Signaldust release: Abstract Chamber

[V'ger]

Click where it says mode: send in the top right corner and change it to insert, then you can use the output knob as a blender.

[miedex]

Click where it says mode: send in the top right corner and change it to insert, then you can use the output knob as a blender.

Insert mode is really strange behavior, it keeps the dry input at 0 but increases the volume of the wet signal. I haven't seen this in any other plugin and I don't see a reason to be limited in that way. Reaper does have a mix knob on the plugin window dashboard but its really really small and doesn't give any sort of value readout.

There are very few decent reverb freebies so its especially annoying that one of the few great ones is crippled.

[bk]

its especially annoying that one of the few great ones is crippled.

Wow. Your definition of "crippled" must be completely different from mine.
This is a great plug, that works well and sounds good. I don't see his implementation of send and insert as even a mild annoyance, let alone crippling!
The only situation in which this would be unusable is if you wanted it inserted, but completely wet. If that's the case, simply use a send. It's not that hard.

It's fine to make suggestions to the dev about free plugins, but to really
expect him to respond just because you don't like it is really rude, IMO. Going on about how it's "unusable" (when it's not!) is ridiculous.

If someone hands you a gift, do you hand it back and say "I'd rather have it in blue"?

[miedex]

its especially annoying that one of the few great ones is crippled.

Wow. Your definition of "crippled" must be completely different from mine.
This is a great plug, that works well and sounds good. I don't see his implementation of send and insert as even a mild annoyance, let alone crippling!
The only situation in which this would be unusable is if you wanted it inserted, but completely wet. If that's the case, simply use a send. It's not that hard.

It's fine to make suggestions to the dev about free plugins, but to really
expect him to respond just because you don't like it is really rude, IMO. Going on about how it's "unusable" (when it's not!) is ridiculous.

If someone hands you a gift, do you hand it back and say "I'd rather have it in blue"?

The developer is forcing his personal workflow on the users. It seems passive aggressive and I'm just like saying, hey man, that's annoying.

[bk]

That's fine. And I have no problem with asking freeware devs to consider changing something, but saying the plugin is crippled because of this design choice is a bit over the top. He stated on Pg 1 of this thread that this was his design choice, and some may not like it.

I guess some don't.
I'm ok with it. I'd be ok with a standard mix control as well.

[hcv242]

The developer is forcing his personal workflow on the users. It seems passive aggressive and I'm just like saying, hey man, that's annoying.

yep. everytime someone designs a plugin that person is forcing his personal workflow on the user. seems logical to me and i don't see anything bad about that.

[mystran]

The developer is forcing his personal workflow on the users. It seems passive aggressive and I'm just like saying, hey man, that's annoying.

I'm not trying to force my personal workflow on anyone, any more than I'm trying to force my plugins on anyone. I do however spend quite a bit of time thinking about workflows and how they do or do not support the intention of each particular plugin. As far as I'm concerned, that's what design is all about.

This particular plugin was designed specifically to give an abstract sense of space behind and around the sound source. I specifically tried to avoid "blending" with the sound source, rather trying to keep the source sound "as-is" while adding a spatial context. As such, everything in the algorithm is designed and tuned for use as a send-effect: something you add to a track or a group of tracks, separate from the direct sound. Whether it succeeds is another thing, but that's what I wanted to do.

The "insert" mode then is simply an "internal send mode" for the situations where you want to avoid the workflow overhead of routing to a separate send track. It's still supposed to work "like a send" (since that's what the plugin is designed for), but save the trouble of having to route a send for the purpose of hosting a single plugin for a single track. It exists because I personally find it incredibly frustrating, when some reverbs only have a wet/dry control and you're forced to always route them with a real send-track.

However, if you find it inconvenient to use the plugin for a purpose it was not designed for, then I'm sorry to hear that. I'm actually open to constructive criticism and it appears that every now and then someone finds this particular design choice to be a show-stopper. As such I'm considering the possibility of another mode "blend" (in addition to the current modes) that would replace the output knob to a more traditional wet/dry blender.

This would have been rather problematic originally (due to esoteric technical reasons) but with the recent advances in my current framework code it shouldn't be that complicated. I'll consider it for the next update. It should be possible to do it without breaking patch compatibility. It means replacing the current switch with a drop-down menu, but I guess that's an acceptable sacrifice (though I'm a bit worried whether this would then suggests that said blending-mode was actually intended to give sensible results).

Speaking of updates, there is a somewhat embarrassing problem with this particular plugin that is holding back some important bug-fixes as well: somewhere during the incredibly scientific process of trying to improve some subtle details of the algorithm, I lost a particular set of coefficients (yeah, I do have source control.. in theory) and unfortunately the current dev-builds sound slightly worse than the last release (it's not a huge difference, but still). So I've been meaning to try to fix that detail, but reverb tuning is rather time-consuming (and at least for me ear fatiguing, and my ears have not really responded well to fatiguing content as of late) so... yeah, there will be an update, but it requires some non-trivial work, I'm afraid.

[xoxos]

i'd say you're lucky, at least you're not doing percussion synthesis, but then, auditioning reverb needs an impulse..

happy time making/using

[mystran]

i'd say you're lucky, at least you're not doing percussion synthesis, but then, auditioning reverb needs an impulse..

happy time making/using

Actually the part that makes reverbs so painful is that feeding an impulse to a reverb will only help you so much. Quite often a reverb might sound great with an impulse and horrible with musical material, or the other way around.

Also sometimes a reverb sounds great for at first, but then when you listen to it for a few days and get used to it's sound, you start noticing obvious problems. I suppose that's somewhat similar with physical modelling.

To be honest, I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would every want to work on reverb algorithms for free.

[synthblaster]

I love this plug, one of the best free reverbs. It has very nice, smooth sound. I use it mainly on synths and it does its job very well

Thank you, signaldust !

Keep going on.

[Halma]

...

To be honest, I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would every want to work on reverb algorithms for free.

Lol.

But I think you are right. It's quite difficult to find a free "good sounding" reverb with it's own character aside from sounding metallic. I am a regular on Seans Blog and diggin' his information about delays and reverberation and stuff like that.

I think you did a great job with Tila2 and this one. They are certainly not made for everything but if they fit into they do it great.

At first I was a little bit confused by this Insert/Send mode knob but that's a cool feature. Reminds me on the small chorus unit from Reason with the same feature. I like it.

BTW your chorus is "the bomb". As I already mentioned somewhere else I use it together with Azurite from distorque and the RoChor from Osiris as my three main chorus devices. All sound different but with their own character. Very cool.

Cheers,
Sebastian

[mystran]

Thanks for the feedback.

[synthblaster]

BTW your chorus is "the bomb". As I already mentioned somewhere else I use it together with Azurite from distorque and the RoChor from Osiris as my three main chorus devices. All sound different but with their own character. Very cool.

Is there some chorus by Signaldust ? I've checked his web but I haven't found any chorus device there

Yes, Azurite is definitely a rock-solid chorus device (also his stompboxes are amazing, I use them on monosynths).

BTW Signaldust Pink is a pretty good sounding synth. It's pity that it doesn't offer mono mode with glide. Some juicy bass can be produced. I also like how it sounds in unison with stereo spread. And the GUI is very inspiring for me .

As for chorus units, The Blue Cat stereo chorus is very good for intense stereo sound from mono sources.

I am sooo happy that there are a lot of amazing free plugins, thank you all guys !

[Halma]

...
Is there some chorus by Signaldust ? I've checked his web but I haven't found any chorus device there
...

Dust Bucket

Enjoy.

Cheers,
Sebastian

[mystran]

...
Is there some chorus by Signaldust ? I've checked his web but I haven't found any chorus device there
...

Dust Bucket

Enjoy.

Cheers,
Sebastian

Yup, DC entry.. couldn't make the page back then because.. well had to wait for the "simultaneous release" and then I kinda never added a page afterwards..

Sorry..