It is my opinion that the Boss IR-200 is best suited when you are not using an amp, but if you do have a preamp pedal, you can disable the amp portion of the IR-200. The Boss IR-200 has this massive library included of cabinets with microphones at different positions and so you do get a lot of options in a very small box. The Universal OX Box does this beautifully as does the Torpedo Capture X from Two Notes. In some IRs, you can have two microphones of different types in different positions on the same cabinet. Different microphones have different characteristics and rich Impulse Response files allow the user to select the microphone in use and its position relative to the cabinet speaker. What I have learned through training and practical application is that a) it is all about the microphone placement and b) see point a. I’ve been studying Recording Engineering in depth recently using texts and training videos by Bobby Owsinski. That truth being said, we may not have the luxury of running these amps at volume in today’s world and we may not have the space for all manner of different cabinets.Ī critical part of any good Impulse Response is the microphone(s) used to make the IR and the placement of the microphone(s). #Strymon iridium manual fullThe sound is great, but there is something elemental about the feel of a 2x12 Fender Twin at 7 or a Marshall 2203 at full chat into a pair of 4x12 cabs. As a player, I can feel a difference, even driving a great IR through a powerful FRFR cabinet like the JBLs and Headrush units that I have personally purchased. The listener may not be able to tell the difference and I have proven this with recordings made of a real Fender Super Reverb and their Tonemaster DI out version. A good IR sounds like the real thing audibly, but doesn’t have the physical presence of a real cabinet driven at power by a real amp. Both are correct, but I fall into the group of fascinated myself. For some of us, the process is fascinating and for others, those folks just want to get the sound of the cabinet that they like and move on. That’s why you could find four IRs, all made from the same type of cabinet, but that still sound different. Impulse Responses are actually recorded from a real world cabinet and their duration allows the IR file to capture how the cabinet responds under different frequencies and loading. Old style cabinet simulations tried to use tone maps to fake out a cabinet and to be blunt, they were pretty lousy. That’s why the same amplifier head sounds so different into a 2x12 open back cabinet compared to a 4x12 closed back cabinet. We hear constantly about the tone of different amps and a lot of the time this gets tied back to the preamp of the amp, and while the preamp stage of an amplifier definitely contributes, in a classic tube amp, the majority of the uniqueness of tone comes from the output transformer (a long and wonderful conversation for real gear heads) and the speaker cabinet. The device supports Impulse Response files of either 200ms or 500ms duration, where the longer IRs tend to be more accurate. There are also 128 slots where you can store your own IR files. The device also includes an Impulse Response library for cabinet simulations that includes 144 IRs from Boss and 10 IRs direct from Celestion. There is a DSM&Humboldt Bass Simplifier with a much richer range of options, but it is a dedicated box and purchase separate from the guitar version. While I do appreciate that there are bass amp emulations in the unit, they are a bit skint in terms of choice. It offers amplifier emulation for both guitar and bass amps (a unique value proposition over the others which are guitar amp only) The graphics below show the options that come in the box. #Strymon iridium manual seriesThe IR-200 is built on the same solid chassis as the other 200 series stomps from Boss. It takes the form of a stomp box like the Strymon, whereas the DSM&Humboldt is more a desktop device. It is the last option that interested me. The IR-200 is a device that you can use in front of an amp if you wish, or to an FRFR cabinet or into your recording interface. I recently have had the opportunity to evaluate the new IR-200 from Boss. I own the DSM&Humboldt Simplifier which is an all analog approach, that it, I think, quite excellent and also the Strymon Iridium which is as one would expect from the geniuses at Strymon, a DSP based solution. Between miking a real amplifier and using a powerful digital modelling tool like a Neural Quad Cortex, exist these middle solutions that offer the ability to emulated an amp or three, and some number of speaker cabinets.
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