Impulse Response Libraries Information Manual Copyright 2015 OwnHammer, LLC. All rights reserved. Third Party Reference Disclaimer: Any and all third party companies and products listed or otherwise mentioned in this document may be trademarks of their respective owners and are in no way affiliated or associated with OwnHammer, LLC. Product names are referenced solely for the purpose of identifying certain elements used in the equipment chain for impulse response capture, as well as related third party tools and applicable file loading platforms. Use of these names does not imply any cooperation or endorsement.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Library Overview by Justin York... 3 How the Vectors Work... 4 About This Library... 5 Quick Start Folder... 5 The Speaker Locations... 5 The Power Amp... 5 Wave Audio Format Files... 5 File Decay Tail and Minimum Phase Transformation... 6 Additional Platforms... 6 Page 2
LIBRARY OVERVIEW BY JUSTIN YORK I m so honored and privileged to work alongside Kevin at OwnHammer to bring you the Justin York Collection. After six months of countless hours of correspondence, play testing various capture methods and techniques, comparing multiple mic preamps, mic choice and meticulous mic placements, we ve finally landed on what I feel is one of the greatest sounding and most useable IR libraries to date. Fusing old and new methods from OwnHammer s history, this library features accurate and diverse IRs by utilizing the Vector methodology that Kevin developed in 2014 and Phase Out which he developed this year in 2015. The results are outstanding, and I cannot stress enough how organic and true to life these IRs are compared to their real world counterparts. The first time I played the first IR Kevin shot of my straight Mesa Rectifier cab, I couldn t wipe the smile from my face because I was finally hearing MY sound. I was hearing the cabinet that has traveled with me all over the world and been the core of my sound in the five years I ve been with Paramore, and until now, I didn t believe that my Mesa, or any of these exceptional cabinets could ever be accurately represented and used in a digital box. I stand ecstatically corrected. Here s what s in the Justin York Collection: 2008 Mesa Straight Rectifier 4x12 with 8 ohm English Vintage 30s My main live cab and desert island 4x12. The sound is massive with deep low end, balanced midrange, and a sweet top end. EVERYTHING sounds good through this cab, and the years and thousands of shows played through it have worn the speakers in which all have very different tonal qualities and characteristics. My personal favorite speaker I mic live is the BL (Bottom Left). An IR of my live mic and mic placement on this speaker (SM7-LIVE) can be found in the Quick Start folder. 2003 Mesa Horizontal Rectifier 2x12 with 16 ohm English Vintage 30s This is my go-to cab for recording. The low end is tight and focused, and the top end is more aggressive than the 4x12, which is great for heavier in-your-face tones. This cab has some serious thump and loves high gain, but it also plays nicely with clean tones as well. 1994 Vox AC30 Top Boost with 8 ohm Celestion Blues This amp is very special and very rare. Only 36 Vox AC30s were made in 94 with red tolex and this is one of them. Looks aside, this amp is THE quintessential Vox tone. It s got chime, yet also has body and that signature midrange that Vox amps are famous for. This was my touring clean amp from 2010-2013, but took it off the road to keep it safe from wear and tear. I m extremely excited to offer this amp in the collection as well. It has all of the classic Voxy goodness you d expect from standard mic-ups, but we ve also added a couple one-off mic shots based on images of live setups from a couple of legendary Vox users. What makes this library different from the hundreds of lr libraries already out there? The Justin York Collection is easy to use, highly intuitive, tonally diverse, and organized to help you get the sound you re after quicker. For the click and play user, we ve included a Quick Start folder to familiarize you with some of the features and sounds in the full library and to get you playing right away. For the more advanced user that has had actual experience in mic ing an amp and knows where they want to put a 57 or 421 on the real-life cab, we offer the OH Vector approach on every speaker in every cab so you have control over WHERE you put the mic. This way, you know exactly how your amp is mic d up, making it easier to dial in your amp models to get the sound you hear in your head. With each Vector labeled A-H, we have four sweet spot positions that range from brightest (1) to darkest (4). Page 3
Here s where it gets really interesting and this is what sets our library apart from the others. I realized that different amp models came to life depending on which Vector I chose. For example, I know that I tend to use mic positions 2 and 3 the most, and in real life, I pretty much always mic up my cab in Vector C. Now I can audition different speakers and still know where the mic is positioned and can try out all C Vector options to find the speaker that speaks the best for my particular tone with the mic placement I prefer. If the C isn t quite the right flavor, I try Vector B and move the mic around until one fits the amp just right. With this approach, you don t have to feel like you re scrolling blindly through IRs, but you can determine where YOU want to mic your cab, resulting in less time spent IR hunting and more time playing. Mic Selection In the spirit of making this library diverse without option overload, aside from the Vector variable positions of the Shure SM57 and the vintage Telefunken MD421, we offer single shot options of the following mics: Royer R121 Sennheiser MD441 Shure SM7B Microtech Gefell U70 AKG C414 Sennheiser e906 Beyerdynamic M160 Shure SM58 (Vox only) Plus, Auxiliary captures for ROOM, REAR, and MID for all cabinets. And lastly, I can t stress enough how accurate these IRs are compared to my real cabinets. If you have any experience with these cabs in real life, you will absolutely love this library. I highly recommend using Cab Lab 3 to explore your own signature sounds to unlock the music inside you. Have fun, and good luck on your tone quest! - Justin York HOW THE VECTORS WORK In this library the SM57 and MD421 mics are extensively placed across the face of the speaker along eight separate directional vectors. Vectors A through H, as depicted in the image to the right, show the relative movement of the mic from position 1 (brighter and closer to center) to position 4 (darker and nearer to the speaker edge) and are labeled here as you will find them in the library files. For the JY-MES-212 cabinet, position G4 is not included as the relative position was blocked by the logo brace underneath the grill cloth on the exterior of the front baffle. All single shot, non-auxiliary mics were placed according to sweet spot relative to both position and vector. Page 4
ABOUT THIS LIBRARY QUICK START FOLDER The quick start folder not only contains some favorites from the Mics and Mixes subfolders, but also unique files that are only found here. All 57xx-121 and 421xx-121 mix permutations can be found in the Mixes subfolders. THE SPEAKER LOCATIONS Every speaker in all cabinets was mic d in full. These speaker locations are abbreviated in the following manner: JY-MES-212 and JY-VX30-212 L = Left Speaker R = Right Speaker JY-MES-412 BL = Bottom Left Speaker BR = Bottom Right Speaker TL = Top Left Speaker TR = Top Right Speaker THE POWER AMP This library s captures were driven by a mostly neutral tube power amplifier. While the overall frequency response is largely even like that of a solid state reference amplifier, the common tube amp deviation traits are present that both liven and thicken up the sound slightly. As such they are ideal as-is with accurate modeling platforms and tube amps sent to dummy load + line out devices. For platforms that need the little extra scoop of modestly configured guitar tube amp driven files, this is quickly and easily accomplished by implementing the following simple post processing adjustment: SOUNDING LIKE A GUITAR TUBE AMP With the files contained in this library there is a very quick, simple step that can be taken to duplicate the sound of a guitar tube power amp with the Presence and Depth set to 0, similar what is offered in other OwnHammer speaker cabinet impulse response libraries. To replicate this sound, following the cabinet IR loader add an EQ with a parametric bell curve set to -3 db at 400 Hz. Adjust the Q/bandwidth to roughly where the edges of the curve start to make the initial cut around 100 Hz on the low side and 2 khz on the high side. If necessary, adjust the Q/bandwidth to taste from here to best suit your sound source and tonal preference. WAVE AUDIO FORMAT FILES The Wav folder contains files in.wav format for use in any convolution reverb loader, be it DAW hosts or external hardware devices. These files are formatted in 44.1 khz, 48 khz, 88.2 khz, and 96 khz sample rates in mono channel count. For information concerning loading of these files into the host of your choice beyond what is included in this user manual and additional text files in the directory structure, please refer to their website or documentation. Page 5
FILE DECAY TAIL AND MINIMUM PHASE TRANSFORMATION This library contains various configurations of decay (reverb) tail truncation level and minimum phase transformation. These elements can change the sound as well as the compatibility with various platforms or ease of use when mixing IR files. WAV-200MS Files in the Wav-200ms folder have had the decay tail truncated to 200 milliseconds. This shorter truncation level may assist in loading platforms that are bound by sample length ceilings. If you use the full 500 millisecond files and your IR loader throws an error stating that you are attempting to use files that exceed the sample length (note, not the sample rate) limitations, use these files. In addition to this scenario, and the 200 millisecond files could potentially help with CPU usage on less powerful systems or where track and instance counts are high. WAV-500MS Files in the Wav-500ms folder exhibit the full, uninhibited decay tail. These files will contain all of the reflective information of sound moving around inside the cabinet, and inside the room. In some instances, minimum phase transformed files in this folder may be slightly more quiet in volume level than those in the 200ms directory, however this is just a side effect of the involved math, and is not a quality factor, just output level. This phenomenon is dependent upon the data inside each unique IR, and is not consistent. MPT Files in the Mpt folder are minimum phase transformed versions of the raw files in the directory above them. Minimum phase transformation destroys all phase information contained within an IR file, and has a sonic result that may work better or worse for a given situation or taste. Above all, minimum phase transformation achieves a global time and phase alignment for IR s from any source or creator. All non-mpt d OwnHammer files are universally time aligned to be 1 st party compatible for blending, however if blending with 3 rd party content, Mpt d files will likely be required unless significant time is spent in the parallel time and phase alignment process. ADDITIONAL PLATFORMS For additional convenience files with the appropriate sample rate, channel count, and time alignment standard are included for popular external hardware systems. These files are no different from those in the Wav directory structure, save for changing the naming convention to better accommodate front panel displays with limited character lengths. In these cases and in these subdirectories, additional text files are included for extended information. Page 6