Saturday, June 15, 2019

How to capture an impulse response (IR) from an amp (with free plugins) Part 2/2





Now that we have everything ready, let's put our microphone in front of our cabinet (using one of the positions suggested in our article about how to microphone a cab) and now we need to nail perfectly our gain staging, which means let's plug our guitar into the amp until we reach a volume in which the power amp section is giving its best, and let's setup the input gain of our audio interface to make sure the signal is captured loud and clear, but without any clipping. 


Now follow those steps:

1) go on Voxengo Deconvolver, click on "Test Tone Gen", generate the sweep (the sound that covers all the audible spectrum) and save it somewhere in your desktop, then import it into a mono track in your Daw.

2) Connect a jack cable from the output of the audio interface to the return of the effect loop of your amp (making sure the loop is on and if there is a mix knob, it is at 100%).

3) play the sweep file you generated, so that it will come out through your amp, and at the same time record the resulting sound with your microphone into another mono track, making sure it's captured at a good volume, but without clipping.

4) export your recorded sound as a wave file, 24bit 48khz (muting the original sweep track!).




5) now go back to Voxengo Deconvolver and load in the first file browser (Test Tone File) the original sweep you have generated, and in the second file browser (File Folder) the recorded file you just exported. Make sure the bit depth is 24, the "MP transform" box is ticked and so the "Normalize to -0.3dbFS" one, and click the "Process" button.

6) The file resulting from the processing will be your IR. Now you can import it into an IR Loader, such as Ignite Amps NadIR. This is the moment in which we can test our tone and eventually see if the mic positioning is correct, if the volume is right, and this will take a bit of trial and error before we start really nailing the perfect IRs.

7) Repeat the process with all the microphone positions you want, all the different microphones, amps, cabinets you have and you'll create your own collection of IRs, so that every time you will want to play your favourite guitar amp simulator it will sound like it's  played in your rehearsals room or studio!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE RESULT OF OUR IR CAPTURING EXPERIMENT: THE FREE TRIDENT IR PACK!

I hope this was helpful!




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