Reverb

[JohnRoberts]

Reverb is such a matter of personal taste, I doubt the results of such tests would be conclusive.  Can there be an universally accepted"absolute best reverb"? What is the best beer in the world? I guess your answer would be "mine"...

My beer is exactly what I want....  8)
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Over the decades I have dealt with artificial reverbs. IIRC the classic technical paper on the subject was written by a guy named "Schroder" something about "colorless reverb" using multiple delays and recirculation. Early technology was crude but reverb algorithms can be subjective.

Modern digital platforms should not be a limiting factor like they were way back when. Modern reverbs could be better, whether they are or not YMMV.

JR

 

[Whoops]

Did you ever hear a EMT250? Now that´s a very old DSP. It sounds great, though. One of the best reverbs ever.

You're right, very old DSP and computer on the EMT250 and it sounds great. Always liked that machine.

Have you listen the UAD EMT 250 emulation? Sounds fantastic, it's wonderful.

Last year I had a Live Broadcast mix of a Portuguese artist for Serbia TV.
We went to Belgrade to a really nice  historic studio. The studio complex belongs to the Serbian Government and it was packed with nice vintage equipment, MCI JH500 console, all the vintage Neumann microphones and they had an EMT 250.

I always loved the EMT 250 and have some settings I really enjoy,
we tried to use the studio's 250 but in the middle of the soundcheck it started to produced lots of noise and then introduced digital distortion in the reverb decays.
I had my UAD satellite and my soundcard, so I used the UAD EMT 250 instead, it sounded absolutely fantastic, it was easy so carry, I had no noise or maintenance costs. Maric the studio Engineer was really impressed with the sound.

Digital reverbs are just getting better and better over time, it was a big improvement since the 70s and 80s, and there are fantastic recreations of the classic old timers

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Rarity
Hype
Collecting item
Re-Sale Value
and also because most of them seem to be regarded as really well built in it's day.

Exactly, and most of these causes cannot be assessed objectively. That was where I was coming to.

 

[Whoops]

Thats exactly my point, if its  just an algorithm, then why an old DSP should be praised instead of a modern CPU and a plug-in, we are talking information here not circuitry.

Exactely

 

[Tubetec]

I read previously in here about people using a speaker and a room as a reverb chamber it got me thinking about introducing effects via monitor speaker in the recording area to add a bit of an acoustic vibe to an otherwise very dead and heavily furnished living room. I had a friend over to record who ,aside from prefering to wear his hat all the times didnt like the headphone experience much .
Theres subtle timing cues a musician gets from early reflections in a pub or club and a bit of reverb generally helps a vocalist pitch better, so the idea is to add just efx signal to the room . A condenser mic each on vocals and guitar angled in such a way as to null out one another as much as possible , spaced omni's to pick up any stereo information ,
just wondered if anyone else used a similar approach .


.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I read previously in here about people using a speaker and a room as a reverb chamber it got me thinking about introducing effects via monitor speaker in the recording area to add a bit of an acoustic vibe to an otherwise very dead and heavily furnished living room. I had a friend over to record who ,aside from prefering to wear his hat all the times didnt like the headphone experience much .
Theres subtle timing cues a musician gets from early reflections in a pub or club and a bit of reverb generally helps a vocalist pitch better, so the idea is to add just efx signal to the room . A condenser mic each on vocals and guitar angled in such a way as to null out one another as much as possible , spaced omni's to pick up any stereo information ,
just wondered if anyone else used a similar approach .


.

I am not aware of that being done.

Should I ASSume you do not have an acoustically isolated control room with talk back monitor speakers in the recording space for communicating with the talent?

The obvious concern is that introducing an acoustic signal into the recording space could be picked up by the microphones and feedback. Depending on the size of the room (distance between speaker and mic) this would likely make relatively short time repeats (not very reverb like.) Of course you could feed some reverb processed signal out into the room that could make the space seem larger. This is more commonly done at mixdown, where you have more flexibility to tweak for taste.
 
JR

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I read previously in here about people using a speaker and a room as a reverb chamber it got me thinking about introducing effects via monitor speaker in the recording area to add a bit of an acoustic vibe to an otherwise very dead and heavily furnished living room. I had a friend over to record who ,aside from prefering to wear his hat all the times didnt like the headphone experience much .
Theres subtle timing cues a musician gets from early reflections in a pub or club and a bit of reverb generally helps a vocalist pitch better, so the idea is to add just efx signal to the room . A condenser mic each on vocals and guitar angled in such a way as to null out one another as much as possible , spaced omni's to pick up any stereo information ,
just wondered if anyone else used a similar approach .

That's the principle of virtual acoustics, as used in some concert halls and opera houses. It uses numerous microphones and speakers in conjunction with powerful DSP. The idea is both to enhance the natural reflections in order to help singers and also to apply to an existing room the sonic signature of another, so the singer in the BFE opera house can think he is at Milano's Scala.
Existing systems cost $$$$. A system with 2 mics and 2 speakers is bound to disappoint.
Now you must experience with the technique used by the EMI techs at Abbey Road. A pair of speakers, one on the right, another on the left of a figure-8 mic, right where the rejection is max. You may also reverse the polarity of one speaker.

 

[Tubetec]

Interesting stuff , thanks Abbey.

 

[iomegaman]

So I went back and read this entire thread aside from the pissing contest (which was done fairly politely) about vintage electronics vs modern cpu's I remain somewhat unconvinced of either side of the argument.

I will say two things though...I tried out the Altiverb demo and was VERY impressed it does sound quite good, but even the best verbs/IR's seem to have a little bit of "synthetic sheen" on them.

I also listened to the Youtube linked Lexicon 480L hardware vs. the plugin and my own subjective opinion was the hardware won hands down every time, what my untrained ears seem to pick up was what I can only describe as some sort of sonic compression on the verb tails in the real hardware...things just sounded "tighter" and it got me to thinking if there are any plugins that allow you to insert a compressor somewhere IN the signal chain so that you can compress the reflections or something?

It seems to me that what might be missing is some sort of phase cancellation to part of the signal as a reflection meets itself or another "origin" signal with only milliseconds of difference between origin and reflection...I mean if two almost exact signals encounter one another in a room is there any phase cancellation to identical parts of the signal (out of phase of course) or is that just not valid in the time domain?

Maybe in real life it does not exist but in human hearing is there a limit to the speed our mind/ears process sound? Reverbs seem to play with how our minds process sounds at least to some degree...with plugins everyone is doing their best to create the illusion of distance by shifting the time repeat of the EXACT same signal, however in a real room the exact same signal comes back to you changed and I know plugin makers try to do this by letting you pick the material on the wall/etc and even by "dampening" but they are basically just tweaking the original signal...I think on some level a REAL reflection is not just a tweaked signal it is a modified signal...

I still feel like the real 480L is either compressing the reflection as it blends it or something along that line..

Pretty much all of my plugins have that thin "metallic" sheen on the tails with the exception of the UAD Capitol Chambers but its a bit much at times...

Down this road HOFA is releasing a new IR reverb that seems like it might allow some of the tweaking I am considering...

https://hofa-plugins.de/en/plugins/iq-reverb/v2/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=studionews&utm_campaign=2020-09-21-en&utm_content=link

 

[living sounds]

iomegaman, I think it's the other way round. The plugins blur the sound, whereas the integer processing in the hardware doesn't. To my ears almost every plugin sounds blurred, not only reverb but also compression, EQ, etc.

Converters these days seem to do the same thing.

Mostly, modern mixes are just blurry, mushy, artificial sounding noise to my ears, and it gets worse every year.

 

[L´Andratté]

There is one often overlooked phenomenon (by me at least until recently)
when recording acoustic music.
If you record a classical guitar e.g. (like I do often) it projects very different sound
at different directions. With a mic you catch one sound "direction" in free field and the room reverb of ALL "directions" in diffuse field. With reverb processing of your
close free field mic signal you got reverb only of that single sound "direction".           
I am convinced I hear a difference...

 

[iomegaman]

iomegaman, I think it's the other way round. The plugins blur the sound, whereas the integer processing in the hardware doesn't. To my ears almost every plugin sounds blurred, not only reverb but also compression, EQ, etc.

Converters these days seem to do the same thing.

Mostly, modern mixes are just blurry, mushy, artificial sounding noise to my ears, and it gets worse every year.

Yea I think thats what I meant, not a compression that "blurs" the sound one that glues it together and makes it cohesive...the real 480L sounded more distinct...

And yes as well on converters...the exception to my ears being Apogee Symphony (I have the first version)...its a nice shiny box with pretty much JUST the converter...(I know there is some analog chain there but it seems minimal sonic-wise)...

I honestly cannot distinguish between the UAD's Apollo Twin converters and the Behringer AD82000...but that might be just the DA side of things...there is definitely an industry standard smearing going on.

 

[FarisElek]

VERY DISLIKE the Behringer Ada8200 converters. Used them to extend my audio interface and they have insane latency issues and terrible sound. Typically when I’d use my I/O plugin, the rate to adjust for latency was usually around between -6 and -12 samples. This was a big problem when using stereo processing becsuse one out might be need -6, one -8, and one -9 samples to to adjust for latency. So the two sides would be subtlety but noticeably off phase. Sold it and spent the same money on Lucid 8824 converter. Very old but solid. Converters sound great and the latency is always -2 samples so stereo processing is always good.

Would prefer a 24 track tape machine but the tape, the maintenance, and crosstalk are such a pain. In the future I’d like a tape machine for final takes but until then converters are fine.

Reverb since I’ve started this thread Is still the abbey road played. Don’t love them. But I don’t think anything within my price point sounds as good. Researching plate. Builds at the moment.

 

[living sounds]

I have switched to a discrete R2R DAC and never looked back. Doesn't measure as nice in terms of THD at max output as the current delta sigma implimentations, but it has all the clarity and power of analog recording media.

 

[Whoops]

Tape was always blury to my ears. Things rarely came from it better than what went in.

A/D and D/A Converters sound better every year.
I was amazed with the sound quality of the new Focusrite converters on the Red4Pre interface.

In the past Lavry, Crane Song, Lynx, Mytek had great non-blurry converters, nowadays the choice is tremendous, a lot of improvements were done in this area and most present converts sound great.

 

[hodad]

I have 3 hardware digital reverbs that all sit remarkably in the mix, a TC M3000, a Quantec Yardstick and a dbx290.
The Quantec is rather rare and fetch $$$, even second-hand, but a used M3k can be had for less than $1k ; a dbx290 can be had for a couple hundred $ but is quite rare.
I made comparative tests between these and a Bricasti M7 and a Lex PCM96. The Quantec is clearly in a league of its own; you can't hear it until you turn it off. The Bricasti and PCM96 did not make enough difference with the M3k to justify the expense (and I had very nice pricing on both, nearly -50%). Finally the 290 was far from ridiculous in terms of performance in this comparison. It is quite limited in terms of tweakability, though.

This post inspired me to seek out a dbx 290.  It took months to come across one here in the US, but I finally did & got it today.  Definitely not an "effects" reverb--sits very naturally beneath the dry signal.  I appreciate its simplicity & look forward to using it more.  Thanks for the insight! 

 

[analag]

https://www.audiothing.net/effects/fog-convolver/
Here's an idea get a convolution reverb like the one in the link above. Make some impulses and create the sound or something close to it. This a pretty good plate, try the XL version https://www.denise.io/store/denise/PerfectPlate. ValhallaDSP VintageVerb is good, Eventide https://www.eventideaudio.com/products/plugins-reverb/reverb/sp2016-reverb. Lots of good stuff out there. Send all your FX to a sub group and smack em lightly with a tape emulation plugin, nothing from Waves though.

 

[hodad]

Eventide https://www.eventideaudio.com/products/plugins-reverb/reverb/sp2016-reverb.

But the SP2016 plugin doesn't have all the programs that were in the hardware unit--not to mention the third party programs that were available.  Where's the fun in that?

 

[analag]

But the SP2016 plugin doesn't have all the programs that were in the hardware unit--not to mention the third party programs that were available.  Where's the fun in that?

The difference is 3K vs $250 and less when they have a sale

 

[Whoops]

Just finished 3 mixes since yesterday.

In the past I mixed in a room with an EMT140, an EMT240, a Lexicon 480 and a Lexicon 300 (Plus much more great reverbs). I loved all those units and I think they sounded great, specially the EMT plates.

Yesterday I mixed at home and used UAD reverb plugins and Altiverb for all the Reverb duties, they sound outstanding.

Although I enjoy the units I had to my disposal before I don't miss them a single bit with the tools that I have at the moment in plugin format.