Acoustic Guitar IR ?

[keith.rogers]

Has anyone tried to use an IR loader and acoustic guitar IR to improve a DI'd guitar? I'm going to be recording someone at a venue who has a guitar that sounds like poo (IMO), and wondering if there's anything I can do after the fact, besides the usual shenanigans to try and make this sound better than I'm fearing.

I will be using a shotgun mic to try and pick up some of the acoustic sound, but my past experience in places like this (hard walls, noisy) is that there's so much room coming from everywhere it's a losing battle. Just looking for another trick to try.

 

[Nola]

Is the live acoustic DI into the board via a pickup or mic'd?
If it's DI you can do a lot. Yeah, run it through amp sims, effects, etc. If it's mic'd not as much (sometimes adding a little distortion can make a crap acoustic sound cool, but where that fits depends on genre).

 

[Pinky]

Is the live acoustic DI into the board via a pickup or mic'd?
If it's DI you can do a lot. Yeah, run it through amp sims, effects, etc. If it's mic'd not as much (sometimes adding a little distortion can make a crap acoustic sound cool, but where that fits depends on genre).

That gets me thinking - I've added a tube distortion effect, with the gain turned way down, to add 'warmth' to acoustic tracks in the past (not something I think to ever do anymore).

It's a solid idea IMO.

 

[keith.rogers]

Is the live acoustic DI into the board via a pickup or mic'd?
If it's DI you can do a lot. Yeah, run it through amp sims, effects, etc. If it's mic'd not as much (sometimes adding a little distortion can make a crap acoustic sound cool, but where that fits depends on genre).

This is for those live situations where I have to record the guitar's pickup because I either can't get a mic on the guitar or even if I do, it's not usable due to noise or the performer's movements, etc. A few acoustic guitar rigs sound pretty good, but a lot of them do not. One, in particular, is what I'm recording next week and I was wondering about the use of IRs, specifically, in this context. Here's a company that sells them:

Acoustic Guitar Impulses - 3 Sigma Audio

I might throw $10 at one of these just to see what happens, though I'm thinking I'll create a couple myself this weekend and take a stab at that too.

I do use whatever FX I can to try to fix up these tracks when I can, but I'm thinking this (an IR) might be a little quicker.

 

[DM60]

Kind of interesting. I usually hate DI'd acoustic, but if I can get them to sound closer to a mic'd sound.

 

[keith.rogers]

I haven't got around to spending money on the IR at that site (found other ways to spend money, as usual), but I did take a stab at creating an IR, and I'm going to do a few more of these tests next week when I have a little more time. The first/only one I did by simply sticking the mic in front of the guitar and smacking the top right behind the bridge. This is similar to using a "starting pistol" audio track to capture a room, i.e., vs. a sine wave sweep. It's interesting. I'm not sure it improves the sound, but it does make changes in it. I had recorded the artist playing their guitar through the DI (direct into my Zoom H6) and then applied the IR. This is a plot of the differences in frequency response, using Audacity's Spectrum Analysis of the raw and IR'd track. A couple hundred measurements and small differences going in both directions - everything kind of +/- a dB, but it does sound different. I'm going to keep poking at this and see what turns up, but it's going to be a slow learning process, I suspect.
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