Soundspot Oracle

[Aloysius]

No. I like Soundspot but Soundspot Oracle sucks.

[starflakeprj]

What I meant was that everything is subjective. Saying that something sucks doesn't mean you are right or that everyone agree. Therefore YOU THINK it sucks.

[Aloysius]

I am right. Yes.

[starflakeprj]

Funny guy..

[Aloysius]

Ha ha ha

[Michael L]

Soundspot Oracle sucks

If they just added another reflection it would instantly suck half as much. I THINK

[Aloysius]

It has great potential.

[Michael L]

Huge upside!

[dreamvoid]

Every perception is subject to bias, this is trivial

Believe me, I would throw out all reverb hardware if they doesn't have an audible benefit

These two statements are at odds. The appreciation or perception of a benefit is entirely predicated on the biases of the listener. So, the subject of bias in not trivial as it relates to the latter statement. If a $50 plugin and a $5000 outboard unit had sufficiently similar enough sonic characteristics as to render them indistinguishable to the average listener in the mix, I would submit the hardware as having no audible benefit. Does that mean they're the same in isolation? No. Does it mean they're similar enough not to care? It probably depends on the context. If there are hardware reverbs that sound better than software, I would reckon their uses are so incredibly esoteric that the discussion would immediately be made irrelevant to 99% of the people reading this thread.

I just stated the obvious concerning perception. Perception itself is a complex matter in combination with scientific based research, when it comes to human listening. That is the reason developments of audio devices for music production are subject to listening tests and subjective esthetical decisions.
Therefore you would have a very hard time to define "sufficiently similar enough sonic characteristics". And I'm not talking about the average listener - in music production he/she is not the yard stick for audio quality, at least for me. All your reasoning seems to come out from a lack of listening experience with high end reverb hardware and comparison to plug ins. I know similar discussions from people talking about microphones and the cheap ones being as good as the expensive ones most of the time. Usually it can be tracked down to a total lack of experience with the high end devices and perception bias due to promises of the company advertisement strategies ("like hardware", "as good as microphones cost several thousands more"). Don't confuse the overall development of digital audio, which I lived thru and welcomed fully, with making everything new as instantly better. Some algorithms are completely developed thru and used in different incarnations since many years, being it hardware or software - Eventide comes to mind. The PCM-96 algos in the Lexicon plug ins are what they are - and sounding great. It will not be different in another 20 years.
If this all 'sounds' odd to you - it may be your perception of the situation ...

[Russell Grand]

It has great potential.

Yes it does, but I've come to agree with you. Oracle does indeed suck. It's the purchase I regret the most this year. And I got it for just over $4.

[Aloysius]

[plexuss]

I will submit here, the same opinion as I did to Vojtech at Melda when he claimed that there are reverbs that sound bad - there are no bad sounding reverbs. The only way to qualify a reverb is in the context of it's use. But out of a context, no reverb can sound bad because on it's own any reverb can be used effectively in some context. Going back to Vojtech I challenged him to create a reverb that he considered universally "bad" and I would make a track that used it effectively. I did, and Vojtech conceded.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=485121&p=6790159&hi ... e#p6790159

So this idea that any reverb is better than any other reverb is moot unless you are talking about its use in context. An audio engineer should understand this and not spout about a reverb being bad without a context of use.

I have been scooping up Soundspot's products as they go on deep discount at PB. I haven't checked out Oracle yet but I will. Will it be useful, yes almost guaranteed. Will be worth the asking price... I'll have to try the demo. if it sounds thin and metalic, it may have some use but my criteria are: how redundant is it compared to what I already have and the cost.

[Aloysius]

We look forward to your spouting.

[Rumi]

dreamvoid and plexuss, thank you for your valid contributions!

plexuss, I listened to your "unusable reverb" track (that thread actually initiated my wondering about whether people still know and use the classic hardware pieces, because it seemed that even Vojtech took other plugins and IRs as reference), and while I take my hat off before your creativity and high ability of imagination, the reverb sounded like ITB to me. I would say you could have found a better "unusable reverb" OTB.

And I guess we agree that some reverbs are more useful for a broader usage than others.

Aloysius et al, thank you for your humor!

Of course, it's all related to context. I mainly work on recorded music, from Folk to Hardcore. I often need "real sounding" reverbs, and often more rooms than long reverbs. Interestingly enough, in my experience, it's the small rooms that plugins lack the most in, except for some Nebula offerings like "70 small room". But I also like "unreal" reverbs. Recently, I needed an "epical wash", and I got an incredible sounding one in 10 minutes, with VSS 6 from TC 6000, some KSP-8 and some Sony DRE-S777. I then thought "Well, for epic, 2c B2 is the one!", and tried to replace my hardware "epic reverb" with the B2. I fiddled around for 15 minutes, and I came up with nothing. This is one example that led me to believe that even for "epic", "unreal" etc., hardware is often better.
The Kurzweil KSP-8 for example comes from a synth, and it sounds stellar, also for acoustic music.

But don't get me wrong, I get great results at times with Valhalla, IRCAM, Acon, UAD reverbs, East West Spaces, MTurboReverb & Co. But I am usually much quicker with hardware, and it's most of the times considerably better sounding - to me and my clients.

It's difficult to verbalize audio, but for me, the points to be aware of in a reverb are the following: does it produce depth, or does it sound flat? Does it blur and smear the audio? Does it sound "rooted" and "grounded"? (Exponential Audio reverbs sound "ungrounded and ethereal" to me, for example.) Is there an impression of space, and how does it do that? What does it do with the signal it processes - is the signal "in" the room, or does the reverb sound like added to it? Does it move the signal back in a homogenuous way? How does it "gel" with the rest of the audio? How is the frequency spectrum - how are the lows (most ITB reverbs fail there, UAD Ocean Way for example being an exception to some extent), how smooth are the mids, how do the highs sound? How real / unreal does it sound? How is modulation implemented? (For example, the Bricasti has a lot of modulation, but you often don't hear it that much, and it sounds rather natural - although I don't really seem to like it, but that's more a preference, and not a statement about the quality of that piece of equipment.)

To me, what ITB reverb is mostly lacking is real depth (Nebula, MTurboReverb, Eareckon, and to some extent Valhalla stand out, but don't reach good hardware), groundedness, solidity ("grip", not mere densitiy), naturalness, it potentially smears and blurs the audio, sounds flat and rather unexciting (Valhalla has excitement), and often "doesn't fully sound right", which is of course a completely subjective description. Interestingly enough, the hardware that I have does "sound right" to me much more often than software, or there is at least a much more "right" base to start with. There's much less fiddling involved.

Martin Lind wrote an excellent list of paramaters that are important for him here: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11315654-post6.html

It is interesting to watch my main studio assistant, who is a bit over 20 (half as old as me), and has a background in EDM. He first considered the music I listen to strange ("That is very strange, it sounds as if the singer stood in front of me!"), but then went into an interesting transformation. From the start, he clearly preferred to use the hardware reverbs, and is now opening up more and more to the subtleties I am hearing (and moving away from his "bedroom producer" background).
It takes time and education to learn how to listen, but it's a great (and endless) path, and well worth it!

To repeat: I would recommend to listen to the classic and well-respected hardware pieces (not IRs of them), and improve your understanding of reverbs and you own hearing in the process. And develop your preferences!

And to reply to a statement made earlier: If I had to choose between an engineer with 35 years of experience in audio work, and someone with a PHD, to mix my music, or make a valid statement about the quality of a reverb used for mixing, I would of course choose the one with the actual experience.

dreamvoid, it was my understanding that Wolfgang Buchleitner was more involved with the marketing side, but I might be wrong. I will ask Sigi for details (we will probably meet next week). What I know is that you should send your broken QRS and QRS-XL to Sigi, and avoid Quantec for that. The Yardsticks are fine pieces of equipment, though, and I know that Sigi was not involved in the development of those (Sigi speaks highly of the 2496).

And if you're looking for the original QRS sound, I would recommend the free u-he Protoverb (in conjunction with a low pass). That's quite an interesting plugin!

[ghettosynth]

And to reply to a statement made earlier: If I had to choose between an engineer with 35 years of experience in audio work, and someone with a PHD, to mix my music, or make a valid statement about the quality of a reverb used for mixing, I would of course choose the one with the actual experience.

That wasn't at all the "statement" that was made. Creating reverb models is not a "seat of the pants" exercise.