How to Make Your Own Acoustic Impulse Response

One of my most highly requested topics has been a tutorial on how to create acoustic impulse responses. A few weeks ago I was working on a mix that had a lot of unfortunate bleed from the drum cymbals into the vocal mic. I was exploring options for minimizing this after the fact and came across an EQ plugin that was able to analyze one track and remove those frequencies from another. It ended up not working (thank god for iZotope in the end) but instead I found a cool plugin that'll make creating custom impulse responses a breeze. In this video I'll walk you through the entire process from start to finish. It's surprisingly easy! If you have any questions, leave them below as I'm usually pretty good at getting back to people.

In this bundle you'll get 50+ presets that I've developed over the course of hundreds of hours at home on my studio monitors, in empty venues on various FOH systems, and in the context of a full band. Updates are frequent and always free to previous supporters! I've also included a bundle of acoustic IRs as stated in this video.

Products mentioned:

▶️ *Highlights*
0:00 - Introduction
0:27 - What you'll need
1:40 - How it works
3:05 - The process
5:13 - Exporting the Impulse Response
6:09 - Additional tips for improving the IR
8:31 - Impulse Responses for Helix Users
10:45 - A/B comparison
11:04 - Summary

#ImpulseResponse #Acoustic #Tutorial
=================================

Hi! My name is Alex Price. I’m a professional musician based out of Pittsburgh, USA. I make a living between touring, performing on cruise ships, and while I’m home, teaching. Check out my new uploads every Tuesday and Saturday for gear demos, lessons, and performance clips.

=================================

If you’ve found value in this video, you are more than welcome to make a donation to help fund the channel. Drop a note and let me know how I can be of help in the future! I appreciate your support.

=================================

*This description contains affiliate links, which means that I get a small commision in return for purchases made through them, though it doesn't cost anything extra to you. Each product that I've linked, I personally own and use extensively. If my channel has helped you make a decision on a gear purchase, this is a great way to support the work that I've put it. I appreciate it!

=================================

🎥 Playlists:

=================================

⭐️ Social Media - @AlexPriceMusician:
🎧 And my other projects:

=================================

[budgetguitaristcom]

Alex, I got turned onto this plugin from one of your previous videos, and I bought the plugin. This works extremely well! I've made and given away a few IR files on my own channel after watching your other video. For anyone who is curious, give this a try. It's a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. Thanks again for pointing out this awesome plugin and process.

[PlayGuitarcom]

Excellent, thank you. I've been using third party IRs, but then suddenly today thought maybe it wouldn't be that hard to make one of my own, for my own guitar, which I love the sound of. Found your video and discovered the process is much easier than I had imagined!

[albertorinaldi]

This tutorial is very well done! Thanks for it and the comprehensive explanation!

[RickyMontijo]

Great concept! I might have to try it!

[johnviera]

great video. also, Logic Pro has a stock IR plugin. it’s called Space Designer.

[allighton]

Being able to generate your own IR is such a good thing. Not only does it let you make your own plugged in guitar sound more like your mic'd guitar, but it lets you sound more like other guitars too. Lots of folks out there sell acoustic IRs of certain source guitars. But that to neglects the fact that having the target guitar EQ curve right is just as important as the source eq curve. All the different piezos and built in electronics from different brands sound different, and the differences in the actual guitar is also just as important. I borrowed my friends Collings D1A, collings SJ, Martin HD28, and Taylor 712, as well as my own Taylor Dan Crary, and now my Taylor 614CE can sound more like those, and they sound more realistic than the IR's I tried that weren't made specifically for my 614.

[jeffrysteck]

A few extra things to note: If you turn on the minimum phase button, it trims the IR for you.

Additionally, if you turn the smoothness down to 0% you'll have a much more accurate EQ curve.

[filipnovosel]

Man your videos are life saver! Keep up the good work!

[nategoodlet]

I don't think i've even heard of IR before today and now I know I've got my work cut out for me!! looking forward to diving into it!

[TheDouglasOxford]

Please excuse my ignorance on this topic…this is new territory for me (I am old school). You trimmed off the beginning of your IR file but left the excess after the pulse of sound. Is there a reason you left the silence after the pulse or does it not matter? I understand the reason for trimming the silence from the beginning of the IR.

[stevemac]

Thank you sir, I went through the process this morning and it was most successful !

[mikeledwith]

I recorded my Taylor 414 through a microphone into a DAW, and the same piece of music with all guitars I have with a piezo (Crowdster, Crafter SA, Brenner Piezo, others). The IR generated definitely helped. I will say that the eq plugin inside the DAW was astoundingly good; I was shocked how good everything sounded. The IR exported and applied in Helix was an improvement, but nowhere near as good sounding as the eq curve generated and applied in the DAW. Not sure if that's the nature of IRs or if I'm doing something wrong.

[jeffd]

Just made an IR of my archtop guitar now to compare sound of Guitar + IR versus GUITAR + MIC ( I like to blend the pickup with the acoustic sound.)
Results: It sounds killer. Now need to make one with a thinner pick to get a brighter version. I live in a noisy house, can rarely use a mic, plus the AC unit is outside on my side of the house. I'm 67 and mostly playing for fun now but this is the bomb! Thanks so much Alex for the video. You can really hear the "WOOD" of the guitar.

UPDATE: I can only use it between 1- 30% and then 100% otherwise the the tone gets very thin.

[SorenAraujo]

Great content, thanks! Do you reckon it's possible/feasible to try and make stereo IRs? E.g. XY mic set-up? Thanks in advance for any input, I suspect this might be a stupid noob question. My guitar (Ovation) sounds fine with a mono mic, but still feels somewhat "incomplete" to my ears. Thanks again.

[jamesfallmusic]

I tried to use this method to make a guitar sound like a banjo. i knew it was a long shot, but tried it anyways. The IR gave my guitar the brightness of the banjo, especially when i turned up the tone knob on my guitar, but other than that it unfortunately doesnt sound very convincing. i do not think that is the fault of the software though. It is just too much of a difference of sound to capture only with an EQ curve. i will be using this software to make IRs of more other things in the future!

[cantorFlaviomotta.oficial]

Is it possible to create an Impulse Response from an existing audio? In other words, taking a WAV audio from the internet and turning it into an IR.

[p_mouse]

I am so happy with the whole idea of IR's. Sure it's not always sounding 100% right, but it's a thousand times better than that absolutely horrible sound coming from a piezo transducer.
I always hated that sound so deeply.

[rvatina]

I have Godin Solidac electric guitar and it has LR Baggs X-Bridge which is some kind of piezo bridge pickup (?). Pure signal from that pickup has a very "plastic/metallic" sound. As I understand, raw signal from piezo always sounds like that.
My question is can I record few chords like you on my Godin guitar through bridge pickup (like you do in this video), and then use mic recording of some other guitar not playing same sequence of chords (maybe even download beautiful sounding recording of a acoustic guitar from the web since I don't have acoustic guitar and condenser mic) and then use your method described in a video to get an good IR for piezo signal from my Godin Solidac?
I tried bunch of free acoustic IR's for various types of pickup systems but when i pass signal from LR Baggs X-Bridge piezo through them it even sounds worse than raw signal.

[markmacalik]

Nice video, Alex! Two questions. 1 Does the source (piezo) and target (mic) guitar have to be the same instrument? 2 Do you need to record the piezo and mic simultaneously for the software to analyze the differences between the two guitars? I was wondering if you can record a guitar that has no pickups with a mic and then use another guitar with a piezo to play and get the first guitar's sound.

[stevesirois]

Thanks for this informative video! Couple of questions:

1. Is this basically what one would get out of using a ToneDexter unit or is there more to the TD that makes an acoustic sound better live?

2. You mentioned that your Martin using a different pickup system. Why would the system you're using matter if you're just applying an EQ curve to it? Thanks!