Differences between IR loaders

Hey everyone, Jeremy here. Today, I'm going to go over a couple of ways to use impulse responses. Specifically, via an IR loader built into an amp sim and standalone IR loaders. So let's go ahead and get started.

What is an IR loader?

An IR loader is what knows how to decode an impulse response into an actual audio signal. If you've ever used an amp sim such as those from Neural DSP, then you have used IR loaders even if you didn't know it. Now, most amp sims come with impulse responses installed with it, but they allow loading external impulse responses. To do so, you would find the option to load the external IRs, navigate to where you store your impulse responses on your computer, select the one you want, and you're done.

What to watch out for?

Now, there is something to watch out for when using amp sim impulse response loaders, and that is any sort of processing that might be applied to the impulse response. For example, some amp sims have high and low pass filters, resonance, etc. It is recommended that you turn all of these settings off at least to start with, so you get the full benefits of the pre-processing that was done to our impulse responses.

Standalone IR loaders

Now for those who might want more flexibility, or to be able to blend multiple IRs together, this is where standalone IR loaders come into play. However, before we go any further, a word of caution, not all IR loaders are created equal. Some have built-in processing that results in a tone that isn't how it was actually captured or intended to sound. For this reason, I'd like to share with you some recommended standalone IR loaders that are going to keep the original tone intact, and those are STL Tones Libra or their free NadIR.

Tone tips!

If you're using NadIR, make sure to turn off the low pass and the resonance, as well as GGD Studio Cabs Zilla. Any of these are going to offer you the most flexibility and options for blending multiple IRs together to create some completely custom tones.

We hope you found this information helpful. Have fun!

OUR IMPULSE RESPONSES:

	JENS BOGREN SIGNATURE IR PACK: RHYTHM
	JENS BOGREN SIGNATURE IR PACK: LEAD + CLEAN
	RHYTHM IR: DOWNTUNED