Impulse responses
An impulse response is a short recording of how a cabinet (or a space) answers a click. Played through one, a track sounds as if it went through that cabinet and that mic. Stab’s own cabinets cover most needs; an impulse response brings one you already like.
Your own impulse responses
Available on Mac and Windows. Not on Web.
This isn’t on Web.
Loading an impulse response from a file is in the apps: on the Mac, Windows, the iPad, the iPhone and Android. Here, a song that already has one inside it plays it, and its controls work.
Adding one
Two ways, both in the Sound pane:
- After the Amp: select the Amp and choose Load an Impulse Response… under its cabinet (on its full face, or in the Amp’s editor). The Amp’s Cabinet goes to No Cabinet, and an Impulse Response device holding your file is put right after it. One undo step.
- Anywhere in a chain: add Impulse Response from a + or Add, select it, and choose Load Impulse Response….
Then pick an audio file (WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3 or M4A) (WAV, AIFF or another audio file). Once loaded, the button shows its name; choose it again to Replace… it with another.
A file Stab can’t use isn’t loaded, and a line over the pane says why:
- it couldn’t be read as audio (a format the device can’t decode, or a damaged file);
- it is silent: an impulse response needs sound in it;
- it has damaged samples;
- it’s in a sample rate or channel count Stab can’t use (it takes 8 to 384 kHz, up to eight channels).
In the apps, an Impulse Response device loads its file from Load Impulse Response…, or the Amp’s Load an Impulse Response… puts one after the Amp in place of its cabinet.
What Stab keeps
- The file is mixed to mono and the silence after its last sound is trimmed, up to two seconds of it.
- Its level is evened out, so loading one keeps the track at about the level it was.
- This device keeps it, so your songs play it here whenever you open them.
- Choosing which response a device uses is one undo step.
Stab plays all of it, up to those two seconds, with no added latency: a cabinet’s few hundred milliseconds, or a room’s tail. A file longer than two seconds is cut there, with a short fade. A long response costs more to play than a short one: a two-second room about twice a cabinet’s.
Its controls
- Response: which file it plays, as above.
- Tone: Low Cut and High Cut, to clean up the response’s ends.
- Output: Mix, how much of it against the signal going in (100 %: the response alone, as for a cabinet), and Level.
A device with nothing loaded lets the sound through unchanged. Its power button bypasses it, as for any device.
Impulse responses in songs you share
An impulse response you load is someone else’s recording, as a plugin is someone else’s work, so Stab is careful about passing it on:
- Your own song on this device always plays it: Stab keeps the file on this device.
- When the song goes elsewhere (saved to Stab Cloud, shared with a link, published, played together, a preset), the response travels inside the song only if its file says it’s free to pass on: CC0, or CC BY (then with its author’s name, the credit CC BY asks for). Stab reads that from the file itself (a WAV’s or a FLAC’s own tags). Any other, including one whose licence isn’t written in it, travels by reference: its name, and a fingerprint of the file.
- Responses from Stab’s Sound Library travel inside the song, everywhere.
- Songs saved before this rule keep the responses already inside them, as they were.
Where a response travelled by reference and isn’t on the device, its button says not on this device and a built-in cabinet plays in its place (a miked 4x12, for a cabinet’s response), or nothing for a room’s, which lets the sound through. Choose the button to see which, and:
- Find This File…: pick the file. If it’s the same file, the song plays it again, here and from then on; another file replaces it, as Replace… does.
- In Its Place: choose another built-in cabinet, or Nothing (It Passes). The choice is saved with the song.