Now that we know there’s a way to emulate monitor output in rooms when mixing, wouldn’t it be cool if you could add room simulation to the cabinet or cabinet simulation you are using? Well, you can – using impulse responses. An impulse response is the recording of a special kind of sound – a perfect impulse – played through a speaker (such as a guitar cabinet) in an environment (such as a perfectly setup recording room in a studio) through a mic (such as an SM-57). Astonishingly enough, the impulse response is just a regular .wav file. You plug it into a convolution reverb and you’re good to go.

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Most digital amp simulators like PODs and applications like Guitar Rig use this method to simulate cabs, only thing is that their impulse responses aren’t very good. As luck would have it there are numerous people and companies out there who create great impulse responses, some free (but that’s another post).

It comes with a plethora of on-board impulse responses, and it can be used with 3 rd party response loaders. With such a solid selection of amps, cabinets, and microphones it’s hard to beat this much value in a freeware guitar amp processor. Download page (Windows 64 and 32-bit, VST/VST3 /AU / AAX). The well known free convolution VST reverb. Convolution reverb is a processing plugin that need an impulse response file. Impulse response is the response of a dynamic system when this system is feeded with an impulse.

So now you can get a simulation of that cab you can’t afford and that there’s no place for in your house, in a simulation of a studio that you can’t fit into your house either.

So, how do you do it in Reaper?

1. Create a new track empty track to use as a bus
2. Add the FX ReaVerb, it’s included in Reaper
3. In the section Impulse Generation, click add and select you impulse file.
4. Set your guitar tracks to send to the impulse bus track

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That’s it. Haven’t tried it myself yet, but I’m going to test a couple of the most popular free cab impulses.

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Cred goes to Chris, The Grim Reaperer, of Metal Guitarist.

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