For discussion about setting up your studio and advice on the gear and equipment within it.
By skiroy Fri Aug 27, 2010 3:52 am
Yo I am sold on impulse responses. I would love to get a sp 1200 and in fact IM planning on it. BUt I want to see what a impulse response can do for me.

Any one that can do this for me I can bless you with a drum kit I paid for thats SICK. Battle cat uses them and its not just single sounds they all snares,claps,kick ect all ready stack ed up for a huge sound, in a single wav. I cant wait to see how they would sound thru a sp 1200. I can also hook you up and tell you how to make a keyboard guitar sound,sound like a reall guitar. NO lie its amazing. I tried everything before this,even with a real guitar with no luck. But now with impulse responses its so real.

But let me know. Cause I will have to walk you thru it.

All you need to do is sample a .wav of white noise Ill send. Then just record that back into the Daw.
Thats it.

I would just need a couple different ones with some of the filters and with the pitched down method. Pretty much the things you would do to your drums. What ever you could do would be fine.

Much blessings

Hit me up. And Im sure I can return the favor in some way.

[email protected]
By aes-one Thu Sep 02, 2010 5:21 am
sorry for getting off topic..and i dont have an sp unfortunately...but can you explain some more what impulse responses are used for? and how u would use them? and how they help? i read up on them and understand them a bit better now, but i still dont see how or why i would use them....
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By cogswell Fri Sep 03, 2010 4:17 am
aes-one wrote:sorry for getting off topic..and i dont have an sp unfortunately...but can you explain some more what impulse responses are used for? and how u would use them? and how they help? i read up on them and understand them a bit better now, but i still dont see how or why i would use them....


I'm no expert, but here's the short version. An impulse response is essentially a sample of the sonic signature or characteristics of a thing. These samples are usually taken in one of two methods -- The transient method where a sound with a quick attack (starter pistol, click, etc) is used and the sweep method where a waveform, normally a sine, is swept across the frequency spectrum is used. The sound sources are triggered into the space or device and recorded by microphones or at the outputs of a device, respectively. These can be used to measure the acoustics of a room for an instance in time and used for convolution reverb, or used to reproduce the frequency response of a device (digital reverb, EQ, SP1200, etc) respectively. Basically people use them to approximate the sound and timing in the case of an acoustic space or the sound of devices at a particular time or setting. If you run your signals through a hardware/software that can utilize these impulses it is ideally supposed to sound as if your signals are going through the actual thing that was sampled, be it a room or device. Not all results are equal. With a device like the SP1200, I assume, the OP is trying to approximate the characteristic of the converters, filters, and aliasing caused by it's bit depth and sample rate. There are far more in depth information that can be found in books and online from experts on the subject though, I'm sure.

Thanks, SupremeSoulstice!
By aes-one Fri Sep 03, 2010 5:13 am
thanks for that explanation cogswell. so how would you use an IR in a beat, for example? to my understanding, are IR's usually just one short transient with a long reverb tail? how could a such a short sound be useful? still a bit confused at the practical use of IRs. i actually just bought the plugsound pro uvi soundcard and it comes with a whoel section of IR sounds. im not sure how to incoroporate these into my work though.

thanks for the help. would like to hear more of ur thoughts!
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By cogswell Fri Sep 03, 2010 8:03 am
See AntonPD's answer above. An example of a product using impulse samples for things other than reverb would be Nebula and Focusrite's Liquid Channel, where they are also used for sound processing like EQ and the sound of consoles. Like AntonPD said, there are no rules though. As an example of something using impulse responses for non-conventional use, Apple Logic's Space Designer uses impulses for both time based effects like reverb and more creative effects like sound design ("Warped Effects"). You even have them working behind the scenes in a lot of guitar amp/cabinet emulations. :D

You wouldn't usually use the actual impulse responses themselves, as AntonPD mentioned, instead you would load them into a convolution or impulse sampling product that would do the required math for you. You would then either use the product as an insert on a channel (for things like EQ, etc) or on an auxiliary channel and send to it via a bus (for things like reverb, etc). Unless you're really interested in using esoteric mic setups or niche based sampling software to capture your own responses your best bet is to just use them (with your software of choice) where you would any other reverb, EQ, or such. I'm still learning about ORTF, Decca-tree and all those microphone schemes so I won't even botch an explanation of them. In regards to the subject at hand sampling a static device like a SP is relatively easy and you'd just use it over your drums, for example. It's up to you to decide how close it comes sonically to the SP.
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By peterpiper Fri Sep 03, 2010 1:34 pm
The Freeware reverb VST SIR also work with IRs.

http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html

I really like to work with it cause the result sounds like a real room.

You can get IRs of many rooms and devices at noisevault.

http://noisevault.com/nv/index.php?opti ... &Itemid=29

There is also an IR set of the MPC60 over at goldbabys site
http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/freestuff.html

Doesnt sound like a MPC to me but give a nice coloration of the sound.

peace