this is a a huge time saver! I normally do this with ozone match / fabfilter stacked and multiple sine wave capture iterations to correct errors at extreme ends post convolution. This is SO much slicker! Thanks for making this video!
Awesome :) Enjoy! My favorite part is that Melda includes the IR Export button on nearly all of their plugins now. Luckily, it kinda makes the most sense for this plugin, when used in this context.
Man, always a pleasure seeing one of your videos pop up. I've yet to really seek out this technique but it's cool seeing it in action, and it's really interesting thinking about how much EQ curves truly define guitar sound. Thanks! Can't wait for the next one.
Thank you, brother! I appreciate the sentiment :) If you ever decide to give this a try, I hope I spelled things out well enough to get you through the process!
Awesome. I combined this with an idea from another video of yours, MnoiseGenerator pink noise for the source, into the IR that you want to copy, and....easy peasy.
Yep! If you dont want to include the amp profile, that works great. you tend to end up with more mids than the original but honestly I think that can sound great. More defined in a way :)
@@jasonzdora interesting, I didn't hear more mids, I heard a slightly less fizzy top end, which isn't a bad thing. I didn't even do the low and high cuts.
@@orionktulu Yep, same thing. Less highs = more mids. Its just the way youre looking at it. Either way, if you enjoy that method, go for it! There is no "wrong" way to do this kinda stuff. Its all about experimentation :)
Yep! Once you understand the concept here, it really opens the doors to other ideas. If youre like me, you can sit there before falling asleep and have some cool "what about doing it THIS way?" kind of thoughts. Enjoy!!
Cheers!! This is something I leared from other people over the years (David Fau Casquel, Mikko Lagren) with older plugins. I just wanted to show the "best" version of this process in 2022 to help people get more experimental and have a great new trick they can do :) Enjoy, brother!
Hello Jason, Thank you for your valuable video. I have a question and it is what to do if the isolated guitar track is in stereo?? Should I select only one Left or Right channel and sacrifice the other?
You have a couple options. the best way is to make one IR for each side (left and right). From there, you can make a stereo IR by editing them together with Audacity or whatever you like to work with. The other choice is to play the stereo sound into MFreeformEqualizer and basically capture a 50/50 blend of both tones into one IR. The only problem here is if the stereo tones have inverted phases on any frequencies which would result in an unnatural dip in the IR shape where you werent expecting it. This is why I like the first method better.
Jason, regarding the second part about low and high cuts, it is better to do it before exporting de IR or may it work by using the IR Loader low and high pass filters?
I prefer to do as much work as I can on the IR while creating it. You can of course leave the highs and lows in place and then filter them later. I would try both methods and see which works best for you. My personal preference is to make it sound as good as possible before exporting.
Not as much as you think. If the reverb is totally wild and has a ton of high end in it, you might get a bit more treble in your IR. If its delay, so long as the delay has the same tonality as the regular tone, youre not adding any other frequencies to the IR profile so it wouldnt make much difference. Really, it all depends on that specific tone. And if you really wanted to cancel those elements out, just add them to your guitar tone that youre using as the "target" and that should equalize the variables.
For some reason my answer didn't appear, so I'm replying here. Thank you for replying 1- I couldn't dl this preset because I installed the demo version of this plugin (I have about 10 days left but it's stripped from online features like preset dl). I copied your settings from the video. 2- I used the Bodyhammer intro because I think it's the only track with a guitar only part. 3- I played the exact same riff indeed 4- yes, apart from the preset dl
Listening to the beginning of Body Hammer, the first few seconds are good but after that it has another sound in the background that has a lot of high end. Sounds like a reverse reverb on a vocal. I would not use that part pf their audio sample. I found the samples I used but Im not sure what songs they are from. If you want, I can email them to you. These are rips directly from the 44.1khz 16bit FLAC files so they are perfect quality. They are very short but they are the only "clean" guitar samples I found on the entire album. Go to my "about" tab to find my email address.
Have you or someone experienced that the exported IRs are kind of low volume/gain? I mean, I need to add several dBs on my cab loader. What would be a good way to have the IR exported with more volume? Thank you in advance.
You can turn up the volume on the IR by turning up the "Output" knob (3rd knob above the EQ section of the plugin). You can also edit the IR in Audacity or Reaper and use their Normalize function.
Fantastic video! ... one thing though, how can I use this to create soundbanks for my amp? I have a Boss Katana 100 MK2 and I've just started (with iZotope Ozone 9) capturing equalizer wave forms (using isolated guitar tracks that I download from youtube and other places) I then copy by hand the equalizer wave form onto my Boss katana tone studio .. I then save it as a patch/soundbank - but I can't see the use of your method (brilliant as it is) for anything other than final mixing .. unless you mention it later in the video (I stopped to write this at 13 minutes in) Thanks from Ireland!
Sounds like you found your own method that works for you! I am showing how to make IRs that may or may not be able to be loaded into the Katana. Im not sure. I dont fully understand how patch/soundbanks work and how my workflow could fit into that.
Thanks for the swift reply, Jason .. what I'm trying to say (I think?) is what do you use/do with these "Impulse Responses" you create? can they be used as a sound in real-time or are they only for adding to a pre-recorded track? (like compression or reverb et al?) ... if you follow?@@jasonzdora
Id have to take a look at the recorded guitar you are trying to sample but in general, if there are any cymbals or other instruments in that recording, you are going to capture those extra high frequencies, resulting in a brighter IR.
I'm using isolated guitar tracks on RU-vid sampled into Pro Tools. Not sure why, but it's taking some tweaking after applying this method to get the tone closer. Maybe I've got a bogus plugin somewhere in the chain
@@PeachtreeGuitar What is your plugin chain? It sounds like youre doing a bit of an augmented workflow than what is in this video. Im just using MFreeformEqualizer to listen to the sample track. Then Im only using an amp sim for my DI.
That might be part of the problem. I had CLA guitars after Amplitube. Are you tone matching with all of the effects (reverbs, delays, mods, compression) in your amp sim, or is it dry when you tone match?
@@PeachtreeGuitar In this video, Im just tone matching with the recorded guitar I want to copy from. My side is just an amp sim and MFreeformEqualizer. No other FX.
Good stuff. Haven't messed with EQ matching myself, but I've known about it/use some great IR's made that way. I just use the Reaper builtin convo Reaverb for loading IR's, it's great. A bit generic for guitar cabs like having extra dynamics control etc (recabinet 3 has that and it's awesome), but it's full frequency and won't mess up your IR. Peace man. PS: Have you thought about doing a vid on the Nalex stuff? Amplex and Truesim in particular? Those ard great sim engines not training based. They're little text file circuits with all the caps and resisters and tubes etc. More people should know about them. They sound great. Plus if you're nerdy you can tweak the files right away without needing to train anything again to hear the results. peace
I messed around with Aplex when it first came out. Its neat but I dont really cover amp sims. I am much more interested in the IR side of things (and production tricks in general). I feel like I can make an amp sim sound like anything I want. And then there is also Neural Amp Modeler, which pretty much fills my entire headspace thats left over for amp sims :)
Great video! But isn't it hard to find the raw guitar tracks of songs to match with? Don't reverbs and all that messing things up also? And isn't it important to create a base sound from the amp with the exact amount of distortion and maybe the character of a distortion pedal in front rather than being baked in after the gain stages?
It is hard to find raw guitar tracks, yes. But they are out there if you are willing to spend the time to find them. Reverbs and other FX can affect the overall EQ snapshot that this plugin creates but I have not run into an instance where it has totally destroyed the tone I was going after. The real problem FX are things like wah, phaser, flanger, etc which have a modulating EQ curve. Those can mess things up to the point where the resulting IR sounds incorrect. Reverb isnt as bad. IRs are an EQ, basically. You could start with an amplifier that has a completely wild EQ curve and this system would still correct for that EQ curve and fix it to sound like the reference tone. You definitely have to adjust your amplifier to have the correct amount of distortion for what youre going for.
Hey really cool video. I have a question though, for curiosity more than anything... Does it really not matter if my amp sim is dialled close to the reference or not? As in, if I know the reference is using a rectifier and intentionally use a Vox AC30, would it be the same as using a rectifier plug in?
Does a Vox AC30 even distort enough to sound like a rectifier? I dont think so. I assume youre making that point on purpose. IRs dont control the distortion of your amp, they are an EQ thats placed after your distortion. You can experiment and see what happens. Ive laid out the steps but you can swap out my amp sim with any amp sim (or real amp going into a load box) that you like. You can also set its EQ however you like, so long as you use those EQ settings next time you try to use the IR, your results should sound perfect.
There's also an undo button if you don't like what you just drew. It's above the MIDI button. Good video, thanks. Perhaps you could make the release on your voice ducker a bit longer, the pumping is a bit much. Cheers!
I wanted the sound to come back as quickly as possible. Sorry if thats annoying. Just a quick thing I threw in there. Could have probably set it up better :) The undo button doesnt really work well for the "Drawing" on the EQ shape. At least it doesnt work very well on Ableton. Maybe better on Reaper or other DAWs. Give it a shot and see if it works for you!
I noticed that exported IR's volume level needs to be increased around 6db's at least, somehow needs a normalize, how do we solve that? I got millions of other IR's and nearly most of them sound much higher in volume or does not need any volume boost.
You can normalize the IR manually with an audio editing program (audacity, your DAW, etc) or you can simply turn up the volume (the "Output" knob) on MFreeformEqualizer before exporting. If you have other IRs that are louder, its because they are probably normalized already. Drop them into Audacity or your DAW and check out their bit depth and volume levels.
And I just know this now?!?!?!? Thanks so much for this knowledge. PS: Is this the only plugin that does this? I have a zillion plugins but don't know all their functionality, maybe I have something that works for this?
Do u take requests for IRs? PS: would be useful if u could explain why u have the settings as u put them? PPS: how does this work on stereo sources? Should the target also be stereo?
I do! Go to Facebook and search for "JZIR Users Group" and leave your request there. I will make the IRs for you for free and then put them up on my webstore for other folks to purchase. Some conditions: Guitar needs to be totally "solo" (no drums/cymbals/vocals/other sounds) Guitars need to be high gain
If I explained the settings, the video would have been longer. Feel free to demo the plugin and play around with them to see what all of those settings do. All you really need to know is that I spent a lot of time messing with the settings and these are the best settings for this type of work :)
This creates a mono IR so you would have to send the left and the right tones separately and then combine those two IRs in an audio editor like Audacity or something similar. You would then need to use an IR loader that can handle stereo IRs.
@@loredanamassini9484 The point of the video is to show you how to do it yourself. I could make that IR for you, sure, but I might have to ask for some small compensation for my time. If thats cool with you, please email me at jason(dot)zdora(at)gmail(dot)com
I would check out the IRs in an audio editor. Look at the waveform. Does the IR audio spike happen immediately on the .wav file? Or is there some silence in the .wav file before the IR audio spike begins? If youre making the IRs with the exporter button on MFreeformEqualizer, they should not be creating latency.
The only other thing I can think of is that you have not hit the "Minimum Phase" button. That would definitely create a different type of Impulse Response and that would definitely cause latency. Are you using my preset from the Melda Online Exchange or are you just recreating what you see in the video?
Is there an fx modeler u can recommend that can do what u r doing here and store it in the fx modeler? Tone X pedal recently came out ($399). Wondering if it can be done with that pedal.
The new ToneX pedal does not do any of the modeling work. That is all done inside your computer with the ToneX application. You can use these IRs (IRs that you make with MFreeformEqualizer) inside of Tonex just like you could with any other IR. You just need to use your ToneX amp model as the amp sim (instead of using Emissary like I did in this video). You could use Tonex to capture an amp sim and IR together but that seems like a weird workflow to me. I would rather have the two separate pieces (amp and IR) to have more control over my tone.
@@jasonzdora Thanks Jason 😊 I'm old school pedal guy from the 80s so working with modelers IRs and software is not easy. But thanks for explaining how it's done. Liked & subscribed 👍🏻
@@UncleYoshi For sure, brother! Some day, someone will invent a modeler that listens to a famous album tone and then emulates that tone. It hasnt happened yet but I have seen some folks working on it :)
You can always use MFreeform Equalizer however you like. Experimentation is key. But yeah, if for some reason you do not want to export the EQ profile into an IR, you can always just keep using MFFEQ on its own. Its not very CPU intensive.
I'm not getting accurate results unfortunately, EQ matching doesn't seem to be enough to reproduce a guitar tone, the guitar preamp + dist pedal are also making a big difference. I tried reproducing Demanfacture with Ignite Emissary and Fortin Cali Suite with no cab to no avail. It sounded very harsh.
Ive made IRs of that exact Fear Factory album and they turned out great. Lets go over the steps and lets see whats up. 1- Did you download and use my "Guitar Tone Copy Machine" preset for MFreeformEqualizer? 2- Are you using a sample of ONLY guitar from the Demanufacture album? If so, which song/timestamp on that song? 3- Did you record yourself playing the exact same guitar riff as what is in your guitar sample from the Demanufacture album? 4- Did you follow the steps in this video? Harshness most likely is coming from the sample you took from the Demanufacture album. If there are any cymbals rining out in that sample, it will cause your guitar to have the EQ profile of those cymbals (super harsh high end). You need a perfectly clean guitar sample of ONLY guitars. You might be having another workflow issue but that is my best guess without hearing what you used.
Yes, absolutely. It all comes down to the "amp" that you choose. Because bass tones are usually made from 2 or more parallel audio signals (clean + distortion) you will need to manage that part of the tone with your own imagination. But as far as using a match EQ, this process would work as expected.
@@jasonzdora LOL. I just got a good result making a Mortician bass tone. I ended up using a Proto Four guitar amp sim for the DI track. Mortician has the grittiest, shittiest bass I have ever heard. So, of course that was the tone I wanted to make.
@@leifhildebrandt1645 Thats awesome, man! Im glad you were able to do it! I imagine thats a super distorted bass tone so this workflow would be perfect. In my last comment, I was talking about the more complex bass tones that are a mix of cleans and distortion.
I'm using your preset and have done every step. It sounds great in freeform EQ but the IR it spits out sounds nothing like the results in freeform EQ... Do you have any idea what could be going wrong?
@@boimesa8190 OK. What is your signal path when using the pedal and MFreeform Equalizer? Then, what is your signal path when using the IR (what plugin for the IR, too)?
do I need to ensure EQ on the ampsim/emmissary to be flat? does it matter if it is not flat? so basically, the IR will bypass all the EQ on the ampsim, right?
You can use any EQ settings on your amplifier that you like. Just remember that those EQ settings will be baked into the IR so if you want to recreate that exact tone later on, you will have to set your amp EQ settings exactly the same way when you decide to use that IR again. Since that is the case, I have found that leaving the EQ on the amp alone is the best practice because you dont have to remember anything.