Masterverb 5

[bmanic]

Here are some sound examples of Hyper Prism and the Arts Accoustic reverb. The first two examples contain a full instrumental loop with drums and everything, demonstrating the density and character of the early versus late reflections in each reverb. All examples are in Ogg Vorbis format so you will need a player that supports it (winamp for instance).

Arts Accoustic Reverb example

Hyper Verb example


The example below shows how truly beautiful the Hyper Verb is. It works very well with synthetic sounds, be it a small room or a huge cathedral.

Sytrus magic in the realm of Hyper Verb

All examples start out with the dry source. The Hyper Verb examples have some drop outs due to the demo limitation. The AA Verb example as some slight artefacts while I change some parameters.

Cheers!
bManic

[fritzman]

Reverb is VERY subjective as this thread shows again. So i think in the end it's all a thing of taste and needs and obviously (judged by this thread and a few other postings on KvR) the WaveArts reverb fits the taste and needs of quite some people. Great.
Every plugin has to stand against any comparisson against hardware or software. If somebody is happy with a freeware plugin or decides to fork out 180 dollars for another one or to buy a multi thousand dollar hardware unit is a decision based on taste, needs and money.
So I think there is no right or wrong for a reverb. But there are objective factors like customer support. I'm glad to read that Rob does such an extraordinary good support job that even though I don't like the reverb (will check in more depth nonetheless) I'm very interested in all the other WaveArts plugins now. I'll check them out later.


Best wishes, FRitz

[bmanic]

I kind of disagree. Reverb is subjective in a music context of course but ask people about different rooms and which ones they prefere the accoustics in. Poor rooms that make it hard to hear details and understand human speech are usually considered, well, poor. This can of course be used in an artistic manner but in the traditional sense of mixing, where reverb plays a vital role, not just as an artistic tool but as any other basic tool like EQ and compression that help to get the recording to sound as detailed as possible and to translate well over all systems, quality really does come into play. There really is Good and Bad just like there are poor equalisers and compressors (which of course also can be abused in an artistic manner but that is not the point) that do harm to the source signal.

I'd say one of the most important effects to achieve that "pro" sound (aka, not that 'home-made', recorded & mixed in the basement feel) is a quality reverb. The big boys have em and use them all over the place. With modern mixing it's usually more a subtle enhancement than a very obvious effect (the obvious effects are the artistic choises).
Why do the vocals sound so up front and close enough to be touched? Quality Reverb/Ambience is the answer. Why do the guitars sit so well and have awesome body to them? Quality reverb helps again. How can they make the [insert instrument/sound here] fits so nicely inside, far behind the main elements, in the mix? Again, quality reverb is the answer.

Quality reverb is that missing 3D feel that one needs for the mix. This is especially crucial when mixing a track that has been composed completely within the box, without any 'real world' elements. These mixes tend to sound flat and two dimensional because they lack that 3rd dimension that a good bunch of microphones brings to an accoustic mix.

just my 2 cents worth of thoughts on the subject..
Cheers!
bManic

[fritzman]

I kind of disagree. Reverb is subjective in a music context of course ...


just my 2 cents worth of thoughts on the subject..
Cheers!
bManic

Hi bmanic,

I think that you don't disagree but that you simply wrote what I left out. When I was writing "... a decision based on taste, needs and money." I also meant what you described in detail. But not everybody has a "traditional sense of mixing" like you and me. And there it is: NEEDS!
In a not so long ago thread about reverb a well known KvR poster said that he prefers Freeverb for his ambience music!!! And here we go: TASTE! I would not use Freeverb for big reverbs in ambient music. Period.
And then there is the "Oh, I want/need a hi end hardware reverb. I WANT/NEED that Lexikon, Quantec, etc, sound!" If you can afford it: MONEY!
The problem obviously starts If I want more than my budget allows me ATM. Then things like this starts. I know what we're talking about here, bmanic.


All the best, FRitz

P.S. Would you please post some Wavearts reverb examples, too? For comparisson?

[jbraner]

I'll just add that I've always had great and fast support from the Wavearts guys.

I remember when there was a denorm problem with the gate in Trackplug (a few years ago now) and they sent me a new beta version within days.

Also, I can verify that Rob is around on weekends, as I had an email conversation with him last weekend.

When you send an email to wavearts support - you will get a fast reply...

[hifiboom]

while hyperverb is a very dense reverb, which is good, it has other problems:

the decay is not very realistic...

There is a colour parameter, but if you move this down it will cut away all high frequencies.... that does sound unnatural.

A good reverb sould cut out the high frequencies over the time more and more, but not from the start of the response.

That has something to do with the absorbtion of the room elements and walls.

AA Reverb has a very nice model on this as you can set different decay times for high, mid and low frequencies....
Masterverb also does model this quite good.

So these two are a new level of soundquality, for me this is sure.

But I am waiting until IK Multimedia comes out with the CSR Reverb, as it has 4 different models and many parmeters to tune the reverb more to the liking.

Maybe this will be my final reverb, but we have to check sound quality...

And it also features my favoured inverse reverb algorithm

[dirtnap]

CSR Reverb looks interesting. Seems like it's supposed to be out already... wonder what the holdup is.

So what's the consensus on the Princeton Digital 2016 plate and stereo room reverbs?

[tech44]

I'm no reverb expert like many of you on here, but I know the sound I'm looking for. I have been looking for a reverb similar to what you may hear on Terry Lee Brown or The Timewriter productions where things are pretty much drenched in a reverb and the tail seems to just go forever. So far every software reverb I've tried (even AA) has sounded 'grainy' in the tail, if this makes sense, and it either to 'tinny' or to much highend in the tail (regardless of how I try to tune it).
Recently I have tried the WaveArts and to me this is the closest thing I have found that recreates this type of reverb tail. Not exactly the same, but close.
However, I definately hear the ringing mentioned earlier, which seems to be in the high-mid range to me, but I can eq it out for the most part.

The only other reverb that came close to this sound I'm lookng for was the VSS3 for powercore. I'm still waiting to see how the IK Multimedia CSR sounds.

Just my observations...

[hifiboom]

one more thing: some years ago I went to a music shop and asked the dealer for a good reverb, he told me that there are many good VST reverbs.....

In fact that was a total lie.

Since 2003 there were no good VST reverbs on market.

These reverbs that we have today are not perfect, but at least they earned the name "Reverb". Hopefully this is not the end, because the VST reverbs can get even much better, but at least we reached a quality that is lets say "okay". Of course the real high end external are unreachable for any kind of VST plug at moment, even convultion, which I think are too high-rated in terms of quality as they sound totally "static" and mostly "not-smooth".

But its quite good situation. Think about it, wheater TC nor Lexicon did build up that nice sound at one day.

TC M4000 needs 30 man-work-years to develop. So give the VST developers the time to tune their reverbs to. Good things needs time.

The actual reverbs are "usable" and the next years, I am sure, will bring us even better plug-ins.

As the reverbs in IK Multimedia CSR package are out of the Creamware Scope base, the yare supposed to be very good, maybe not exactly the same as a Lexicon but very near, and you`ll find much more parameters in this one than in any other softreverbs.

And many users will be much more pleased if they can tune up their reverb as much as possible, as every one needs another reverb in another situation. Thats the way a real professional reverb should be. Thats what I missed on all those sogftware reverbs. While some sound good, you miss some parameters you really would need at moment, the other have these parameters but do sound bad.....

I swear on the upcoming CSR reverb as the man behind this project seems to know what he is doing. And further all parameters will be able to modulate, which can make a reverb alive and part of a mix...

Lets see what we will have in our hands the next months....

best regards...

[bmanic]

Good points hifiboom. Yes, hyper verb is far from a perfect reverb but it's "core" is very well done. I've been emailing Arboretum several times over the past four years to try to make them realise that they had a winner on their hands and that they should concentrate their efforts on trying to improve the reverb and sell it separately but alas, to no avail. I never even got an answer from them, ever. Too bad, it could have become a true classic.

I'm also eagerly waiting for the IK reverb but so far I have always been disappointed by IK products. Every single time so we will see..

Cheers!
bManic

[Cintronic]

Just wondering what all you reverb experts thought of psp easyverb?
I tried it a little while before MD5 came out. I quite liked the sound. Thought it was better then MD4 definatly not better than 5, but the high cpu load kept ceashing my little mac which put my off.

[diverdee]

I like the spring reverb on easyverb personally.
It can be high-ish on cpu but its simple to use, with a decent (to my non-expert ears) sound.
If one needs predelay voxengo does some free plugins one can whack in front of it & adjust to taste.

[nick at artsacoustic]

So far every software reverb I've tried (even AA) has sounded 'grainy' in the tail, if this makes sense, and it either to 'tinny' or to much highend in the tail (regardless of how I try to tune it).

hi tech 44,
if you set the density of our reverb to 100% there will be definately no "grainy" sound, not even on a very short, percussive impulse. also you have a cutoff and 3 seperate bands for the frequency roll off. if you want you can cut off all the high frequencies, resulting in no highend in the tail whatsoever.

[Frippertronix]

Anyone here try either the new or the old Sonic Timeworks reverbs?

[hifiboom]

the new Timeworks reverbs will soon be available as VST reverbs from IK multimedia, as the developer is now porting the algos for IK multimedia, lets hope it can achieve the sound quality of the scope plugs, as they seem to possibly replace a Lexicon PCM91. A user on plantz even said it would sound better than its PCM91 in hardware...



we will see, and this year.....