NuX Optima Air Demo and Observations

[jonfields45]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Jon,

Yesterday I experimented with all five of the Optima Air's stock piezo IRs. It surprised me that the Gibson Hummingbird, the Gibson J15 and the Martin D45 all favored nearly the same EQ settings. (bass - 10:30, mid - 10, treble - 11:30)

I'll eventually get around to making more of my own IRs with the Optima Air and sending you recordings for an IR or two, although I'm clueless as to how I'd get your IRs into the Optima Air.

Could your IR creation system handle the Anthem SL pickup system, or should I stick with recording the UST-equipped guitar?

The Anthem will work too, but you will need to leave the mic level the same as the recording when you use the IR. Said differently, UST/Mic mix for IR generation needs to be the set the same when you use the IR.

[jonfields45]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Jon,

Yesterday I experimented with all five of the Optima Air's stock piezo IRs. It surprised me that the Gibson Hummingbird, the Gibson J15 and the Martin D45 all favored nearly the same EQ settings. (bass - 10:30, mid - 10, treble - 11:30)

I'll eventually get around to making more of my own IRs with the Optima Air and sending you recordings for an IR or two, although I'm clueless as to how I'd get your IRs into the Optima Air.

Could your IR creation system handle the Anthem SL pickup system, or should I stick with recording the UST-equipped guitar?

That does not seem too extreme an EQ setting, if 12:00 is flat. It might reflect some other aspect of the Nux's design that those settings are the good ones for you and have nothing to do with their IR.

[Joe.Manganese]

Originally Posted by Petty1818

The IR level control is a volume control, not a blend control. I reached out to the NUX to confirm this. They told me it’s just a level control.

I suppose you never had one unit to test on. I did, and it blends the IR by adjusting its level, and you can do the same with the direct level with Gain.
That's the purpose of calling "IR LEVEL" instead of "LEVEL" or "VOLUME" when you already have a "GAIN" knob.

If you dont believe me, go see yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no4s...EoC6VQ&index=2 after minute 3.

So all this fuzz about this pedal not having a blend is nonsense.

[Joe.Manganese]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

I once owned a OO-sized Cort with an onboard Aura system. The model specific Aura sound images in that guitar worked well enough, but it sounded much better to me when I turned off the onboard Aura and ran the dry UST signal through an Aura Spectrum preamp which was set on OM sound image #4. I couldn't tell you specifically if it was a Martin OM28 (although I eventually learned it was), but it definitely made my little Cort sound like a bigger guitar and it definitely yielded a more pleasing amplified tone than the Cort's model specific sound images.

The conventional wisdom is that an IR will work best with the same guitar/pickup rig which was used to create it. That doesn't mean that an IR can't be useful when used with certain other guitar/pickup rigs. Fender's Acoustasonic series of guitars is a prime example of that.

Right. In fact you can well load any kind of equalizer curve on a DAW, and sooner or later you will find one that you like.
An IR is just an EQ , nothing more . The aim would be to be able to recreate the miked sound.
Concerning Fender Acoustasonic, it is clear now that you don't understand how these IR are working. Fender made the IRs for their own guitar. You are not loading an IR created with, f.i. , a Martin .
In other words, to make it more simple for you:

a x b = C (suppose C is the IR, a the miked sound, b the piezo sound)
C/b = a ( IR and piezo combined give you the original miked sound)

It is just obvious that if you change the "b", what you get back is totally random sound.

[Cuki79]

Originally Posted by Joe.Manganese

An IR is just an EQ , nothing more.

Let’s add some details.

1) What people call IR is relate to Finite Impulse Response filter FIR.

The sound results from the convolution of your signal with the IR waveform.
It enables to shape both the amplitude in frequency domain AND the phase.
It can make the lows come before the highs… and change the feel.

2) digital EQ are Infinite Impulse Response filter (IIR).
IIR filter usually have a fixed phase response you can not alter. All you can set is the amount of boost or attenuation at specific frequencies.

It is a shortcut to reduce what people commonly refer as IR to EQ.


For example IR (FIR) are very processing power consuming. On a Helix you are limited to 1 block of 2048 pts IR…. While EQ are not DSP consuming and you can use as many as you want.

If IR was just EQ it would make no sens to use FIR filters…

Joe, please read this link for more detailed information. I hope you will find it instructive.
https://www.minidsp.com/applications...-iir-filtering

[guitaniac]

Originally Posted by Joe.Manganese

I suppose you never had one unit to test on. I did, and it blends the IR by adjusting its level, and you can do the same with the direct level with Gain.
That's the purpose of calling "IR LEVEL" instead of "LEVEL" or "VOLUME" when you already have a "GAIN" knob.

If you dont believe me, go see yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no4s...EoC6VQ&index=2 after minute 3.

So all this fuzz about this pedal not having a blend is nonsense.

It sounded to me like the tone was the same with the IR dial at noon and the dial full clockwise. I agree with Petty, NuX support and my own observations. There is no blend function. Just for insurance, however, I will do a recording experiment where the IR dial is set at 9 o'clock and the gain is set for a healthy recording level. After recording that, I will set the IR knob at full on and lower the gain to approximate the same recording level. Then I will normalize the sound samples so the peak amplitude is the same and we can compare them. I'm curious to see if the change in both dial positions makes any tonal difference at all.

[Cuki79]

Originally Posted by Joe.Manganese

I suppose you never had one unit to test on. I did, and it blends the IR by adjusting its level, and you can do the same with the direct level with Gain.
That's the purpose of calling "IR LEVEL" instead of "LEVEL" or "VOLUME" when you already have a "GAIN" knob.

If you dont believe me, go see yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no4s...EoC6VQ&index=2 after minute 3.

So all this fuzz about this pedal not having a blend is nonsense.

Thanks for the info, I changed my website page

[Petty1818]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

It sounded to me like the tone was the same with the IR dial at noon and the dial full clockwise. I agree with Petty, NuX support and my own observations. There is no blend function. Just for insurance, however, I will do a recording experiment where the IR dial is set at 9 o'clock and the gain is set for a healthy recording level. After recording that, I will set the IR knob at full on and lower the gain to approximate the same recording level. Then I will normalize the sound samples so the peak amplitude is the same and we can compare them. I'm curious to see if the change in both dial positions makes any tonal difference at all.

Thank you for the post! I think where the confusion comes from is that people are so used to a blend control that when they see "IR level," they automatically think that, that's what it does. Honestly, I thought the exact same thing until I did some research. I have seen a few YouTube demo guys refer to it as a blend control and that's not correct.

The IR level control, which Nux outlined to me in an email response and which is in the manual, is for simply turning up the IR. It's not blending from dry to processed as you have pointed out. It's simply to correct any potential drops in volume from a created IR.

To be completely honest, if this was a true blend control, I would be all over the Optima Air as I think it sounds awesome.

Edit: Just thinking about it further, was there potentially a firmware update recently that made this a true blend control? If so, Nux didn't advertise it.

[Cuki79]

Originally Posted by Petty1818

The IR level control, which Nux outlined to me in an email response and which is in the manual, is for simply turning up the IR. It's not blending from dry to processed as you have pointed out. It's simply to correct any potential drops in volume from a created IR.

To be completely honest, if this was a true blend control, I would be all over the Optima Air as I think it sounds awesome.

Edit: Just thinking about it further, was there potentially a firmware update recently that made this a true blend control? If so, Nux didn't advertise it.

Can someone who actually owns the pedal make a demo with 8 positions?

[Petty1818]

Originally Posted by Cuki79

Can someone who actually owns the pedal make a demo with 8 positions?

Why are you highlighting my post?

[guitaniac]

Listen to NuXOAtest - testing different gain and IR level settings by guitaniac on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/wvNHE

Here are the recording samples promised. The first sample is with the IR off. The second sample is with the IR level at 9 o'clock and the gain at 1:30. The last sample has the IR level full on (5 o'clock) and the gain at 10:30. The IR is #9, the Martin D45. All samples were normalized to -1 db, peak to peak.

I'll try to edit and include some pics.

http://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0cJtdOXmKKtXBm

[Cuki79]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Listen to NuXOAtest - testing different gain and IR level settings by guitaniac on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/wvNHE

Here are the recording samples promised. The first sample is with the IR off. The second sample is with the IR level at 9 o'clock and the gain at 1:30. The last sample has the IR level full on (5 o'clock) and the gain at 10:30. The IR is #9, the Martin D45. All samples were normalized to -1 db, peak to peak.

I'll try to edit and include some photos off my cantankerous iPhone.

Seems you are right.

Would you mind sending me a 2-track recording (2min) so I can make an IR of your(s) guitar(s)? Pm me a google drive/Dropbox link.

[Petty1818]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Listen to NuXOAtest - testing different gain and IR level settings by guitaniac on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/wvNHE

Here are the recording samples promised. The first sample is with the IR off. The second sample is with the IR level at 9 o'clock and the gain at 1:30. The last sample has the IR level full on (5 o'clock) and the gain at 10:30. The IR is #9, the Martin D45. All samples were normalized to -1 db, peak to peak.

I'll try to edit and include some photos off my cantankerous iPhone.

Thank you for confirming that.

[guitaniac]

Originally Posted by jonfields45

The Anthem will work too, but you will need to leave the mic level the same as the recording when you use the IR. Said differently, UST/Mic mix for IR generation needs to be the set the same when you use the IR.

I understand why you wouldn’t want to alter the UST/mic balance. I finally gave up on finding the perfect UST/mic balance. I just set the balance as well as possible and started EQing the crap out of it. My suspicion is that the pickup is overly strong at the crossover frequency around 250Hz. My cedar topped OM is also overly strong in that zone, so it creates an EQ challenge. I’m hoping that a well-balanced IR will compensate for that issue. Albeit, I’d have to use a high percentage of IR or the blend would get tubby sounding.

[hyenik]

this comparison video conviced me to buy Optima Air



Now I am not so happy that IR level is not true Blend
because for akuIR technology is absolutely crucial
when I set IR level for minimum, this is still too much of IR in sound,
I will do more test with own impulses
(which are another crucial point, always much better than any external )