How do I use an impulse response?

Basically, you load one of our impulse responses into a convolution plugin like our mixIR2 or hardware device that can load IRs and route your guitar signal through it. The signal can come from your amp's preamp, the line out on your amp, a guitar DI box, or a dummy load box with a line out to safely get the direct signal from the power amp.


And voila, out comes the sound of your guitar played through a well-mic'ed speaker cabinet, in an acoustically treated live room, run through a Neve 1073, a preamp expensive enough that your wife will probably divorce you if you buy one yourself -- and all without disturbing the neighbors. Will it sound exactly the same as the actual setup captured by the impulse response? Not completely.
It'll be missing the non-linear stuff like distortion (many would agree this is a good thing), but it's really, REALLY close.

What's an impulse response?

"What's an impulse response?", you ask. Only your key to unleashing killer guitar tones at any volume. Finally, you can give the neighbors some other reason to call the cops. For the technical among us, an impulse response (or "IR") realistically captures the characteristics, both in frequency and time, of an entire signal chain, including the sampled speaker, the microphone, the room it's in, the power amp, preamp even the A/D converters.




Put another way, it'll capture the unique frequency curve of the speaker, any phase smearing inherent in the mechanical operation of the speaker, any cabinet resonance, the frequency response and resonance of the mic, the sound of the room, and any frequency or phase related coloration introduced by the power amp, preamp, and converters and apply that captured sound to any audio you pass through it... or so our even geekier friends tell us.