faIRmageddon: XY Axis multi-IR Morpher

[TDVV]

This is one of my favorite ideas yet. Why is no one talking about this yet?!?? I love it and i'm trying it out now, part of me thinks it's really useful. Another part of me thinks it might be making the overall sound "sound more flat" maybe? I'm unsure, but hopefully i'm wrong.
but i love this idea!

https://www.forward-audio.com/fairmageddon/




EVERY FEATURE ON THIS and how it's layed out is really intuitive and inspiring, however i'm not 100% on "how it really sounds". it could just be the IR samples themselves.
We aren't limited to just amp IR samples, too which makes this all the more interesting.

if anyone's against it, I'd like other's critique on this alongside what they might like

[jinotsuh]

I tried it out early last week. First thing to notice is the price, even at 60% off it costs more than most other cab IR Loaders. Second thing is CPU usage, compared to my go to cab IR Loaders, faIRmageddon uses 6 x the amount of CPU than they do.

There is at least 1 other IR Loader that I know of that does the visual mixing thing (which for me doesn't add much to the normal way you can mix IR's in other Loaders that don't have a 'Visual' mixer), and there are also other IR Loaders with which you can mix IR's and export a resulting IR etc, none of that is new. It does have some different features, but I found them to be a bit 'gimmicky' for want of a better word, can't recall all the parameters now, but things like the cab size etc, although they do work and make an audible difference, whether or not that 'difference' is desired or not is debatable, as is whether or not that 'difference' is 'realistic' or to be 'realistically expected'. The Automatic Gain Compensation was totally whacked when I engaged it, it created a continuous fluctuation in volume as you played, not nice at all, turn off the AGC and all was fine. It does have a more blinged up GUI than most other IR Loaders for what that is worth

Considering the price, the CPU hit (in comparison to other IR loaders) the extra features which to me were a little if not a lot 'gimmicky' and the fact that other selling points are nothing new, visual mixing, mixing and exporting IR's etc, and not least of all that the sound is no better than the IR Loaders I use now, which are far more CPU efficient, with less seemingly useless 'distractions', I decided it was not for me and uninstalled the demo. YMMV

[kidslow]

^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^

I installed a late beta and quickly uninstalled after I saw the CPU hit. To me the interface also felt a bit clunky, for lack of a better word. Some of that may be due to beta state, but . . .

. . . interesting cab IR loaders presently near the $20USD range include Kuassa Amplifikation One or Audio Assault Grind Machine III. Haven't done a legit comparison, but those would be where my evaluation would start. No shortage of free (and paid) IRs that can be loaded and found with varying degrees of effort.

Not sure why I would need or want morphing or when I would use it. I couldn't determine any other unique selling point of faIRmageddon, besides the various IR files included, and the CPU sink that was implemented rather well.

[TDVV]

jinotsuh ! i appreciate your input
i'm kind of new to producing, so i'm skeptical of my own judgements and if they're exactly right. I've met myself in too many times regretful not getting certain creative plugins in intro price, justifying that "other tools can technically do the same thing". I love the improvisery freedom certain tools give us to act instinctively, instead of having to set things procedurally calculated.
I did think the AGC was a little wonky, and it got me trying to justify that "having such diverse IRs" being morphed together was trying to "learn" their habits and then change to being quicker to process.

For some reason i've assumed processing an IRS texture to another sound was this complex novelty. This plugin seemed to impress me BECAUSE it has 4 IRs at the same time being processed and smoothly sweepable between.
Trying out some convolution reverb IRs (forgot the name but it was blue), the CPU hit on that single IR processing plugin turned me off. It was processing just 1 IR.
faIR seemed to impress me because it seemed to use a similar amount of CPU and brings a very texturally fine tunable and creative environment overall.

it all depends on what the producers doing, and for me i mainly like playing and finding weird noises and such, so maybe that's why fairmageddon, attracts me in such a way.

i'll look into this Kuassa thing. if u can load your own IRs that's awesome. There's some free one i've tried out too which i liked a lot too, but no other thing to my knowledge (besides Max for live) does this texturally XY axis sweepable thing and with master characteristic knobs alike BeatFormer's shtick AND with AGC, which still technically works, albeit not smooth as it could be.

i'm thinking i may hold off on this and just save up for max for live or something to do something similar with lower CPU hit. hmm

[mike_the_ranger]

I absolutely agree it's a fantastic *design* tool, not just another IR loader. Seeing the free early access version every customer got and now the release version the unique selling points to me are the automatic phase alignment, the eq matching, consolidation & export, the design options specialized on guitar cabinets and espeically the clear straight forward visual feedback of everything you do. Considering this you can't compare the price to a standard IR loader. During early access & beta there have been more feature requests & polls which the devs responded to, so I think there will be added more if it works out. Of course there's always room for improvement, like for CPU usage but on the other hand I've not needed to load it on 10 guitar tracks or so but a few busses. Their cooperation with valhallir may be the start of something bigger too...

[kidslow]

Didn't mean to denigrate the product as much as provoke further discussion. Just reported my observations. I treated it as a souped up cab IR loader, which is how it is marketed. There are two videos available, neither of which demonstrates the design capabilities, not really. I guess I'm not the target audience if I can't envision how it would benefit me. The development team was very active and I'll give them credit for that. May there be a vibrant community who puts out videos and shows me what I'm missing, seriously.

[Kumal]

I've stopped trying to eq, compress or saturate guitar tracks to make them fit into my track. Instead I've decided to just combine Irs with different characteristics which leads to more natural sounding results. I think this plugin makes that task more easy than ever because you can just switch any of the slots Ir and it keeps them aligned. Using packs from different companies the Irs are rarely the same length or have their "real" zero point at the same position. I hate manually adjusting these things because being of a sample will lead to audible comb filtering. With irmageddon manually delaying is not necessary anymore and that is a big workflow improvement! Proper stereo handling is another positive aspect for me. They said their 2 free ir packs were made with this tool and I honestly think they're pretty good. Can't agree much on the cpu issues because it barely needs more than Libra or Torpedo wall of sound on my system. I'd rather see more improvements with browsing and organizing my ir library. The price could be a bit lower. I'll give it some more time.

edit: coincidence or not I received newsletter mails from other ir loader devs trying to sell me their plugins extra cheap since the release of this plugin I guess irmageddon is on the right track

[TDVV]

dumb note: i don't work for Forward Audio or whatever if, yeah..

Kumal, This is what i mean in how much of a game changer this kinda thing would be if it were actually done to it's best. I wanna get it, but something tells me it still wouldn't be ideal yet in my workflow (by how it kind of sucks the life out of signal, but it could just be the IR samples supplied) ... and yeah we don't have much other softwares offering such weirdly liberating approach to something that can almost make a big part of eq-ing obsolete (in a way).

idk i'm just sharing whatevers going on in my mind and i hope other developers take similar approaches to alternative workflow designs.

[jinotsuh]

Yeah, whatever floats your boat, but for me I'll pass. I use either mixIR2 or mixIR3 or Recabinet 5, with the mixIR's you can do all the mixing and combining, blending and exporting to a single IR etc, use different companies IR's and there are no issues with phase issues or comb filtering or anything, it's all just handled for you, at least I have never come across an issue. As for CPU faIRmageddon as I said uses 6x the CPU of either mixIR2/3 or Recabinet 5, it's just how it is. If it works well for you and does everything you need, that's all that matters, what anyone else thinks is irrelevant. Enjoy.

I use to use WOS a bit, but don't bother anymore, it's just got unnecessary stuff that I never use, and I don't like the proprietary nature of their IR's, the ones I purchased from them are of no use to me now because of that, but that's how it goes. It was also noticeably more CPU hungry, than what I use.

[TDVV]

i like more the idea of what its going for, than the faIR plugin itself, if that makes sense...because yeah, i dont think its THAT stable on top of the high cpu. It crashed on my like 3 times in the last few days of demoing.
Thus im here debating if getting this would be worth and crossing my fingers hoping that this will be updated to being more stable.

I Had no clue other multi IR experimental blending things existed already, so thanks for informing me on those mixIR2/3 and recabinet things.
I’ll look in to those, but im unsure what WOS is..

im just dreaming someday this multi IR jungle gym concept is expanded upon in the future with better system optimizing.

Again, max for live is probably the more pragmatic solution here for me at least experimentally

[jinotsuh]

Recabinet can't really do it, you can mix/blend 2 IRs, but that's about it, it's just a really good IR loader, very light on CPU, mixIR 2 and 3 can do the mixing, blending, exporting etc of many multiple IR's, and again very good IR loaders and very light on CPU, all rock solid.

Recab is also no longer available, neither is mixIR2 since the release of mixIR3. They have been mixing, blending, exporting etc IR's for many years. I got mixIR2 in 2015, not sure how long it was around before that.

[RobinWood]

TLDR; I don't think it's a game changer but that doesn't make it less interesting. It definitely has unique features and I like the full control over the sound as well as the WYSIWYG approach (each controls action is directly visible in a display or waveform). But it needs refinements in workflow and more clearing things up.

Upfront: the video su**s. Too much sale, way too less audio exmaples/info of the plugin. They'd better had made a video out of the manual. This paired with a price of $170+ (which is only accessible once the product was added to the cart) unfortunately makes the whole product less appealing. If I didn't know what it was about I'd probably not have demoed it at all.

I got in touch with it during the free phase but of course wouldn't want to write a review for it back then. Now with the final release I'll just copy & paste my review here:

"The installation went pretty smooth. I appreciate having the 2 free packs and an IR selection of VallhallIR. Minor thing: there are no presets but those often are a first step into understanding a plugin. Just add some (maybe show how some of the free IRs were made or show something uniquely to this plugin).

I immediately was surprised positively how straight forward the interface is. No uneseccary bling bling or glossy 3D models but pure information what's going on. It offers full control over the sound in a "What you see is what you get" approach, means each controls action is directly visible in a display or waveform. And there are many controls to shape the sound. Besides simple low/highpass the tilt is a neat feature; never saw bending but turned out with interesting effects; same for simply delaying in the stereo field.

The loaded IRs got sample rate converted and phase aligned automatically which already makes this plugin worth having installed imo. Latency and length is adjustable on the system page (which btw shows a whole bunch of useful extra information).
Mixing up to 4 IRs with the x y pad was an easy task. Usually I only was mixing 2 IRs but having the option to just add some more worked out well and helped getting better results easily.

I'm not sure what this compare section is about. It's a whole subsection but effectively has 2 controls. Okay comparing your mixed IR to something else is one application but why is then copied to a slot when consolidating? It's not clear to me what purpose this section has or even if it is already finished.

But my biggest issue: I can't scroll inside the browsers. That + the view mode that lists all IRs in a folder and subfolders is not a good combination cause navigation relys soley on 2 buttons. That's a pita.

Some minor things I'd wish for: help texts or tooltips. Needing to read the manual to figure out what some buttons do is not optimal. A small tooltip at least saying the name of the control would already help much. Also an option to change the signal flow could be an idea. Like putting the EQ match as last step or first apply the output options and then compare it to something.

In conclusion I don't think it's a game changer but that doesn't make it less interesting. It definitely has unique features and I like the full control over the sound as well as the WYSIWYG approach. But it needs refinements in workflow and more clearing things up. Furthermore the price and its transparency need a rethink or otherwise pump that plugin full with features to make it really worth it. I feel like I already like it more than some other solutions that's why it still ended up getting 4 out of 5 points. Of course going to edit it if problems occur during further testing."

[aMUSEd]

Can't seem to see the price without hitting the buy button

[XxEDxX]

...and not least of all that the sound is no better than the IR Loaders I use now...

I'd like to jump in here and say that during the free phase there were talks and polls about features that could change that. I hope they're adding those in with an update because then it would be a no-brainer. I'm going to further demo the release version now before writing anything more What I can say for now: it's stable, it's clean, it's intuitive and CPU hits only rarely when changing some major settings.

[forwardaudio]

Glad about the vital and polite discussions in this thread. I am currently working on upcoming tutorial videos that will clarify the usage, usability and the USPs in detail. After all, the current video on our site is only a trailer.

BTW: I really like the term Multi-IR Morpher. Thumbs up!