AudioThing releases Fog Convolver - v1.5.1 - True Stereo!

[Krakatau]

It seems quite a few people are new to creative uses of convo plugs, and of course Diego Stocco's videos are great but I was going to post links to Spirit Canyon Audio's collection of IR's. They however, seemed to have closed up shop over the years. They had quite the collection of creative IR's that really were an eye-opener on what convolution engines could do.

Indeed it seems that they went out of business...

There was also a IR library from virtuasonic.com (Synesthesis) that went out their catalog yet, ...too bad

Currently, there's still is my own library (Deep Spaces) at Dangerous Bear Underground here : http://www.dangerousbear.com/dbsig.html
...that should be drastically updated soon the library is achieved but i need to create some demos and tutorials yet

[aMUSEd]

It seems quite a few people are new to creative uses of convo plugs, and of course Diego Stocco's videos are great but I was going to post links to Spirit Canyon Audio's collection of IR's. They however, seemed to have closed up shop over the years. They had quite the collection of creative IR's that really were an eye-opener on what convolution engines could do.

Indeed it seems that they went out of business...

There was also a IR library from virtuasonic.com (Synesthesis) that went out their catalog yet, ...too bad

Currently, there's still is my own library (Deep Spaces) at Dangerous Bear Underground here : http://www.dangerousbear.com/dbsig.html
...that should be drastically updated soon the library is achieved but i need to create some demos and tutorials yet

There is also still Intelligent Machinery's "The Threshold" which is very much in the same ball park as the Spirit Canyon banks:

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?page_id=764

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?page_id=764

[lnikj]

I hope you can take the following as constructive critcism.

I'm not sure who your target market is here. Given your previous offerings (I'm a happy Frostbite owner), I think you like creative effects and are probably not trying to mount a challenge on Altiverb.

What *I* would like to see is this implemented as more of a creative effect, because between having Space Designer in Logic, Convolution Reverb Pro in Live, Kontakt's built in convo, Reflektor in Guitar Rig, and finally the very powerful and creative (though clunky!) Reverberate, there isn't really a gaping hole for Fog Convolver to fill. I suspect many people are in a similar position.

Your interface is a pleasure to use, I love the visual feedback, and the browser is great. It makes convolution easy to use, but as it stands it is not full featured enough for me. Reverberate, with your GUI ideas, would be great.

A Fog Convolver *Pro* reconfigured as a creative reverb effect would certainly fill a hole. Something with built in MSEGs and custom LFOs, a step sequenced gate, chorus and delays for example. I'd be seriously interested in that.

I'm not sure I'm your target market though.

Cheers.

[Krakatau]

Indeed it seems that they went out of business...

There was also a IR library from virtuasonic.com (Synesthesis) that went out their catalog yet, ...too bad

Currently, there's still is my own library (Deep Spaces) at Dangerous Bear Underground here : http://www.dangerousbear.com/dbsig.html
...that should be drastically updated soon the library is achieved but i need to create some demos and tutorials yet

There is also still Intelligent Machinery's "The Threshold" which is very much in the same ball park as the Spirit Canyon banks:

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?page_id=764

thanks for the info

!

[Krakatau]

A Fog Convolver *Pro* reconfigured as a creative reverb effect would certainly fill a hole. Something with built in MSEGs and custom LFOs, a step sequenced gate, chorus and delays for example. I'd be seriously interested in that.

I'm not sure I'm your target market though.

Cheers.

Let say on that purpose :

I've been creating IRs that are directly related to a particular tone or scale

One first obvious feature that are lacking on convo reverb to my ears would be the ability to transpose up or down the sampling frequency in order to transpose an IR half-step by half-step so a single one could cover all the possible chromatic transpositions within one octave or two...

Space designer can through that process transpose down a IR sample until 3 octave down (octaves-by-octaves)

as example have a glance at the IR sampled on the attached, Tune in C Major scale, you'll likely see more quickly what i mean :

C_Major03d.wav.zip

AFAIK, there are a few IR reverbs with tempo-related features, but none that bother to fine-tune and/or transpose IR samples for harmonica purposes and for creative purposes it might certainly have it interest, IMHO...

[whyterabbyt]

There's actually two Intelligent Machinery sets... The other one, Unnatural spaces is impulse responses of rather small objects, which can be quite interesting.

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?page_id=114

Another one with some 'effects' style impulses is Kineticsoundprism

http://www.kineticsoundprism.com/Impulses.html

BTW I agree with lnikj that a more 'creative effect' direction for a Fog Convolver ''pro' would probably make it a more attractive 'yet another' convolver for me; eg more ('static') manipulation of the IR (eg frequency/length resampling, mixing of multiple IRs, smearing, filtering, pseudo-unison, pseudo-looping, envelopes etc) , daisy-chained or parallel IR's (a la ReMatrix or Melda), and more 'interesting' processing of the audio.

[audiothing]

Importing entire IR Folders and a way to rate those presets goes a long ways. Will need to try the demo, but I love your work and am still a big fan of Organetta.

Thanks for the kind words.

I hope you can take the following as constructive critcism.

I'm not sure who your target market is here. Given your previous offerings (I'm a happy Frostbite owner), I think you like creative effects and are probably not trying to mount a challenge on Altiverb.

What *I* would like to see is this implemented as more of a creative effect, because between having Space Designer in Logic, Convolution Reverb Pro in Live, Kontakt's built in convo, Reflektor in Guitar Rig, and finally the very powerful and creative (though clunky!) Reverberate, there isn't really a gaping hole for Fog Convolver to fill. I suspect many people are in a similar position.

Your interface is a pleasure to use, I love the visual feedback, and the browser is great. It makes convolution easy to use, but as it stands it is not full featured enough for me. Reverberate, with your GUI ideas, would be great.

A Fog Convolver *Pro* reconfigured as a creative reverb effect would certainly fill a hole. Something with built in MSEGs and custom LFOs, a step sequenced gate, chorus and delays for example. I'd be seriously interested in that.

I'm not sure I'm your target market though.

Cheers.

Thanks for your feedback. Without constructive criticism I wouldn't be able to improve my plugins, so it's always welcome. Actually sometime I feel like I should pay for these suggestions, tips and ideas

As you said, in both my sample libraries and plugins I try to follow the creative and/or unusual approach.
I wanted to make Fog Convolver for two main reasons: easy to use yet not too simple convolution plugin, and a nice IR library following AudioThing philosophy. My plans are to expand the factory bank in the future and also offering new commercial banks (and of course let both users and other developers create their own banks). As a user myself I love the preset browsers of NI plug-ins (like Massive) and Omnispheres etc...so I focused on that. I know that most experienced users will make (or already have) their own IRs, but most of the time people will simply browse for presets. In a way, I used Fog Convolver as an excuse to make my IR bank(s) available.

Also, as many noted, the GUI is another important aspect. This is of course personal opinion, but, as a user, whether I use simple or super complex plugins, if the GUI is not easy/appealing/nice, creativity is turned down. I know, this is my limit.
Last time I used Space Designer I realized that most of the work was done in Audacity (to edit the IRs) and I just drag-dropped the files, barely moving the Wet/Dry parameters. I wanted to improve this experience.

I already have plans for a Pro version with probably 5.1 support, true stereo etc...I'll consider your suggestions (LFOs and sequencer/gate sound really interesting) but I also have other creative ideas to use convolution in different ways, especially in synthesisers, more on this hopefully soon.

[audiothing]

AFAIK, there are a few IR reverbs with tempo-related features, but none that bother to fine-tune and/or transpose IR samples for harmonica purposes and for creative purposes it might certainly have it interest, IMHO...

This is something I'm working on. Tempo-syncing rhythmic/long IRs is hard but definitely interesting. I already got some results but the problem is making it work in real time.
For now you can still use the Stretch parameter (which is a simple pitch shifter) to tune the IR, kinda like the Size parameters in reverbs and other convolution plugins.

BTW I agree with lnikj that a more 'creative effect' direction for a Fog Convolver ''pro' would probably make it a more attractive 'yet another' convolver for me; eg more ('static') manipulation of the IR (eg frequency/length resampling, mixing of multiple IRs, smearing, filtering, pseudo-unison, pseudo-looping, envelopes etc) , daisy-chained or parallel IR's (a la ReMatrix or Melda), and more 'interesting' processing of the audio.

Well, there's definitely space for a Fog Convolver Pro thanks for the input.

[Krakatau]

There's actually two Intelligent Machinery sets... The other one, Unnatural spaces is impulse responses of rather small objects, which can be quite interesting.

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?page_id=114

As a reminder for some (because these aren't new on the web), free... and very similar to the ones on the link above :

http://fokkie.home.xs4all.nl/IR.htm

[elxsound]

I think there definitely is a market for a pro version, and certainly not to diminish Fog Convolver, which looks great, but a one-stop shop for convolution presented in a simple and convenient way is long overdue (of course IMO).

Everything whyterabbyt mentioned would absolutely be great and included things I wouldn't have thought to request, but would gladly use. My biggest wish for inclusion is the option to daisy-chain and for parallel IR's, as well frequency/length resampling. I would also be sold on temp-syncing rhythmic IRs.

But back to the current offering...

I still have not downloaded the demo, but am looking forward to it (and sorry, I just don't download anything until I know I have the time to try it out). The preset browser is exactly what I was looking for more recently. I have many of the Convolution products mentioned in this thread, but I started using Convolution Reverb Pro just because of its simplicity, but adding homegrown creatively designed IRs is not a feature-set of that product, nor is exporting a designed IR a convenient process from Live.

So on that note... Is the export feature available from the Demo version? That's not a make or break feature I need use in a demo version, but am just curious. If not, I think the video could be sufficient.

[Krakatau]

Still about feature request :

At my level apart from a detailed pitch tuning as describe before,another feature that i'd find useful for sound design inside a convo reverb would be a real 4 band parametric eq with display option (like the channel eq in logic...i regret they didn't implemented it within Space Designer instead of the one inside), there are often frequencies that are over amplified in comparison to the general bandwidth and need to be minimized precisely..

...also but i have to admit, this becomes rather excessively sophisticated : a plugin like the "match eq" (again, in Logic) that can analyse the overall curve of an IR and then might apply an inversed one at different degree would also avoid many problems of over amplification and would be anyway a killer combination inside a convo reverb for creative purposes

[gwok]

Hi there,

Thanks for the quick and really useful update

I would still put in my recommendation for forward and backward arrows as well for IR's. The drawback about importing all the IR's as samples, is it changes all your settings.

Say for example, you have set a many different parameters to suit your needs, time, stretch, env etc. Now you want to test a few different IR's. By choosing a preset, you will now lose all those settings.

I think that that type of IR auditioning is very common, it is for me anyway. I also thought about "locking" certain parameters, but that is a lot of stuff to lock, if you want your whole patch to stay the same. As well, I thought the browser could have a tick-box - IR - ONLY, type thing, meaning only the sample changes, not the preset. Or just the good ole arrows.

Those are just my thoughts on how I use a plugin like this - great work!

cheers!

[audiothing]

@elxsound: Yes the tempo-syncing is something I am working on. I'll make a list of feature requests and see if I can work on a Pro version. Thanks
Unfortunately not. Save, import and export are disabled in demo mode.

@Krakatau: Added to the feature requests list. Thanks!

@gwok: Thanks. Actually you can already browse the presets without updating the parameters.
Click on More -> Settings and then enable Load IR only (lock parameters).

Also, if you right click on each knob/slider you can lock each parameter from the randomizer.

[gwok]

ah, great!

Didn't see that, that's perfect.

Might be nice to have that option on the main UI somewhere, for fast toggling?

G

[audiothing]

Might be nice to have that option on the main UI somewhere, for fast toggling?

Yes, that's a good idea, but I have to figure out where At the bottom of the preset browser you can enable an additional info label. I'll think about that.