You made a good point though. Being able to load IRs is a nice thing to have, either for plugins or cab sims on pedals.
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yeah it makes a whole lot of difference. I’d say it’s mandatory, unless you have already done your path making your tone beside IRs
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although it’s not really marketed as a frfr cab, i have read in a bunch of places that phil jones cabs are and that’s what i play (dual C4s). they do market that you can use any instrument or vocals through it which sure sounds like frfr to me. i run my helix stomp through it, with 2 harley benton 300B bass heads in stereo.
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Yeah it all depends on the preamp. AFAIK all class-D amps should have a pretty flat response, and the question is what the preamp does; some (like Fender) put in a mid scoop when set flat, others (like Ampeg and G-K) add other characteristic tonal color; etc.
If you have a transparent preamp in front of a class D amp it should essentially be flat.
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i won’t disagree with you as i think this premise is correct. howevs, unless you are using headphones, in a home situation you are going to be using some kind of amp/speaker setup anyways (usually monitors). and they probably won’t be capable of punch you in the chest unless you have really nice ones, so that’s one thing for amps (and i hate wearing headphones). and there are a lot of places that just aren’t setup to run a di out to front of house (hell, 75% of the scuzzy dive places i like to go to aren’t) so you would need an amp for those.
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Definitely - though for those I would still go preamp into PAs. A couple thousand watts of PA speaker is surprisingly inexpensive and portable.
Something like a Quad Cortex into a pair of PA’s is really tempting. You could run amps and cabs for a bass and a pair of guitars, and hve a channel left over for keys or vocals. All carryable by two people.
Could do the same with a small mixer and pedals too for even cheaper.
For home, I like monitors and phones myself, but I live in a place where even a 25W amp is overkill.
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it’s not something directly related to the Class D I must say. but yeah, not false 
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I was going to call out “all power stages” but realized it probably wasn’t entirely true for class A and B
actually the class is not much important when speaking about the flat response thing (well, Class A may be a bit difficult there …). You just want something transparent. Class AB and Class D will deliver.
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Boss IR-200 is interesting, it also has amp sims
Darkglass Element has good IR’s too. Think Mooer has a dedicated IR pedal, not sure how good that one sounds.
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I’d be more impressed if for running FRFR they let you sweep the speaker you are using and reverse it’s color out of the system before painting a new one on. Since it’s virtual, they should be able to allow stacked combos too.
Looking at the schema of the Boss IR-200 I see you can have two different channels, which you can also link for stereo. I have no clue what you can do with the software. So at least you can have a clean and dirt channel and separate EQ, blend/mix controls.
Do you know of any other good contenders @DaveT ? If we are talking about actually editing the IR you probably need something advanced like a Kemper profiler. Afaik you have different type of IR’s too. Or am I misunderstanding you? I thought a IR is basically a recorded .wav file.
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it’s more some kind of map of dynamic response of the device, depending on the input signal : Impulse response - Wikipedia
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There’s the Fearless/Fearful cabs out there. Combination of 12” or 15” woofers, 6” mid drivers, and tweeter for a FRFR cabinet capable of incredible loudness and accuracy.
Barefaced speakers also have FRFR options in their 12” cabs.
Right now I just use my Kali LP-6 V2 monitors at the computer or Presonus Eris E8s at the Jam Station™️
I have a little Phil Jones BG-75 Double Four combo amp. Its 35W per side and dual 4” speakers can vibrate the walls if I want it to.
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I’m willing to bet you can do that in some of the more expensive units, i.e. Kemper or Quad Cortex. It totally makes sense. Basically the ability to have a subtractive IR filter.
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I glanced at the Kemper manual and it didn’t seem to do it. It seems more geared toward recording or making a PA feed with the sim and has a local “monitor” out to feed the stage cabinet. It’s nothing I need, but seems useful if wanting to use cab sims on FRFR.
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I don’t know of any. I’m imagining products again.
An IR can possibly be generated from a recorded .wav file. Some test signal needs to be sent to the device to see how it behaves. For getting the IR of a room, we pop a balloon or fire a starter pistol and record the result. It still takes some processing after that.
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IR files actually can be in the wav format but it’s not a typical wav file you play back; it’s an instantaneous spectrum across the speaker frequency range.
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Yes, good clarification. I didn’t say that quite right.
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