State of the art in amp&cab IR loader plugins?

[kvotchin]

This is actually not for guitar purposes, but I thought this might be the best forum to ask in.

I know the free options. But what is truly worth some money, that you’d absolutely recommend, and why?

[mystran]

At the end of the day an IR loader is an IR loader (and it doesn't really even matter if it's for cabs or reverb or whatever.. it's all the same as long as you can put it on 100% wet) ... assuming you just want to load an IR and be done with it.

There's not very many things that can vary besides latency and CPU efficiency.

If you want it to do something else besides just loading an IR or you want fancy interface for selecting different IRs or whatever (this can be a big thing if you have a big library where you want to choose) ... then it might be worth it... but I just mostly use Fruity Convolver (comes with the DAW) in FL Studio, or occasionally ReaVerb (also comes with the DAW) in Reaper... whatever is available.

[Dirk Diggler]

Scuffham Sgear is an excellent resource.

[imrae]

The "state-of-the-art" models seem to be making a song-and-dance about additional nonlinearities; I guess they have to because the linear stuff is all equivalent.

But I've yet to hear a clear demo of the nonlinearities making things "better", especially compared to adding a conventional compression or saturation stage.

Unless someone has a good model of a razor-blade-sliced speaker cone, that would be neat!

[mcbpete]

NAM is supposedly where it's at nowadays
Plugin - https://wavemind.net/software#:~:text=F ... mate%20NAM
Models - https://www.tone3000.com/search

Though to be honest I haven't really heard much difference between these and static IRs especially the emulation of pre-amps and console channels - It all just sounds like soft clipping has been applied to everything

[mystran]

But I've yet to hear a clear demo of the nonlinearities making things "better", especially compared to adding a conventional compression or saturation stage.

Unless someone has a good model of a razor-blade-sliced speaker cone, that would be neat!

For guitar specifically, where the cabinets have their lowpass resonance (and cutoff) somewhere in the 3-6kHz area, you might expect a little bit of low level distortion at (likely) 3 times the cutoff .. which might it sounds a bit less "dull" and rather more "open" than a static IR...

...although you can often see a bump in linear IR response around where you'd expect the distortion and I think this is basically the distortion being misinterpreted as linear response... except it's not necessarily a bad thing, 'cos if you then run a high-gain tone through such an IR, that "distortion bump" will let through a bit of the high-freqs that are already there in the source from the previous distortion stages, so you'll kinda get the same "air" effect anyway (well, not exactly the same, but close enough that it tends to sound "right").

It's usually rather subtle though (as you'd expect from the physics; there's mostly just slight non-linearity due to how the magnets move relative to the coils, a maybe just a tiny bit from the mechanical construction, so it's not exactly huge unless you're trying to destroy the speaker) and not something that you'll necessarily notice (one way or another) in a full mix once you drop the drums (with hihats and cymbals much louder in the region where this happens).

[lfm]

At the end of the day an IR loader is an IR loader (and it doesn't really even matter if it's for cabs or reverb or whatever.. it's all the same as long as you can put it on 100% wet) ... assuming you just want to load an IR and be done with it.

There's not very many things that can vary besides latency and CPU efficiency.

If you want it to do something else besides just loading an IR or you want fancy interface for selecting different IRs or whatever (this can be a big thing if you have a big library where you want to choose) ... then it might be worth it... but I just mostly use Fruity Convolver (comes with the DAW) in FL Studio, or occasionally ReaVerb (also comes with the DAW) in Reaper... whatever is available.

If not for guitar cabs alone I think there are loads of different interesting features you can look for
- quad channel IR ability, making it true stereo
- or load 2 IR and process and modulate differently
- loads of modulation options

Look at Reverberate
https://www.liquidsonics.com/software/reverberate-3/
- I have v1 though, with a serial, now iLok is needed.

But even Waves IR1 has other options, adjust the length of the IR, and other controls
https://www.waves.com/plugins/ir1-convolution-reverb
- Waves can authorize on computer or a normal usb memory stick

If to have IR loader, why not get one that has headroom for what you might want to explore in the future.
- if you see the advantage of that

[mystran]

If not for guitar cabs alone I think there are loads of different interesting features you can look for
- quad channel IR ability, making it true stereo
- or load 2 IR and process and modulate differently
- loads of modulation options

Yeah, certainly.

The first one can technically be done with even just mono-to-stereo or dual-mono IR loader by loading two of them on parallel mixer tracks (+perhaps some stereo utility to shuffle around the channels), but one that supports 4 channels directly is definitely a lot more convenient.

[Uncle E]

Overloud SuperCabinet offers some unique features and sounds great. It's a lot better than the Fractal DynaCabs, IMO.

[lfm]

Overloud (as I understand old Simul Analog) is good stuff for sure.

But scary at the same time, 41 000 IRs with THU are updated to Fluid IR????
- 90 cabinet models
- massive preset browsing, here we come....

But Overloud folks did incredible jobs before, and have a model for this harmonics handling then.
- Simul Analog if that was about 25-30 years ago, so improved quite a bit since

The LiquiSonics developer of Reverberate told about improvements he did on v2 and v3, regarding making more natural sounding IRs, but he called it Fusion-IR.
- not sure how it is different though.

A flashback 25 years doing ITB guitar when I ran Izotope Trash v1, and what they called BoxModels. Boxmodels surely generate more true feel of a real guitar amp and cabinet shaping the character. Much more than the amp you created.

Now with my recent improved amp load, a 5" celestion packed with acoustic foam in a 4U rack case, then a Radial JDX over that with it's cab sim and real tube amps, could not be happier.
- volume half of when playing an acoustic guitar in room
- feels like have 4 new amps, really, and fresh tubes kind of feel how smooth it ís

This is like building a relationship with a living organism and I like it. Like all relationsships, takes a while to get to know "the beast", but in the end worth it.

[Surgo]

Are there any free IR loaders that let you A/B between two while level matching them, so they have equivalent loudness? This is missing from my old friend Nadir.

[Bombadil]

I‘m pretty happy with ToneX and Scuffham Amps. I almost never plug into my VOX AC-15 these days.

[Uncle E]

Are there any free IR loaders that let you A/B between two while level matching them, so they have equivalent loudness? This is missing from my old friend Nadir.

Try AmpliTube CS. The full version allows for creative uses of mixing and matching IR's, and I think the CS version also offers that.

[imrae]

Workflow-wise MCabinet is still in another league, I think. After importing IRs you can "flatten" them and apply EQ to get the desired overall shaping, much more directly than messing with microphone settings.

From there you can flip through other imported IR profiles and essentially audition the cab resonances independently of the broader frequency response. I have a folder of re-exported IRs "matched" to a particular one I liked, and can quickly flip through those with a simple convolver.