User Guide

Waves IR-1 software guide page 34
Saving Impulse Responses
The Save operation will always save all data: Control Settings, IR properties and a
pointer to the IR file. This is true whether saving to a new file or to a user preset.
The impulse response data is stored in a .wir file, separate from the IR-1 .xps preset file.
The .xps preset file contains the file name of the relevant .wir file. A complete preset is
valid only if the related .WIR file is found. In the event that the .wir file specified in the
preset is not found, a dialog box saying: “Please locate: Filename” opens. You can
browse and navigate to the file, point to a different file, or cancel.
Canceling returns to the plugin without loading a setup and will show a message “IR was
not loaded”. Pointing to a different file will load that file in place of the one saved with the
preset, and a note on the IR Graph “Different IR loaded to preset” will be displayed.
Importing Impulse Responses
You can import IRs in .wav and .wir formats (supported bit-depths: 16, 24 and 32- floating
point, with sample rates between 44.1kHz and192kHz). The plugin will automatically sample-
rate convert the IR to the sample rate you are working in (session sample rate is 96kHz
maximum).
Note: an imported .wav is not saved. If you want to move your session to another system,
you will need to include in your backup any IRs and .wav(s) you need for the session.
When importing IRs the IR-series will normalize loud peaks to –12dB. If the imported IRs
peak is lower than –12, then no normalization will take place, and the IR will be imported as
is. The –12dB norm is applied in order to allow some headroom for the expected peak
growth and clipping that will occur when convolving a hot signal with a hot IR. This may still
prove to be too high, especially when importing IRs that do not have a Direct signal. In this
case, it is recommended to scale the IR level using the Direct/ER/Tail gains. A
recommended approach is to try to reach the point where the perceived loudness of the
fully wet signal is similar to that of the fully dry signal.
Depending upon the channel component of the plugin, IR-series will expect a certain number
of channels to be imported. If you select an IR with fewer channels than expected, for
example loading a stereo file to the IR-series Full Stereo (4 convolutions), the result will be
another dialog box saying, “IR requires 2 more channels. Please select a file.” You can
create some wild sound effects by loading in completely different impulse files.
If the user chooses to cancel rather than open more files, the IR-series will use what it has
and multiply it for the missing channels. The IR-1’s graph screen will show the following
message: “IR was loaded using fewer files”.