In Summary

Recording guitarists have their pick of insert-dwelling soft amps for their DAW, but not all of their speakers were created equally. Bogren Digital’s solution lets you plug into their own driver tech that goes beyond conventional IR. We check it out.

Going Deeper

One Quieter

Guitar amp speaker simulations have come a very along way since some of the early boxes that used analogue components to coax speaker-like tones from the output of a real amp. Following on from these, the desktop amp sims that came later have now morphed into the many software amps that slot into the DAW quicker than you can say “could you turn it down a bit?”. Many of these can be almost indiscernible from the real thing when placed into the mix, however, one developer has decided to go the extra mile when it comes to turning up the realism.

Bogren Digital IRDX Core

Back in September 2023 James Ivey took Bogren Digital’s MLC Subzero 100 virtual rig for blast. The Swedish guitar amp maestros’ creation includes their Impulse Response Dynamics a.k.a., IRDX tech for the cabinet stage. With an eye on heavier guitar sounds, IRDX Core has been overseen by Jens Bogren, a man whose clients include Sepultura, Amon Amarth, Opeth, Kreator, among others.

IRDX Core is an audio plugin that sets out to enhance the speaker and cabinet behaviour of any existing virtual rig. Impulse responses might encapsulate sine wave behaviour in a speaker system, but they are inherently ‘deaf’ to the tonal characteristics of a real cab that reacts dynamically to the amplifier’s output. IRDX technology uses ‘advanced machine learning methods’ to reconstruct the difference between a real cab and an impulse response. It's been developed to be used downstream of existing cab emulations or impulse responses for a guitar amp sim that reacts like a real amp.

In the video we use IRDX Core to add the finishing touch that isn’t just restricted to heavier styles to a stock amp simulator. Taking a part-driven blues style guitar recording, we show how IRDX Core can re-introduce some of the non-linear movements of speakers driven by a real performance. We also demo its different shades of processing thanks to its Normal and Intense switching in tandem with the main large control for the amount of influence.

Bogren Digital don’t pretend that IRDX Core is going to completely transform your virtual speaker driver’s behaviour. What it does set out to do is inject some real world undulations into existing audio plugin cabinets for anyone who wants the final finish on their guitar sounds.

This is a specialist product, and when a developer says that the effect is subtle, engineers might expect there to be more pressing things to get guitar sounds over the line. That said, it does address a real disparity between a speaker’s reproduction of pure tones compared to real-life human input. With more generous settings, IRDX Core does lend an appreciable difference that’s worth investigating for anyone interested in organic hues for virtual driver sounds.