How to make Impulse Responses from guitar cabinet plugins FOR FREE on REAPER

How to extract an IR from your guitar amp sim suite plugins using REAPER.
Single-sample IRs (Dirac Spike files):
drive.google.c...
And if youre feeling courageous and you use JS scripts in Reaper, this guy built a script that lets you do all of this in one click:
forum.cockos.c...
(re-upload with better quality audio)

[@jasonzdora]

This is a re-upload with better quality audio. If you use Davinci Resolve and you use the "youtube" preset, I strongly suggest watching this video I made on the subject. TLDR is that the KZbin Preset has crappy audio. You should use Quicktime and PCM audio instead. kzbin.info/www/bejne/lZzGfmiQZr2XsNk

[@TudorAdrian]

You can also skip bouncing the "wet" signal to another track if you just go for the "File" > "Render" option. Helps speed things up a lot if you have something like the NDSP plugins and want to capture several mic permutations.

[@jasonzdora]

Thanks, Tudor! Definitely 15 ways to do everything in Reaper and I know literally nothing about it besides what I googled 20 mins before this video :)

[@robertsteinberger]

Lucky I have the Archetype Gojira and ProQ3, and I like Evanescense or I wouldn't have been able to follow this tutorial.

[@MrOwl888]

Thank you, kind man! Most videos about IR are either loaded with boring theory (but they never get to practice), or like "take IR, load it into the pulse simulator - and SUDDENLY, it sounds!". Damn, I asked Google "how TO GET IR FROM a plugin", not "how TO LOAD IR INTO a plugin". Besides yours, I haven't seen any more videos on how to get IR. It's strange, well, we're not the only ones who want to apply the sound of the purchased plug-in used during recording to the performance. At the same time, you don't want to carry a laptop with you when performing in small clubs, where a tipsy fan in a slam can smash it to hell. :) I'm sorry for the emotions, but I'm crying with happiness, thanks again!

[@jasonzdora]

I know your pain, brother. Thats why I learned how to do all this stuff and Im happy to share it.

[@martinmorales3195]

Awesome! Let's see how audio gurus in the nam forum use this information 😂

[@jasonzdora]

Its a great way to combine a bunch of audio work into a singular IR. Thats definitely useful for NAM, especially for the standalone version. Since it can only load one IR and only has a basic EQ, this allows you to make that IR into something that works perfectly with your model :)

[@leeyoungun]

Hands down the best tutorial on making impulse responses! I’ve been trying to make an impulse response from a proprietary formatted IR for months and haven’t been able to follow other tutorials.

[@jasonzdora]

Thank you, brother! I know the feeling and thats why I make videos the way that I do. Id rather be over-explaining things than under-explaining them.

[@matttaylor1449]

Did this in Cubase Artist 7. Cropping down the file, especially the beginning of it was the important part. Like many others I had tried this in the past but in a back to back comparison with the source there was an obvious difference in the sound, meaning the IRs +EQ I was trying to capture into a single IR was not captured properly. My final result was only close enough (maybe 98% perfect so I settled on that result). It probably comes down to how CA7 mixdown's (exports) audio from the track. It doesn't seem to do it perfectly because the new file is always a bit delayed. Had to line it up to the impulse I got from Libra (which has a perfect export of combine IRs) to make the EQd version of that start on time and not have excess silence at the beginning of the IR. Conclusion: Use Libra to combine IRs into 1 IR Only use this method to EQ said IR

[@jasonzdora]

Sorry your DAW isnt giving you exact results. I would try adding some silence before the 1-sample spike as a way of possibly mitigating issues with your DAWs handling of transients or audio file truncating. Not sure what the problem could be as I dont use Cubase. Glad you got decent results, though! Libra is cool but it has its own issues. Primarily the way it handles IR alignment. I dont like how they require you to manually align IRs from different makers. If you have an IR from Ownhammer, one from Bogren and another from York, you have 3 IRs that have 3 different starting points. Without the ability to visualize that, you are left guessing with their "Delay" knob. To me, the best way to blend IRs is Melda MCabinet in Edit mode, or Fractal Audio CabLab4. MCabinet will automatically align all IRs and allows you to add EQ, though its difficult to use. CabLab4 allows you to visualize the alignment which is a lot easier to manage than Libra. The only thing with CabLab4 is that you have to extract the IR through manual means as they only allow export to their proprietary format (so you do what I show in this video).

[@fernandoqueixada8741]

I tried lots of times but it doesnt works, using a Darkglass plugin to shape the sound of my bass but the impulse response dont change anything.

[@jasonzdora]

What does the audio file look like when you record it on the 2nd channel? If you dont see any audio information, have you tried playing ANY audio through your darkglass and re-recording it with the 2nd channel to make sure youve set that up correctly?

[@MichaelMyersDoverPA]

Thanks for the great video and instructions. I myself typically do not use Reaper, so this was a great intro to the process and how to use Reaper to do it. I got the results I was looking for in my own IR, so this was a great help to me.

[@jasonzdora]

Aweseome, Michael!

[@GuyManley]

This is fantastic. Thanks for making this video. I like the amp sim in dark glass but the single cab felt constraining. I got a trial the Ampeg SVT suite and went to town on their cab/mic combos. It's crazy, I could never afford to even get near good gear back in the day and now you can have it in a tiny file for recording with a DI audio interface.

[@jasonzdora]

It really is amazing what we can do with convolution and a little bit of thinking outside the box :)

[@cunjoz]

is it really free if I have to use fabfilter?

[@jasonzdora]

LOL use another EQ.

[@deans.4705]

Thanks for the video Jason. Couldn't you just offline bounce the first track to the second? I don't know reaper at all but I'm just asking. cheers

[@jasonzdora]

Im sure there are 50 ways to do this.

[@deans.4705]

@@jasonzdora thanks. Where did you find those dirac spikes? they are actually very good and they are not easy to find. I've downloaded a few others which were rubbish in comparison.

[@jasonzdora]

@@deans.4705 I made them in Audacity. Just create a second of silence then enable the pencil tool, zoom all the way down on the beginning of the silence and raise the 2nd sample up to some value higher than zero, then normalize to -1db. Some folks think the spike has to be several samples long but in my testing, a single sample works just fine. I also noticed that leaving the 1st sample silent and then making the 2nd sample the actual spike resulted in better copies of some stuff like reverbs and delays for whatever reson.

[@deans.4705]

​@@jasonzdora thanks so much. I spent about 5 hours working with Audacity last night trying. Yours are still better. It's quite bizarre as your steps were very detailed and there's not much to mess up. I use Hofa IQ analyzer as my measuring tool. I load up an IR directly in it as my reference. Then in a DAW, I send a pulse through a vst IR loader with the same IR loaded and create a new impulse response hoping to match the reference. Once created, I load that IR into Hofa for comparison. All in all, from a vst perspective, for accuracy Lancaster Pulse loader beats GGD, air impulse, and STL Libra. By comparison though if I use the built-in IR Maker in Studio One and send it out via usb to my Fractal FM9 with the same IR loaded it's almost 100% accurate.

[@orionktulu]

Damn it's going to be a lot of work making IRs from Wall of Sound....lol

[@jasonzdora]

And you would do that because you absolutely positively paid for all those IRs with money.... riiiight?! ;p

[@orionktulu]

@@jasonzdora of course. I have a 4 cab mix of cabs that I own that I really like and want to use elsewhere without having to load WoS and be connected to the internet. The IR that I made isn't stereo of course, but still sounds pretty good and has the power amp stuff from WoS baked into it. Mostly I just wanted to see if it would work.

[@jasonzdora]

@@orionktulu Right on. I was just joking but of course it is possible to "abuse" this workflow on IR systems that let you demo paid stuff. If you want to capture a stereo IR, its totally possible. You just need to record a stereo channel and I guess you would also need to utilize an IR loader that can accept stereo IRs.

[@orionktulu]

​@@jasonzdoraI'm not sure what I did wrong but my IR sounds quite different from my source. It still sounds good, but quite different. Tried with a different cab source and it wasn't even close.

[@jasonzdora]

@@orionktulu I dunno. Did you leave any distortion on in the chain? Turn everything off except for the cabinet and EQ.

[@thiagodalpoz]

Will this work if we include the distortion in Gojira (and not only the cab)? This would allow to create IRs from stomp boxes… tks for the great video

[@jasonzdora]

IRs do not capture distortion, unfortunately. If that was the case, everybody would have already done that. They are "linear" so they can do things like EQ or Reverb but they cant do distortion.

[@Andrea-qg5yk]

@@jasonzdora IRs can capture reverb?

[@jasonzdora]

@@Andrea-qg5yk Yes. IRs were primarily used for reverbs before they were also used for guitar cabinets. Its very common. The only thing to consider is that the IR loader that you use for your guitar cabinet IRs might not be designed to utilize reverbs. Most IR loaders built for guitar cabinets have a relatively short window they expect the guitar cabinet sound to occur (between 20 and 500ms). Reverbs can last longer than 3 seconds so trying to load a reverb IR (or a guitar cabinet IR that has reverb built into it) will not work as expected on most Guitar Cab IR Loaders. In this case, something like Melda MConvolutionEZ would be a better choice, especially because its stereo and because it doesnt have a time limit on reverb length for the IRs you load into it.

[@joao_miguel_lc]

Do I have to select the 48Hz (or higher) option on my audio interface/neural dsp plugin settings in order to record the IRs in that sample rate? Or just recording them with the 48Hz single sample impulse regardless of my settings on the audio interface/plugin is enough?

[@jasonzdora]

Try both ways and see what works best. But from a resampling perspective, all modern IR loaders will automatically resample whatever IR you give them to match your current settings.

[@misskanao932]

great content! I have a question..I did everything like in this video but i am at a stopping point..wherever i click the record the first track automutes..resulting to IR recorded being blank. i didnt hear that popping sound like happen in your vid. How did you record that does not automute? thanks

[@jasonzdora]

Try doing the process without recording anything. Do you see the audio meter on the 2nd track displaying anything? If not, you havent routed your audio from the frist track into the 2nd track. Its either that OR you have somehow muted the first track entirely. You mentioned "auto mute" which I have not seen before. Im not a regular Reaper user so I cant say for sure whats happening there. Sorry.

[@jjm9741]

Id like to profile my tube amps for NAM community, not just a cab...how is this done?

[@jasonzdora]

The process in my video isnt for NAM. Its just for IRs. I have other videos for NAM but I would suggest going to their Discord or Facebook or website to get more information on how to make NAM models of your tube amps.

[@jaroswave]

Subscribed! Thanks and greetings from FB group ;)

[@jasonzdora]

Cheers, brother!

[@dietcoke8114]

when i load my ir to my effects unit , it doesnt have a sound. does sampling rate affects it? im using other irs but it work..its just that particular ir i want to use is not working

[@jasonzdora]

I would start by looking at the IR you created in an audio editor like Audacity. Take a look to see if you actually have any information in the waveform. If you play the IR you created like an audio file, do you hear anything? Like a click noise?

[@dietcoke8114]

​@@jasonzdorai actually made it to work😊 but the problem is that the IR volume is so low..could I add gain in the IR to make it louder?if so..how?thanks for the response btw

[@jasonzdora]

@@dietcoke8114 in the video at @8:54 I show how to normalize. You can also simply turn up the volume on whatever it is that you are making an IR out of. You can also add a gain plugin.

[@wtpmikee]

what do i do wrong if my ir comes out darker than the source tone?

[@jasonzdora]

Most of the time, its the automatic crossfade issue. Did you make the change to the settings that I show at the beginning of the video?

[@wtpmikee]

@@jasonzdora yep it wasnt the exact setting as in this video i guess because of the updates since but i believe i did those changes

[@fraenkiboii]

What am I doing wrong, if the first peak of my resulting IR starts before the source impulse you provided? I turned off auto fade-in.

[@jasonzdora]

You did nothing wrong. Just edit the recording where the beginning of the file is the beginning of the upward swing and the end is about 100ms after (where there is total silence) and you will be fine.

[@fraenkiboii]

@@jasonzdora Thank you! I did cut the beginning of the resulting IR so that the first sample is right where the first peak/wave starts. The IR works in itself on my Quad Cortex but I saw something that was weird. I compared the IRs I created with other MPT IRs from named brands in Audacity. The peaks/waves of my IR are longer so that the IRs are slowly going out of phase with time. Have you seen this before? I used 48kHz sampling rate throughout the process.

[@jasonzdora]

@@fraenkiboii Yes thats normal. All IRs are different. Thats why they sound different. If you want to manually align some IRs from different places, your best bet is to align them all with their peak loudest points all in the same place. This means some IRs will start earlier or later than others but so long as the very peak is aligned, they will sound their most in-phase as they possibly can. You would do this work by dropping all of the IRs you want to blend together into Audacity or your DAW. You cant hear the result until you export a master of the blended IRs so you cant manage your volume/mix of each IR but its not difficult to re-export the files after adjusting the volumes.

[@jasonzdora]

Another method for easily blending IRs is Melda MCabinet. It auto-aligns the IRs perfectly and allows you to listen to the resulting mix as you adjust the volumes. Its a great plugin but wait for it to go on 50% sale.