I’ve owned this PL-IR unit for a while now and am just now evaluating how the reactive load compares to a real speaker cab (my D412 F70).
Bottom line: the PL-IR’s load in “warm/edge” gets close to the response of my D412, but the difference is discernible. Some further adjustment of the load impedance values could maybe get it from “close” to “magic?” Those are my thoughts for future iterations.
The experiment: I recorded 10 samples of me playing the same thing through the same amp (my D60) with the same guitar with the same settings, into the PL-IR and recorded both the analog cab out and the IR out (bank 2 preset 3), while only changing the following things:
Sample 1: used the “cab-through” of the PL-IR into my D412 cab
Samples 2-10: disconnected the “cab-through” and used the PL-IR load, and went through all 9 setting combinations of the reactive load switches.
I should have used my looper pedal for this but I’m too lazy. The intent was to figure out which setting of the reactive load switches best emulates the response of the cab-through with the D412.
It turns out that “edge” is the best option for the top-end, but it doesn’t quite get it across the finish line. The real cab’s load resulted in more “edginess” than the PL-IR’s load could afford.
“Warm” was the best option for the low-end. “Deep” was kind of muddy in comparison. Still a very useful setting if you adjust the amp or use post EQ, but in comparison to the real cab’s response, the PL-IR’s load presented more low-mids in both settings. Interestingly, the real cab’s load response sounds “deeper” in the bottom register. So maybe the resonance peak of the real cab is at a lower frequency that that of the PL-IR’s load?
Speaking of the low-end, the real cabinet’s load gave the sound a little more liveliness and bounce as a result compared to the PL-IR’s load, while still staying clear. it’s most noticeable on those chunky palm mutes.
edit: almost forgot another difference: the cab-through version ended up coming in at around 1.5 dB higher than the version with the reactive load. Not sure why. I did apply a pad in post to make it a more fair comparison.
Here’s the two samples. I probably should have tuned my guitar and played on time, oh well. I wasn’t intending to post these, it was an experiment for my own purposes, but then I thought that it was useful information to share. The analog cab is on the left channel and the digital cab on the right. They channels are time aligned, but there’s still a bit of phasing if you’re playing it back in mono or with a small stereo field. There is a tiny amount of post-EQ and also a touch of reverb, just to make it closer to something you’d actually put in a mix for a fair comparison.
With the cab-through (D412):
With the PL-IR’s load in warm/edge:
Just for giggles, here’s the PL-IR in flat/flat. I’m not sure why you would ever use this setting. It makes sense for the Power station, but I don’t know why I would want it for the PL-IR:
So, why is it potentially important for the PL-IR’s load to exactly match the actual cab’s? I want to get started with a workflow where I use the PL-IR in “cab-through” mode along with microphones on the cab to record those along with the cab-less signal and make some IRs. Last album I did the mic setup was ridiculous: four close mics (two on each cab) and two far-field mics. It took a long time to set-up and even longer to tweak into exactly the right position. Next time I do this I’d like to be able to capture the setup as six IRs for use in the future. Okay, so I set-up the mics, use the cab-through, and make the IRs. Now, I can disconnect the cab-through and silently record the PL-IR output with the reactive load, and either load my IRs into the PL-IR and/or record the cab-less output and convolve with my IRs in the DAW. Now, if the reactive load matched my cabinet’s load exactly, I would expect a very close match in the “silent” recording vs. what I would get with the mics. But since there is a difference, that difference will manifest in the silent version compared to the version I’d get in the room, and there is not a clear way to “undo it” in post except do some careful EQing with my ears. Anyway, just thought I’d give some feedback on what could turn this from a really great product into a magical one. Thanks for listening.
…
I don’t want to make a separate thread for this, but I’m also curious if anyone else here is making their own IRs. I’ve never really been super happy with any of the deconvolution software I’ve found before so I spent a few hours yesterday rolling my own matlab script to do it and the results were very good. If anyone wants the script I’ll put it on github or something with instructions. Maybe I’ll get around to porting it to a real program someday.