3 Sigma IR Comparison

I’ve posted on the Fractal Audio forum about the 3 Sigma Audio acoustic guitar IR files in the past (ref). I wasn’t overly pleased with their J15 IRs (ref) when I paired them with the piezo output from my real Gibson J45. But I ponied up for the J45 IRs when they released them and used them on a guide track for a summer recording project that never really got off the ground.

I thought they did a good job of softening the “piezo sound” out of the very basic pickup and preamp system on the J45 I own. Is it a mic’ed guitar sound? Not really. But it’s not a piezo-straight-into-the-board sound either. It’s good enough for my work and I’d definitely prefer to run a preset on my FM3 with these IRs, live, if I was taking the J45 along to the gig.

Someone on the forum kicked off a new discussion of these 3 Sigma IRs (ref) and I thought it’d be useful to show the piezo signal contrasted against the IR-effected signal so people can draw their own conclusions about whether this IRs will work well for their acoustic applications or not.

Here’s the piezo signal that I captured on the re-amp track while I was playing:

The only thing I did to that track was bring the level up +3.5 dB to better match the peak output on that track with the peak output on the track where the 3 Sigma IR was applied to the guitar using the CAB block in my Axe-Fx III.

And here’s the IR effected track that was captured at the same time:

Someone on the forum mentioned a phasey sound with the 3 Sigma IRs. It wasn’t anything I’d noticed when I was recording and I don’t hear any phasing in either of those isolated tracks above. But when I did a mono blend of the piezo signal and the IR effected signal I definitely heard some phasing. So there’s a note for anyone using these: don’t blend your dry and effected signals (or at least expect some phasing or comb filter type thing to happen if you do blend them).

Compare them yourself

A · Piezo

B · J45 IR

Finally, here’s the piezo panned hard left and the effected take panned hard right so you can blend and compare them using whatever monitoring system you use:

I definitely like what the J45 IRs did to the piezo system on my J45. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to record my J45 direct and apply some IR magic to spruce it up than it is to get a great mic capture of my guitar happening in my home recording environment.

Call me a fan of the J45 captures at least. They were worth the $10 they cost from the 3 Sigma site (ref).