Kapo_Polenton":37snbodh said:
With the IR's, are you just choosing two IR's that were from the same distance off the speaker to get your tone or are you fiddling with a whole bunch to get two that compliment each other. Did you do any high/low passes on these ? I could def work with that tone for leads at the very least if not more.
Each impulse response (IR) file that you load is a "snapshot" of a certain mic on a certain speaker, at a certain distance/angle/etc. and running through whatever mic preamp/EQ/etc. the person used when creating the IR. Dynamic things such as transformer saturation etc. aren't modeled into the IR; only static representations of things like that make it through (those things can influence the IR, but not dynamically; it just adds an EQ to it). If you have enough IR though, it's quite feasible to choose a certain mic/distance/speaker/etc. and blend two or more IR if you want (to make it sound as though you're using two or more mics). It has its limits but it's very good, and using this on a PC or Mac with a real guitar amp (or even just a preamp) sounds more realistic to me than using any amp sim. You can also do this for free, in terms of the speaker simulation anyway (but presumably you already own an amp!)
Try the impulse loader NadIR (free plugin) from here:
http://www.igniteamps.com/en/audio-plug-ins
Pick and download your preferred version (Windows x86 or 64-bit, Mac AU or VST).
You can load two IR at a time in the plugin, then blend them or use them "stereo" (and/or pan them around). High pass, low pass, and delay are options for each. You can phase align using the delay feature; the first few ms range of the control goes by in very small increments (.01ms), making it really easy to phase align. Load two IR and set it to mono, then adjust the delay of one and listen to it get more in phase (thicker) with the other. Then decide to use them in mono or stereo etc. afterward.
Some other IR plugins have these features and might allow for more IR to be loaded at once, but this one seems stable and has all the features a person really needs for loading a speaker IR and blending a couple. (I personally don't think loading more than two IR at once, as long as they're nice IRs, is necessary.) Also it's free, so that's very nice of the author.
NadIR has a capability some other free plugins doesn't: it can load longer speaker IRs beyond a certain sample length. Some other free speaker IR loaders have limits in this regard, so if you load longer samples they can sound a bit harsh/less smooth. It's still not bad (a high shelf EQ can take care of it, generally speaking), but for free plugins like this I have to recommend NadIR. As to what makes a "longer" or "shorter" speaker IR exactly, I forget. I'd found the info once on KVR VST or something when searching for this, but it was a long time ago and I forget the specifics.
As for where to get IRs: some are available for free, and others can be purchased in packs relatively inexpensively. The bonus of some of the purchased IR packs is how thorough they are when recording, capturing many IR at many angles with the same mic/speaker combination. With a plugin like NadIR or some others, you can toggle through a folder of IR and audition them as the sound is playing, so it's like moving a mic around on the speaker. Search Google using "free speaker ir" and you'll find a few packs which are definitely worth using (for free) and possibly some you'd want to purchase.
Oh and as for how to do this in general, you can read this:
http://www.redwirez.com/tutorials.jsp
It has things specific to their own IR loader plugin, and their own files/directory structure of the IRs, but generally it's a good guide for using any IR loading plugin with speaker IRs, with a guitar amp or preamp.
