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Post by mcirish on Jan 13, 2020 16:42:07 GMT -6
Hi,
I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this, but lately I have been getting into using IRs for speaker cabinets. I can record loud amps silently using a load box and a DI into my DAW. Then, I apply a cabinet IR in Pulse or faIRmegeddon. The results have been great. So, that got me thinking about using IRs to get a DI of an instrument to sound close to the sound of a mic'd instrument. I know there is the Tone Dexter pedal that does just that. But my thought was that I might be able to do something like that and then load the IR into a cheap loader pedal like the Mooer Radar. Sound interesting?
From reading up on the subject, I have come up with these steps. If you have done this before, check it over and tell me if I'm missing something. I do have a question in there about the sweep tone length.
Here are the steps: Using any DAW, Izotope Ozone, Voxengo Deconvolver
1) Instrument with mic into preamp - to DAW
2) Instrument into preamp DI - to DAW
3) Get levels somewhat close to each other without any clipping
4) Record both tracks at the same time in various ranges of the instrument
5) Normalize both resulting recordings
6) Export those two recordings - at least you need the one that was mic'd
7) On the DI track, add Ozone to it and do an EQ match to the mic'd recording
8) After you have the match, save the EQ match as a file preset (you will need it)
9) In Deconvolver, generate a test tone. Not sure how long 250ms? 500ms? Longer? Most speaker IRs are either 250ms or 500ms
10) On a new track in DAW, add the test tone file
11) Add Ozone as an insert and apply the matched EQ to the sweep
12) Export the sweep with the EQ and save as a wav file
13) Open Deconvolver and add the test tone (the raw one - not EQ'd) in the test tone file line
14) In the file folder line, add the exported test tone with EQ on it
15) Select where to save the output file
16) Process - the saved wav file is the IR
17) Load the IR into an IR loader and test
If you've read this far, what do you think?
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Post by mcirish on Jan 13, 2020 22:31:13 GMT -6
Ok, I figured this would be too geeky for most people. Just to sort of wrap it up for the curious, I tried the theory tonight and make an IR of an expensive mandolin. I recorded it with a DI and a mic. I then did the match EQ and applied the EQ curve to a sweep. I ran that through Deconvolvers to make the IR. I loaded the IR into a loader in my DAW and played back the DI track with the IR. It sounded amazingly close to the microphone channel. Easily the best sound I've ever got from this instrument plugged in. This is seriously a game changing technique for live acoustic instrument amplification. I got a sound that was so close to the sound of a mic without any feedback issues that a mic would have.
Now, I just need an IR loader pedal that can change IRs on the fly for when I switch instruments.
Incredible.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 13, 2020 23:10:07 GMT -6
Hi, I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this, but lately I have been getting into using IRs for speaker cabinets. I can record loud amps silently using a load box and a DI into my DAW. Then, I apply a cabinet IR in Pulse or faIRmegeddon. The results have been great. So, that got me thinking about using IRs to get a DI of an instrument to sound close to the sound of a mic'd instrument. I know there is the Tone Dexter pedal that does just that. But my thought was that I might be able to do something like that and then load the IR into a cheap loader pedal like the Mooer Radar. Sound interesting? From reading up on the subject, I have come up with these steps. If you have done this before, check it over and tell me if I'm missing something. I do have a question in there about the sweep tone length. Here are the steps: Using any DAW, Izotope Ozone, Voxengo Deconvolver 1) Instrument with mic into preamp - to DAW 2) Instrument into preamp DI - to DAW 3) Get levels somewhat close to each other without any clipping 4) Record both tracks at the same time in various ranges of the instrument 5) Normalize both resulting recordings 6) Export those two recordings - at least you need the one that was mic'd 7) On the DI track, add Ozone to it and do an EQ match to the mic'd recording 8) After you have the match, save the EQ match as a file preset (you will need it) 9) In Deconvolver, generate a test tone. Not sure how long 250ms? 500ms? Longer? Most speaker IRs are either 250ms or 500ms 10) On a new track in DAW, add the test tone file 11) Add Ozone as an insert and apply the matched EQ to the sweep 12) Export the sweep with the EQ and save as a wav file 13) Open Deconvolver and add the test tone (the raw one - not EQ'd) in the test tone file line 14) In the file folder line, add the exported test tone with EQ on it 15) Select where to save the output file 16) Process - the saved wav file is the IR 17) Load the IR into an IR loader and test If you've read this far, what do you think? What do I think? I think I'm damn happy that I don't have to mess with all that complicated stuff! Kudos to you! |
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 13, 2020 23:13:33 GMT -6
Ok, I figured this would be too geeky for most people. Just to sort of wrap it up for the curious, I tried the theory tonight and make an IR of an expensive mandolin. I recorded it with a DI and a mic. I then did the match EQ and applied the EQ curve to a sweep. I ran that through Deconvolvers to make the IR. I loaded the IR into a loader in my DAW and played back the DI track with the IR. It sounded amazingly close to the microphone channel. Easily the best sound I've ever got from this instrument plugged in. This is seriously a game changing technique for live acoustic instrument amplification. I got a sound that was so close to the sound of a mic without any feedback issues that a mic would have. Now, I just need an IR loader pedal that can change IRs on the fly for when I switch instruments. Incredible. Sounds cool. What I fail to understand is why you would have feedback issues when recording an acoustic instrument in a studio, even a relatively primitive one....? |
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Post by mcirish on Jan 14, 2020 9:25:30 GMT -6
Hi John,
This is not for recording. It is for live use, but I needed to do the proof of concept in the studio. Yes, it is an amazing amount of steps. It ends up being way more complicated than simply using a modeling pedal with EQ. But on the other hand, if sonic accuracy is the intended goal, no modeler or EQ can do this. In essence, I am using the IR as a preset EQ that has infinite bands. It's been created from a matching EQ, so sonically, it's as close to the sound of the mic as I can get.
The only trouble now is finding an IR loader pedal that allows me to go through presets with my feet. In one of my bands, I play 7 different acoustic instruments. They all have varying sound qualities so each on needs a preset. The Mooer radar is the cheapest solution but it only has a rotary encoder to select the IR. If you think about it, this is very similar to what the Fishman Aura pedal does, except I am using an IR of my actual instrument.
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Post by stormymondays on Jan 14, 2020 10:21:20 GMT -6
I’m glad to see it works. In the studio, I’ve used acoustic guitar IRs when mixing live tracks that had piezo acoustic guitars with great success.
I think the weak link of your process is the matching EQ. It seems like it would be a lot better to capture the impulse response of the actual instrument. I have never tried this but I’ve reas stuff about people banging the guitar bridge without strings and recording that.
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Post by svart on Jan 14, 2020 10:40:02 GMT -6
I've seen a few acoustic guitar IR's coming out. Most of them are of chords and progressions you can put together, but I think soon they'll have ways to do it very seamlessly.
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Post by mcirish on Jan 14, 2020 10:42:01 GMT -6
I’m glad to see it works. In the studio, I’ve used acoustic guitar IRs when mixing live tracks that had piezo acoustic guitars with great success. I think the weak link of your process is the matching EQ. It seems like it would be a lot better to capture the impulse response of the actual instrument. I have never tried this but I’ve reas stuff about people banging the guitar bridge without strings and recording that. The process I used does use the actual instrument to create the IR. I know there are a lot of steps to my process, but the end result sounded just like the instrument with a mic on it, instead of the piezo pickup sound. I didn't want to buy premade IRs of other instruments. In my case, I have some very fine instruments and I just want them to come across sounding natural in a live setting. So many premade IRs make the instrument sound less like itself. They way I made the IR made it sound exactly like what it really sounds like with a mic, except with hopefully no feedback during a show. I'm tempted to just buy a Mooer Radar and deal with the preset changing process (bend down and turn a knob). I wish I could find an IR loader that had up and down buttons to select the IRs, but I have not found one that does just what I want. maybe I should go in to business. I could sell 5 or 6 of these, I'm sure. :-) |
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Post by stormymondays on Jan 14, 2020 10:46:02 GMT -6
Can’t argue with the results and that’s all that matters. However, I think you are creating an IR of a match EQ. That’s the bottleneck of the process, isn’t it? It would be better to skip that step, at least theoretically. However, it might complicate the capture too much for maybe not a huge difference in the results.
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Post by mcirish on Jan 14, 2020 11:52:15 GMT -6
Can’t argue with the results and that’s all that matters. However, I think you are creating an IR of a match EQ. That’s the bottleneck of the process, isn’t it? It would be better to skip that step, at least theoretically. However, it might complicate the capture too much for maybe not a huge difference in the results. I'm not sure how I would create an IR in any other way than to base it on a match EQ. In this case, I'm simply trying to get a piezo pickup to sound like a microphone on the same instrument. The IR based on the matching EQ works to do just that. If I were making IRs of speaker cabinets, that would be much much easier as there is no need for a matching EQ. A sweep is all that is needed in that scenario. Thanks for the interest. I will post a couple clips of the piezo, mic and processed piezo audio at some point. That would help everyone; if they could hear what I'm hearing. |
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Post by stormymondays on Jan 14, 2020 11:58:18 GMT -6
I haven’t got deep into it but it seems people go as far as putting a speaker inside a guitar and playing a sweep. I just started reading about it a couple days ago but it seemed complicated. Maybe I’ll give your method a try. Thanks!
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Post by tkaitkai on Jan 14, 2020 16:21:34 GMT -6
I do something very similar to this all the time.
You can use Ozone to EQ match pretty much any recorded distorted guitar tone with anywhere from 75 to 90% accuracy. Save it as an IR and it can be used with any amp sim — the IR gives you a really nice frequency response, and swapping out amp sims gives you flexibility with the distortion characteristics.
This yields 1000x better results than using amp sims as-is. Often, I find it to be on par with a Kemper.
I've tried EQ matching acoustic guitars, but never had much luck. I haven't thought to use a DI, though — I'll have to give that a shot!
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Post by askomiko on Jan 15, 2020 7:26:57 GMT -6
I did this with AxeFX for live use too, with that the process is nice and easy: Piezo and mic connected into inputs 1 and 2, hit tone match and play the guitar. Done. But I still struggled with feedback with the piezo pickup and eventually got a Line6 Variax acoustic. Doesn't sound any good but zero feedback, no matter how loud.
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Post by mcirish on Jan 15, 2020 9:08:02 GMT -6
I have not used this IR configuration live so far. I've only done the proof of concept in the studio. I had someone in yesterday and played them the before and after recordings. They were also amazed at how close the IR got to the sound of a mic. I have no idea how it will do on stage with loud monitors. It may have some feedback issues but I'm willing to give it a try. The sound is worth the effort I put in.
I did buy a Mooer Radar IR pedal to test my results in a show. I won't have the pedal until next week but I will report back then on how it worked in a rehearsal.
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Post by EmRR on Jan 15, 2020 10:11:30 GMT -6
Sounds like a good start.
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Post by mcirish on Jan 20, 2020 12:12:06 GMT -6
I got a Mooer Radar and loaded in my custom IR I made for a Gibson Fern mandolin. The sound I can get is now the closest I've ever got to the actual sound of the instrument. So with that, the theory is proved for me. Next thing to do is to create custom IRs for each of the acoustic instruments I play live and then load them into the pedal. I will finally have a stage sound that is inspiring instead of aggravating. Seriously, why pay 10k+ for an instrument that will sound more like the $100 pickup in it than it's own acoustic sound. I wish I was a bit smarter and had a lot more money. I'd make a better version of the Tone Dexter, which I assume is pretty close to this idea. I think that idea could take over the market. No more quacky piezo pickup sounds. Who wouldn't want that?
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Post by sloidj on May 15, 2021 9:56:32 GMT -6
Hi mcirish,
Thank you for posting your IR making method and results.
I’m late to the party but have a question.
I have a Fishman JD Aura pedal with Jerry Douglas IRs built in via their proprietary method. I want to extract a couple of preferred Fishman images from the pedal and load them as IRs in to my Mooer Radar pedal, so that I can access multiple IRs in one box for convenience much like the way you describe.
Since I already have great sounding IRs in my Fishman pedal, would it make sense to send the test tone through the Fishman box and then combine the raw test tone with the Fishman test one in the de-convolver?
I’m not sure if that makes sense but your opinion would be appreciated.
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Post by mcirish on May 15, 2021 16:55:02 GMT -6
I would think you could do a sweep and then deconvolve the results to give you the IR. If the pedal has something you really like, it's worth a shot. For me, using IRs is still the best way to get a natural acoustic sound from an instrument with a pickup. I recently bought a Mooer 300 Lite. Gives me some extra fx I can use along with my custom IRs. Works great.
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Post by sloidj on May 15, 2021 20:30:37 GMT -6
Thanks for the reply mcirish. I went ahead and successfully extracted an IR from the Fishman. It sounds great and I will be loading a few in to my Radar as planned. The Radar will also serve well for live streaming and switching between guitars.
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Post by johneppstein on May 16, 2021 13:34:35 GMT -6
I do something very similar to this all the time. You can use Ozone to EQ match pretty much any recorded distorted guitar tone with anywhere from 75 to 90% accuracy. Save it as an IR and it can be used with any amp sim — the IR gives you a really nice frequency response, and swapping out amp sims gives you flexibility with the distortion characteristics. This yields 1000x better results than using amp sims as-is. Often, I find it to be on par with a Kemper. I've tried EQ matching acoustic guitars, but never had much luck. I haven't thought to use a DI, though — I'll have to give that a shot! Except that we're not talking about electric guitars. A distorted electric guitar is easy compared to an acoustic. |
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bp
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Post by bp on Sept 13, 2024 12:23:44 GMT -6
mcirish, thanks for this tutorial, I'm interested in trying this approach. I'm not particularly technically savvy so it's a little intimidating.
Also I have a Mac so the voxengo plug in is not an option; I'm wondering if there is an alternative to do the deconvolution.
From what others have said, this approach seems like it's really creating an IR of the match EQ, which is itself a useful approach and sounds like it works well, so I'd start there.
I'm wondering if an alternative would somehow be to maybe put speaker into the instrument playing a sine wave sweep and record both the mic and pickup versions of the sine wave directly? From the standpoint of the IR, which would be the reference and which would be the response? Seems to me that the pickup would be the reference (i.e., it represents the "unaltered" sound) and the mic would be the response sound. Is that right?
I wonder if this would yield a more accurate IR? It may be that the difference would be minimal in real-life applications though.
(for what it's worth: I'm trying to do this with an oud, which is why I need to make my own IRs - there aren't any available for this instrument)
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