The new Celestion SpeakerMix Pro plugin (VST, AAX, AU) is designed to be a studio-grade application, enabling you to produce stunningly realistic guitar tones in your DAW. Far more than just an IR loader and mixer, SpeakerMix Pro delivers pristine sound, while offering a whole host of features. All with an intuitive and instantly familiar interface.
Fully compatible with your personal library of Celestion and third party (.wav) Impulse Responses, you can mix up to six channels (each with individual parametric EQ functionality) of different speaker responses into a stereo or mono track. The software also fixes sample rate/project mismatches.
SpeakerMix Pro gives you ample opportunity to further enhance and finesse your speaker responses. Deploy the unique Z-curve function to closely model the dynamic electrical coupling between amp and speaker for ultimate accuracy and feel. Add Celestion’s outstanding room responses (included) or incorporate your own into the mix for a superb ‘live’ sound.
Perhaps most significantly, it’s as the host program for Celestion’s proprietary new Dynamic Speaker Responses where SpeakerMix Pro represents a genuine Next Generation virtual speaker solution.
So What Is a Dynamic Speaker Response and What Does It Do?
Celestion Impulse Responses have become the go-to speaker emulation solution in the studios and live rigs of many top professional guitarists, bassists, and music producers. Looking to define the next generation in digital tone with greater accuracy and realism, we have developed the Dynamic Speaker Response (DSR).
A traditional speaker IR captures the performance of that speaker in a specific cabinet with a particular microphone in a certain position, at a pre-determined level. But there are an additional factors at play when it comes to speaker tonality: the cone of a speaker played very quietly barely moves, the cone of the same speaker played loud does move: it ‘ripples’ and ‘shakes’ in a non-linear way. This adds additional harmonic complexity and character to the sound: it’s part of the reason why loud amps sound so exciting.
The IRs that we’ve been successfully using for several years represents the speaker’s frequency response captured at a single, optimum level. A Dynamic Speaker Response goes a step further, it reacts to the signal level. The DSR models the speaker’s sonic characteristic dynamically, shifting in response dependent on changes in the input level, for a more natural, ‘analog’ feeling and sounding output.
Benefit from a More Intuitive Workflow
When using Impulse Responses in the standard way, if we want to “move” or “change” the microphone we need to find a different IR that was recorded with our new mic in the new position; that’s quite easy, simply scroll through an IR library and find the file that gives the sound that we want to hear. It’s not quite as intuitive as moving a microphone on a stand but it has worked very well for several years now and produced a lot of fine performances and recordings as well as having the well-documented advantages of convenience and repeatability.
Use DSRs with SpeakerMix Pro to provide a fast, simple and intuitive way to select microphone, speaker, and cabinet type with just a few clicks. The graphical interface enables rapid selection of speaker, cab and mic, as well as pinpoint positioning of the microphone across the speaker cone. What’s great is that this can be done while listening to the changes in sound as we make the adjustments, just like in the traditional physical studio.
For an additional bonus, we can also adjust the dynamic electrical coupling between the output stage of an amplifier (the Z-curve function) and the DSRs —or IRs, which are fully compatible with this function—and mix in room sound together with the speaker response to fine-tune the final sound of the performance.
Enhance Tone with a Highly Comprehensive Toolset
Celestion’s SpeakerMix Pro plug-in is designed to be a highly sophisticated and intuitive guitar speaker tone engine. It enables you to rapidly load your existing IR library into your DAW, while offering a comprehensive set of invaluable tools designed to make the most of your virtual speaker tone.
Beyond that Celestion have also integrated into the plug-in the next generation of speaker response, the Dynamic Speaker Response (DSR). Not only is it an accurate replica of a speaker’s frequency response in the digital realm that’s easy to use providing consistency and repeatability in the recording process. The DSR also responds to a player’s ‘attitude’ and playing intensity as well as the relationship between the amplifier and the speaker, capturing these subtle but important real-time nuances and injecting digital tone with true analogue realism.
SpeakerMix Pro – click here to buy now from our online shop
Browse our range of Dynamic Speaker Responses here
Find out how you can shape your perfect guitar tone with Robbie Miller’s demo of SpeakerMix Pro and our DSRs.
