No, I hated it. I wasn't able to get one useful tone out of it and I really don't understand why people like it. Maybe this one was broken, I have no idea. I'd love to get the designer over to my place and check it out with me, and tell me what I did wrong after fucking with it for 3 hours.
Not that the Suhr RL and Celestion IR's sound exactly like my cabinet either, but they come a hell of a lot closer than the Ox.
Wow, this is a huge surprise. I’ve had a good luck with it in the short amount of time I’ve had it, but am probably going for some different tones than you. Also I haven’t tried recording ina mix yet, just some simple tests on its own.
Has anyone else on the forum, have any tips on it or agree with Scott?
I'm not going for any particular types of tones, but I'd expect for that kind of money it should be able to do a high gain sound and a crunch sound, especially with a great head plugged into it. All I got out of it was fizz and woofy, unusable sounds. Compared to my real cabinet, it was a joke. Not so with the Suhr RL and Celestion IR's - at least I can get in the ball park with those, and at one quarter of the price.
Troy was with me when we tried it, and he said he was going to call UA and ask "what the hell?" Oz Noy told me he's had good luck with it too, so I have no idea what to think now because he gets good tone. It's really weird because I rarely say a piece of gear just plain sucks ass, but that's my opinion of the Ox.
I am very surprised too. I don't have high gain heads, just use pedals, but have the bella and have gotten some "lead" sounds that sounded good. But like I said, I haven't spent too much time with it yet.
Will be good to hear what the UA guys say to Troy. Anybody here had better luck with higher gain sounds?
No, I hated it. I wasn't able to get one useful tone out of it and I really don't understand why people like it. Maybe this one was broken, I have no idea. I'd love to get the designer over to my place and check it out with me, and tell me what I did wrong after fucking with it for 3 hours.
Not that the Suhr RL and Celestion IR's sound exactly like my cabinet either, but they come a hell of a lot closer than the Ox.
That's my experience too. It's great if you need an "all in one" live load box but for recording the OX has some serious flexibility issues.
The biggest issue being that you can't use any other IR's internally that are not UAD designed. For a $1k load box, this is an absolutely unbelievably stupid oversight to me. You could get any currently produced load boxes and a small IR library and have much more flexibility than with the OX for a fraction of the price.
I know, right? That's what I thought before I even heard it, but after hearing how awful it sounds, I'm completely confused. Worst piece of gear of the year in my opinion.
I also have a small complaint about Celestion IR's. They make quality stuff, but they need to take a lesson from OwnHammer concerning mic placement. OwnHammer makes 10 versions of a speaker, from the mic in the middle of the cone to the edge of the paper. The Celestion Balanced Greenback sounds like they put the mic in the seam between the cone and the paper, and the Bright Greenback sounds like they put it right in the middle of the cone. I think if they'd made one in between, it would sound exactly like my cabinet, or too close to hear the difference in the mix.
I'm also confused by how Celestion was able to come out with IR's which sound fatter and more real sounding than OwnHammer or RedWirez, companies which have been doing this for many years. I can only say that's my experience using IR's which were recorded using a Shure 57 - no idea how other mics compare.
I know, right? That's what I thought before I even heard it, but after hearing how awful it sounds, I'm completely confused. Worst piece of gear of the year in my opinion.
I also have a small complaint about Celestion IR's. They make quality stuff, but they need to take a lesson from OwnHammer concerning mic placement. OwnHammer makes 10 versions of a speaker, from the mic in the middle of the cone to the edge of the paper. The Celestion Balanced Greenback sounds like they put the mic in the seam between the cone and the paper, and the Bright Greenback sounds like they put it right in the middle of the cone. I think if they'd made one in between, it would sound exactly like my cabinet, or too close to hear the difference in the mix.
I'm also confused by how Celestion was able to come out with IR's which sound fatter and more real sounding than OwnHammer or RedWirez, companies which have been doing this for many years. I can only say that's my experience using IR's which were recorded using a Shure 57 - no idea how other mics compare.
Yeah, I had heard about the OX from a friend who is also friends with Oz. He was having no issues, but I don't think he was quite as demanding of an IR setup sounding "right" as much as yourself.
I have only really liked the RedWirez (And some of the OwnHammer stuff) because of their larger microphone collections and the flexibility it offers. I find that blending two cabinet IR's in MixIR is nearly essential to get any kind of depth to the bass dynamics like a real cabinet, particularly when you are dealing with bass guitars (and electric guitars to a lesser but still significant extent). Even just the same mic, by the same IR maker, in the same position on the speaker but with a slightly further or closer distance can make a huge difference in the fatness of the top end I have found. Otherwise a lot of the single mic IR's sound kinda wimpy by themselves which has made me hesitant to jump into the Celestion IR's where they are not nearly as thorough and much more expensive.
I saw Oz once play a gig with a stereo rig and he had a horrendous ground loop hum going on from the two amps being grounded that he never addressed. Just sayin'. Played his ass off though!
I would ask Pete Thorn what his method is to make his own IR's. I know it's not too hard, but I know it requires some special hardware pieces. That way at least you can control the mic placements and the power amp type (which I think has A LOT to do with the tone of the IR, but I'm only speculating).
Thanks for the info Travis - I'm not really an expert on IR's and I've never used one on a record (yet). I haven't had any luck mixing IR's, for the same reason I've never been able to use two mics on my cabinet - it always seems to cause problems, mainly phasing. When you mix IR's, do you experience those problems?
Thanks for the info Travis - I'm not really an expert on IR's and I've never used one on a record (yet). I haven't had any luck mixing IR's, for the same reason I've never been able to use two mics on my cabinet - it always seems to cause problems, mainly phasing. When you mix IR's, do you experience those problems?
The MixIR Plug-in fixes phasing issues with other mics by making the sound arrive at every IR in the "Block" (where you drag the IR files) at the same time. Other IR plug-ins I've tried suck shit at this. None of them can blend IR's musically like MixIR does.
It makes me feel like the guy who walked into a bar and sees a jukebox for the first time in 1930 or something: "How do they do this?! How they get a little band playin' in there?!"
What's kind of neat about this is the ability to blend physically impossible mic placements, like two SM57's that are a couple inches apart distance-wise from the source both pointing at the same physical spot on the cone with the mic capsule on the same axis. Sort of the Jimmy Page "distance equals depth" mic placement but a much, much smaller scale, of course. That little distance is what seems to give the cabinet a bit more "breath" with the bass dynamics (ie palm muting, single note fatness) and it's not as flat as a single IR in my experience. Even though this "composite IR" is a pain in the ass, it seems to sound closer to what I am used to with a microphone on a cabinet.
Here's my method as of right now:
Drag your favorite IR file into the "Block" of your choosing in MixIR. I think of this IR as my "main" IR in the block. I usually will start blending by dragging an additional IR block with the same mic but a distance of 2 inches farther away from the first one with them blended 50/50. I sometimes find that they are too close to tell apart sonically at 50/50, in which case I will make the distance the mics are from each other greater by moving the mic that is farther away an inch farther away from the closer "main" mic. If they are too drastic sonically, I will make the farther mic closer to the "main" mic. Either way you blend it, most of the time, the closer mic provides more of the upper midrange and the farther mic gives you more bass. It's up to your ears as to how much of each you want to hear. It's the same sort of quack science mic placement is in the physical realm but in a digital realm.
I'm sorry Travis, I'm completely confused, so I'll ask this question because maybe there are other readers who are as confused as I am.
Where are you getting IR's which include mic placements of distance? The IR's I know (Celestion, OwnHammer, RedWirez) only include horizontal mic placements from the center of the cone to the edge of the speaker, not vertical placements referring to how far the mic is from the cabinet. Also I see no parameter in MixIR which has anything to do with distance.
Just a word of advice about distance in real world recording. Unless you have a very large recording space, a mic any further than two inches from the speaker will just pick up that tanky small room sound and make your tone worse. I've done some sessions in big studios where the engineer used a room mic about 2 feet away from the cabinet, and it added a nice ambience to the tone. That sure doesn't work at my house! I'm a huge fan of Jimmy Page's "far away" guitar parts, but you can hear they were recorded in a massive room.
Sorry Scott, my post is confusing upon second look. I'll try to clear it up the best I can.
I use only the Redwirez IR's for that method because they offer not only a horizontal microphone position (Cap, Cap Edge, Cap Off Axis, Cone, etc), but each of those horizontal positions has a measurement of distance at the very end of the file that is in increments of one inch up to 6 inches and then a jump to 12 inches (which is pretty much useless as you had stated). That distance measurement is the distance from the cabinet. OwnHammer doesn't have horizontal mic placements, just distances from the source cabinet (Uggghhhh) and I honestly don't know how Celestion organizes their libraries (I'm gonna research that today). The mic distance is fixed in each IR file. Sorry that was confusing; I hope this clears it up.
You are absolutely right about a mic that is too far away from the source sounding "tanky". You know just as well as anyone that as you get further away from your source with a dynamic mic like a 57, you will lose a lot of upper mid definition and it just turns to a muddy undefined mess. My concept was to sort of "tune" that "tankiness" with a mic that is a slightly farther distance away in conjunction with a closer mic. While this practice is much harder in real life because of phasing issues, the MixIR plug-in allows you to do this with no phasing issues because all the IR's have input signal arriving at them at the same time.
Thanks for clearing that up Travis - I'm not as familiar with RedWirez IR's and didn't know they had a distance parameter. Concerning OwnHammer, who knows, judging from this horribly written paragraph in the OwnHammer manual:
"For microphones with position numbers 00 through 10, these positions represent movement across the face of the speaker along the relative sweet spot from brighter and closer to center (00) to darker and further out on the cap or cone (10). These numbers do not represent any specific unit of measure and are merely sequential arbitrary definitions."
WTF? All I can get out of this is that he's just fucking with mic positions and not telling anyone what he's doing. Very scientific, thanks for that helpful information. Seems like people would want to know which numbers mean what. I can't say anything bad about his IR's because it's all relative, but I can say that I've heard every one of his 4x12 Greenback/ Shure 57 IR's and not one of them comes even close to the sound of my cab. Celestion got much closer, but as I said in my previous post, if they offered a bigger variety of mic placements, they could've gotten closer.
I also have the RedWirez Basketweave collection and I'm assuming that's the closest thing they have to a vintage Marshall 4x12 with Greenbacks. I'm not impressed - very midrangy, honky sounding, and thin. Please let me know if they have 4x12 Greenback IR's which you think might be better. As I said before, OwnHammer and RedRiwez have been doing this for a long time. How is it that Celestion came along out of the blue and kicked their asses at this technology?
Yeah the Ownhammer naming conventions drive me nuts. I just want to know what I’m working with! I guess one way to look at it is that you’re just supposed to scroll through the IRs until you find the sound you want, and not worry about all the little details. Maybe that’s liberating for some people, I guess? I mean, how hard is it just to whip up a pdf file with the exact positions used?
With Celestion, I feel like their philosophy is to create the most basic set of IRs with commonly used mic positions to appeal to the most amount of users. I kind of appreciate that approach, since most guitarists don’t seem to understand that when you get into modeling territory, you unwittingly take on the role of an audio engineer.
Personally, I’ve never had much luck mixing different microphones both digitally and in real life. A lot of people rave about the SM57 Royer R121 combo, but I find that it sounds odd. Sometimes I like the R121 by itself, but I still prefer the 57 by itself. The only other mic I really like is the Neumann U87, but the only IR libraries I know of that use it are the Redwirez ones.
I just read an interview with Mike Landau - he says he uses one mic, usually a 57. Me too, a 57 and 121 mix sounds really weird to me. Maybe it's because I use a 4x12 and have bass to spare - a smaller cab might benefit from the 121 being in there. Mike loaned me a ribbon mic that he really likes, but it doesn't sound good unless its a few feet away from the cab - that doesn't work in my small recording room.
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Played his ass off though!