Just like with guitar amplifier cabinets, you can simulate the acoustic behavior of instrument’s bodies with Impulse Response (IR) technology. Typical piezo pickups in acoustic guitars have a harsh signal that does not really sound like an acoustic guitar in the room. Including an acoustic IR in your piezo signal chain makes a great difference. The “acoustic amplifiers” in Archetypes Petrucci and Tim Henson are good attempts at improving piezo tones, but I feel they still are not up to par with good IRs.
It would be great if the Quad Cortex included stock acoustic instrument simulation blocks like it does with cab blocks. That way, you would be able to play with the choice, positioning, and blending of different microphones in a way that you cannot with static IRs. Moreover, a variety of guitars could be included, starting from typical dreadnoughts, jumbos, parlors, and all the way to classicals, archtops, resonators, etc. The addition of other instruments, like violins, violas, celli, mandolins, ukeleles, banjos, harps, ouds, shamisens, etc., would be mind-blowing.
This would be an amazing selling point for acoustic players with great potential far beyond guitar. It could also open the floodgates to a wealth of tones replicating and blending acoustic voices.
that would be interesting. Basically, a shell like the cab block, but for anything other than cabs.
In the meantime I’ve been converting as many acoustic/lofi/outside-the-box IRs as I can into captures so they can be shared more easily than IRs. I really think they are a mostly overlooked resource for unusual and unique tones.
I use the IR fx block, and import violin IRs, for my violin with an LR Baggs piezo pickup. It does change the tone. It removes some (maybe not all but some) of the piezo “quack”. It adds a woody /earthy tone.
It’s not perfect, but it does help.
Was this what you wanted in your request??
A company called 3 Sigma Audio has “IRs” for acoustic instruments
Same, AJ. I got some acoustic guitar IRs that I load on the QC. They improve piezo tones considerably. Also, paired with the capture of an acoustic emulator pedal (basically magnetic to piezo pickup signal converter), I manage to get an acoustic tone from my electric guitars that far surpasses the stock QC acoustic sim preset. Now, as you probably know, getting good quality IRs is expensive or very hard, especially for niche instruments like the oud. (E.g., the link you provided sells each set of IRs for $10-$15.) Imagine having high quality acoustic response blocks in the QC. Not only you would not need to dig the internet and pay to find good IRs, but you would be able to customize mic selection, etc. Moreover, IR blocks in the QC normally use more CPU than cab blocks: only the “lite” versions for single IRs are lighter than cab blocks. I don’t know about cab IRs (have not used them), but those lite loaders do have a noticeably drop in quality when used with acoustic IR files.
That’s a great idea! I use an acoustic IR with my main performance guitars (2 Kiesel electrics with piezo bridges) and it makes a huge difference in the realism of the “acoustic” tone. Having a model block that does the same thing but allows modification (beyond basic EQ) within the block would be great. I’m not sure that acoustic resonance can be captured using modeling technology, though.
Perhaps the Petrucci acoustic amp sim will have an accompanying free version. It does a pretty good job, though it’s not as versatile as what this Feature Request is asking for.
Pete, from what I understand, impulse responses perform a linear transformation of the signal. That is, they do not change their behavior depending on the intensity of the signal or what came before. Captures do have some of this dynamic behavior in terms of both intensity and memory. It is agreed that speaker cabinets and acoustic instrument bodies have mostly a linear behavior and, therefore, IRs work well for them. Captures might be overkill in terms of resource requirements for these, but perhaps they do provide some improvement… I do want to try to create a capture of my acoustic guitar at some point. @xush, you mentioned you converted IRs to captures. Have you noticed anything of interest when comparing side by side?
I really don’t see or hear a big difference in the results, but I’d still like to do some sort of scientific analysis to be sure. Haven’t had the chance yet.
The one part that FOR SURE makes a difference is you can share captures thru the Cloud, but not IRs. That’s mainly why I do it.
That’s an interesting description of the differences between three methods. I think captures must take a pretty substantial measurement of the relationship between dynamics and frequency response, harmonics, etcetera, or turning down your guitar wouldn’t clean up your signal.
For woody jazz tones, I’ve been blending a clean signal through an acoustic IR, then blending that back in after an amp and cab block. It gets my es-335 to sound more like a thunky es-175, but there is an artificial tinniness to it that I can’t completely get rid of.
This has been discussed before, but a feature like the Tone Dexter v2 could do what you are asking for. It seems to be a slightly different technology than a traditional IR, as it requires you to have both a pickup and a microphone - effectively, it measures the difference in sound between your pickup and mic’d sound, then creates a ‘waveform’ to turn your pickup sound into the mic’d sound. I don’t know whether that ‘waveform’ is an IR or their own proprietary tech. The QC can take both inputs, so if they are clever enough to code it, I’m sure it could happen.
A step further would then be to have the option to select the acoustic instrument you want it to sound like, rather than the mic’d acoustic sound. It would make it more versatile, and useful with a solidbody for example, but this is where acoustic simulators have sounded artificial in the past.
Thanks for sharing about the Tone Dexter II. I would say that “WaveMap” must basically be an IR. It’s nice that you can create it on the go instead of having to use some other IR creation tool in your computer. You should go ahead and create a new feature request for the Quad Cortex that allows capturing IRs. The algorithm is much simpler than with Captures, so you mostly just need a different user flow, where you play the instrument and send two different signals simultaneously (source and target). My request is more about having a library of acoustic instruments available stock in the QC, and being able to experiment with mic selection, placement, etc. just like with cab blocks.
By the way, for your ES-335, I think you need to add a block in the QC chain that converts your magnetic pickup signal to a piezo-like one before hitting the IR. The IRs are usually “trained” using a input piezo signal, so a magnetic one will not translate as accurately (and perhaps could explain the tinniness)…
Sure, it would make it easier to find and categorize. Acoustic IRs really make acoustic-electric guitars sound much better. Even standard electric guitars can achieve a more realistic acoustic tone with this type of IR. I have a Furman magnetic pickup mounted on my Martin’s soundhole, and on its own it doesn’t sound that great, but with an acoustic IR, the difference is very noticeable.
That Tone Dexter is amazing. Made a MASSIVE difference to the acoustic tone. I’d love something like that on the QC, even to just help semi-hollow or hollow body guitars.
I would say that “WaveMap” must basically be an IR. It’s nice that you can create it on the go instead of having to use some other IR creation tool in your computer. You should go ahead and create a new feature request for the Quad Cortex that allows capturing IRs. The algorithm is much simpler than with Captures, so you mostly just need a different user flow, where you play the instrument and send two different signals simultaneously (source and target). My request is more about having a library of acoustic instruments available stock in the QC, and being able to experiment with mic selection, placement, etc. just like with cab blocks.