ArtsAcoustic site and ArtsAcoustic Reverb demo`s online now

[3*s]

The ambience is good too. I'm liking the room presets.

Sounds much better than freeverb IMO.

[nick at artsacoustic]

Alright,

from some test I made I can say that I'm impressed. Most param combinations do sound at least good. Some sounds I dialed in were really stunning. Rooms can sounds impressively good and big washes, too. Overall usefulness for various sounds is good. Ambience is on the loose compared to this one.
Performance is OK, way lower than Ambience (I'm using a P4).
Gotta do some more tests later also checking it inside of mixes but my first impression is that this is the next quality level of reverb vst plugins.


All the best, FRitz

thanks. yes, to test the reverb (and tweak it) in a mix is a very good thing to do. we did that a lot ourself to asure that it does what we think a good reverb has to do.
tip: the relation of the roomsize, diffusion and density could bring you forward in general.
_don`t use the most common settings of a reverb as you`re used to.
not necessaryly "all knobs right", as you might have done it in other reverbs, because that`s what made them work, is the key.
the ArtsAcoustic Reverb is very sensible and effective with very uncommon settings.
not that i think you don`t know how to treat reverbs, don`t get me wrong on thatone, but our reverb actually works with settings besides the "all knobs left" settings. not so many reverbs do .

[nick at artsacoustic]

I've also demoed the reverb for a while now. It's quite good sounding when using big rooms/halls but it doesn't do a "hardware" like small room, extreme tight ambience (think lexicon 'closet'/dry studio sounds or TC Mx000 series tight ambiences). Also, I had quite big problems dialing in a good kick drum reverb ambience. These are extremely tricky to setup as they can easily muddy the track. It is a high quality reverb, that's for sure, but it's definately not the holy grail for me. However, it does seem to be one of the best sounding native plugin 'non-convolving' revebs around. I'll keep tweaking and see if my opinion will change.

Cheers!
bManic

yes do so .
a tip on the bassdrums, though:
be aware to use the predelay on drums (doesn`t have to be a big amount), to free up the transients. a last, a good thing to get the mud out of the bassdrum, try to raise the send on the basdrum, and use a little highpass on the reverb itself, as a room on bassfrequent signals mostly still is more noticeable in general in the mid/higmid frequencies content of that signal.
also read my upper answer to rawcan.
maybe this will bring you forward.

[nick at artsacoustic]

I'm thrilled...this is sounding great upon initial inspection...awesome job, Nick!

thanks, nice to hear you like it. and yes, it was an awesome job .

[nick at artsacoustic]

lovely tails.

yes, allmost fairytales like .

[nick at artsacoustic]

The ambience is good too. I'm liking the room presets.

Sounds much better than freeverb IMO.

i hope so

[MrTom]

Just played around with it a bit and honestly I am not very impressed related to the price and announcements.

I mean, it is not a bad one, but there is so much competition out there on this quality level and unfortunately none of them (except VSS3) comes close to (of course much more expensive) hardware but with every release it is step further. If you do not own a good reverb already it might be a good choice.

Performance is not much better compared to other reverbs, at least on my box.

so waiting for the holy grail is not over ...

Tom

tom, would you mind giving a more detailled statement ?

Sure. Of course it is only a personal opinion.
I have the VSS3 here, which should be very close
to a hardware unit (at least close to the M3000, which is just a midlcass reverb unit).

Generally the VSS3 has a sweeter reverb tail, it does not sound as static as the arts acoustic and fits way better into a mix. Drums can be extremely fx-ed, without annoying the listener.
I also have the Pristine Space here, and I think, that the IRs of hardware units sound much better in general. Keeping in mind that an IR is just a static snapshot, the original would sound much better. This is why I think the artsactoustic reverb is still not comparable to expensive hardware units.

Another thing:
Dependent on the material I hear some unwanted and unpleasent resonances, which I often hear in less expensive reverbs and do rarely occur in highend reverbs. To get rid of them in the mix, I had to reduce the fx level or apply some EQ.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think, it is a bad one.
There are some interesting presets (the ones for vocal), but I really would like to have a VST highend reverb. I would not mind about CPU efficency and price, I hope maybe in a year TC will release the M6000 algos or maybe you will release the lexicon killer.

[Scr1pt3r]

Another thing:
Dependent on the material I hear some unwanted and unpleasent resonances, which I often hear in less expensive reverbs and do rarely occur in highend reverbs. To get rid of them in the mix, I had to reduce the fx level or apply some EQ.

Tom, could you post MP3 examples so that the developers of the reverb could work on fixing such issues if they exist ?
I still haven't tested the demo, I've just found this thread. I'll check it out tonight

[MrTom]

I do not think it is a bug or something.
It is the character of the reverb itself. As said before, the same thing I hear in other reverbs too.
Maybe I did not describe to correctly.

[bmanic]

No, I agree. There are some resonances. Especially when using really short reverb times and trying to do that kick drum trick. Nick, using a highpass is not the answer. I already have a pre-delay set to make the kick transient come trough. However, compared to some high-end IR's (and real experience on the 960 lexicon, 91, and TC M6000) your reverb does not really provide the same 'full' character. The thing with an extremely short kick drum reverb, is, that it should make a quite small, short, mono sample of a kick drum sound larger than life and really PUSH trough both speakers making a wide stereo illusion. This is currently not possible with your reverb. It usually just ends up sounding like it's in a tiny wooden box or something.

TC M6000 is a master at extremely short, early reflections only kind of reverbs, that are very mono compatible, (that is you don't really hear the room when listening to the signal in mono) that make it possible to place percussive instruments in a 3D kind of field. These reverbs are also used a lot in movies to give a feeling of a room/car/toilet/shower/behind the sofa and are a quite important part of the modern 'dry' pop sound.

As for the long tails and blending in a mix, I think your reverb is definately among the top native reverb plugins. It works very well as a reverb for synth sounds of all kinds (especially pads, pushing them nicely back in the mix).

Cheers!
bManic

[ArneyS]

It seems that I may be the only one experiencing some 'artifacts' with this reverb. I am using FL 3.56 and I am getting occasional crackles. My sys specs are Win2k SP3, P4 2.8, 1GB Ram.

[Poni]

It works very well as a reverb for synth sounds of all kinds (especially pads, pushing them nicely back in the mix).

Cheers!
bManic

What reverb doesn't ? I'm not impressed with this one.

[bmanic]

It works very well as a reverb for synth sounds of all kinds (especially pads, pushing them nicely back in the mix).

Cheers!
bManic

What reverb doesn't ? I'm not impressed with this one.

Very few actually do. I can only think of 4 other reverbs that I've tried that are good enough quality to work on synth sounds, especially lead sounds.

- bManic

[Peter Pan]

Seriously, did you guys think this reverb would beat lexicon and tc verbs?

It's a nice thing to be optimistic and all, but come on.............

[greendoor]

Still hung up on brand names and hype? There is no technical reason why a VST reverb couldn't sound as good as a TC or Lexicon from the 1980's. The processing power is more than adequate. The technology is fairly simple - delays and filters. The missing ingredient is simply the choice of delay times, modulation, filter settings and pan settings, and getting them to work with an interface in a way that pleases our ears. That's basically where the "Art" or "Acoustics" happens. Certainly Lexicon and TC have set a very high standard and creamed the market for years. But there is no reason to think that VST plugins are somehow inferior. The algorithms are up to the designer, but a VST designer doesn't have to worry about power supplies and anlog circuits and digital i/o. Convolution reverbs are proof that high quality reverb sound is possible by that means - and the crazy thing is that we are just taking samples of algorithm-based reverb most of the time. Someday, someone will crack it. I strongly believe the secret is to forget modelling rectangular rooms - they don't sound the best in the real world. Think convex surfaces - get some Sin functions into those equations maybe ... dunno, but the answer is out there, it's been done before.