use them responsibly.

Yours truly,

--mike... and Red Wire Impulses

[CaliTone]

Although I have a shitload of Cabinet IRs already, I went ahead and bought the full big box package (will buy the speakerbox later). After messing around with it for the last 45 minutes, all I have to say is WOW!!!!.

I was kicking myself in the ass while it was downloading, telling myself why did I go out and spend more money on shit I didn't need. After hearing just a few IRs my "buyer's remorse" quickly disappeared. Great job! Love it!!!

It ROCKS with ReValver!

Cheers!

[Football]

Bought one of the smaller box IR's (Celestion Blue).

Noodling around with it so far. Gotta mess with it more tomorrow with fresh ears, little late at night for me.

Anyway, posted some MP3 riffs with Royer 121.

[Reptil]

...snip...abusing 60 year old radio technology.. and let's not forget the neighbors with the cops on speed dial.....snip...

hmmm got a point there. (he does, I know)

[Ermz]

Cool. Does this use dynamic convolution technology to represent speaker distortion, power amp saturation and differences in cabinet voicing with level, or is it a collection of standard, static IRs?

I'm very interested in the next phase of this technology, but static IRs have already proven that they cannot compete on even grounds with real cabinets for professional productions.

Great for demoing and guide tracks though.

[redwire]

Originally Posted by CaliTone

Although I have a shitload of Cabinet IRs already, I went ahead and bought the full big box package (will buy the speakerbox later). After messing around with it for the last 45 minutes, all I have to say is WOW!!!!.

I was kicking myself in the ass while it was downloading, telling myself why did I go out and spend more money on shit I didn't need. After hearing just a few IRs my "buyer's remorse" quickly disappeared. Great job! Love it!!!

It ROCKS with ReValver!

Cheers!

Glad you like them! And thanks for the kind words and the purchase. There's nothing but good stuff in the signal chain.

Revalver is a good platform for these IRs. The Crunch and Distortion knobs add a whole 'nother element to the mix.

[redwire]

Originally Posted by Football

Bought one of the smaller box IR's (Celestion Blue).

Noodling around with it so far. Gotta mess with it more tomorrow with fresh ears, little late at night for me.

Anyway, posted some MP3 riffs with Royer 121.

Nice "noodling!" The Royer beef is all there. Pulling it back an inch will add more definition, if that's what you're going for. Sounds great. Thanks for posting and thanks for your patronage.

[r.staettler]

does the BigBox Bundle include the upcoming stuff as well?

Or will its price rise when more IRs are available? Otherwise it would just be better to WAIT

[redwire]

Originally Posted by Ermz

Cool. Does this use dynamic convolution technology to represent speaker distortion, power amp saturation and differences in cabinet voicing with level, or is it a collection of standard, static IRs?

I'm very interested in the next phase of this technology, but static IRs have already proven that they cannot compete on even grounds with real cabinets for professional productions.

Great for demoing and guide tracks though.

Thanks for your interest. I'll try my best to answer your questions.

They are static IRs. So, the cabinet voicing is as it was sampled.

We used a Bryston 2B or 4B to power the cabs because we wanted as little distortion or coloration from the power amp as possible.

Any power amp saturation would come from using a real amp into a dummy load or attenuator, which is what I like to do, or simulated by an amp modeler. I find the Palmer PDI-03 or Sequis motherload to be quite transparent when used as a dummy load (no filters). The others I've used seem to roll off the lows (and not just due to the Fletcher-Munson curve) when not attached to a speaker.

As for speaker distortion, some people rely on it for their sound, some avoid it. We don't capture it, as we mention on the site, but you can dial in a similar vibe using the Distortion and Crunch controls in the Revalver convolution module, for instance. So, there are workable solutions for people who prefer to run silent.

We also had high hopes for the next-gen technology, as well. We played around with Nebula and Volterra kernels when we first started this project and the latency in real time use, the CPU hit and the time it takes to sample a single point ruled it out. Perhaps a few years from now, the technology will have advanced sufficiently, but we needed a solution today.

If you compare an IR to a cabinet recorded in a good live room, with a well-placed mic, using first-class preamps and converters, which would be the best case scenario, then yes, I would agree that an IR will not be the same, it will be missing some of the non-linear things not attributed to the guitar amp, like speaker distortion, which you mentioned, and transformer saturation at the preamp. Transformer saturation can be added in later by abusing a preamp's output transformer, though. Speaker distortion, I mentioned already.

We've found that despite some of the limitations, IRs, especially when paired with a real amp, can sound really great. I've heard killer sounds from "in the box" amp modelers, as well. Our job is to try and level the playing field as much as possible, and we've tried to do that by using only the best equipment to capture the IRs and by being as thorough as is possible for guys with ADHD (fortunately I have some OCD mixed in).

Man, I'm feeling long winded today.

As you so aptly pointed out, even people who have access to a nice studio space can still use IRs for demoing and laying down tracks that they can take into the studio later and reamp or polish up.

They can also come in handy salvaging tracks (where the directs were captured) that weren't recorded as well as they should have been, or for augmenting or doubling existing tracks in post.

And the folks who don't have access to a well-equipped studio, well, they have one more tool to help them get great sounding guitar tracks.

Hope this helps.

[redwire]

Originally Posted by r.staettler

does the BigBox Bundle include the upcoming stuff as well?

Or will its price rise when more IRs are available? Otherwise it would just be better to WAIT

Right now the bundle is a bit more than a 20% discount off the individual cabs. The discount will stay about the same, but it won't stay the same price. As the collection grows, we will probably split the bundles off into Vintage and Modern collections, though. Then maybe into Vintage Core, Vintage Esoteric, Vintage Crazy Sh*t We Had Laying Around the Studio, when we start getting into some of the weird cabinets we have sitting around.

[jahtao]

Thorough! Liking it!!

[Ermz]

Thank you for the thorough run-through, Mike. It's good to see an IR library finally sampled with top-class gear. Unfortunate once again that we are still limited by today's sampling technology.

I've also been in some circles where we tested NAT and Nebula for this purpose and unfortunately it didn't come up with the goods in the end. It is currently too cumbersome and unrefined to work adequately for the purpose. What we experienced was a strange sort of top-end un-musical fizz, as if the signal tones were exciting the cab in incorrect ways and the result was a 'dynamic impulse' that was less alike to the real cab tonally than a static IR was.

Good luck with your product launch. It sounds like it may not be the thing for me yet, as I only use impulses for guide tracks and rough mixes, but if the technology comes along in the future I'll be very keen to see (and hear, perhaps!) what you come up with.

[Animus]

Question: I have a Rivera Ktre head which has a line out and a speaker out that goes to a Bogner Uberkab.

What's the best way to get the amp directly into the computer and bypass the cab? Should I just go line out directly into the converter? Go line out in my Great River Me1nv? Or do i need some kind of converter box?

thanks

[redwire]

Originally Posted by Animus

Question: I have a Rivera Ktre head which has a line out and a speaker out that goes to a Bogner Uberkab.

What's the best way to get the amp directly into the computer and bypass the cab? Should I just go line out directly into the converter? Go line out in my Great River Me1nv? Or do i need some kind of converter box?

thanks

You'll want to use the line out to get the signal to your computer. Use a shielded cable, not a speaker cable. You'll probably want an unbalanced cable (TS not TRS). It's the one with only one black stripe. YOU MUST HAVE A SPEAKER OR DUMMY LOAD CONNECTED to the speaker out, though. Sorry for the CAPS, but it's important. You will most likely blow your output transformer if you run it without a load. You need a dummy load that matches the amp's impedance and can handle the wattage if you're going to run silent. The tutorial on the site covers it in a little more detail.

The line out on the K-Tre is after the power amp, which is nice because it means the signal will include any power amp saturation, which is a critical part of the amp's sound. So, in your case if you need to buy a dummy load for silent running, you don't need to worry about it having a line out, and you don't need to be as concerned about it rolling off the lows which some people (including me) complain about with the cheaper boxes because you'll be getting the signal from the line out on your amp. I think your biggest concern will be that it can handle the wattage 'cause that's a mighty powerful beast you got there.

If you're not concerned about totally silent running, you can put your cab somewhere where the sound from it won't interfere with your EQ decisions or piss anybody off... like in a coffin, buried in the back yard. :-) Or, you could use an attenuator, as opposed to a dummy load, which will shave off some volume, but won't be silent.

You can run the line out from the amp into the Great River if you're not getting enough gain, or if you want to include some transformer saturation in your sound.

Hope this helps.

[AshleySmith06]

Hey

Do you have any audio demo's on the site to demo the IR's? I'm curious how these stand up against Recabinet, which I use along with Overloud's TH-1. Btw, is that supported? Should be afaik, right?

Cheers,

Ash

[redwire]

Originally Posted by AshleySmith06

Hey

Do you have any audio demo's on the site to demo the IR's? I'm curious how these stand up against Recabinet, which I use along with Overloud's TH-1. Btw, is that supported? Should be afaik, right?

Cheers,

Ash

Thanks for your interest. If TH-1 supports the Recabinet stuff, then it will support ours. But, I haven't tried it, so it's not on the list.

There aren't any audio demos, but there's something better, at least in my opinion. On the home page, there's a link to something we call the ConvolvoBot! (you have to use an exclamation point when you refer to it, otherwise it will affect its self esteem). You can run your own audio through any of our IRs with it. So, you can do a pretty direct comparison. Just bypass any speaker emulation TH-1 might have and export the file to WAV, then upload it.

I say "pretty direct" because every convolution processor takes various liberties with its calculations to save on processing time, CPU, etc., so that alone may account for some differences.

Make sure you match levels when you compare them. Louder stuff almost always sounds better. The ConvolvoBot! shaves off some volume to avoid clipping.

If you end up using our IRs, please let us know how they work in TH-1, so we can add it to the list. If they don't work for some reason, we'll give you a refund.

[yngve]

Originally Posted by Animus

Question: I have a Rivera Ktre head which has a line out and a speaker out that goes to a Bogner Uberkab.

What's the best way to get the amp directly into the computer and bypass the cab? Should I just go line out directly into the converter? Go line out in my Great River Me1nv? Or do i need some kind of converter box?

thanks

The Millennia TD-1s Speaker Soak technology is awesome for this!

[Animus]

Originally Posted by redwire

You'll want to use the line out to get the signal to your computer. Use a shielded cable, not a speaker cable. You'll probably want an unbalanced cable (TS not TRS). It's the one with only one black stripe. YOU MUST HAVE A SPEAKER OR DUMMY LOAD CONNECTED to the speaker out, though. Sorry for the CAPS, but it's important. You will most likely blow your output transformer if you run it without a load. You need a dummy load that matches the amp's impedance and can handle the wattage if you're going to run silent. The tutorial on the site covers it in a little more detail.

The line out on the K-Tre is after the power amp, which is nice because it means the signal will include any power amp saturation, which is a critical part of the amp's sound. So, in your case if you need to buy a dummy load for silent running, you don't need to worry about it having a line out, and you don't need to be as concerned about it rolling off the lows which some people (including me) complain about with the cheaper boxes because you'll be getting the signal from the line out on your amp. I think your biggest concern will be that it can handle the wattage 'cause that's a mighty powerful beast you got there.

If you're not concerned about totally silent running, you can put your cab somewhere where the sound from it won't interfere with your EQ decisions or piss anybody off... like in a coffin, buried in the back yard. :-) Or, you could use an attenuator, as opposed to a dummy load, which will shave off some volume, but won't be silent.

You can run the line out from the amp into the Great River if you're not getting enough gain, or if you want to include some transformer saturation in your sound.

Hope this helps.

thanks for your input. So I will get better results going line out than direct out the speaker outs? I will just need a dummy load?

What's the cheapest power soak I can get? If I am going to line out I guess quality won't matter since I won't be running sound through the cab.

[Animus]

Originally Posted by yngve

The Millennia TD-1s Speaker Soak technology is awesome for this!

yeah if I had 1800 just for a speaker soak.

[redwire]

Originally Posted by Animus

thanks for your input. So I will get better results going line out than direct out the speaker outs? I will just need a dummy load?

I must be the king of long posts today :-)

Sounds like you have a handle on things, but I'm going to belabor some of the points for the benefit of others that might stumble on this thread.

You can't go direct from the speaker outs to the computer. You need a line out at some point whether it's from your amp or on the dummy load you run on the speaker output.

I would use the line out from your amp since it comes after the power amp and doesn't have the cheesy speaker emulation that some have.

So, if you want to run silent, yes, you need a dummy load. Like you said, it doesn't need to be an $1800 wonder box (although I'm salivating over that TD-1) because you are relying on the LINE OUT from the amp for the tone. It just needs to safely dissipate the power from the SPEAKER OUT.

If you want to check the kind of results you're going to get before you spend money on an attenuator or dummy load, then you can keep the speaker plugged in but don't mic it and record a few riffs by running the LINE OUT (NOT speaker out) into your audio interface. The result will sound all prickly and horrible because you're not getting the benefit of a speaker, or speaker IR.

Make a WAV file of that and upload it to our ConvolvoBot! and choose a range of cabinet/mic combinations. You can try up to 10 at a pass and there's no limit to how many times you can run it. Don't just pick the ones on the grill, make sure you pick some further out, too, and then hone in on the sweet spot for your amp.

If you find something you're happy with, then you're good and you can consider spending a little money on a dummy load. There's a list on the site. There are others not on the list, I'm sure. We listed the ones we had experience with.

IMO, a Weber Mass might work for you, but please do your own research. I personally think it runs a little on the bright side as a DI using the line out. But like you said, you shouldn't need to worry about that because you're using your amp's line out. You're just using it to safely and quietly dissipate the output of your power amp. It's one of the cheaper ones (maybe the cheapest?) and can handle the wattage and has a real speaker motor in it, FWIW.

Good luck with your quest.

[Vocalvoodoo]

Just bought the Marshall 1960B 4x12 • Celestion Vintage 30s pack, and I'm very impressed. I've only tinkered a little, but the Royer/V30 combo sounds great with Revalver mkIII! Night and day vs. the stock cabs.

[Animus]

Originally Posted by redwire

I must be the king of long posts today :-)

Sounds like you have a handle on things, but I'm going to belabor some of the points for the benefit of others that might stumble on this thread.

You can't go direct from the speaker outs to the computer. You need a line out at some point whether it's from your amp or on the dummy load you run on the speaker output.

I would use the line out from your amp since it comes after the power amp and doesn't have the cheesy speaker emulation that some have.

So, if you want to run silent, yes, you need a dummy load. Like you said, it doesn't need to be an $1800 wonder box (although I'm salivating over that TD-1) because you are relying on the LINE OUT from the amp for the tone. It just needs to safely dissipate the power from the SPEAKER OUT.

If you want to check the kind of results you're going to get before you spend money on an attenuator or dummy load, then you can keep the speaker plugged in but don't mic it and record a few riffs by running the LINE OUT (NOT speaker out) into your audio interface. The result will sound all prickly and horrible because you're not getting the benefit of a speaker, or speaker IR.

Make a WAV file of that and upload it to our ConvolvoBot! and choose a range of cabinet/mic combinations. You can try up to 10 at a pass and there's no limit to how many times you can run it. Don't just pick the ones on the grill, make sure you pick some further out, too, and then hone in on the sweet spot for your amp.

If you find something you're happy with, then you're good and you can consider spending a little money on a dummy load. There's a list on the site. There are others not on the list, I'm sure. We listed the ones we had experience with.

IMO, a Weber Mass might work for you, but please do your own research. I personally do not like the way it sounds as an attenuator or as a DI using the line out. It sounds way too bright to me, but like you said, you shouldn't need to worry about that because you're using your amp's line out. You're just using it to safely and quietly dissipate the output of your power amp. It's one of the cheaper ones (maybe the cheapest?) and can handle the wattage and has a real speaker motor in it, FWIW.

Good luck with your quest.

So $200 is the cheapest I can do just for a 8 ohm resister if I don't plan on using the speaker at all? THe amp is 150 w too so I have to make sure the power soak has the same rating?

thanks!

I definitely plan to check out your impulses.

[redwire]

Originally Posted by Animus

So $200 is the cheapest I can do just for a 8 ohm resister if I don't plan on using the speaker at all? THe amp is 150 w too so I have to make sure the power soak has the same rating?

thanks!

I definitely plan to check out your impulses.

Not really sure. There's probably something cheaper. You should probably leave a little headroom as far as the powersoak rating is concerned. I would.

[Ermz]

I had Ted Weber put together a custom dummy load for me which was essentially just a soak for the amp with no outs whatsoever. It cost roughly $100 or so with shipping.

[redwire]

I've updated the Convolvobot! It should now consistently produce files with peaks between -3dbFS and 0dbFs. Give it a try now. Thanks for the feedback.

I would also like to explicitly point out that there's a money back guarantee, which is now on the site. So, if you try them and don't find them useful, we'll give you your money back.

We're pretty sure, though, if you try them you will want to keep them :-)

Thanks for the support.

[lydpik]

No sound samples??

[AshleySmith06]

Originally Posted by lydpik

No sound samples??

One can use Convolvobot! to process an already recorded track using upto 10 of the impulses in the pack(s), so you can hear what the end result is. Or you can make a purchase with 100% money back guarantee if you find they're not what you're after.



I think I'm gonna plug for the bigbox next week and see what's what.

[Beau777]

These are excellent. Maybe the best I've heard. Bought 4 already. When do we see more Fender cabs?

A few of us that use the Fractal Axe-FX have started purchasing them and loading them in the User cab slots and they are working really well.

Also sound great blending a close mic with a back of cab and room IR in the DAW. Lot's of possibilities with these and the phase coherence is a huge plus.

[Absolute]

Personally I thinks its nuts to not have audio examples.

I have never bought anything, that has to do with sound, for my studio without hearing it first--why would I start now? I may show FAITH in Randy Staub...but this? and about the convobot--never make your potential customers jump through hoops.

[C Heat]

Hey redwire.

If this doesn't work out for you, you should try your hand as a copywriter for an ad agency.

Good stuff