CSR comments...

[Frippertronix]

Got it last night. Initial reactions after playing around with all four modules:

First, let's get it out of the way:

Q: Is CSR "metallic"?

A: Do you mean, as in: "Does CSR reverb work well when used on covers of songs like "Enter Sandman" and "Master of Puppets"?

Q: No! I mean, does it sound metallic when you, you know, put some sound through it?

A: Initially, yes, I found the default "no settings" configurations to be metallic sounding on all the modules. And I would stress that if you like reverb tails with lots of high end, you definitely need to demo this and make sure you can use it. For me, there was an easy solution, because I use subtle reverb for almost everything so I can dial down the mix ratio and suck the highs out of the tail and it sounds fine. Just keep all this in mind.

Basically, I think for 200 clams (cross-grade) and what amounts to low CPU use for a single instance, this is a very usable reverb. It is indeed capable of being "musical" (without too much effort) and can enhance the sweetness of a mix.

Tragically, I can predict it will not replace Lexicons in the studios of the pro producers of the world. It's not quite that good.

But, that said, it is on par with the best of the VST reverbs, IMO (again, with the caveat that the highs have to be managed carefully, but I find that true of AAR as well).

The advanced pages are nice. They give you more control of attack, frequency contour and stereo image, among other things, and it's not a steep learning curve.

So far my faves are some of the plates. They can be pretty convincing and have a certain richness.

All in all this is definitely a happy purchase.

[Animus]

I agree totally with your assesment. THe presets rather suck imo.

Anecdotally, we were using Waves IR1 with a Lexicon Fat Plate impulse on the vocals of one particular song. I tried to reproduce it with CSR. I was able to get more density (thanks to the delays and modulation) without the longer decay time I had in Waves IR1. I sounded much cleaner and richer. The "vocalist", who doesn't know about all the technical stuff. even picked CSR out in a blind A/B comparison.

[friteuse]

Hi Frippertronix,

thanks for this! Gives us, after all that hype, a some more clear impression of what CSR can do and what not.

I personally would be interested in more details how it compares to the ArtsAcoustic Reverb. You allready said that it's in the same quality level - so I wonder if for me as an ArtsAcoustic owner (and fan!) a CSR purchase made sense or not. What does CSR better than AAR and vice versa...

Ok, I admit, I could demo the CSR for myself, but I'm a bit hesitand to buy that dongle only for experience that CSR is nothing for me...

What do you think? Thanks a lot!

[brok landers]

yeah, i've been kinda "requesting" this adressed to bmanic in another thread a few days ago ... i'd really like to have a serious statement on this, as i don't own a dongle myself and i won't (of course) buy one for testing purposes only.
so if anyone has both reverbs and knows them in depth please enlight us ... a big thanks in advance to the one who takes the challenge!

[brok landers]

btw, if it comes to have a non-metallic reverb, i up to now _only_ managed to have these with the artsacoustic reverb and the r66, whereby i have to say that i did not manage it to get a result that fits in the mix with the r66 but allways with the artsacoustic reverb ... dunno, this reverb just allways fits for me ...
but of course, i'm never satisfied ...

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[warren]

How does it compare to WizooverbW2? Is it easier on CPU?

[bmanic]

yeah, i've been kinda "requesting" this adressed to bmanic in another thread a few days ago ... i'd really like to have a serious statement on this, as i don't own a dongle myself and i won't (of course) buy one for testing purposes only.
so if anyone has both reverbs and knows them in depth please enlight us ... a big thanks in advance to the one who takes the challenge!

Yes, sorry for the delay. I've yet to demo CSR as there has been too much other stuff going on in "real life" (like searching for appartments etc).

I'm still planning to do an extensive test session at Kingstons place once I get some free time. I also plan to book some time in the university studio to do some Lexicon PCM 90 examples (I know I said it was a pcm 91 but I remebered wrong, it's a pcm 90). Then I'll post all the audio examples in a single thread. I'll try to ad AA reverb to that as well.

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

Brok, have you tinkered with the timeworks verb? Or the arboreturm hyperverb? I find the hyperverb the best virtual reverb on the planet for vocals with no metallicness at all. I can't try the csr becasue I am now the king of all dongle haters.

Yeah, the good old hyper verb was/is fantastic! It's really a shame that they never replied to any of my emails where I tried to convince them that they should focus only on the reverb and sell that separately in a more tweakable package. Alas, their loss as this was many years ago and now reverb seems to be "the" thing right now.

Arboretum has never been a very wise company when it comes to business it seems.. they've always been fading, slowly but surely. Too bad..

Cheers!
bManic

[brok landers]

Brok, have you tinkered with the timeworks verb? Or the arboreturm hyperverb? I find the hyperverb the best virtual reverb on the planet for vocals with no metallicness at all. I can't try the csr becasue I am now the king of all dongle haters.

yes, i have tried both (you did suggest thatone in some threads earlier, thats when i tried them out) .. indeed hyperverb (this old thing) sounded quite nice, but no comparsion to artsacoustic's at all, imo (personal taste) ... timeworks just didn't do it for me at all ... in no way ...
btw, to check resonances and metallic behaviour, vocals are the worst material to check with. try a static, generic saw instead and hold it for about 1 or 2 sec ... if your reverb produces good results on this saw in terms of not resonating, clear spitting off the original signal, then it will mostly work on vocals/any other signal too, and you can be sure it will have just as much resonances or metallic behaviour as you've heard on the saw ...
note: these are by far not the _only_ way to test a reverb.
but in terms of metallic response and resonances this is the ultimative test.
the reason why it's not too constructive to test with vocals is simple:
vocals are _allways_ modulating in pitch, no singer can hold a tone perfetly in tune.
by modulating the inputfrequency of a reverb you _allways_ destroy some resonances.
when a generic saw is used, there is no pitchmodulation. also, if no filter is applied, it will give you the full frequencyspectrum range, so you can check the frequency response of a reverb, too ...
try it, you will easily hear the difference.
again, this test is only to test the resonance behaviour and the metallic response.
for other things (like f.e. how the reverb resonds with room information, spatial aspects), this test will not tell you a lot, so, of course, it is allways a good idea to test a reverb with multiple test signals.

btw, you cannot be the donglehater king, cos i am ....

[bmanic]

Another thing that I've noticed lately is that "grainy" reverb does not at all mean that it is bad. Some of the old digital classics are pretty grainy but still manage to sound really good within a mix. Especially synths and vocals can work better with a grainy reverb than trough a really dense one, at least in a busy mix. This makes it very hard to test reverbs.

One needs to ask a few basic questions of what one wants a reverb to do.

A) Is it used for giving the mix depth (the Z axis)?

B) Is it used for "glue" (that wash that ties all the elements together)?

C) Is it used to bring certain elements into focus (think lexicon very short ambience kind of thing, that in your face invisible stereo)?

D) Is it used to give that huge hall/plate wash sound for lead synths (think tarnce, large scale)?

E) Is it used to place stereo elements into certain "mono" positions within a mix? Like a stereo recorded instrument where you send it to a mono reverb that you then pan to the desired location. This enhances the feeling of position and stability of a mix.

There are so many things that reverbs are used for. They are the true opposites to one-trick pony effects. This is also why having several high quality reverbs is so common in professional studios.

Remeber, there is also always the possibility to use the real deal. Just feed whatever you would like to treat with reverb trough your speakers and re-record the sound. This requires a suitable room though.

Just some thoughts on the subject, Cheers!
bManic

[Frippertronix]

Okay, sorry about the delay. I've been learning about the advanced pages a little more and I'm finding there are multiple ways around the metallic sound, but they all involve making the tails darker, but at the same time they warm up the effect and it ends up sounding nice and mellow in the mix---sort of soft and unobtrusive, which is how I like reverb to be. I don't drench anything in 'verb so just having that kind of "aura" hanging around and after the notes is my ideal reverb application and CSR can do it.

There is actually a sweepable high damping control in the "reverb" page, and then there is an additional "high cut" with a different frequency control, and a low cut w/ freq (these are in the "color" page). I need to crack the manual to see what the difference between the high cut and high damping is. There is also the great feature of a crossover between the high and low tails---you can split the tail in two and set them for different lengths. I'm using this to extend the mellower low tail and create more of a hall sound but avoid the metallic highs.

One thing I've noticed is the reverb reacts pretty strongly to what you put in it. A heavily distorted guitar with effects was producting a much more dramatic tail with more pronounced highs, and a more vintage crunch guitar sound was producing what seemed like a much more abbreviated tail and a much mellower sound---all with exactly the same settings. I'm seeing how fine tuning these algos for each track will be a necessity.

Stereo-wise I'm liking it quite a bit. Pre and post image settings seem to be allowing a wider range of stereo signatures to the effect which, again, can be tuned to compliment the material as well as configure the sense of space to be either more realistic or have more of a pronounced impact.

As far as AAR, I only have the demo and have never used it extensively, but I'll throw it on and try to draw some comparisons. I know AAR has a loyal base, and I don't claim to have ever realy learned how to use it effectively, but I didn't warm up to it the way I have to CSR. I feel at this point that CSR seems to blend better with the material (once settings are adjusted). My auditions of the AAR presets left me feeling that AAR sounded more forced and kind of "tacked on", which is why I didn't like it as much, but, again, if I had learned how to tweak it better I might have changed my mind.

CPU wise---CSR is very cooperative. Compared to Wizoo it's like night and day, since Wizoo uses more CPU than most plugins out there of any kind. I also have Princeton Stereo Room, which uses far more CPU than CSR.

Comparing CSR to what I've heard of high-end Lexicons (all from recordings and IR's), the Lexicon sound is generally more transparent with smoother highs. CSR sounds a little "cheaper", for lack of a better term. But, for $200-$300 vs. several thousand, it a pretty unfair comparison.

I think it's safe to say that if you need a VST reverb and you want to go with an algo, CSR should at least be in the top handful that you consider. I know it's a pain in the arse that the dongle is necessary for the demo. Kind of silly and a shame, since I think they would sell more with a conventional demo.

[Frippertronix]

I'm still planning to do an extensive test session at Kingstons place once I get some free time. I also plan to book some time in the university studio to do some Lexicon PCM 90 examples (I know I said it was a pcm 91 but I remebered wrong, it's a pcm 90). Then I'll post all the audio examples in a single thread. I'll try to ad AA reverb to that as well.

Cheers!
bManic

bManic, what does Kingston think of CSR?

[Frippertronix]

Hi Frippertronix,

thanks for this! Gives us, after all that hype, a some more clear impression of what CSR can do and what not.

I personally would be interested in more details how it compares to the ArtsAcoustic Reverb. You allready said that it's in the same quality level - so I wonder if for me as an ArtsAcoustic owner (and fan!) a CSR purchase made sense or not. What does CSR better than AAR and vice versa...

Ok, I admit, I could demo the CSR for myself, but I'm a bit hesitand to buy that dongle only for experience that CSR is nothing for me...

What do you think? Thanks a lot!

Hi, give me a little more time and I'll try to compare. I know AAR never worked to my ears based entirely on the presets, but people obviously praise it so I likely have missed something about it. I'll put them both on the same track this weekend and try to describe what I think are the comparitave strengths and weaknesses.

I'm not sure I'd suggest buying the dongle to try CSR if you already love AAR. I can't really say that, although I prefer it, CSR is clearly superior like a TC6000 or Lexi 960 is clearly superior.

[bmanic]

bManic, what does Kingston think of CSR?

No idea. My guess is he hasn't started the demo period yet on his dongle. If he has I'm gona kick his a**!



Cheers!
bManic