Arts Acoustic Reverb appreciation thread

[greendoor]

www.artsacoustic.com When this product was launched, I briefly checked out the demo and posted some dumb comments that I now wish to retract. So instead of digging up the past, i've started this new thread.

The more time I play with this demo, the more I want it. It's expensive - so i'll have to save up for this one. I live in New Zealand, and have absolutely no connection with this German company.

I've been A/B'ing against my favorite reverbs:
SIR - with good impulses from EMT, Lexicon, TC etc
Voxengo - with the same impulses
Silverspike Reverbit and R2
Ultrafunk Sonitus
Magnus Ambiance (and the SX3 Roomworks version)
Glaceverb - (free, limited functions but very good)
Priceton VST - demo only
etc, etc

I have come to the conclusion that I could very happily ditch all these reverbs and simply work with Arts Acoustic. This is a very deeply editable and musical sounding reverb. For my money, the Princeton reverb doesn't tempt me at all. The closest competition comes from the convolution reverbs, but i'm finding that - with practice - I can come very, very close to emulating even the high end Lexicon sounds. The ability to customise the shape is more important to me than exactly cloning a particular sound.

[snooky]

...

[greendoor]

Also - for anyone who hasn't tried this reverb, I am absolutely impressed with the way this GUI allows the input of parameters. Many of the parameters are on sliders, where you can see the number in the slider knob. Most GUI makers would have stopped there - and i'm frequently annoyed when trying to set an exact number, and the mouse is allowing - say 99 or 101 but not 100. No such problems with this ArtsAcoustic GUI. Double click on the slider knob, and you get a little popup screen. This screen has three buttons - allowing you to set the paramter and Min, Max or a Default setting - very handy. Also, it has scrub wheels for coarse and fine setting of the numbers - very easy to be very exact. And what really pleases me, is that you also type the number directly into the value box too. And because this is in a seperate popup box from the main GUI, it doesn't seem to suffer from the Cubase "always on top" problem that plagues other GUI's. Absolutely brilliant design.

[MacQ]

And because this is in a seperate popup box from the main GUI, it doesn't seem to suffer from the Cubase "always on top" problem that plagues other GUI's. Absolutely brilliant design.

Agreed. It's a marvel of user-interface design. Also, green, if you click on the blue area above the "always on top" plug, it switches focus to that plug for key commands. Click back on the arrange page to return focus to Cubase. I just figured that out yesterday.

~MacQ

[Left Headphone]

I was a doubter until I tried the demo. Probably the best Native reVerb out. I'm waiting for the group buy...

[nick at artsacoustic]

www.artsacoustic.com When this product was launched, I briefly checked out the demo and posted some dumb comments that I now wish to retract. So instead of digging up the past, i've started this new thread.

The more time I play with this demo, the more I want it. It's expensive - so i'll have to save up for this one. I live in New Zealand, and have absolutely no connection with this German company.

I've been A/B'ing against my favorite reverbs:
SIR - with good impulses from EMT, Lexicon, TC etc
Voxengo - with the same impulses
Silverspike Reverbit and R2
Ultrafunk Sonitus
Magnus Ambiance (and the SX3 Roomworks version)
Glaceverb - (free, limited functions but very good)
Priceton VST - demo only
etc, etc

I have come to the conclusion that I could very happily ditch all these reverbs and simply work with Arts Acoustic. This is a very deeply editable and musical sounding reverb. For my money, the Princeton reverb doesn't tempt me at all. The closest competition comes from the convolution reverbs, but i'm finding that - with practice - I can come very, very close to emulating even the high end Lexicon sounds. The ability to customise the shape is more important to me than exactly cloning a particular sound.

greendoor:
i must say that i am very impressed of your reaction.
one has to own big class to do so.
thank you a lot.
as we (like every company) relay on good public reactions, too, this showes a lot of engagement from you.
our reverb seems to show it´s quality while tweaking it a bit longer, to get used to the unusual behaviour.
with reverb this is often the case, but i up to now didn`t come across one where it is the case in this amount.
in the end it is the result in the production (whatever it might be) that has to convince.
we at ArtsAcoustic are very happy, that it finally does.
sometimes it`s not obvious what makes the difference.
you took the time to find out while actually tweaking it the way i has to be in order to seriosly check out a product, and you show engagement to correct your opinion.
soi thanks a in the name of ArtsAcoustic.
seriously.

[nick at artsacoustic]

Agreed. It's a marvel of user-interface design. Also, green, if you click on the blue area above the "always on top" plug, it switches focus to that plug for key commands. Click back on the arrange page to return focus to Cubase. I just figured that out yesterday.

~MacQ

thank you for the flowers, but theese belong to steinberg , as that`s a feature of cubase entirely.
it works for every plugin in cubase.

[greendoor]

The thing that I find different from other VST reverbs is that the parameters are usefull over their entire range. For example, other reverbs typically have diffusion - and with most other reverbs, minimum diffusion sounds horrible, and maximum sounds best. So I would typically set this to maxium. Some reverbs start resonating at maximum diffusion, and need backing off. The great thing about ArtsAcoustic is that there are musically useful sounds over the entire range, and it took me a while to realise that this isn't a reverb that has to have everything maximised just to sound good. I spend a good hour or two just playing drum hits through this, and this would have to be the most fun i've had with a reverb for a long time. Probably next pay day ...

[nick at artsacoustic]

The thing that I find different from other VST reverbs is that the parameters are usefull over their entire range. For example, other reverbs typically have diffusion - and with most other reverbs, minimum diffusion sounds horrible, and maximum sounds best. So I would typically set this to maxium. Some reverbs start resonating at maximum diffusion, and need backing off. The great thing about ArtsAcoustic is that there are musically useful sounds over the entire range, and it took me a while to realise that this isn't a reverb that has to have everything maximised just to sound good. I spend a good hour or two just playing drum hits through this, and this would have to be the most fun i've had with a reverb for a long time. Probably next pay day ...

great!
funny thing, though, i mentioned exactly your points very often in the other threads. finally someone who recognises that.
we paid very heavy attention to theese points, as theese are the problems we had with so many other reverbs out there, whether its hard-or software.
as we state on our initial announcement:
this reverb is designed to work in equal quality in every aspect of sound you put in/use one might need reverb for. for us it is the first "allrounder" in that quality. that was in fact the hardest goal to achive for us. lets hope that all others who struggled with reverb find out that, too.

[greendoor]

There are so many reverbs on offer, it's a bit confusing at the moment. Often the weakness of a reverb is the small room sounds, which are probably the most useful for modern music. This is just fantastic for small rooms - the presets demonstrate this really well. I was seriously considering a TC Powercore, but I don't think that's necessary now. I need to get back to making music instead of worrying about which reverb is better than which. I'm tired of searching through thousands of convolution impulses, and the concept of just tweaking my own sounds to suit each mix is very appealing. Especially when the interface is so user friendly. I hope you do well with this product, and whatever future ones you might be considering.
Cheers,
James

[nick at artsacoustic]

There are so many reverbs on offer, it's a bit confusing at the moment. Often the weakness of a reverb is the small room sounds, which are probably the most useful for modern music. This is just fantastic for small rooms - the presets demonstrate this really well. I was seriously considering a TC Powercore, but I don't think that's necessary now. I need to get back to making music instead of worrying about which reverb is better than which. I'm tired of searching through thousands of convolution impulses, and the concept of just tweaking my own sounds to suit each mix is very appealing. Especially when the interface is so user friendly. I hope you do well with this product, and whatever future ones you might be considering.
Cheers,
James

thank you greendoor, honestly.
btw,could you please contact me privately?
as i cannot reach you via pm here at kvr.

[egbert]

thank you greendoor, honestly.
btw,could you please contact me privately?
as i cannot reach you via pm here at kvr.

Stay away from the Dark Side, Greendoor.

(just kidding)

[DMuzik]

I'm waiting for the group buy...

Me too

[brianbrian]

Just wanted to chime in here too: I think the AAR has the best GUI of any plugin verb. It is very logically laid out and quick to tune. It demonstrates that you can have a lot of precise control over the sound without a complicated or cluttered interface. Nice job!

[nick at artsacoustic]

hi all,
thanks for the nice words.
a note on the price, though:
i think, most of you didn`t realize that the licence one buys is for all three versions.
so you pay once, and have the possibility to use it as vst pc, vst mac osx, and mac au (wich will come soon, too).
just wanted to drop that here again, as this hasn`t been clear for all.