Hope this doesn't start a war or anything but all this talk about Pristine Space, Convo Boy, and SIR has me interested in what the real tech geeks among us think about the differences. I am definitely not techie when it comes to plugins, and I discovered Convo Boy right after I heard about SIR. For me it was no contest: CB is far easier to use, more flexible, sounds great, and will even work real time in certain situations. At $13 how could I resist?
But I don't really hear much about CB here. It was pretty much all SIR until I started seeing this PSL buzz. I'd love to hear some opinions from folks who are more familiar and experienced with convolution plugs than me. Does it boil down to features? Are their real differences in sound quality?
Convo Boy, Pristine Space, SIR
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- KVRian
- 992 posts since 16 Dec, 2002
Another difference is the sound quality. Given the CPU requirements, no VST convolution engine can possibly do brute force convolution (which has ideal quality), so all use some kind of short cut mechanisms to make convolution happen with a reasonable CPU load. In short, all are using FFT-based convolution.
Once you bring FFT into the picture, there are myriad ways of performing the FFT, of 'chunking' up an incoming audio stream into FFT blocks, of windowing the audio stream to avoid FFT artifacts, of reconstructing the outgoing stream from all the chunks, etc. etc. Every one of these different methods has different advantages/disadvantages for the sound quality. So every VST-based convolution engine is going to sound a little different.
SIR is mosdef a decent convolution engine but Pristine Space sounds a hair cleaner and more pristine to my ears. I have not had the chance to A/B Convo Boy against either of these, so I can't really comment on that.
So what I'm saying is that there are definitely differences in sound between them, and you should download demos and try them out to see which sounds the best to your ears.
Once you bring FFT into the picture, there are myriad ways of performing the FFT, of 'chunking' up an incoming audio stream into FFT blocks, of windowing the audio stream to avoid FFT artifacts, of reconstructing the outgoing stream from all the chunks, etc. etc. Every one of these different methods has different advantages/disadvantages for the sound quality. So every VST-based convolution engine is going to sound a little different.
SIR is mosdef a decent convolution engine but Pristine Space sounds a hair cleaner and more pristine to my ears. I have not had the chance to A/B Convo Boy against either of these, so I can't really comment on that.
So what I'm saying is that there are definitely differences in sound between them, and you should download demos and try them out to see which sounds the best to your ears.