Precisely. But not all reflections are the same, nor is diffusion always the desired quality. Every reverb has it's pros and cons, so it's really up to us to decide how to use them.

Wohooo, slow there, cowboy.

I use both the ReaEQ and the SSL Duende Channel on a daily basis, and they are VERY different EQs.
Not simply regarding the GUI, but from a DSP point of view.
The ReaEQ tries to be a clean and precise "digital EQ", whereas the SSL is dirty and "has character".

I know, I know, behind the SSL lies the same "clean digital EQ" principle - plus some added mojo, probably dynamic saturation or harmonic distortion etc.

But there definitely IS a world of difference between them.

Personally - I think Eventide is more about a specific engineering/programming mentality. If you've ever looked at the manuals of one of their bigger boxes - there is usually about 5000+ programs to choose from - wherein about 70% of it is actually quite "exotic" - or just sometimes - plain weird! They've been going at it from the 70's - with (IMHO) a mentality of - everything 'might' one day have a use/purpose, they are all about variety and new effects and technology - instead of the usual -> analog is better -> let's spend months developing a single algorithm - that sounds analog. They quite rarely discard algorithms, so there is so much choice - you'll always find something you like. I think the programmers there are actively encouraged to explore their own uniqueness, ideas - to be free in a sense.

Personally, I don't think that the "quality factor" is what defines Eventide as an excellent audio company - it's their strive to do something useful and unique, and as much as possible. It's the mentality I've always strived for myself.

Regards
Andrew

Myriads of presets - I am not convinced that this is an advantage, less a key one.


But some of those presets reveal the capacity of the device to transform casual sounds into unearthly orchestras, yet much closer to beauty than cacophony.

This effect is not to be achieved by a pain multiplication of reverbs and harmonic enhancers.


If not processing power (agreed), then it must be the algorithms and/or presets, or the demoing musicians.


There was this austrian guy who demoed H8000 presets for about 20 minutes - maybe someone can comeup with the link - with effect that were unbelieveable. Truly spectacular but in a clearly musical way.

My source on this is this guy: http://rhythminmind.net/1313/?p=361.

He nulls a bunch of plugins against Sonitus EQ (another cheap digital RBJ algo EQ). This includes SSL X-EQ, SSL channel, sonnox oxford and waves SSL (with "analog" saturation on!).

And in case you're wondering about the cambridge EQ, some guy also tested that:
http://studionu.com/uadforums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13038&star t=15#p105522
Conclusion: it's linear
Corollary: probably easy to null with sonitus EQ too.

When they mention analog, they usually mean the curve shapes. But yeah, quite misleading.

You mean this one?

http://soundcloud.com/eventideaudio/eventide-h8000-audio-dem o/s-nDlTV

Yeah, that's the one.

I didn't know about the OpenAL open source reverb. I took a look at the code yesterday, and the algorithm is super duper close to a reverb algorithm I wrote in 2002, that was designed to be compatible with the Open AL standard. I think this is just one of those coincidences, as the code for that reverb was never made public. At one point, my division at ADI was in discussions to integrate the reverb into the Unreal Engine, but that never happened, although I got a short mention in the credits for Unreal Tournament 2003 (or 2004) for the efforts.

Sean Costello

There is an interview with one of the Soundtoys developers (owner?) from several years back. It's worth reading to get an overview of the history behind the Eventide effects units:

http://www.audionewsroom.net/2008/09/off-record-soundtoys.ht ml

It has some of the answers the OP is looking for: think long, slow evolution of the effects over the last 30 years or so ...

Peace,
Andy.

Just gave it a read - I'm not really into FDNs that much but that 4D skew-symmetric rotation matrix is pretty dang smart!

I've been looking at that matrix tonight. That IS smart. I think it was mentioned in a Creative Labs patent from the 2000s, at least in an 8x8 form, so it would be worth seeing if the technique is patented.

The decorrelator also seems linked to the "cluster" delays described in a few Creative Labs patents, but Jot might have developed those before leaving IRCAM. The Flux IRCAM reverbs seem to use these as well.

The late reverb has some similarities to a reverb structure I published in 2009:

http://valhalladsp.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/a-reverb-paper-o f-mine-just-got-published-online/

I use more allpass delays in my structure, for a faster build of diffusion. The diffusion calculations and rotation matrix from the OpenAL reverb could be adapted to my design pretty easily.

Sean Costello