I´ve found the cabs and sounds in the QC to be good enough for me but wanted to experiment with some IRs and see if there is any big difference…
what are your experiences?
is buying some nice IRs worth it? and in what cases?
2 Likes
Large collection of ir during years…
Now completely abandoned.
The free mic placement Is superior sculpting Tone (and eq) imho.
Now i use only qc cabs
4 Likes
In all honesty, I have my go to IRs but I am able to recreate those cabs with the factory IRs without much hassle.
2 Likes
I wouldn’t, unless you’re unhappy with the factory IRs. It’s an endless rabbit hole of auditioning IRs and thinking that there must be something better in that other pack. I bought several IR packs way back when I had the Axe-Fx Standard, and they were certainly necessary back then.
The cabs in the QC are fantastic. You just need to develop an ear for what you need to tweak to change the tone.
2 Likes
thanks, looks like i´ll be repurposing that money into feeding a hungry child
1 Like
I think the stock cabs are great.
But if you really want the sound of your own amp the way it sounds in your studio or on stage, I would suggest making a DI capture of your amp, then making a few quick IR’s of your cab mic’ed the way you like it. Then just match your amp DI capture up with your IR and let the rock and roll flow.
1 Like
The QC Stock IRs/Cabs are all you need. I have my “go to” IR’s as well, which i put in every preset, but thats just because i’m lazy and don’t want to recreate them with the stock cabs 
2 Likes
I’m not crazy about the QC’s stock IRs (they tend to sound too warm for my ears). But I have the ML Sound Lab Mikko plug-in, which lets you create and export your own IRs. I made a couple of custom IRs using their ORNG (Orange PPC412 model) pack, then dropped them into my QC. That fixed it for me.
2 Likes
+1 for the Mikko plugin!
It allows me to create my personal mix of microphones and positions very intuitively (like pushing mics around in the recording room) for my recording sounds. Then I can create an IR from that mix and bring it on the QC.
If you’re primarily editing on the QC, I’d say it’s not worth the hassle - much easier to fine-tune your cab sound when you have direct access to mic positions and can just nudge the mic a bit towards the cap or away from it. IRs are much more hassle in that case - whenever you want to change the sound, you need to load a different IR file, which is not as intuitive as just nudging a mic, IMO.
But if you want to fine-tune your guitar cab sound on your PC/Mac (with amp plugins), then the most intuitive and powerful option from my perspective is definitely the Mikko plugin. And then simply copy the result to your QC, and you’re good.
4 Likes
Usually i go out from this maintaining a ribbon close, but increasing distance of Dynamic…a lot in any case, reamping with looper. Very good results.
I’ve tried a number of commercial IR packs, and while they did sound good, I can’t say that they sounded better than the stock ones, at least for my preferences.
Judging by the presets shared on Cortex Cloud, I suspect that most people don’t spend much time exploring what they can get with stock cabs, especially experimenting with non-default combinations of microphones and position/distance settings.
I don’t suppose you’d be interested in sharing those? 
Yeah, MIKKO 2 is probably worth a look if you like the idea of moving mics around but want something other than factory options. I wish this stuff was available like 10-15 years ago, instead of going through a folder of IRs and hoping to stumble on a good one. 
I just checked my old Red Wire IR big box pack: 23 000 files per sampling rate
I use two IRs I created with the Mikko ORNG cab pack; one of them focuses the mics right in the center of the cone. I can’t remember what other kinds of EQ stuff I may have done to them.
I run both IRs into a mono Cab block or mono IR block at equal volume. The blend works well for me and I’ve learned to set it and forget it. The point is to keep upper mids and highs crisp and tight, and not sound like there’s a blanket over the whole sound.
If that sounds like your cup of tea, DM me and I can share them.
thanks! i think i´ll stick to the QC ones then
could i try them out too? just out of curiosity
If you’re going for acoustic sound, Ir’s all the way. You can actually hear the difference between a Gibson J45, Humming bird, Taylor, Martin, McPherson and Collins. I personally found a Lowden Ir on site and love t’s tone!
1 Like
It’s changed my world for acoustic. I set up my acoustic board long before my electric, and almost never played the electrics for a while, because the acoustic setup sounded so good.
I’m not a fan of Taylor’s ES2 system - it sounds too much like a tin can too me - but I love how my 414ce custom sounds in the room - especially when it comes to dynamics and fingerpicking. After a few months of still not being happy plugged in with the full align series of pedals by lr Baggs and a Strymon cloud burst on top, I ordered an LR Baggs Voiceprint DI off Reverb. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made. When I first got it, I knew like 1 scale and couldn’t play fluently up the neck yet. I was still able to fumble through creating my first IR using my iPhone easily, which transferred to the Voiceprint pedal. I couldn’t believe the difference, it instantly sounded like the guitar did in the room… only better combined with the align session pedal, then some chorus and reverb (and other pedals mixed in when it makes sense). I never play the 414ce without the voiceprint now.
In short, I think IRs are a huge game changer when it comes to acoustic electrics, especially piezo pups. I do have a gs-mini that’s my take it every time I leave the house, beat it up, use it to play more percussively guitat. I had a Fishman powertap rare earth system installed, with the sound hole pup and body sensor. I just bypass the voiceprint when that’s plugged in and it sounds awesome with just the align session and other pedals. But any other acoustic goes through the Voiceprint.
My Quad Cortex is arriving today. I was browsing the cloud/presets and neural captures earlier and was really excited to see some of the acoustic stuff available. Def trying out the Martin one to see how it sounds today. I wish I could bring the IRs from voiceprint in the QC, but the format voiceprint uses for IRs, is incompatible with anything else. Though someone from the voiceprint team did say earlier this year that they were planning/hoping to address that in the future so you can export your voiceprint IRs and use them with other devices. 