Space360 - Support Thread

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Following the others devs' example, I'm starting this thread as a place to report any bugs or ask any questions about my entry, Space360.

Let me know if anything seems screwy. Also, I deliberately left the supporting doc brief to encourage experimentation. However, if anything needs clearing up or expanded on, I'll be happy to do so here.

Thanks to Ben and everybody at KVR for this opportunity to share my little project, to all the other devs for their wonderful entries, and also to all the devoted members for their enthusiasm for the contest.

-Brad (cytoSonic)

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Sleight nitpick: If I make the room bigger than about 33%, and drag the left speaker all the way into the upper left corner, it's not possible to drag it back out unless the room is first made less than 33% again.

Also, any theories on how to smooth out the transition artifacts when moving the sound stage around?

It's very astute to combine a stereo imaging tool with a reverb, it looks like a trend setting plugin.

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overhishead wrote:Sleight nitpick: If I make the room bigger than about 33%, and drag the left speaker all the way into the upper left corner, it's not possible to drag it back out unless the room is first made less than 33% again.
Unfortunately, I think this is just something you just have to work around. The "layering" of the graphic elements puts the little curved arrow on top of the other things. When two things are stacked, there is no way to determine which one the user is intending to select. Because the elements are defined by the "square" that surrounds them and not actually the pixels that represent them, sometimes what the user sees and what the computer sees are not the same. I know this is frustrating and is one thing that I tried to overcome, but I think the ideal solution would not be pratical.
overhishead wrote:Also, any theories on how to smooth out the transition artifacts when moving the sound stage around?
Yes. As it stands now the delays used in the direct signals and the early reflections read discrete points in the buffers. In the "ambience" section, they are fractional (in order to produce the smooth "smear" modulations). If I were to interpolate the direct and the early reflection delay pointers, I could lessen the artifacts. I obviously can't add that feature now that voting has started, but maybe in subsequent revisions after the contest I could add a "smoothing" option for those that want to more movement in the track. This, of course, would add slightly more CPU overhead, but might be a cool feature to have.
overhishead wrote:It's very astute to combine a stereo imaging tool with a reverb, it looks like a trend setting plugin.
Thanks! And thank you for the input above. Definitely will be worked into future versions!

-Brad

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I just wanted to pop in here real fast to address a couple remarks about my plugin that have been addressed in the sticky topic at the top of this forum...

RE Getting a "brighter" ambience: You should be able to get a pretty bright reverb sound by pulling down the "damping" sliders on the different "walls" in the reflect panel, while simultaneously boosting the "lo-cut" slider in the ambience panel.

RE Modulation: There is a slider in the ambience section that controls the depth of the modulation of the comb filters. While you can't adjust the individual LFO rates (16 in total) of the modulation, you should be able to get some interesting modulation effects by boosting the depth with this control.

It has occurred to me that accessing the different "edit" panels might not have been described as well as it should have. If you click on the LABELS of the top three knobs (direct, reflect, ambience), the respective edit panels open up for further adjustment. You can't do anything real crazy there, but you can "fine-tune" the effect to your liking.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

-Brad

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cytoSonic wrote: It has occurred to me that accessing the different "edit" panels might not have been described as well as it should have. If you click on the LABELS of the top three knobs (direct, reflect, ambience), the respective edit panels open up for further adjustment.
Thanks for the heads up :) + thanks for the class plugin!

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Hi brad,
Maybe a naive question....anyway:
If I want to use Space360 for the front/back axis (maybe also for the position of the pan-axis), but want to use another reverb together with space360 (per track), do you think that will work?
My question does NOT mean, that I think your reverb is bad!

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Hi. I'm going up-load 10 vstpresets for Space360. ( banks & patches section )
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oups ! I can't for the moment ( page no found ) ! If u want it, pm me :)
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up-loaded today
Last edited by jeff51 on Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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A couple of things for future versions (after the DC). I really like this one, and I'll definitely use it in one or another post-pro job. But you can make more out of it.


For example:
1) indication of how big the room is (width, length)
2) I'd love to have more speakers in the field
3) maybe different wall/floor settings to influence the reflection
4) different room shapes (not just retangle)

Maybe I'm just thinking too much of QuikQuak RaySpace. But this one's unfortunately a bit outdated, might not be continued and your tool is the most promising in that section. In this regards, I can dream of custom shapes within the room (with different material), height of the room, etc.


Else, I didn't find any issues at all. I like that little critter. Definitely cool if you want to create an echo chamber ITB. Impressed me right from the start.

Sad that SynthMaker never made it to Mac (or not yet!). So many great creations were made with that tool.
[ Mix Challenge ] | [ Studio Page / Twitter ] | [ KVRmarks (see: metering tools) ]

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@akira: You most definitely could use another reverb with this! What I would do is run them in series (space360 --> other verb). Mix together the "direct" and "reflect" to your liking but turn the "ambience" knob all the way down. Then, in the other reverb, dial in the sound you like. If your reverb has a "pre-delay" setting, you should set it so the reverb tail comes in just a tiny bit after the last reflection.

@CompyFox: It's funny you should mention the multiple speaker idea because this is the on the top of MY list, too. In fact, when I shared an early sketch of the reflection algorithm to other SMers, I mentioned my intention to have a multi-input effect. The idea being a "bus reverb" to glue things together in the mix stage. I will definitely add it to later versions. How many inputs do you think is reasonable? Eight maybe?

Regarding the room sizes, etc. I wanted to keep the GUI as clutter-free as possible. It certainly would be possible to display the dimensions, though. The plugin is already calculating them for speed-of-sound and air-absorption considerations. FWIW, the lateral width of the "head" graphic represents about eight inches and the walls, head, etc are all at the same scale. If I remember correctly, the lowest room scale setting has about nine foot nominal width and the highest room scale has about a thirty foot nominal width.

The shape and reflection material suggestions are duly noted, too :wink:

Thanks again, everyone for the feedback. I was afraid the such a "subtle" effect might get lost among all the more aggressive entries. I'm very happy that people are finding it useful (and not finding bugs!)

-Brad

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cytoSonic wrote:@akira: You most definitely could use another reverb with this! What I would do is run them in series (space360 --> other verb). Mix together the "direct" and "reflect" to your liking but turn the "ambience" knob all the way down. Then, in the other reverb, dial in the sound you like. If your reverb has a "pre-delay" setting, you should set it so the reverb tail comes in just a tiny bit after the last reflection.
-Brad
Brad, Thank You very nuch, this is just great!! :)

Could you please elaborate your last sentence?
Do you mean the reverb tail of my reverb or of space360?
And same question for "last reflection".
And why to do that?

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cytoSonic wrote:@CompyFox: It's funny you should mention the multiple speaker idea because this is the on the top of MY list, too. In fact, when I shared an early sketch of the reflection algorithm to other SMers, I mentioned my intention to have a multi-input effect. The idea being a "bus reverb" to glue things together in the mix stage. I will definitely add it to later versions. How many inputs do you think is reasonable? Eight maybe?
Well, considering that there are mixes from 5.1 to 22.2, I'd say stick with the usual suspects. 5.1 (6 inputs) 6.1 (7 inputs) and 7.1 (8 inputs). Cubase can currently only pull off 5.1, Nuendo could go higher, the sky is the limit for Reaper and Modular environments (except you use the latter as wrapper).

I'm only mentioning this just in case. I'd actually also prefer a plain and simple mono source which is then recorded by a binaural head, or an array of different mics (single mic, A/B, X/Y, M/S, multi-mic array, etc).

I just have to find an ideal balance of the settings for using your plugin as "send" FX.


Again, sorry to compare you with QuikQuak's RAYSPACE, but your creation is the closest to that concept. Maybe you should get in touch with them after the DC to develop it further? I'd love to see both creations being continued.

cytoSonic wrote: Regarding the room sizes, etc. I wanted to keep the GUI as clutter-free as possible. It certainly would be possible to display the dimensions, though. The plugin is already calculating them for speed-of-sound and air-absorption considerations. FWIW, the lateral width of the "head" graphic represents about eight inches and the walls, head, etc are all at the same scale. If I remember correctly, the lowest room scale setting has about nine foot nominal width and the highest room scale has about a thirty foot nominal width.
If there is a chance to change all that in the near future, and also switch from INCH to METER metrics... I'm all game.

cytoSonic wrote: The shape and reflection material suggestions are duly noted, too :wink:
Definitely looking forward to that. If we can even place stuff in the room, even better (but this really turns into a "Rayspace" type plugin then).

cytoSonic wrote: Thanks again, everyone for the feedback. I was afraid the such a "subtle" effect might get lost among all the more aggressive entries. I'm very happy that people are finding it useful (and not finding bugs!)

-Brad
Sure as hell isn't a subtle FX.
[ Mix Challenge ] | [ Studio Page / Twitter ] | [ KVRmarks (see: metering tools) ]

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cytoSonic wrote: @CompyFox: It's funny you should mention the multiple speaker idea because this is the on the top of MY list, too. In fact, when I shared an early sketch of the reflection algorithm to other SMers, I mentioned my intention to have a multi-input effect. The idea being a "bus reverb" to glue things together in the mix stage. I will definitely add it to later versions. How many inputs do you think is reasonable? Eight maybe?
-Brad
Hi brad and all the others,
I had similar thoughts like compyfox. To me 8 Stereo inputs would be enough (I don't care about 5.1 Dolby Surround so much). The white field, where to position them could become bigger. The different stereo inputs could have different colors, maybe 2 green spots for the first stereo input (e.g. track one), one with "L" and the other with "R". And then the blue, and the red ones etc..
Wouldn't it be nice, to be able to move these sixteen spots freely on this virtual stage?!!!!
I agree with all the suggestions of Compyfox, but from the chronology of development, to me the most important thing would be, to be able to position different stereo-tracks on the front/back axis...this I found always diffcult!
If this plugin would remain freeware, this would be great!

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akira wrote:Could you please elaborate your last sentence?
Do you mean the reverb tail of my reverb or of space360?
And same question for "last reflection".
And why to do that?
Hi Akira.

By "reverb tail" I mean the reverb sound (or "late reflections", etc) of your reverb. Essentially, by turning down the "ambience" of the space360, you are only left with the initial sound and the early reflections, leaving your reverb to handle the late, dense reflections (the ones that decay over time).

If you have a "pre-delay" setting on your reverb, use this to delay the buildup of those late reflections so it sounds natural with the output of the space360 (you don't want them to obscure the early reflections). You'll have to use your ears to get this timed right, but really anything above, say, 80ms should do the trick (depending on the room scale). Also, if you can adjust the volume of the "early reflections" on your reverb, you should turn this all the way down so it doesn't obscure the ones generated by the space 360.

I am noting all of the suggestions made so far for future versions, BTW. I have some ideas myself of how to make this a really robust sound-stage/mixing tool. Probably nothing new will come out before the close of the contest, but I will monitor here for more suggestions and possibly look to a release at the start of the new year.

Thanks again, everyone.

-Brad

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I'm just starting to test your plugin and have a few questions. I can't seem to get the presets to work, and I can't save presets. If these should work then I know I've done something wrong and will try again. At first glance I really like this plugin. It has a nice gui and it's pretty easy to get a nice reverb...I just want to be able to make my own presets. Thanks!

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clintmartin wrote:I'm just starting to test your plugin and have a few questions. I can't seem to get the presets to work, and I can't save presets. If these should work then I know I've done something wrong and will try again. At first glance I really like this plugin. It has a nice gui and it's pretty easy to get a nice reverb...I just want to be able to make my own presets. Thanks!
Hi Clint.

Thanks for taking a look at my plugin. Regarding the presets: There are two ways of saving presets: either through your host (.fxb, etc) or through the plugin itself (room: load/save buttons near the bottom). If you use the second method, you can re-use your presets with any project, no matter what host your are using.

Now, having said that, I was a little short-sighted in with respect to preset handling. I didn't really anticipate users needing a whole bunch of presets saved in banks for easy access, so the plugin will only save ONE preset per file. In hindsight, I realize that this is very limiting. My reasoning behind this decision was founded on the idea that the settings for any given project were pretty dependent on the source material being treated, and therefore a "one-size-fits-all" bank of presets didn't seem to make sense to me. I rather thought of the preset system as a way to quickly transfer the room settings to different tracks in the project (e.g. "okay I put this rhythm guitar on the right side of the room, so let me just save the room settings and transfer them over the other rhythm guitar track that I'll move to the left side of the room"). But, like I said, I realize now that this is a little too limiting.

So, see if you can save these single presets in either of the two methods listed above. If not, post back here and let me know what DAW you are using and I'll see if I can track down the problem.

If you are using Cubase, jeff51 uploaded a set of presets for that host. You can download them from the plugin's product page. (BTW, jeff51, I never got to thank you for doing so... Thanks :) )

Let me know if you are unsuccessful in saving/loading the preset files or if you have any other problems.

-Brad

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