KVR Audio

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 12:56 am

This may seem a silly question, but I've started to explore the world of convolution and have acquired a rather large number of impulse responses from a variety of sources. Now, I assume that these vary in quality, with some being much better than others for processing audio. Is there a good way to weed out the losers and duplicates? For example, is there a test file of an instrument or voice or whatever that makes it easy to listen to and evaluate IRs? I've got far too many cluttering my hard drive.

--eduardo

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 1:03 am

I've got two. but you can't have them...I'm rather attached to my ears

....anyhow not that I know of, but if it will keep your peace of mind back em up to a cd...

mandolarian · Post by **mandolarian** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 1:31 am

You're not trying to start a 'Best IR thread' are you?

Sadly, there is no 'reference' source to weed out the good from the not so. It's like verbs in general, it's context sensitive. Depends on the source, the mix and everything in between.

You're getting into the convuluted world. Hard drive clutter is part of the package. Deal with it. But I would draw the line at 1 gig of IR files.

SleepyP · Post by **SleepyP** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 3:07 am

mandolarian wrote:You're getting into the convuluted world.

a groaner of a pun

sidrat · Post by **sidrat** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 4:45 am

imo, a convolution verb is only as good as the impulses you feed it. i recently did an informal listening test of impulses from various libraries (waves ir1, altiverb, space designer, tl space and noisevault).

i compared comparable ir's of the following:

emt 140
emt 250
lex 480l
cello rooms
westlake rooms

the plugs i used to compare the impulses were pristine space and ir1. all things being egual, i thought the ir1 impulses sounded the best - more natural and 3d sounding. altiverb came in second followed by noisevault and tl space. the space designer ir's sounded pretty bad in comparison to the rest.

if you want to try the same test, sdtwowav is great at converting altiverb ir's (dual-mono sd2) to wav files.
http://www.railjonrogut.com/sdTwoWav.htm

here's a link to some free altiverb impulses:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fokkie/IR.htm

mandolarian · Post by **mandolarian** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 5:15 am

SleepyP wrote:
mandolarian wrote:You're getting into the convuluted world.
a groaner of a pun

Thank you. I'm hear all weak.

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 5:19 am

I just use EnergyXT with a couple of different instruments (e.g. RMIV for percussion testing, Sampletank for some piano or whatever) and some effect like amplitube or Simulanalog, all plugged into Pristine Space Light (which happens to be an awsome plugin for scrolling through and evaluating impulses).

Z · Post by Z » Sat Aug 20, 2005 6:43 am

eduardo_b wrote:This may seem a silly question, but I've started to explore the world of convolution and have acquired a rather large number of impulse responses from a variety of sources. Now, I assume that these vary in quality, with some being much better than others for processing audio. Is there a good way to weed out the losers and duplicates? For example, is there a test file of an instrument or voice or whatever that makes it easy to listen to and evaluate IRs? I've got far too many cluttering my hard drive.

--eduardo

This could only be me, but I've almost shelved Pristine Space after I got ArtsAcoustic Reverb. I have umpteen Lexicon (PCM9X, 460L, many others) impulses I found at Noisevault, I even found some Sony DRE777 impulses which are very sweet. Even still I like the sound of AA Reverb better.
Of course, AA Reverb comes with a lot of very nice presets, while I find it quite frankly tedious to load and set up impulses in PS all the time, especially if you're browsing through a lot of impulses in order to find a nice one or a set of nice ones.
This is also a factor for why I prefer AA over PS.

wsaidah · Post by **wsaidah** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 4:23 pm

can some body send me the westlake impulses

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 5:24 pm

mandolarian wrote:You're not trying to start a 'Best IR thread' are you?

Not really. I don't know about "best" IRs, but I'm noticing that many groups of IRs are very similar, with only minor differences in their spectrums, and coinciding and seemingly indistinguishable sound differences. So, I'm thinking, it could take many hours simply to try out IRs -- too many choices but not enough differences to matter among many of them.

Sadly, there is no 'reference' source to weed out the good from the not so. It's like verbs in general, it's context sensitive. Depends on the source, the mix and everything in between.

So, you're saying that the same IR might sound great with one source or mix, but not with another. But wouldn't adjustments within the convolver "fill in" the differences between IRs that are similar but slightly different instead of having separate variations of these IRs?

You're getting into the convuluted world. Hard drive clutter is part of the package. Deal with it. But I would draw the line at 1 gig of IR files. :)

I might not have an issue with having a gig of IRs, but in practical terms does this make sense? How would one organize them and find what one is looking for? It's like too much of a good thing. :0

--eduardo

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 5:34 pm

sidrat wrote:imo, a convolution verb is only as good as the impulses you feed it. all things being egual, i thought the ir1 impulses sounded the best.

This is another reason I wanted to weed through the many hundreds of IRs I have -- surely the quality of some makes them less useful. How do _you_ decide what to keep and use? Any advice is appreciated.

if you want to try the same test, sdtwowav is great at converting altiverb ir's (dual-mono sd2) to wav files.
http://www.railjonrogut.com/sdTwoWav.htm

I'm not familiar with this file format. What is SD2?

here's a link to some free altiverb impulses:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fokkie/IR.htm

I've downloade some of these that were .sit files and opened them up, but they had separate left and right files for each IR. Is this a Mac thing? Can they be converted to WAVs?

--eduardo

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 5:39 pm

morelia wrote:...all plugged into Pristine Space Light (which happens to be an awsome plugin for scrolling through and evaluating impulses).

I've noticed I could scroll through the IRs, and that's when I really became aware of how similar many "families" of IRs were. It seemed I could pick one at random and it wouldn't matter -- I could make up the difference with adjustments within PS. I'm thinking I've collected too many of them, and maybe not good ones. Probably because I don't want to miss great ones by not downloading everything I find.

--eduardo

eduardo_b · Post by **eduardo_b** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 5:45 pm

Z wrote:This could only be me, but I've almost shelved Pristine Space after I got ArtsAcoustic Reverb. I have umpteen Lexicon (PCM9X, 460L, many others) impulses I found at Noisevault, I even found some Sony DRE777 impulses which are very sweet. Even still I like the sound of AA Reverb better.
Of course, AA Reverb comes with a lot of very nice presets, while I find it quite frankly tedious to load and set up impulses in PS all the time, especially if you're browsing through a lot of impulses in order to find a nice one or a set of nice ones.
This is also a factor for why I prefer AA over PS.

Very interesting! So, even though ArtsAcoustics is not a convolver, you find it as good as or even better than using IRs? I downloaded a lot of IRs at Noisevault. Never seen the Sony DRE777 IRs, but you make me wish I had.

I started this thread because the tedium factor of having so many IRs was a problem for me. I'd rather have a couple hundred good ones instead of well over a thousand of varying quality to wade through.

--eduardo

fred2112 · Post by **fred2112** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 7:07 pm

I use all the time one of the plate impulse Of a PCM 91 24 bit at noisevolt.com
I think They sound realy good

sidrat · Post by **sidrat** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 9:07 pm

eduardo_b wrote: This is another reason I wanted to weed through the many hundreds of IRs I have -- surely the quality of some makes them less useful. How do _you_ decide what to keep and use? Any advice is appreciated.

the best way to judge is just listen to them and compare for yourself. fwiw, i think the ir1 has the best sounding library. it covers all the bases for me - emt, lexicon, rooms, etc. aside from that, the eventide impulses on noisevault sound pretty decent...

I'm not familiar with this file format. What is SD2?

I've downloade some of these that were .sit files and opened them up, but they had separate left and right files for each IR. Is this a Mac thing? Can they be converted to WAVs?

sd2 is digidesign's sound designer format. altiverb uses split l+r sd2 files. the best way i've found to convert them to wav is with sdtwowav. after you convert them, you should have two wav files and you can import them into your convolution plug as separate left and right files. hope this helps...

Testing IRs