Being able to generate your own IR is such a good thing. Not only does it let you make your own plugged in guitar sound more like your mic'd guitar, but it lets you sound more like other guitars too. Lots of folks out there sell acoustic IRs of certain source guitars. But that to neglects the fact that having the target guitar EQ curve right is just as important as the source eq curve. All the different piezos and built in electronics from different brands sound different, and the differences in the actual guitar is also just as important. I borrowed my friends Collings D1A, collings SJ, Martin HD28, and Taylor 712, as well as my own Taylor Dan Crary, and now my Taylor 614CE can sound more like those, and they sound more realistic than the IR's I tried that weren't made specifically for my 614.
Great point. I’ve gotten ahold of a body transduction pickup, a magnetic sound hole pickup, and an under saddle piezo too. Even still, there will be big differences depending on the preamp and setting used with each guitar’s pickup.
A few extra things to note: If you turn on the minimum phase button, it trims the IR for you. Additionally, if you turn the smoothness down to 0% you'll have a much more accurate EQ curve.
Please excuse my ignorance on this topic…this is new territory for me (I am old school). You trimmed off the beginning of your IR file but left the excess after the pulse of sound. Is there a reason you left the silence after the pulse or does it not matter? I understand the reason for trimming the silence from the beginning of the IR.
Excellent, thank you. I've been using third party IRs, but then suddenly today thought maybe it wouldn't be that hard to make one of my own, for my own guitar, which I love the sound of. Found your video and discovered the process is much easier than I had imagined!
Just made an IR of my archtop guitar now to compare sound of Guitar + IR versus GUITAR + MIC ( I like to blend the pickup with the acoustic sound.) Results: It sounds killer. Now need to make one with a thinner pick to get a brighter version. I live in a noisy house, can rarely use a mic, plus the AC unit is outside on my side of the house. I'm 67 and mostly playing for fun now but this is the bomb! Thanks so much Alex for the video. You can really hear the "WOOD" of the guitar. UPDATE: I can only use it between 1- 30% and then 100% otherwise the the tone gets very thin.
Alex, I got turned onto this plugin from one of your previous videos, and I bought the plugin. This works extremely well! I've made and given away a few IR files on my own channel after watching your other video. For anyone who is curious, give this a try. It's a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. Thanks again for pointing out this awesome plugin and process.
I recorded my Taylor 414 through a microphone into a DAW, and the same piece of music with all guitars I have with a piezo (Crowdster, Crafter SA, Brenner Piezo, others). The IR generated definitely helped. I will say that the eq plugin inside the DAW was astoundingly good; I was shocked how good everything sounded. The IR exported and applied in Helix was an improvement, but nowhere near as good sounding as the eq curve generated and applied in the DAW. Not sure if that's the nature of IRs or if I'm doing something wrong.
I am so happy with the whole idea of IR's. Sure it's not always sounding 100% right, but it's a thousand times better than that absolutely horrible sound coming from a piezo transducer. I always hated that sound so deeply.
I tried to use this method to make a guitar sound like a banjo. i knew it was a long shot, but tried it anyways. The IR gave my guitar the brightness of the banjo, especially when i turned up the tone knob on my guitar, but other than that it unfortunately doesnt sound very convincing. i do not think that is the fault of the software though. It is just too much of a difference of sound to capture only with an EQ curve. i will be using this software to make IRs of more other things in the future!
Yeah, that's the problem - it's limited by just being an EQ. A proper IR measures EQ as it pertains to a time value, so perhaps if there were a way to capture that in a good way, an ordinary IR could maybe hold the right information for that use. I've had great results matching guitars to other guitars, and even violin to a cello now, but banjo and guitar I think are just too different in how the note resonates and decays. I haven't tried creating a banjo IR yet since I use a mic on my Bacon & Day tenor. I'm not sure if this method would even work the same way for banjo to banjo as it does for acoustic guitars. It's interesting to think about the possibilities
Great content, thanks! Do you reckon it's possible/feasible to try and make stereo IRs? E.g. XY mic set-up? Thanks in advance for any input, I suspect this might be a stupid noob question. My guitar (Ovation) sounds fine with a mono mic, but still feels somewhat "incomplete" to my ears. Thanks again.
Thanks for this informative video! Couple of questions: 1. Is this basically what one would get out of using a ToneDexter unit or is there more to the TD that makes an acoustic sound better live? 2. You mentioned that your Martin using a different pickup system. Why would the system you're using matter if you're just applying an EQ curve to it? Thanks!
I think there's a bit more to the Tone Dexter, though they're very secretive about it. It's definitely similar. The pickup system matters when you create a match EQ like this because it's ultimately compensating for whatever the pickup lacks. If I'm mismatching pickups and these match EQ IRs, I might have an IR that is compensating for a treble loss in a certain range that the pickup I'm currently using does just fine with. The end result would be a super unrealistic boost in that range.
Nice video, Alex! Two questions. 1 Does the source (piezo) and target (mic) guitar have to be the same instrument? 2 Do you need to record the piezo and mic simultaneously for the software to analyze the differences between the two guitars? I was wondering if you can record a guitar that has no pickups with a mic and then use another guitar with a piezo to play and get the first guitar's sound.
I have Godin Solidac electric guitar and it has LR Baggs X-Bridge which is some kind of piezo bridge pickup (?). Pure signal from that pickup has a very "plastic/metallic" sound. As I understand, raw signal from piezo always sounds like that. My question is can I record few chords like you on my Godin guitar through bridge pickup (like you do in this video), and then use mic recording of some other guitar not playing same sequence of chords (maybe even download beautiful sounding recording of a acoustic guitar from the web since I don't have acoustic guitar and condenser mic) and then use your method described in a video to get an good IR for piezo signal from my Godin Solidac? I tried bunch of free acoustic IR's for various types of pickup systems but when i pass signal from LR Baggs X-Bridge piezo through them it even sounds worse than raw signal.
Nice technique and explanation. I'm curious... wouldn't it be better to simultaneously record with a mic and the direct piezo signal and then use that recorded mic as the comparison instead of using a microphone effect on the piezo signal for the comparison?
@@AlexPriceMusician unless I'm missing something, aren't you modeling a microphone using a plugin on the second channel (the one you are calling the mic channel) from the same guitar pickup DI signal that's on the other channel instead of actually using a microphone to record the guitar acoustically on the mic channel, which you could do simultaneously with the DI?
Hi Alex, thanks for your video. It’s been a great help and changed my life for live performances. But there’s one thing, I do get a significant gain drop when I load the IR. My work around it to use a gain block in my Quad Cortex, but I’m wandering if there’s any other way to make the IR sound « louder ». If by any chance you know, thanks for letting us know !
This video is so awesome thank you! I have a quick question. I have two guitars with the lr Baggs anthem, one is a SL and the other is the full anthem that can blend between Piezo and mic. Would an IR work well with these pickups?
If I were you, I'd create one IR for 100% piezo, then one for 50/50 piezo and mic. I use IRs even with my Fishman rare earth mic blend system. Think of it like a very specific EQ. Sometimes an internal mic can sound a bit boomy so I'll use and IR to help.
I was thinking this, but I can't see how you can export that EQ curve into a Wav file to use as the impulse response. EQ Match should work as long as you're staying in logic, but if you want to export it to use in modellers, it becomes a problem. Is there a way to export the EQ curve from Match EQ?
@@llionbevan3386 I did this some time ago; from what I recall, it was about saving the match EQ result, locating the preset, and just renaming this to .wav
Great vid! Found it on reddt. I am having an issue though, as I posted on the helix sub. I think I'm not missing any steps but the IRs I create and import into my helix are silent. If I dial down the IR mix the guitar signal fades back in. What might I be missing?
When I was getting that issue, it turned out that the IRs were actually too short. Trim the IR right up to the start of the waveform and then export a little bit past the end of the file just to be safe.
Maybe record the acoustic through a mic, then record a similar passage direct in with your electric and then go through the process? Either that or get a magnetic soundhole pickup and do the exact process shown in this video
The HX Stomp is the most affordable of the various Helix units. Or if that is too much, you can also find something as cheap as the Soncake IR to load an impulse response - www.sonicake.com/products/sonic-ir?sca_ref=1423127.N7n9z6QRNq
My SSL 2 was a piece of plastic junk that failed within 6 months. I recommend people stay away from those interfaces. I listened to the YT hype on that thing and felt like I was ripped off. I spent a little bit more and bought the Clarettt + Pre and life is so much better. Maybe I got a lemon with the SSL 2 , but the buttons were loose and fuzzy, and it made a god awful buzzing noise even with nothing plugged into it. 2nd channel didn't work at all either. I think they're cheap garbage, but that's just my opinion.
@@AlexPriceMusician The purpose of these messages was to share an information especially by using a free software... I would like to know why they disappeared from the comments...
@@MrKornea I haven't seen any comments other than this one. You should know that RUclips automatically flags and removes comments with links to external sites. Sorry man. I appreciate you sharing whatever you did! Feel free to try again but without a link if you're able to.
It doesn't work... curious... Here is the post : 5th attempt at posting a comment (damn RUclips): A few months ago, I had been looking for links and info on acoustic IRs (like many, I hate the sound of the piezo). At the time, I found your video using IR sigma audio). By continuing to search, I found a 100% open source and free method (same principle: a sound card, 2 inputs, one on the piezo, the other on a microphone): ruclips.net/video/wgBRN0K5S4I/видео.html This software is developed by two people in France and all the information is available on their website (the link in the description of the video. I was also able to communicate with these two people by mail : they are very cool, answer in the day and give advices on how to get an IR. With this method, I was able to design the IR of my own acoustic guitar without spending a penny...
Being able to generate your own IR is such a good thing. Not only does it let you make your own plugged in guitar sound more like your mic'd guitar, but it lets you sound more like other guitars too. Lots of folks out there sell acoustic IRs of certain source guitars. But that to neglects the fact that having the target guitar EQ curve right is just as important as the source eq curve. All the different piezos and built in electronics from different brands sound different, and the differences in the actual guitar is also just as important. I borrowed my friends Collings D1A, collings SJ, Martin HD28, and Taylor 712, as well as my own Taylor Dan Crary, and now my Taylor 614CE can sound more like those, and they sound more realistic than the IR's I tried that weren't made specifically for my 614.
Great point. I’ve gotten ahold of a body transduction pickup, a magnetic sound hole pickup, and an under saddle piezo too. Even still, there will be big differences depending on the preamp and setting used with each guitar’s pickup.
A few extra things to note: If you turn on the minimum phase button, it trims the IR for you.
Additionally, if you turn the smoothness down to 0% you'll have a much more accurate EQ curve.
Thanks Jeffry! Hoping to revisit this video sometime now that I have a better understanding of it.
great video. also, Logic Pro has a stock IR plugin. it’s called Space Designer.
I don't think i've even heard of IR before today and now I know I've got my work cut out for me!! looking forward to diving into it!
Yeah! Time to load some into your new HX Stomp
Please excuse my ignorance on this topic…this is new territory for me (I am old school). You trimmed off the beginning of your IR file but left the excess after the pulse of sound. Is there a reason you left the silence after the pulse or does it not matter? I understand the reason for trimming the silence from the beginning of the IR.
Excellent, thank you. I've been using third party IRs, but then suddenly today thought maybe it wouldn't be that hard to make one of my own, for my own guitar, which I love the sound of. Found your video and discovered the process is much easier than I had imagined!
Just made an IR of my archtop guitar now to compare sound of Guitar + IR versus GUITAR + MIC ( I like to blend the pickup with the acoustic sound.)
Results: It sounds killer. Now need to make one with a thinner pick to get a brighter version. I live in a noisy house, can rarely use a mic, plus the AC unit is outside on my side of the house. I'm 67 and mostly playing for fun now but this is the bomb! Thanks so much Alex for the video. You can really hear the "WOOD" of the guitar.
UPDATE: I can only use it between 1- 30% and then 100% otherwise the the tone gets very thin.
That's awesome to hear. I've always wanted to try it with my archtop to see if I could get a sort of acoustic tone.
Alex, I got turned onto this plugin from one of your previous videos, and I bought the plugin. This works extremely well! I've made and given away a few IR files on my own channel after watching your other video. For anyone who is curious, give this a try. It's a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. Thanks again for pointing out this awesome plugin and process.
Glad it’s working out! That’s exciting to hear
This tutorial is very well done! Thanks for it and the comprehensive explanation!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you sir, I went through the process this morning and it was most successful !
Glad it helped!
@@AlexPriceMusician I finally, properly, characterized my Martin and it’s in my Fractal FM9…you made my life easy. :)
great video. thanks
I recorded my Taylor 414 through a microphone into a DAW, and the same piece of music with all guitars I have with a piezo (Crowdster, Crafter SA, Brenner Piezo, others). The IR generated definitely helped. I will say that the eq plugin inside the DAW was astoundingly good; I was shocked how good everything sounded. The IR exported and applied in Helix was an improvement, but nowhere near as good sounding as the eq curve generated and applied in the DAW. Not sure if that's the nature of IRs or if I'm doing something wrong.
Great concept! I might have to try it!
Incredibly useful info! Thanks!!
Fantastic video. Thank you
I am so happy with the whole idea of IR's. Sure it's not always sounding 100% right, but it's a thousand times better than that absolutely horrible sound coming from a piezo transducer.
I always hated that sound so deeply.
Man your videos are life saver! Keep up the good work!
Glad to help!
I tried to use this method to make a guitar sound like a banjo. i knew it was a long shot, but tried it anyways. The IR gave my guitar the brightness of the banjo, especially when i turned up the tone knob on my guitar, but other than that it unfortunately doesnt sound very convincing. i do not think that is the fault of the software though. It is just too much of a difference of sound to capture only with an EQ curve. i will be using this software to make IRs of more other things in the future!
Yeah, that's the problem - it's limited by just being an EQ. A proper IR measures EQ as it pertains to a time value, so perhaps if there were a way to capture that in a good way, an ordinary IR could maybe hold the right information for that use.
I've had great results matching guitars to other guitars, and even violin to a cello now, but banjo and guitar I think are just too different in how the note resonates and decays.
I haven't tried creating a banjo IR yet since I use a mic on my Bacon & Day tenor. I'm not sure if this method would even work the same way for banjo to banjo as it does for acoustic guitars. It's interesting to think about the possibilities
Is it possible to create an Impulse Response from an existing audio? In other words, taking a WAV audio from the internet and turning it into an IR.
If you use Minimum Phase the cut on the IR is done matematically
it's much better to use the "Minimum phase" option, which will remove the "preringing" in a more scientific way
Discovered this too recently. Thanks!
Very cool!
Great content, thanks! Do you reckon it's possible/feasible to try and make stereo IRs? E.g. XY mic set-up? Thanks in advance for any input, I suspect this might be a stupid noob question. My guitar (Ovation) sounds fine with a mono mic, but still feels somewhat "incomplete" to my ears. Thanks again.
Thanks for this informative video! Couple of questions:
1. Is this basically what one would get out of using a ToneDexter unit or is there more to the TD that makes an acoustic sound better live?
2. You mentioned that your Martin using a different pickup system. Why would the system you're using matter if you're just applying an EQ curve to it? Thanks!
I think there's a bit more to the Tone Dexter, though they're very secretive about it. It's definitely similar. The pickup system matters when you create a match EQ like this because it's ultimately compensating for whatever the pickup lacks. If I'm mismatching pickups and these match EQ IRs, I might have an IR that is compensating for a treble loss in a certain range that the pickup I'm currently using does just fine with. The end result would be a super unrealistic boost in that range.
Nice video, Alex! Two questions. 1 Does the source (piezo) and target (mic) guitar have to be the same instrument? 2 Do you need to record the piezo and mic simultaneously for the software to analyze the differences between the two guitars? I was wondering if you can record a guitar that has no pickups with a mic and then use another guitar with a piezo to play and get the first guitar's sound.
Absolutely! Just try to record an identical sample.
Is it possible to make an electric guitar with an octave pedal sound more like a real bass guitar using this method?
I have Godin Solidac electric guitar and it has LR Baggs X-Bridge which is some kind of piezo bridge pickup (?). Pure signal from that pickup has a very "plastic/metallic" sound. As I understand, raw signal from piezo always sounds like that.
My question is can I record few chords like you on my Godin guitar through bridge pickup (like you do in this video), and then use mic recording of some other guitar not playing same sequence of chords (maybe even download beautiful sounding recording of a acoustic guitar from the web since I don't have acoustic guitar and condenser mic) and then use your method described in a video to get an good IR for piezo signal from my Godin Solidac?
I tried bunch of free acoustic IR's for various types of pickup systems but when i pass signal from LR Baggs X-Bridge piezo through them it even sounds worse than raw signal.
Nice technique and explanation. I'm curious... wouldn't it be better to simultaneously record with a mic and the direct piezo signal and then use that recorded mic as the comparison instead of using a microphone effect on the piezo signal for the comparison?
The mic modeling is on the mic channel.
@@AlexPriceMusician unless I'm missing something, aren't you modeling a microphone using a plugin on the second channel (the one you are calling the mic channel) from the same guitar pickup DI signal that's on the other channel instead of actually using a microphone to record the guitar acoustically on the mic channel, which you could do simultaneously with the DI?
Didn't understand why you only trimmed a little bit of the dead space on the IR....how long should they be?
Most IR loaders handle 1024 samples, some 2048 or more. I generally trim to 1024 for match EQs. A traditional IR will have a longer tail.
Hi Alex, thanks for your video. It’s been a great help and changed my life for live performances. But there’s one thing, I do get a significant gain drop when I load the IR. My work around it to use a gain block in my Quad Cortex, but I’m wandering if there’s any other way to make the IR sound « louder ». If by any chance you know, thanks for letting us know !
To fix that, I've pulled the IR back into Logic, then bounced with normalization turned on. It'll bring the IR to 0db.
This video is so awesome thank you! I have a quick question. I have two guitars with the lr Baggs anthem, one is a SL and the other is the full anthem that can blend between Piezo and mic. Would an IR work well with these pickups?
If I were you, I'd create one IR for 100% piezo, then one for 50/50 piezo and mic. I use IRs even with my Fishman rare earth mic blend system. Think of it like a very specific EQ. Sometimes an internal mic can sound a bit boomy so I'll use and IR to help.
@@AlexPriceMusician awesome thanks for the info! And I’m glad I found your channel loads of great content!
Why not use match EQ that comes with Logic?
I was thinking this, but I can't see how you can export that EQ curve into a Wav file to use as the impulse response. EQ Match should work as long as you're staying in logic, but if you want to export it to use in modellers, it becomes a problem. Is there a way to export the EQ curve from Match EQ?
@@llionbevan3386 Match EQ has the ability to export the IR
Oh cool, how?
@@llionbevan3386 I did this some time ago; from what I recall, it was about saving the match EQ result, locating the preset, and just renaming this to .wav
Great vid! Found it on reddt. I am having an issue though, as I posted on the helix sub. I think I'm not missing any steps but the IRs I create and import into my helix are silent. If I dial down the IR mix the guitar signal fades back in. What might I be missing?
When I was getting that issue, it turned out that the IRs were actually too short. Trim the IR right up to the start of the waveform and then export a little bit past the end of the file just to be safe.
thanks...how do i make an ir that will make my electric les paul or strat sound like an acoustic?
Maybe record the acoustic through a mic, then record a similar passage direct in with your electric and then go through the process? Either that or get a magnetic soundhole pickup and do the exact process shown in this video
Are there ay other plugins which do the same thing too?
I haven't found any besides the one I mentioned in this video.
great vid but when I looked up the Helix it was way out of my price range...
The HX Stomp is the most affordable of the various Helix units. Or if that is too much, you can also find something as cheap as the Soncake IR to load an impulse response - www.sonicake.com/products/sonic-ir?sca_ref=1423127.N7n9z6QRNq
My SSL 2 was a piece of plastic junk that failed within 6 months. I recommend people stay away from those interfaces. I listened to the YT hype on that thing and felt like I was ripped off. I spent a little bit more and bought the Clarettt + Pre and life is so much better. Maybe I got a lemon with the SSL 2 , but the buttons were loose and fuzzy, and it made a god awful buzzing noise even with nothing plugged into it. 2nd channel didn't work at all either. I think they're cheap garbage, but that's just my opinion.
OK... one more... What's the point to have a youtube channel if no comment are allowed... Let's unsuscribe !
.?
@@AlexPriceMusician The purpose of these messages was to share an information especially by using a free software... I would like to know why they disappeared from the comments...
@@MrKornea I haven't seen any comments other than this one. You should know that RUclips automatically flags and removes comments with links to external sites. Sorry man. I appreciate you sharing whatever you did! Feel free to try again but without a link if you're able to.
@@AlexPriceMusician ok, thanks for your reply... I will try again
It doesn't work... curious... Here is the post :
5th attempt at posting a comment (damn RUclips):
A few months ago, I had been looking for links and info on acoustic IRs (like many, I hate the sound of the piezo). At the time, I found your video using IR sigma audio).
By continuing to search, I found a 100% open source and free method (same principle: a sound card, 2 inputs, one on the piezo, the other on a microphone): ruclips.net/video/wgBRN0K5S4I/видео.html
This software is developed by two people in France and all the information is available on their website (the link in the description of the video. I was also able to communicate with these two people by mail : they are very cool, answer in the day and give advices on how to get an IR.
With this method, I was able to design the IR of my own acoustic guitar without spending a penny...