Studio One Impulse Responses

[Ariel Wascom]

Clickon a cabinet below and browse our extensive collection of impulse responses, including: Marshall, Budda, Mesa, Orange, EVH and many more! Purchase our bundle packs for added savings on our top cab models. See for yourself what sets our cab IRs apart from the rest.

ALL PRODUCTS AND BRAND NAMES SEEN ON THIS WEBSITE ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH LANCASTER AUDIO. THESE PRODUCTS AND BRAND NAMES ARE ONLY LISTED ON THIS WEBSITE TO DESCRIBE THE INSTRUMENT BEING SAMPLED OR IMPULSE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ANY USE OF MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE, INCLUDING REPRODUCTION, MODIFICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR REPUBLICATION, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM LANCASTER AUDIO, IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.

The process of capturing a room starts with setting up a pair of good quality studio monitor speakers on stands in a spot in the room where a loud instrument like a drum kit might normally be positioned, and point them directly at the capsules of a spaced pair of microphones on the opposite side of the room. Omni-directional mics are usually best as they will capture the ambience of a room most naturally.

For each studio in this series, I will provide several different audio examples including one showcasing the difference between the actual audio recorded by the mics in the room vs. the same dry audio played through the Altiverb impulse response of the room. I will also provide a commercially available track recorded at each studio.

BC Sound is the studio home of legendary producer/engineer Martin Bisi, well known for his work with Sonic Youth, Swans, Bill Laswell, Herbie Hancock and more recently the Dresden Dolls. The building is the former home of the Old American Can factory and today provides spaces for a myriad of artistic outlets.

Martin currently shares the BC Sound control room space with producer Jason LaFarge and his studio, Seizures Palace. Prior to LaFarge, Martin shared the studio space with producer Bill Laswell and Brian Eno.

The vertical walls are painted white brick with translucent glass block windows on one side. The ceiling has been treated with spectacular staggered wood paneling creating a tight and well-controlled sound.

I have run through everything I can find, and have not found information that allowed me to get an export of an impulse response from REW, into Sigma studio/Auto Eq. I have successfully exported FR curves from REW, converted them with the Py script available, and then used them in Auto EQ. It seems most people are either using ARTA, which I have set up but haven't yet purchased because I am not sure I absolutely need it. Or, they are generating filters in REW and then exporting/importing them. This may be newbie stuff but rather than just throw things at the wall until something sticks, I figured I would ask to be pointed in the best direction first.

SS/Auto EQ will work if the IR file is text, one sample per line and no header lines. In REW select the the "Export impulse response as text" option. Then use an editor to delete all the header lines (line 1 thru the * Data start" line), leaving only the samples. This works for me.

Do note that REW (and ARTA I believe) do not include the soundcard and microphone calibration file effects in IR files. They are included in the FR files. Auto EQ also limits the maximum IR time to 10 msec (i.e. 100 Hz). So this is a problem if you want to work with responses below 100 Hz. I stick with FR files for these reasons.

Our Spitfire engineering team have curated a selection of 54 presets to suit different instruments based on real life mixing practises, and to create a selection of standard reverb modes and spaces. Adjust the canopy height, material, hall layout and gallery dampening, and blend up to 8 individual true stereo signals to create a hyper realistic sonic experience.

To recreate both of these signature sounds within AIR Reverb, our team mirrored microphone placements on the hall floor. Combined with dedicated speaker positioning, this allows you to position your virtual sound source facing either direction and capture the essence of these legendary recordings.

AIR Studios Reverb goes beyond traditional impulse responses, leveraging Spitfire Audio's proprietary Virtual Positioning Technology (VPT). This groundbreaking feature allows you to position your sound source anywhere within the legendary AIR Studios, capturing the precise ambiance of its unique acoustic spaces.

Here is a page of impulse responses (both for convolution reverb and also guitar cabinet sims) that I have captured and are now available for you to download! Click the main links for each IR "pack" to go to my Gumroad or Bandcamp page where you can download them on a "name your price" donation basis or alternatively, download for free.

Your sounds are going places with the help of Bitwig Impulse Responses, the companion package for our Convolution device (released in Bitwig Studio 4.3). There are 270 options, so you can take your sounds to locations around the world with reverbs professionally recorded in ancient train stations, cathedrals, monk meditation halls and private attics. You could also use Convolution and these impulse responses to imbue your tracks with the tones of iconic hardware studio gear like vintage spring reverbs, pedals and digital FX units, or for more experimental purposes.

To make browsing this massive collection easier, we divided Bitwig Impulse Responses into nine categories. Real Halls and Real Rooms contain reverbs and room effects professionally recorded in real locations, while those marked "Spring" or "Studio" are sampled from classic equipment. The Synthetic impulses are reverbs and effects synthesized by Bitwig developers. You can load these impulse responses manually into the Convolution browser or as Convolution presets, so you can find them in the main browsers.

Trying to understand what they are.. Are they just presets using factory amps/cabs/effects achieving a certain sound. That these sellers have deemed "Really nice" and decided to sell them? As in if i had the knowledge, i could replicate them exactly if i knew what i was doing?

IRs are basically a 'snapshot' of the sound of a amp & mic. So say you feed a signal to an amp, and then record the sound with a mic, both the cab & the mic will have their own sound (their own distortion characteristics) and that is what the IR simulates. So when you run your Go's signal chain through an IR, the output of the IR block would be the same as if recorded through studio's amp/mic/room setup. Basically, they measured how cab + mic change the signal, and the IR changes any signal the same way.

The problem with paying for presets is that what you hear are with the creators specific guitar/pickups and recording gear. These will never sound exactly the same with your gear and will nearly always need some tweaking accordingly.

The idea of an impulse response is to capture all of that information in one go, so you can instantly recall that setting. This means that you can retain your preferred tone, right down to the detail of your favourite mic placement and room sound. The problem is that when you buy IR packs or even use IR's that are available free, you could find that you have literally dozens and dozens of variations of the same speaker. Eg using mic type A/B/C individually or in combination at distance 1-12", offset from the speaker central axis by 1-12". So it's a real rabbit warren and trial & error to find the ones you like best.

Now, even though in Pod Go there is only a distance of mic from the speaker option but no mic 'off axis' option in Pod Go, you still get a good choice of mic types and the ability to alter high & low frequencies and to add a natural room reflection, and a good choice of cabs and speaker options. This means that you already have the ability to vary the tone from the stock cab model considerably.

When you hear an IR compared to the stock cab, your immediate thought might be that the IR is much fuller sounding & bigger eg with more bottom end or 'sparkle'. But one of the reason's is the dB setting of the IR is typically set higher than the stock cab '0dB' setting of the stock speaker, so it's sound is more prominent. But here's a key 'trick' - if you raise the stock cab dB to eg +6dB there's a huge change to how the stock cab sounds and very often you can get extremely close to a third party IR of the same cab.

Some IR's are better than others but there are so many free IR's around, I'd strongly recommend you try these first before deciding to buy. Because we all hear & like different things, an IR that I might rave about you might hate. Similarly, buying patches - you might think these are great but I might hate them. Remember, there are a ton of patches available free on Line 6 Custom tone (I've contributed a few myself) so there's so much to try out before spending money. Buying an IR and/or patches is therefore a lottery.

Why do folk buy? Well, some IR's can be particularly good and some patches might be well crafted. But most often it's because folk want a quick fix - instant tonal gratification without having to do the work themselves. But here's the thing, if all you do is buy stuff you're not really learning about Pod Go yourself and it's that journey of discovery that you'll be missing. And there are a ton of patch building vids on Youtube to help guide you and teach you. But it's still ultimately one persons ears versus another so even a top patch designer's patches, regardless of pedigree, skill in the studio etc, might not suit you.

To make the point, have a listen to the Pod Go demo NAMM 2020 by Phil Hindmarsh, and then load down the exact same patches he was using from Line 6 Custom Tone - Paul is a fab player and in the vid, his tones sound spectacular. Now load those identical patches into your Pod Go - and I guarantee they won't sound like in the vid.

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