Being somewhat a reverb junkie, I recently demoed and purchased Aether Reverb. In an ocean of VST plugins, and sea of reverb plugs, it can be very difficult to keep track of software that truly stands out.

And in that sense, I would recommend anyone currently seeking out a reverb plugin, to take a look at Galbanum's Aether: http://www.galbanum.com/products/aether/

I've tried and own quiet a few software reverbs over the years. And to my ears, Breverb, Arts Acoustic, Reflect, Wizzo W2, R66, and CSR are among the top contenders.

Each one of these reverbs has their own character and are quality products.

What I'm particularly found of with Aether is the scope and depth of editing and reverb sculpting I haven't been able to find in others. From basics like vocals, drums, pads, to the most abstract atmospheric / sound effect reverbs imaginable, Aether covers a very wide range of sonic possibilities.

I really appreciate its open, spacious, and smooth sound. Organic, breathing, and alive, with none of the metalicness found in many, if not most plugin reverbs on the market today.

I still place a high value on the reverbs I mentioned above, they're all very good in their own ways. But if I could have only one reverb, it would clearly be Aether.

I'd appreciate any views and opionions on this matter. It would also be nice hear some comparisons to hardware reverbs, as I feel the gap between hard and software is becoming smaller and smaller.

Will be interesting to hear Redline Reverb, since its just around the corner. Anyway, just some views and thoughts.

Peace

I'm really glad i bought this one.
Last edited by D.Wako on Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:13 am; edited 1 time in total

Thanks guys! This kind of feedback is great to hear of course!

Now that 1.0 is officially released, let's move the discussion to this thread. The thread linked above focuses some on the GUI colors and size of the pre-release version (which was not really intended to be public in the first place, but it found its way out into the wild). We have already listened to everything on these topics, and made changes to meet these requests.

We have made a number of revisions in the 1.0 version including the following:

GUI Enhancements:

1.) New Final Skins: Berlin Large and Berlin Small
2.) Knob Value display controls (disable value displays if you like)
3.) Knob Mouse Motion Control
4) Redesigned Info Page.
5.) Redesigned knobs for improved text readability
6.) Various aesthetic touchups and improvements

Audio Quality improvements and additions:

1.) We identified and fixed a bug in previous versions that caused some quality issues in extreme settings.
2.) We made some top secret improvements to some of the mathematics involved the alg. This results in even better sound quality.
3.) 266 total presets now
4.) Various other refinements

Documentation:

1.) We are now offering the first part of the PDF manual. This includes useful insights and information on how to get the most out of Aether. The rest of the PDF manual will follow shortly.

Please see the documentation included in Aether 1.0 for full details on all changes.

You can go here for full info. This page now includes audio demos, 40-hour trial demo, PDF etc.

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/index.html

Even if you have already checked out 0.9.xx you may want to give 1.0.00 a try as well.

Thanks for your interest!

And please, don't let my post intrude in the conversation here. Please continue to share any and all comments, good and bad,as we listen to both and consider them deeply. Hopefully this is evident even in comparing 0.9.18 to 1.0.00.

Also... Here is some info that may interest people from the press release:
____________________________________________________________ ___________

AETHER SPECS & FEATURES

• Extreme precision floating-point engine which rivals the best hardware reverb units available

• Impeccable specifications in Space, Time, and Frequency response

• Unique pervasive Auto-Randomizing scheme throughout the entire algorithm which keeps mixes sounding alive

• Non-Exponential Decay curves for incredibly lush sound

• Discrete Early Reflection and Late Reflection Engines

• 33 Space Type Models

• Over 250 professionally designed factory presets ranging from sublime acoustic emulations to extreme sound-design ambiences

• Reverb Decay Time range from 0.10sec to 120sec plus an Infinite Decay Mode

• Frequency Dependant Decay Time Scaling

• True Stereo and Hybrid Stereo modes

• Coded in assembly and optimized with SSE for extreme efficiency

• Only 4 sample latency! Suitable for use in tracking and performance!

• Supported Sample Rates of up to 192K

• Intuitive futuristic GUI designed for maximum control and ease of use


2CAUDIO COMPANY BACKGROUND


2CAudio is a new sister company of Galbanum, a highly acclaimed sound-design and content library development company. 2CAudio will develop audio plug-ins for all of the various host standards and focus on spatial processing, advanced creative effects, and other future-forward ideas.

2CAudio is founded by Andrew Souter, of Galbanum, and Denis Malygin. Denis comes to 2CAudio following years of cutting edge DSP research and development with companies including Sound Toys, SpinAudio, and many others. Souter and Malygin had the following to say about 2Caudio and it's first offering Aether:

"Aether is the first of many products to come which will leverage our combined vision, experience, and skill set in effort to develop cutting edge signal processing products aimed at testing the boundaries of our industry. We are not interested in joining the retro club. We are interested in emerging future technologies and extreme fidelity and our products will aim to demonstrate that. Regarding Aether, first and foremost it sounds absolutely incredible. We believe it is one of the best sounding reverbs on the market. Period. The rest is just detail."

____________________________________________________________ ___________

will be checking this out again thanks

EDIT: I think there may be a problem with your 'cello' audio example...

You are speaking about audio demos in the MP3 streamer, correct? Could you describe the problem you are experiencing with this sound? I do not seem to experience any problems with this file? Maybe this is a network/web connectivity problem?

I am not affiliated with 2c audio in any way but i must say that this reverb really stand out. As i am owner of CSR, ArtsAcoustic and VSS3 from powercore i must say that this one can do what AAR and CSR can't regarding ER.

While i won't replace ArtsAcoustic for halls at this point of time Aether is most expressive in making rooms and large spaces (and even plates, note that is not advertised but managed to create damn nice resonating plates..). I would like to see better modulation, maybe even more precise panorama placement of ER and LR.

ER is really tweakable and regarding sound picture Aether is somewhat very similar to VSS3 (which is not bad imo). I am demoing this pretty hard but so far i must admit i am impressed. Really really impressed.

I even managed to recreate some Nebula 3 lexicon presets with very very similar results. Great job!

For now price is a bit too much for me but if this reverb turn to be even better in my testing i will probably buy it.

GUI is really bad to me - but sound is outstanding. I wish you everything best with this piece of software.

Guys, sorry for my bad english!!

btw for some reason when i load demo in FL Studio, before Aether gui show i have black screen and everything in monitor goes to blackout then after second or so everything is back again normal. This is happening only with Aether and i am experiencing this for the first time ever. Never saw this. Complete screen black out ???

Having problem with the cello mp3 demo here too. IE6. The sound stutters and strange pitch warps happen, like someone altering the speed of a vinyl record.

It's a great reverb. I bought it, but now that I'm having to quit music because of my medical problems. I can no longer use it. It's certainly worth purchasing if you can use it and aren't an idiot like me.

Sorry for being OT, but what medical problems makes you quit music? completely? I understand if you dont want to tell everybody, but then you told us you have medical problems so maybe it's not too personal?

sorry to hear Larry,

are you selling your license of this one? i'd be interested. i like it but not for 249

Hi ttoz,

You know I'm selling everything because of med. problems and I'm selling at crazy prices. If I can sell it, you'll get a deal you won't refuse. I guarantee you, unless you run out of money beforehand.

i'm sure you'll give me a good deal. Much appreciated.

give me first dibs on this one if they allo wyou to sell it. They should, you have a genuine reason.

Sorry if my reply seemed a bit rude, LarryAW.

And congrats ttoz, if you get the deal! Too bad I didnt think about that.

Btw, does Aether work good for positioning? I mean like orchestral instruments, ensembles. Maybe not Altiverb-good, but how good is the positioning feature?

/Johnny