Why Dr. Bonkers???

Microphone selection (Click Here)

Many of the mics I use are mentioned by name/model number by professional recording engineers as being used on some of the records you love. Some other cab IR file providers of impulse response (IR) files limit you to 5 or 10 mics and some of those mic choices are not even what professional engineers used on those cabs for the recordings you enjoy. Dr bonkers Soundlab® gives you up to 16 mic choices that are either pro studio standards or best kept secrets for recording bass & guitar cabinets.

Mic Positioning (Click Here)

Dr Bonkers Soundlab® gives you 3 good mic positions per speaker per mic choice so that you can create your own IR mixes as if you were the big time artist or producer sitting in a studio with a seasoned engineer and assistants jockeying microphones around to get your sound on your cab. 3 mic positions per speaker per microphone seems to be the magic number where most people feel there are enough sonic options but not overwhelmed by choice.

HypeReal™ Impulse Response (IR) Files (Click Here)

Dr Bonkers Soundlab® is the only commercial impulse response (IR) file provider as of this writing who gives you files using a Crown® PZM™. Why is that important? A PZM allows an engineer to capture the resonance and rumble of the cabinet with no potential phase cancellation issues, unlike using a mic placed in back of the cabinet or far away placed room mics. Adding a little of this PZM mic impulse to your IR mixes goes a long way. We call IR file mixes that we provide that have the PZM mixed in as HypeReal™! One playing or mixing experience with them and you will understand why we named the files as such!

Power Amp & MicDI Method (Click Here)

Other bass or guitar cabinet IR file providers sometimes bake in power amp coloration so you are getting the odd coloration of your modeller’s power amp coloration plus the power amp coloration used to make the IR file. Some other bass or guitar cabinet IR file providers only give you the MicDI method that filters out that power amp coloration to give you a more accurate reality of the cab. I give you both options so that you do not have to choose one cab pack over another cab pack. This double power amp coloration is not my cup of tea sonically, but I strive to give those of you that like this option some files to work with to create your tone & music.

IR Mixes Made with Typical Microphone Combinations (Click Here)

So that you do not get paralyzed with options if you are just about playing your guitar or bass and not looking to go down what you fear is the recording engineering rabbit hole, Dr Bonkers Soundlab® will give 5 or 6 mic file ir mixes (using the “MicDI_Method” files) to get you down to making music quickly. If the cab has a tweeter that can be shut off, we give you a set of iIR mixes with the tweeter on and a set of IR mixes with the tweeter off, just to make life easier for you.

Folder Structures & File Names You Can Understand (Click Here)

Dr Bonkers Soundlab® strives to give you folder names and file structures that are easy to figure out where you don’t need to scratch your head to figure things out. Once you see the logic of the file naming and structure, you will find it very easy to pick out the files you want to explore using in our cab packs with minimal confusion.

No Arbirtrary EQ (Click Here)

Other guitar or bass cabinet IR file providers sometimes make arbitrary EQ cuts or boosts in the files as kind of a one size fits all approach to try and get an instrument to sit in a mix that is at best a guess. Such best EQ guesses don’t take into account your playing style, strings, pickups, instrument setup, amp model selection/settings, effects choices, or the other sounds and arrangements going on in the music you are going to play live or record.

Guitar & Bass Cab Selection (Click Here)

The goal of Dr Bonkers Soundlab® is to give you comprehensive mic files of either historically significant guitar and bass cabinets or really oddball cabinets in great playing condition that no one has offered commercially at this time. The idea is that everyone and his uncle offers a certain 1960b cabinet, but there are a vast world of cabinets out there that no one has captured in the digital realm to help you on your tone quest. Dr Bonkers Soundlab® is there to help you achieve your tone goals.

Historical Guitar & Bass Cabinet Preservation in the Digital Realm (Click Here)

Philosophically, Dr Bonkers Soundlab® strives to preserve the particular bass cab or guitar cab as a historical snapshot in time within an acoustically neutral physical space within the digital world for each mic position and choice. The reasoning is that you have so many tools in your modeler or digital audio workstation (DAW) to remove or boost frequencies if you need to in a specific circumstance, but you can’t put back what was eliminated and have it be truthful to the reality of the cabinet in an acoustically neutral space at the time of recording. The goal is that if you have a great acoustically engineered cab captured by a seasoned engineer with careful mic positioning of the speakers using professional class mics and signal chain, there should be cab sounds that will help make you sound like you without a ton of EQ.

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