So, I thought I'd add another round of sounds; this group is meant more to demonstrate the mangled and/or deranged sounds you can get. They're definitely not meant to sound pretty or "musical" by any normal sense of the word.

http://soundcloud.com/kbsoundsmith/sets/more-b2-demos

I find B2 covers a lot of sonic territory. It sounds great as a reverb, but my inclination is really try to color and/or destroy the incoming sound with this. I'm really thinking of this as a sound design tool more than as a room reverb.

Here's the way I'm thinking of the difference between Aether and B2. I think if you're looking for a really traditional reverb to make a realistic sounding space like a hall, Aether is the one you want to use. B2, on the other hand, doesn't want to know what a sound is like in a hall--it wants to know what a sound is like if it passes through an alien space craft's circuitry, jettisoned out into vacuum and then received by a satellite, only to be relayed by a faulty transmitter to Earth. And then passed through a hall.

TLDR: Aether rewards detailed modelling of traditional music environments, B2 rewards experimenting and designing non-traditional/unrealistic environments (or so I see it).

#4 is a nice effect (is that full WET?), like a straight razor scraping a pane of glass. Sounds like the highs are distorting a bit.

I bought Aether to do the latter as well as the former. It should be able to do both and I'm still unclear what is going to happen to Aether now they have a new flagship. I would have liked to have seen the more experimental features in Aether developed further, not have to buy another new plugin and now be told Aether was only all about traditional reverb, that is not how it was sold.

Yeah, it was full wet, if I recall (not saved, so I'm not sure now). And it was using the bit reducer available for the "Attitude" knob, so the sound should be distorted.

That's what crazy about this thing. I don't think I've ever seen a reverb that encourages you to mangle the incoming stream of audio.


edit: still had the window actually, it was not full wet, although close to it.
Last edited by KBSoundSmith on Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:58 pm; edited 3 times in total

2CAudio has, from the beginning with every one of these units, encouraged exploration of new and conventional spaces. IMO

Well I agree. But clearly not as far as B2 seems to be encouraging. Maybe I just love wrecking sounds, but the Attitude knob seems to be really essential to what makes B2 unique.

And I can understand the frustration that it seems this "replaces" Aether. I think for some people, that actually will be the case, because I think there is enough overlapping functionality for that to happen. For me, I think they have enough of a different vibe for some people to justify using both (as well as compatibility with past projects). I haven't decided for myself yet either way, in any case.

a good question/dialog from GS:



Not silly at all. A very good question in fact. kfhkh

If you look at the Dual Engine preset folders you can see:

D2 Early Latea
D3 Parallel Space
D4 Cascade Space
D5 Four Channel
D6 Dynamic Space

& also...

D1 Ambience
D7 Colored Space


The first 5 folders I list are designed to show 5 general categories to answer exactly this question.... I choose to group them this way, instead of "Halls, chambers, etc" specially to illustrate the various ways you can use the Dual Engines.

First, a single B2 engine can run in it's normal full reverb tail mode. This gives something similar to a drastically enhanced version of Breeze. Structurally it is similar to Breeze, but feature and tuning-wise it is completely different to achieve a different sound.

Secondly we can disable the tail of each engine separately, so in this capacity it functions solely as an Early/Discrete Reflections engine. But it has NOTHING at all to do with the Aether ER engine. Different universes in fact... Nonetheless we have a set of a bunch of single delays that function as Early Reflections in this case (or better to say Discrete reflections b/c they not not be early, really...)

So either engine could provide ERs-only, or ERs+LRs, or also could just provide a single delay (including no delay) as defined by pre-delay...

The D2 Early Late presets show how you can set up configurations that are SIMILAR to Aether... One engine provides ERs, the other acts as the LR engine... Note ERs here can be modulated... they are NOT in Aether... Note also the Aether LR engine has other tricks up it's sleeves that B2 and Breeze do not have, which I will not discuss for IP reasons... Thus this configuration can get some REALLY great stuff (I made some really great presets testing on acoustic GTRS and other stuff...) But the result is not the same as Aether. They are different flavors...

D3 Parallel Space: here we use two different full ER+LR presets without any (or maybe very low) Cascade. So we could have two "hallish" presets in each engine. One might be brighter, shorter, be dual mono, less diffuse etc to give good foreground imaging. The second might be longer, darker, have more crossed stereo field, have higher modulation or use the other modulation mode, etc etc. This kind of stuff gives incredible sense of depth and "3D-feeling"...


D4 Cascade Space: here we use cascade to feed Engine A into Engine B. This results in extremely dense responses... The results can vary drastically depending on Size and Geometry settings of each engine. A small size into a large size results in clustering in the envelope of the tail for example. Two equal sizes results in a very smooth and dense build in energy. Contour can be used to create all kinds of interesting responses that can be cool for making hall-type presets. Cascade with using only ERs for the A Engine, and A is large can give several "copies" of the response of the B engine. Thus it can function like a sustain aspect for the envelope. And a ton of other stuff. Cascade is possible in Aether, but only with ERs -> LRs. We can not cascade to full engines into one another, nor can ERs be modulated.



D5 Four Channel: This is similar to Parallel Space, but here we set Cross to 0.0 for both Engines, and turn on the Cross Special Feature Button (next to the Cross label) for only the B engine. This reverses the channels, such that L is R and R is L. So then we keep Cascade at 0.0, and we use balance at around 50% or so. Now we have a discrete 4 channel reverb. All four of these channels are distinct. There is no cross mixing as with classic hardware devices that use "Figure 8" structures and similar... So why is this cool? b/c the cross-over channels can be damped more, can have more pre-delay, can have slightly larger size or different geometry setting, they can have more modulation or greater density, etc. etc. All of this stuff creates an AMAZING stereo image that will preserve the relative position of elements in your mix and situate them in a very wide and deep sound-field. It can be very useful for scoring sound-stage kind of applications.

D6 Dynamic Space: We can keep the engines Parallel (or use some cascade, there are no set rules), and apply dynamics to each. You could apply complimentary dynamics to each engine, one engine will go down in gain above a certain threshold, the other will go up... effectively they will be cross-mixed according the the input signal's dynamics... This is quite novel. Dynamics can have VERY LONG attack and release times, so it will give "auto gain" type of behavior... So theoretically, the start of the verse could have a shorter/tighter space around it, and as it progresses the longer verb could fade in and be timed so that when the verse pauses, the loner verb will fill the space and then seamlessly revert back to the shorter space for the start of the next verse. That's the idea. Or any other various dynamic cross-mixing scheme between the two engines. (of course, just the normal use of gating etc on a single engine is cool too sometimes.)


Not exclusively dual engine, but:

D1 Ambience: it can be cool for ambience presets to run both A and B as ER-only, and maybe even cascade one into the other. This will give a very short spacial impression without adding any tail...

D7 Colored Space: say you have synth pad with a lot of bass energery: you can use Attitude on the input to add some harmonics to it, thus shifting engery up into the spectrum. Then you send this into the reverb engine. The modulation smears this out, and you get insanely great ambient textural things. Use it with cascade, add Attitude to the second engine, and now we get some very complex distortions and intermodulation stuff. With subtle settings this can be really great. Or go nutz and completely F things up if you prefer...

Aether is able to do both. Nothing has changed about Aether. B2 does not take anything away from Aether.

We will update Aether at some point, i don't know exactly when, but I think at least 12-18 months... (for 2.0, not minor updates such as OSX 64bit) There are some other things we want to do also... It's very premature to talk about right now.

Just because BMW releases the X6, does not mean the M3 or the 750 or the Z4 is no longer cool...

Aether still kicks complete butt IMHO, and is the reigning champ...

B2 is the new contender (if you really must think that way--we don't.). You guys will ultimately choose which you prefer (if that decision even really needs to be made) and how far B2 goes. We put a ton of passion into it, and are quite proud of it.

And we can tell you B2 is NOT Aether and never will be. Nor will Aether be B2. If you spend any time with the demo you will likely agree.

Ultimately I think the Perfect Storm Bundle is the ideal. Ya I sound like a salesman by saying that, but I honestly believe it. We don't make products that we aren't excited to use ourselves...

And for those of you who have The Perfect Storm 1.0, or Aether + Breeze already, we are working out what we can do for you above/beyond the current offer. You are very important to us and we don't forget you.

Totally agree with this. Doesn't take long with the demo to figure this out.



Thank you!!!

The game is a foot.....

Haste would have been waste ....

Instead I wait with baited breath Andrew.....


M U U U hhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa................


( that laugh wasn't way over the top manical was it ??
It was only supposed to be mildly so .... )

I finally got to test it installing it on my studio system which still runs OS X 10.6.8 and I'm very impressed to say the least. You've created a beautiful sounddesign monster here!

Just let us know in this thread

or an email?

Thanks, received a reply from Denis confirming this. Great customer support and a big relief to know that I was not for once doing something stupid!!

[pre-demo, speculative ramble]
Like a few others have said or alluded to, I was also under the impression that Aether was 2cAudio's "flagship reverb designer" so it's a little disappointing to discover there are now two 2cAudio plugs contending for that title. But not so much that I'm about to start a foaming-at-the-mouth campaign against 2cAudio. Though I do feel this issue could be easily mitigated with better pricing/discounts for existing Aether licensees. Aether licensees especially imo, as it appears to occupy the same tier of reverb design albeit with different features.

Now it's also apparent that 2cAudio are quite focused on time-domain effects, kind of like ValhallaDSP. I have to wonder just how much existing code is being used, simply re-jigged and re-gui'd {in this case simply re-purposing existing gui elements} ? On the one hand, if it's a large amount of existing code re-jigged etc I feel the price for me, an Aether licensee, for the new product should be cheaper. On the other hand if B2 is mostly new code, new r&d etc, I feel it should be added to what was pitched as the company's sound-designer reverb - Aether, in a paid upgrade. Or at least the new product, B2, should be offered to Aether licensees at more of what I would consider an 'upgrade' price. like $99 ?

so between these facts;;

{1} that 2cAudio dsp coding seems to be focused on reverbs {which makes you wonder how many times you're paying for the same code re-jigged}

{2} creating new products that essentially compete with existing products for flagship-sound-design status instead of simply upgrading {for a fee} the existing flagship

{3} and the high prices for existing Aether licensees ....


I have relegated 2cAudio into the "wait and see" developer pile. basically, I'm not about to buy another top-tier sound designer reverb from the same dev - at top tier prices, only to discover 9 months or so down the line that he's been putting his resources into yet another top-tier sound designer reverb instead of updating one of the other TWO {assuming I would also buy B2} I already own from him. He could tell me "I promise the next product isn't a top-tier sound designers reverb" but the seed of shenanigans has been planted, and after three reverbs in a row I'm wondering if his dsp chops will ever extend past time-domain stuff anyway ? At current 'crossgrade' prices I'm not paying to find out.

As an example of a developer who resides in the "wait and see" pile, I give you Ableton. I only just recently upgraded from Live 7 to Live 8.

I figure if I enjoy the B2 demo, as I probably will, I will wait {a long mofo time if needs be} until 2cAudio offer it to me for what I personally consider 'the right price'.

imo.
[/pre-demo, speculative ramble]

All that being said, Aether is an excellent reverb I expect B2 probably is too.

+1 On the surface it looks like Aether. On the demo there's definately more going on under the bonnet. They sound different I had great fun demoing B2 last night, only an hour or so on various patches from a range of sogftsynth presets. Certainly adds some nice richness on synth leads and saws, like the depth to strings and still want to play with it somewhat more. B2 is more than reverb imho. To me its almost choral and reverb. I haven't read all the tech stuff my approach is load, random select preset and jam.



Got your email and look forward to a great result...whilst I shouldn't I probably will upgrade that demo