Speaker sim experiment

[Chistopher]

I have a theory that speaker sim pedals can be used in an interesting way to create a rather oddball interaction. I'll test it tommorow and if it works report back here, if not I'll just spill the beans on it and hopefully not get bullied too hard.

 

[Mincer]

I don't know what you are describing, but I've tried speaker sim pedals that sound sort of like a different EQ and nothing more.

 

[Masta' C]

Curious where this is going...

 

[marcello252]

I don't know what you are describing, but I've tried speaker sim pedals that sound sort of like a different EQ and nothing more.

the classic analog types work exactly that way, unless they have a coil inside, the digital ones are a bit different since they consider the interaction of the components, speaker etc., both work connecting them directly on a mixer board or a audio interface only

 

[El Dunco]

the classic analog types work exactly that way, unless they have a coil inside, the digital ones are a bit different since they consider the interaction of the components, speaker etc., both work connecting them directly on a mixer board or a audio interface only

You can get much closer to a speaker with lots of very narrow band EQ cuts and boosts on a digital EQ, which is probably outside the capabilities of most analog EQs (that could be used practically anyway,) then you’ve got IRs which use deconvolution to grab a realistic, albeit static snapshop of a source, be it a bathroom, the woods or a mic’d speaker cab.

I’m interested to know exactly what the new plugin that keeps popping up all over social media that touts speaker movement emulation when placed after an Impulse Responses. IRDX Core I think it’s called.

Also, the difference between a reactive load vs a resistive load without a speaker plugged in to a tube amp is night and day. It’s crazy how much of the sound relies on the power section having a speaker or something to take its place to interact with.

No-one who matters is going to bully you for being brave enough to post an experiment. It might yield some interesting results we can all learn something from.

 

[Securb]

Curious where this is going...

He took a razor blade to his IR pedal

 

[El Dunco]

I looked into it ans the IRDX apparently uses AI machine learning that was trained on a real speaker and mic.

He took a razor blade to his IR pedal

All day and all of the night? Now I wonder if anybody has tried to model a cut speaker or real speaker breakup. An IR probably wouldn’t be able to but I can see the AI training concept being the next step. Of course someone will make and launch it well before I can do anything about it

 

[Chistopher]

Sorry, I got the experiment done this afternoon and didn't have a moment to do a writeup until now.

So a speaker sim is a very complex thing, but the most important element of it is a basic low pass filter. If you've ever plugged a guitar direct into a PA with no cab emulation, you know the sound is unbearably tinny and bright.

Enter the analog octave pedal. They get easily confused by high frequencies. Standard practice is rolling the tone all the way down, playing on the neck pickup, and playing far up the neck.

But then I got to thinking, what if you ran a speaker sim before an octave pedal, so your octave pedal doesn't get confused by the higher frequencies that you won't even be able to hear anyway?

I didn't get a chance today to try it as extensively as I wanted to with a proper speaker sim, but my Digitech Screamin Blues mixer out (same one as the Bad Monkey) was able to make my OC-2 a lot less glitchy. It wasn't a night and day difference, but it was noticeable enough to where I can say my Octaver definitely had better tracking and consistency than it did before.

I would appreciate if any of you could try and duplicate my results. I know the Digitech speaker sim isn't 100% the best in the buisness, and I don't get to see my new Boss IR-2 for a while because I'm out of town.

 

[Mincer]

Yeah, I am pretty sure the Digitech sim is just a low pass filter, and not a sophisticated one at that. However, that is the output I like best on my Bad Monkey on its way to an actual amp.

 

[El Dunco]

What you’re describing would work great with sidechaining. It would be ideal to have the octave pedal act on a guitar signal with the highs rolled off but not actually be on the output. Octave pedals would sound better if they were wired so the pedal only “hears” the fundamental with a switch for people who like the glitchy sound as post distortion introduces extra harmonics that could confuse it even more.

Sidechaining take some doing (mods or external gear) but more pedals with a built in sidechaining option would open up a world of possibilities usually only possible with recording consoles and DAWs.

Now I think I might build a compact, multi-channel pedal sidechainer.

 

[Chistopher]

I am debating now adding a super aggressive low pass filter to the input of OCT1 to improve the tracking. Currently I have a wire shorting the filtering section of OCT2, such that instead of the rather quiet and useless stock sound, it's a loud splatty synth noise.