FAQ's

Each IR pack features (at least) 4 microphones. We opted for a Shure Unidyne III 545 (essentially a vintage sm57), a Sennheiser 421-U4, a Beyerdynamic m201, and a Beyerdynamic m160. The 545 will typically be the brightest sounding mic, and often the best choice to start with when recording. It's a tried and tested, familiar sound that will cut through the mix. The m160 will be the smoothest choice, with the biggest low end. These are often favoured by users for jamming on their own, for recording smoother/darker tones (or micing a brighter speaker position), or for blending too add their characteristics to another microphone. The 421 has a unique voicing that tends to be a bit love/hate to most people. They've been used for decades and also provide a very relatable tone that you are likely familiar with. My favourite use for them is blending - they pair amazingly well with the sm57/545 which results in a thicker midrange and smoother top end. The m201 was described by Steve Albini as what "an sm57 would sound like if it were a microphone". They work amazingly anywhere you'd opt to use a 57, but without the nasal upper midrange characteristic. A great quick choice for a natural representation of the cabinet.

• Why multiple speakers?

Speaker's exhibit a fairly wide sonic variance when it comes to their construction - speakers of the same type will show a consistent similarity but each with their own characteristics. This is exaggerated further based on where they are positioned in a cabinet, and how the cabinet is designed (front/rear loaded, materials, baffle layout, angled vs straight). The age of the speaker can also change the tone of it, with newer speakers generally sounding a bit brighter and firmer than old ones. When micing a cabinet is so nuanced, these little differences can affect the recorded guitar tone in a very noticeable way. 

• Why so many mic positions?

The most common technique for micing guitar cabinets in the studio is to close mic - it provides an immediate and punchy tone, and proximity effect can help convey the feeling of power. When close micing, the position of the microphone becomes critical - 1cm to either side drastically affects the tone. The brightest sounding part of the speaker will be the centre, and it'll darken and change in timbre as you move to the edges of the cone. Furthermore, each side of the speaker will sound slightly different - based on the design of the speaker and how its orientated in the cabinet, and also based on the cabinet design.

Most IR pack's either offer a small choice of positions which may provide a useable result - often its very context dependent, and not being able to move the microphone fractionally to improve the tone further can feel like you have your hands tied. Many products today offer moveable microphone positions; this is achieved by sampling several positions on a cabinet and then blending between each one as you move the virtual microphone across the cabinet. Impulse responses actually lend themselves quite well for this purpose and the results are acceptably accurate IF you take a lot of sample points. The less source IR's to work with, the more accuracy you surrender. The other issue I've found, is many of these products only sample from one edge of the speaker to the centre, rather than from one edge to the other. Given how different each side of the speaker can sound, you end up losing some great tones. 

It's also worth bearing in mind that some microphones and speakers have different sweet spots to others, and that it'll ALL depend on what you are using the IR's with and what tone you are going for. With so many outside variables, it's impossible to predict what the BEST position is. Once you are familiar with how the tone changes with moving the microphone, you'll quickly know where to adjust the mic to for the tone you are looking for. When you are blending mics, this is even more important. Some of the best blended tones can come from combining some quite ugly sounds that cause pleasing phase cancellations and enhancements and result in a fantastic unique tone. With limited IR options, you miss out on many of these possibilities.

• Can you explain what the Clean and Compensated folders are?

This isn't the easiest concept to explain but I'll do my best (you may need some coffee and patience here). Amplifiers are complex beasts and are often designed to interact with the cabinet they are connected to. The amount of interaction will vary amplifier to amplifier, and different cabs and speakers can cause different results. So when a 2x12 sounds different to a 4x12, one of the reasons is because it's making the amp perform differently. Part of the reason a cab with 4 V30's sounds different to a cab with 4 Greenbacks is that the amplifier is interacting differently and producing a different sound. Its not just a one way relationship of the amplifier passing signal through a speaker - the interaction works in the opposite direction too. This is why some amplifiers LOVE the cabinets they were designed around.

The issue with IR's comes when you are isolating JUST the sound of the speaker. Ideally, you want to capture the sound of the speaker AND have the same interaction from the cabinet to the amplifier. An IR has no idea what amplifier or load you are using. This can influence both the process of capturing the IR, and also how accurate it is when it's in use. 

There are a lot of excellent load boxes on the market now that can accurately model the response of a cabinet. This mean's they'll interact with the amplifier in a way that is familiar to what we're used to hearing with the real thing. This is excellent if you are ONLY using IR's that came from a cabinet with a similar load as your load box. For instance, the Suhr Reactive Load is very accurate to a 1960TV with G12m25 75hz Greenbacks. If I use my Clean G12m25 75hz IR's with this load box, the amp behaves and sounds JUST like when I mic it up normally.

If however, I were to use some "Clean" V30 IR's - the amplifier is still behaving like it is connected to a Greenback loaded cab. While this might produce a pleasing result, it's not accurate to how the amplifier sounds when connected to a V30 loaded cabinet. The ideal situation here is to use a load box that is more similar to the IR type. This can become cumbersome for several reasons, and ends up defeating the benefits of using IR's and a single load box in the first place.

This is where the Compensated files come in. They account for the differences between the original cabinet load, and a fixed reactive load. If the "Clean" IR's are from a cabinet with a different sounding load to your loadbox, the compensated ones EQ some of the differences to give a more accurate result. It's not the same as changing the load, but it helps to compensate some of the difference. Its impossible to do this perfectly without accounting for every single amplifier and speaker and cabinet that's ever been created; but what you can find is that sometimes you may prefer this extra bit of accuracy, and sometimes the compensated curve can even sound a little more pleasing (even if its not totally accurate). 

With modellers and profiles, MOST are created using a fixed load. This means that they are accurate for the load they were created with and will be less so if you don't account for other loads when changing cabinet IR's. Some newer products now are accounting for these behaviours (which is great to see), and you can use our Clean IR's and adjust the impedance behaviours in the software. Kemper and Quad Cortex profiles are only captured with one fixed load. The compensated IR's can be really helpful on direct Profiles/Captures to account for the different influences of the load. 

If you are familiar with what kind of load you have, and what you are expecting, then you have some options to get really accurate results. For most users, I'd recommend experimenting for yourself and trying to hear the differences. They're usually fairly subtle and more like a "sweetening" than a drastic tonal shift.

The Clean IR's have no power amp interaction included - these are ideal for Profiles/Captures that have been created with a Reactive Load/cabinet+DI box, or for emulations that have full power amp emulations. It's important to remember that the Compensated IR's also DON'T include the power amp behaviour - they only account for the small differences different loads cause on a power amp. It's a generic corrective curve rather than a replacement for a power amp emulation.

HELIX PROFILES

I was admittedly late to the party on checking out the Helix, and it took me a little while to wrap my head around dialling it in. They give you some advanced parameters that can really help fine tune how you like your amps set up, but it can also be a little overwhelming if you aren’t used to those controls.

When I started comparing the tones from the models to my real amps, I was really amazed with how close they sounded. You’d have to fine tune settings by ear a bit but in almost every instance they could sound really close to the sound of my real amps.

In the studio, I tend to leave a lot of amp settings roughly where I like them best - I still fine tune a little but usually if I need a different kind of sound, I reach for a more appropriate amp. When I realised I could match my “go-to” amp settings in Helix, it was a really cool feeling to fire up a preset and instantly have my sound there. And what was even better was, just as with the real amps, if I need to fine tune things for a different guitar or cabinet, you just adjust the settings a little like you do with the real amp and you’re good.

This sparked the whole idea for Mirror Profiles - I figured I was in a fortunate position to be able to compare to a lot of real amps and fine tune the settings by ear to get them to sonically match. They serve as great starting points for others to have a lifelike tone. Furthermore, I’d done so many comparisons of my IR pack’s against micing up cabinets normally, that if I knew the amp+IR matched amp+cab+mic, and that amp+IR matched Helix+IR, then I was definitely getting something right. It blows my mind that I can recreate my amplifier and cabinet recording chain with a plugin and IR with the results being indistinguishable.

I include an IR with each amp matching pack, but they’ll pair perfectly with all my bigger IR bundles. Some people will prefer having less options and a tone that is ready to go - particularly musicians with less of a “recording engineer” approach. For those who really like to finesse their tone, it’s really worth checking out some of the bigger IR bundles as you’ll get such a wide range of sounds and you can really find what suits your needs best.

The idea of matching the Artist tones came afterwards - I realised that through my amp, cabinet and mic collection I’d built up for making and testing IR’s, I had all the necessary gear to recreate famous guitar sounds. Often my starting point is to match the tone as close as I can with the real gear, and then match those sounds with Helix (or capture with the Kemper). It's been a fun journey to reverse engineer some classic guitar sounds from my favourite engineers - it led me to have a great understanding of how these iconic producers approach their tones, be it through particular amps and cabs, microphones and mic placement techniques. Its one thing to read about the approach in interviews but to be able to put it into practice and hear the results is really satisfying. All of the Artist Tone Matches are made using the most appropriate IR’s from my bigger packs - I’m not relying on deconvolving against the original stems or master recordings, which can work to a degree, but I feel is a brute force approach that sounds a bit TOO close and gets finicky with different guitar or amp inputs. I’m also not relying on heavy post processing - it's all about choosing the right amplifier, the right settings and the right cab and mic positions. It's quite amazing and affirming to me how simple many of these guitar chains are - there’s no need for excessive amounts of gear and you can really hear more often than not that things were kept pretty simple in the studio.