[Sam Testers]

After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my existing
Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve the sound of the
reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units (ie Lexicon, etc) that
are great, but is there any way to improve the reverb of my existing DAW at
reasonable cost? How about a card made especially for reverb, any of these
recommended and how do they compare to outboard units?

Thanks,
Sam

[Scott Dorsey]

Sam Testers wrote:
After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my existing
Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve the sound of the
reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units (ie Lexicon, etc) that
are great, but is there any way to improve the reverb of my existing DAW at
reasonable cost? How about a card made especially for reverb, any of these
recommended and how do they compare to outboard units?

What kind of DAW system are you using?
Do you mind of the reverb system can't run in realtime? That is, you have
to process a track, then load it into the DAW seperately?

There are bunch of convolution reverb packages out there in software that
are very good, some of them very cheap. They all eat up a huge amount of
CPU time but if you can run them in batch so they don't need to run in
realtime, that's not an issue. All of the convolution systems are as good
or as bad as the impulses you put into them.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Neil Rutman]

You can also get UAD-1 cards pretty cheap these days as users are dumping
for much more powerful UAD-2. The Plate 140 is outstanding and Dreamverb &
Proverb(?) are also very good.

Neil R

--
Neil Rutman

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Sam Testers wrote:
After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my existing
Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve the sound of
the
reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units (ie Lexicon, etc) that
are great, but is there any way to improve the reverb of my existing DAW
at
reasonable cost? How about a card made especially for reverb, any of
these
recommended and how do they compare to outboard units?

What kind of DAW system are you using?
Do you mind of the reverb system can't run in realtime? That is, you have
to process a track, then load it into the DAW seperately?

There are bunch of convolution reverb packages out there in software that
are very good, some of them very cheap. They all eat up a huge amount of
CPU time but if you can run them in batch so they don't need to run in
realtime, that's not an issue. All of the convolution systems are as good
or as bad as the impulses you put into them.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

On Dec 22, 8:01*am, "Sam Testers" wrote:
After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my existing
Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve the sound of the
reverb. *I know there are name brand outboard units (ie Lexicon, etc) that
are great, but is there any way to improve the reverb of my existing DAW at
reasonable cost? *How about a card made especially for reverb, any of these
recommended and how do they compare to outboard units?

Thanks,
Sam

don't know if this may help, but it is a nifty little verb.

http://www.anwida.com/product.asp?pid=7

[Frank Stearns]

"Sam Testers" writes:

After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my existing
Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve the sound of the
reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units (ie Lexicon, etc) that
are great, but is there any way to improve the reverb of my existing DAW at
reasonable cost? How about a card made especially for reverb, any of these
recommended and how do they compare to outboard units?

My single biggest complaint about being "forced" into a digital mix system was the
general sonic character of in-the-box digital reverb. The TC Electronic outboard
digital reverb I was using with the analog mix system took a lot of tweaking to get
a good sound, but it finally was a good sound, which indicated that pleasant digital
reverb was at least possible. (I did finally wind up building a live acoustic
chamber as well, but that's a whole other story. I do take reverb seriously!)

Back in Protools land, I did a lot with delays and various EQs to make it better but
with mixed success. Main clients finally agreed to buy me the TL convolution reverb,
and then later the Waves IR-1 convolution reverb. Still, neither was very impressive
out of the box regardless of the impulse set chosen. Still lots of tweaking,
fiddling, and multiple-'verb layerings were needed.

It's a long, tedious story, but I am finally able to get some gorgeous reverb fields
in-the-box. but it's based on two things: a lot of listening and experimentation to
get the tweaks, and a large amount of CPU brute force. I got a great buy on a
locally-built quad-core machine, which doesn't mind the dozen or so various reverb
engines I ask it to run on any given mix session. The client's dual-core really
can't do it, and my old single core simply wilts.

To answer your question, I'd guess you're on the right path by getting a dedicated
reverb engine (adding horsepower, in essence), but such specialized hardware might
limit how much varied things you can do. In my case, specialized hardware would be a
non-starter with some of my clients because they couldn't run what I'd done. (Wait!
That might be a *good* thing!)

I do simultaneously run several fields now, but have noticed that even running a
couple of instances of reverb (say one convolution and one typical DAW-type "fake"
'verb), along with some careful EQ, can help a lot. But you have to be willing to
fiddle with it, step away for a while, come back, go listen to music in a *good*
space with NO amplifiation to re-align your perception of reverb, fiddle some more
with your synthetic reverb, and eventually you'll get a much better sound. Never
trust presets!

There is, in my opinion, no "general purpose" reverb setup that will work for
everything. There's more to tweak than just decay time and predelay. You have to
become more aware, and dial in the 'verb sound best suited for the job. And you
might need more CPU umph to do it.

Best of luck with it,

Frank Stearns
Mobile Audio
--

[[email protected]]

I do simultaneously run several fields now, but have noticed that even running a
couple of instances of reverb (say one convolution and one typical DAW-type "fake"
'verb), along with some careful EQ, can help a lot. But you have to be willing to
fiddle with it, step away for a while, come back, go listen to music in a *good*
space with NO amplifiation to re-align your perception of reverb, fiddle some more
with your synthetic reverb, and eventually you'll get a much better sound.. Never
trust presets!

There is, in my opinion, no "general purpose" reverb setup that will work for
everything. There's more to tweak than just decay time and predelay. You have to
become more aware, and dial in the 'verb sound best suited for the job. And you
might need more CPU umph to do it.

Best of luck with it,

Frank Stearns
Mobile Audio
--
*.


Do different convolution reverbs have a "sound" to them other than the
selection of impulse response? If they all do the math right, the
"sound" should be totaly determined only by the choice of the impulse
repsonse and not the particular SW package.


Mark

[Geoff]

Sam Testers wrote:
After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my
existing Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve
the sound of the reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units
(ie Lexicon, etc) that are great, but is there any way to improve the
reverb of my existing DAW at reasonable cost? How about a card made
especially for reverb, any of these recommended and how do they
compare to outboard units?

You could choose from a huge variety of reverb plugings, one that hopefully
does what you want.

Nothing that a hardware box can do that can't be done in a DAW, though CPU
load can be a factor for realtime preview in some of the 'heavier' reverbs.


geoff

[Carey Carlan]

"Sam Testers" wrote in
:

After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my
existing Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve
the sound of the reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units
(ie Lexicon, etc) that are great, but is there any way to improve the
reverb of my existing DAW at reasonable cost? How about a card made
especially for reverb, any of these recommended and how do they
compare to outboard units?

Have you tried SIR? It's free and, when properly applied, sounds like the
real thing.

Quality is determined by the convolution files. These are available from
many sources or you can roll your own.

http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html

[Frank Stearns]

writes:

-snips-

Do different convolution reverbs have a "sound" to them other than the
selection of impulse response? If they all do the math right, the
"sound" should be totaly determined only by the choice of the impulse
repsonse and not the particular SW package.

Theoretically, you're correct. Practically speaking, sort-of. As I understand it,
depends in part on how the impulse data was captured. That is, two different capture
teams working in the same space with different gear might get something a little
different in the final sound of the reverb. That's part
of the "art" of impulse capture.

Also depends on how sophisticated the processing software used to "calculate" the
reverb based on how much CPU power you have. The IR-1 has a CPU-light setting to
reduce CPU load. I suppose it sounds okay, sort of like a better MP3 sounds compared
to a good source, but there's still stuff missing when using that setting. (I only
used this briefly with the old computer.)

I wonder about any undisclosed arithmetic short-cuts that might be taken by various
packages. Given the exact same impulse data, algorithm variances alone might yield a
slightly different sound from different vendors.

Eventually I want to capture my own; there are few nice rooms in town I'd like to
sneak into one night. But then someone might report "shots fired" to the police. g

I keep going back to the EMT140 impulse in the TL reverb as one of my basics. That
plate reverb was a reverb from the get-go, voiced to do a reverb function in the
artificial world of recording. I'm still not entirely sure about dumping my mix into
some famous space and bringing back the results. (I've yet to be wowed with that
alone; it's only when I start adding way more than I think I should have to does it
do the job.)

I suppose using convolution reverb is a bit like driving a car around the deck of an
aircraft carrier. Very cool. But compared to just getting in the car and driving on
land, ultimately I'm not in control of where I'm going, and am at the mercy of the
captain. (At least I can switch boats by using different impulses, but they still
might not take the route I'd like.)

Do correct me if I'm wrong on any of the the above. I plead newer-user status on
convolution reverb.

Frank Stearns
Mobile Audio

--

[Geoff]

Frank Stearns wrote:

I wonder about any undisclosed arithmetic short-cuts that might be
taken by various packages. Given the exact same impulse data,
algorithm variances alone might yield a slightly different sound from
different vendors.

I guess if there are 'short cuts' taken by a package's designer, if it
indeed shows then that package will end up less popular than those that
don't do the short-cuts !


geoff

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:01:36 -0500, Sam Testers wrote:

After using my share of various software reverbs and such with my
existing Audiophile card, I'm wondering if it's possible to improve the
sound of the reverb. I know there are name brand outboard units (ie
Lexicon, etc) that are great, but is there any way to improve the reverb
of my existing DAW at reasonable cost? How about a card made especially
for reverb, any of these recommended and how do they compare to outboard
units?

Thanks,
Sam

I've been thinking about this myself recently.
Convolution reverbs do the job for me most of the time, but I need a
little more flexibility and quite like synthetic reverbs.

The cheapest TC DSP card (no bundled plugins, no firewire) with the TC
VSS3 reverb plugin might be an option. It has a good pedigree and will do
the modulation that I miss from convolving reverbs.

For something more digital sounding, the audio damage ADverb reverb is
lots of fun. It can sound wonderfully clear and high fidelity, until I
solo the reverb return and it sounds really odd. Take the solo off and it
sounds great again. You have to trust your ears with it!