I also get asked about IR files, particularly as a couple of our products use IR files. It makes sense for me to try and explain in basic terms what an IR file is, why you might be interested in using one.


With guitar pedals, you have analogue and digital. IR files are used in digital pedals, we are taking a digital snapshot of audio. When you use a preset on a computer, you load it in right?.. That is a principle of the IR file.

 

The JOYO Cab Box, simulates different guitar cabinets/speaker types & Microphones. To recreate these sounds, we have 'recorded' or captured the response frequencies from different vintage and modern guitar cabinets and different microphones often used in recording studios. 

If you are familiar with different music file types on a computer, this sonic information is grabbed within a. WAV file. Try and play it though, you won’t hear it or maybe a very fast bit of white noise.

 

This ridiculously small file contains the complete audio profile or the measurements of the original audio set-up. The file can then be loaded into the JOYO Cab box via our software and a USB cable and software.

 

Seconds later, the same sound can be recreated, applied digitally & recreated exactly wherever you go. Even emailed to a mate, or a studio, or vice versa.

 

Very useful if you get a great sound in a studio and want to recreate it on the road, in a recording studio, or just for yourself so you can remember your song joy cab boxsettings. 

 

Our new Amp simulator pedal from the R Series 'The Preamp House', has some classic and modern guitar preamps loaded in using IR files, these can be tweaked & saved.

 

Our Tone Chain series works on the same principle. Our Gem Box 3 does it all!

 

A lot of companies, speaker manufacturers, studios & artists release their IR files, you can recreate them. They are basically like presets, identical copies of the real thing; you get access to a lot of new sounds using IR files with a guitar.

 

Using Impulse responses offers the nearest thing to the real thing. The sound you can get from a cab simulator is real, it is not artificially modelled by an engineer into a pedal.

 

The IR file has been professionally recorded in studios, then recreated and loaded in as the truest representation of the real thing.

 

So if you are wondering what an Impulse response file is used for with guitars and how you might use them, just think of them as presets, but you get access to really good ones.