Using the Boss IR-200
Between miking a real amplifier and using a powerful digital modelling tool like a Neural Quad Cortex, exist these middle solutions that offer the ability to emulated an amp or three, and some number of speaker cabinets. I own the DSM&Humboldt Simplifier which is an all analog approach, that it, I think, quite excellent and also the Strymon Iridium which is as one would expect from the geniuses at Strymon, a DSP based solution.
I recently have had the opportunity to evaluate the new IR-200 from Boss.
What Is It?
The IR-200 is a device that you can use in front of an amp if you wish, or to an FRFR cabinet or into your recording interface. It is the last option that interested me. It takes the form of a stomp box like the Strymon, whereas the DSM&Humboldt is more a desktop device. The IR-200 is built on the same solid chassis as the other 200 series stomps from Boss.
It offers amplifier emulation for both guitar and bass amps (a unique value proposition over the others which are guitar amp only) The graphics below show the options that come in the box.
The guitar amp emulations in the Boss IR-200
Bass amp emulations in the Boss IR-200
While I do appreciate that there are bass amp emulations in the unit, they are a bit skint in terms of choice. There is a DSM&Humboldt Bass Simplifier with a much richer range of options, but it is a dedicated box and purchase separate from the guitar version.
The device also includes an Impulse Response library for cabinet simulations that includes 144 IRs from Boss and 10 IRs direct from Celestion. There are also 128 slots where you can store your own IR files. The device supports Impulse Response files of either 200ms or 500ms duration, where the longer IRs tend to be more accurate.
Cabinet Simulation and Impulse Response
We hear constantly about the tone of different amps and a lot of the time this gets tied back to the preamp of the amp, and while the preamp stage of an amplifier definitely contributes, in a classic tube amp, the majority of the uniqueness of tone comes from the output transformer (a long and wonderful conversation for real gear heads) and the speaker cabinet. That’s why the same amplifier head sounds so different into a 2x12 open back cabinet compared to a 4x12 closed back cabinet.
Old style cabinet simulations tried to use tone maps to fake out a cabinet and to be blunt, they were pretty lousy. Impulse Responses are actually recorded from a real world cabinet and their duration allows the IR file to capture how the cabinet responds under different frequencies and loading. That’s why you could find four IRs, all made from the same type of cabinet, but that still sound different. For some of us, the process is fascinating and for others, those folks just want to get the sound of the cabinet that they like and move on. Both are correct, but I fall into the group of fascinated myself. A good IR sounds like the real thing audibly, but doesn’t have the physical presence of a real cabinet driven at power by a real amp. The listener may not be able to tell the difference and I have proven this with recordings made of a real Fender Super Reverb and their Tonemaster DI out version. As a player, I can feel a difference, even driving a great IR through a powerful FRFR cabinet like the JBLs and Headrush units that I have personally purchased. The sound is great, but there is something elemental about the feel of a 2x12 Fender Twin at 7 or a Marshall 2203 at full chat into a pair of 4x12 cabs. Something more than immediate deafness.
That truth being said, we may not have the luxury of running these amps at volume in today’s world and we may not have the space for all manner of different cabinets.
A critical part of any good Impulse Response is the microphone(s) used to make the IR and the placement of the microphone(s). I’ve been studying Recording Engineering in depth recently using texts and training videos by Bobby Owsinski. What I have learned through training and practical application is that a) it is all about the microphone placement and b) see point a. Different microphones have different characteristics and rich Impulse Response files allow the user to select the microphone in use and its position relative to the cabinet speaker. In some IRs, you can have two microphones of different types in different positions on the same cabinet. The Universal OX Box does this beautifully as does the Torpedo Capture X from Two Notes. The Boss IR-200 has this massive library included of cabinets with microphones at different positions and so you do get a lot of options in a very small box.
Connectivity
It is my opinion that the Boss IR-200 is best suited when you are not using an amp, but if you do have a preamp pedal, you can disable the amp portion of the IR-200. I did not appreciate just how much I would appreciate this function until I was doing some evaluation on preamp pedals where I did not want an amp sim but did want a cabinet simulation. The IR-200 has a simple instrument in, along with L (mono) out, along with a R (stereo second channel) out. There are also a Send / Return set of connectors and full MIDI support using the small ⅛ MIDI cable connections.
The output is configurable depending on where you are sending the signal. I have set my unit up to send to a Universal Audio Apollo interface.
There is also an Aux in for play along capability as well as a dedicated headphone jack that can have its own ambience setting (think reverb) to open things up a bit. This is another area that I wanted to spend time on. It’s a way that I use my Iridium a lot. To play in silence but hear things as if I am plugged into an amp. I know that lots of folks like earbuds, or perhaps higher end in-ears, but for me, the best quality headphone sound out of this or the others comes from a good pair of over the ear headphones. My recommendation, for those who might care, is for headphones from Focal. I hear content through my Focal headphones that I just do not get from other systems. You can also see the input for an control switch or expression pedal, although I did not explore these as part of my evaluation. If I was using expression pedals on every device that I own that can take one, there would be no floor space at all. There is a also a micro USB 2.0 connection to connect the box to your computer (Windows or Macintosh) to use the free BOSS IR Manager. In my initial time with the unit, I did not get to this.
Included Cabinet IRs
One of the cool elements of the IR-200 is the selection of cabinet IRs that are included. Boss provides a number of them for guitar cabinets with different microphones and two distance options. Boss does the same level of diversity for the included IRs for bass cabinets. While I always look for the variety of guitar amps and cabinets, I have to confess that I look first and foremost for an Ampeg SVT amplifier and 8x10 cabinet when it comes to bass, well, because. The unit also includes a number of cabinet IRs provided by Celestion Digital. A number of players favour certain Celestion speakers, and I am one of them. I like Creambacks in smaller cabinets and bought special run amps specifically because the combo had a Creamback instead of something else. To me, they just sound great. I also personally prefer the 25w Greenbacks in a Marshall 4x12 cabinet over the 75w speaker option. Personal preference, that’s all but one of the joys of great IRs is that you can get this level of granularity. And because they are all in one box, it’s not hard to do a comparison. There are three Marshall 4x12 cabinets in my room already. There is no space for any more, yet I might want the sound of different cabinets and great IRs can make that happen.
Let’s Get to the Playing
The IR-200 needs a power supply and to their immense credit, Boss does not take the asshat way out and instead puts a power supply in the box. While I use CIOKS isolated supply units on my boards, my use case for the IR-200 puts it on a desk not the floor and I want power for it. The one annoyance I will call out is the same one that I have with the excellent RC-10R Loop Station, and that is there is no on/off switch. You have to plug the unit in to turn it on and unplug it to turn it off and I call this really bad design. So in v2, put in an on/off switch and smarten the heck up Boss.
Grrr, rant over. Ok to the user interface. The layout of the real knobs (yay!) is fairly straightforward but the knobs are small and close together for my sausage fingers. The display is perfectly readable for me on a desk, but is a bit small for me if on the floor. I am glad that the number of push buttons is limited and while I won’t be stomping the unit, the foot switches are quality units. The silkscreened text is quite easy to see and the device is pretty darn intuitive and you will only need the manual for setting up the outputs and such. The manual is quite good, with the level of detail and pictures that one expects from the 200 and 500 families of Boss gear. I know that reading documentation is anathema to a lot of musicians but do yourself a favour and spend 15 minutes to RTFM. It will be worth it.
My first go at the device involved an Fender FSR Telecaster with a rosewood neck. It has the stock Fender USA pickups, so not too hot and it sounded pretty decent through the first set of presets. I found nice amounts of clarity in the clean options and the gain intensive options still had a Telecaster bit of twang to them, excepting of course the metal oriented presets. As I often do, I found some of the presets overcooked, but the tweaking of them is actually simpler than I expected.
Turning the cabinet knob gives you the cabinet with different microphone and distance settings. In my opinion, not all presets are useful, as I might want a U87 that isn’t gained to the moon. Easy enough to adjust and you can save your own choices. The display shows good information, and fits the real estate of the unit, but I would be happier with a physically bigger box and a more informative display. This strikes me as a Boss thing, they seem to go skint on their displays in general and it takes more time than you might wish to learn what all the contractions and such mean. Some of the rotary knobs are also push type to allow drilling in.
I started with a pair of Etymotic in ear buds with sponge cushions. For MP3s and the sort they are quite good, have decent isolation and are not uncomfortable. A poor choice with this unit. I tried my Focals, which were superb as expected, but even a pair of plain simple over the ear BOSE headphones worked a charm. As I often do, I just don’t think that you get a good representation of lows and low mids with in ears or earbuds. Over the ears are best, but watch the volume level. I thought the default was a bit quiet, but I was wrong as I went too loud and regretted it.
The tone stack is decent. It’s not great, but about the range of granularity I would expect in this size device. I think that the stack in the DSM&Humboldt is better.
When it comes to the amps, I cannot judge the Bogner because I have never played a real one. The JC-120 and the Twin Reverb are really quite good, the Diamond (AC30) and the British Stack (Marshall 1959 allegedly) require some work on your part or mine to make them accurate. I was most disappointed with what Boss calls the Tweed, which is supposed to emulate a Fender 4x10 Bassman. I own that amp, and to this point, the IR-200 is definitely not there. Perhaps if I send the output to an FRFR instead of headphones or the Apollo.
This could have to do with the initial presets. The clean ones are really nice, but I find that all of the dirt oriented ones that I have tried so far are too overdone for my personal taste. The overdriven version of the AC30 is quite good, but the Tweed and Marshall options are less so. Perhaps as I build my own presets I will find a better place to work from.
The Telecaster in question does not have those noiseless pickups from Fender that I often call toneless, so it is noisy and tends to pickup up hum and electrical pulses from unclean power as one would expect. There is a noise gate in the device which is nice, but it is quite basic. Humbuckers sound fine and I need to do a bit of work on the gate for the P90s in my gold top Les Paul which tend to be a bit noisy where I live because the power is not as clean as I might like it to be. The humbucking and coil tapped output from my old PRS Custom 24 do sound quite nice, best on the clean settings, but I expect that with a bit of diligence on my part, I could get dirt oriented presets that sound good.
This block diagram from Boss gives a good sense of the signal flow in the IR-200.
The ambience works nicely on clean sims, but gets nasally on the driven sims. You can easily adjust the level and I like that I can punch it off when using a setting where the gain is up. There is a separate setting for the headphones including a Surround mode. It’s ok but I want to find a way if possible to quickly disable that without menu diving.
There is a lot of capability in the device and without a reasonable time investment, you run risk of missing a lot of the value capacity contained in the box.
That is in my opinion the biggest risk that faces the IR-200. Getting the most out of it is going to take a time investment by the buyer. I really see this as a desktop device and not a stomp based on its power. You can see from the graphic above, that you can even set it to be two different cabinets each with its own tone stack. This flexibility is great, but you are not going to be expert in an hour or two.
I accidentally turned the Amp mode off, and had a heck of a time figuring out how to turn it back on. That is for me, the challenge of a small platform with lots of power and a small display.
Unlike the other amp/cab units, this one is built to go in front of an amplifier if you wish. I mentioned that I found the sound wooly through headphones. When I was recording through the High impedance input into the Apollo and monitoring in headphones, there was no wooliness at all, and none was evident in the recording either. So I suspect the wooly tone was my not spending enough time fiddling with the direct headphone output.
Sound Samples
I wanted to give you a quick sense of the quality of the amplifier simulations and cabinet IRs. In the track that follows, I used the same guitar, a Paul Reed Smith 513 running into the Boss IR-200 and from that into the Hi Z input on the Apollo Twin X. I used an SSL 4000E channel strip in the Unison preamp spot and no other effects or modifications.
All the clips are in the same file so here they are in sequence. Amplifier and microphone names are expanded from the euphemistic names that Boss uses in the device to try to clarify things a little bit
Fender Twin Reverb 2x12 Cabinet miked with a Sennheiser MD421 Ribbon microphone, pickup selector middle, tone 10, volume 8 - default preset settings
Fender Twin Reverb 2x12 Cabinet miked with a Shure SM57 Dynamic microphone, pickup selector middle, tone 10, volume 8 - default preset settings
Fender 1959 Bassman 4x10 Cabinet miked with an AKG 451 Condenser microphone, pickup selector middle, tone 10, volume 8 - altered preset settings, less drive, 2 o’clock bass, 2 o’clock mids, hall reverb reduced to 10 from 25
VOX AC30 2x12 Cabinet miked with aa Shure SM57 microphone, pickup selector bridge, tone 10, volume 8 - altered preset settings, hall reverb reduced to 10 from 25. This preset is the driven version of the AC30.
Marshall model 1959 Plexi head into a Marshall 4x12 Cabinet with Celestion G12M greenbacks miked with a Sennheiser MD421 Ribbon microphone, pickup selector neck, tone 7, volume 8 - altered preset settings, hall reverb reduced to 10 from 25
As you will see, I dropped the preset reverb value on any driven preset because to my ear, through studio monitors the reverb sounded wrong.
Pricing
Here in Canada, the MAP for the IR-200 is $539 so that is what you are going to pay for the unit from an authorized Boss dealer. Yes it’s price fixing to some extent, but that’s life these days so you deal with it. I was able to find stock relatively easily on the web, but I expect that once the first run of these sell out, it’s going to be a while before the next batch shows up. That’s not a shot at Boss, it’s just the state of reality these days in terms of availability, components and shipping.
Versus Alternatives
I mentioned the two alternative units that I already own. There is a third that I have heard of but never seen or tried, the Walrus Audio MAKO ACS1. I am a fan of the work that Walrus does and own a number of their stomp boxes. The ACS1 has gotten good reviews from folks whose opinion I respect but I cannot comment on something that I have never used myself. As always, I pay for my own gear, I don’t get anything set to me or gifted so I am as straight up as you are going to find in this space.
I have the DSM&Humboldt on a desk with some simple pedals and a Blackbird preamp in front of it going direct into an Apollo. I did not care for the sound of the Blackbird direct over time and like the DSM. While the knobs and switches are small and tightly packed, it has a great sound and is priced lower than the Boss. There is a newer version with more capability and two distinct channels that I have not tested. I find the layout a bit snug and the silkscreened labels are not always clear about which control they relate to if you are not using the device all the time, plus there’s a switch out on a side on its own, that can be tough to get to if your setup is also crammed a bit tight. It does have stereo low impedance XLR outputs built in.
The Iridium is built onto a direct board that is all Strymon gear. It goes stereo into a UA Apollo. While I don’t find it has the same feeling as the DSM&Humboldt Simplifier, the ease of use and quality is really superb. I had issues when I was using it at first just with headphones, because it is really touchy about power and you really need to connect the outputs to something that is properly grounded. While it is much more limited in terms of amp sims (3) and cabinet sims (3) it is very easy to use and it does a very good job of emulating a Vox, a Fender Deluxe and a Marshall. The only frustration that exists for me is that my Strymon board is a stereo board and you have to use one of those crappy Y cables to take your L and R in and convert them to TRS to go into the single input jack. If stereo does not matter to you, then this won’t matter but I want to run separate L and R to the Apollo. Pricing on the Iridium is pretty much identical to the Boss unit. The Iridium has stereo outputs designed to go to an interface or FRFR. If going to a PA, you will be best served by using a DI device.
I like the Boss IR-200. It is rich in features as you would expect from Boss. I don’t know how to best phrase this but it also sounds like a Boss product. I can often recognize the soundscape of Boss pedals and for me that’s not always a good thing. If I were only using this as a headphone device, I would not go there as I get better headphone sound out of the less expensive Simplifier albeit with fewer IRs. Recording using the IR-200 and then comparing the sound (because the feel is not there) with the recorded sound of a well miked real amp is not the same, but for speed the IR-200 is really good and really very quick. Recording the samples took a lot less time than miking up those amps would have taken and while not exact, and not to the level of the Quad Cortex or the Kemper, it sounds pretty good. If I were playing a gig, I am certain that no one in the audience would know the difference. One consideration of note is that the outputs are high impedance and so if running to FRFR monitors, or a PA, you will need a DI box, and if your recording interface does not have a high impedance input, or you want stereo (since most interfaces only have one high impedance interface) you will want a stereo DI there as well.
My Conclusions
I think that the Boss IR-200 is an excellent device for the user who needs decent amp simulations and IR based cabinets with a good choice of microphones and microphone cabinet distances. It would be ideal in a situation where a player doing gigs has his or her presets defined and is sending the signal direct to the house PA with no on stage amplification. The player could use wireless in ears to hear what is happening. Another good potential implementation would be as a desktop device in a home recording environment. I do not think that the amp sims are all great out of the box, and while the cabinet IRs are good, I do not think that they are as good as found in some other devices, but comparable to devices in this price point. The IR-200 excels in the choice of microphones and cabinet to microphone distance options in general. Only a Two Notes Torpedo Captor has better cabinet simulations in this price point, and for those you have to buy them, whereas the Boss unit includes a bunch as part of the package. There is a learning curve, but it is not overly steep. The display is a bit small for me, but the overall construction is very tough and while I don’t think that the user interface is as intuitive as I might like, it is certainly not horrible. At a typical sell price of $539 CAD, it delivers good value for the person who is going to leverage it. I won’t be buying one, because I already own an Iridium, a Simplifier, a Torpedo Captor X, a Kemper and a Quad Cortex and I am covered well at all levels in my journey, however if I was starting fresh in that Simplifier / Iridium price point, the IR-200 would definitely be a contender. In the price point, if I were playing gigs regularly, out of the three I would choose the IR-200 simply for speed of adjustment and versatility at the stage level. The only thing missing in that regard would be a decent DI box to convert the high impedance output to low impedance to allow for a longer cable run and consistent input impedance to the PA. One of the small passive Radial boxes would do the trick nicely.
Thanks for reading and listening. If you have questions on this or other guitar related topics, please fill out this form and submit it to me
