CSR is here, but how does it sound?

[Frippertronix]

....

At least the SIR which is free and not bad.

I dont know if it is just me but I find that SIR is a terrible CPU hog, making a 25% jump in usage. So I cannot use it, and I have a P4-3.2 with 2G dual channel

allen

Try 'printing' your convo reverb to an audio track then ditch the reverb plug.
...or use CSR.

Yea, no realtime use with SIR or Convo Boy. GigaPulse has much lower latency, though.

All in all I find impulses a mixed bag and fairly hard to use. They are very rigid. I love some of them, hate others. Many real acoustic space IR's sound boxy to my ears.

[DevonB]

Yea, no realtime use with SIR or Convo Boy. GigaPulse has much lower latency, though.

All in all I find impulses a mixed bag and fairly hard to use. They are very rigid. I love some of them, hate others. Many real acoustic space IR's sound boxy to my ears.

Really depends on the quality of the impulse. The impulses that come with Larry Seyer Acoustic Drums made my jaw drop. Other impulses like that with Kontakt 2 I wasn't as happy with.

Devon

[Squids]

About activating: I have two IK products (both bundle items from Tracktion 2) registered at the IK site. When I go to register the CSR cross-grade, will it automatically go through (as a cross-grade) because the IK site already has my two other product registrations on record?

Exactly.

[Frippertronix]

Yea, no realtime use with SIR or Convo Boy. GigaPulse has much lower latency, though.

All in all I find impulses a mixed bag and fairly hard to use. They are very rigid. I love some of them, hate others. Many real acoustic space IR's sound boxy to my ears.

Really depends on the quality of the impulse. The impulses that come with Larry Seyer Acoustic Drums made my jaw drop. Other impulses like that with Kontakt 2 I wasn't as happy with.

Devon

Do you have Giga 3? As far as GigaPulse IR's, I'm just going by the bundled impulses with the GigaPulse that came with Giga 3 Orchestra. I've been intrigued by it's capabilities and have considered getting the plugin version. It's hard to gauge how GPulse VST would work for me, though, because I would be using the plugin extensively on synths and I only have acoustic sample sets for Giga 3. It would be nice if they had a GPulse VST demo.

So are the Larry Seyer impulses your favorite for GPulse? I only know the ones that came with GS3. My impression was they were based on algorithms and I thought they were pretty good, but my favorite impulses from GS3-O are the brightwood rooms.

[DevonB]

Do you have Giga 3? As far as GigaPulse IR's, I'm just going by the bundled impulses with the GigaPulse that came with Giga 3 Orchestra. I've been intrigued by it's capabilities and have considered getting the plugin version. It's hard to gauge how GPulse VST would work for me, though, because I would be using the plugin extensively on synths and I only have acoustic sample sets for Giga 3. It would be nice if they had a GPulse VST demo.

So are the Larry Seyer impulses your favorite for GPulse? I only know the ones that came with GS3. My impression was they were based on algorithms and I thought they were pretty good, but my favorite impulses from GS3-O are the brightwood rooms.

Yes, I have Giga3 and LS:AD. I reveiwed both of them for Recording Magazine last year. I would love to play with GigaPulse in my host instead of in Giga. Larry's impulses in Acoustic Drums are simply phenominal. The Parking Garage impulse made me believe I was in a parking garage, it didn't sound artificial.

I just wish there were more choices for good reverbs that don't have 'metallic' artifacts in the audio, or just odd slapback sound that sounds unnatural. I can get pretty good results out of DreamVerb at least on the UAD-1, and am pleased with it.

Most native 'verbs leave me pretty disappointed though. I've had my Eventide for almost a decade, so I'm a bit picky at the quality of a 'verb.

Devon

[Mikem]

I ended up finishing that demo into a song, in case anyone would like to hear it. It still uses CSR and the Miroslav patch. Well, it's nearly finished, anyway. It's the first song I've written in 5 years, actually. Probably make a few more changes in the coming weeks. But you can get it here:

This_Mistake.mp3

Or you can see a discussion at the Music Cafe about it on this thread.

Enjoy! Comments are welcome/encouraged (as Mike pleads for attention to his music).

OK, I installed CSR and gave it a whirl. I've been enjoying it thus far, and I thought I'd demonstrate one of the presets in action:

CSR_Large_Hall.mp3

It's about 1 minute long--a little piano melody I came up with, accompanied by the free downloadable Miroslav string patch for ST 2.1.

I think I ended up going with the "Large Hall" preset at it's default settings as a send, and the piano and strings are both pretty soaked, just to help demonstrate the reverb itself.

Hope you like it!

-Mike

[Squids]

VERY nice!

Ok. More comments than just that. Some constructive compliments. (that's from the show the Office)

Vocals sound great. Nice voice. The strings sound really nice and blend with track nicely. The snare IMO needs something more to it in the production. I'd mess around with compression and limiting to give it a fat smack to it or possibly even layer another snare with it subtley. However, when you do the sidestick it sounds just right. The crashes don't suit the song the best so I would find some other ones personally (even though I recognize them... they are probably okay for other sounding tunes... you need a more smooth longer decay one I think).

The piano part is very nice (reminds me a little bit of Cold Play's first record... which ironically I was just listening to on my Ipod on the plane).

The guitar part needs work in my opinion. A little stiff especially in the solo section. It needs some bends, vibrato and some more feeling in general. This can even be a subtle change but would make a difference because it stood out to me. Anytime something stands out signifying "oh, this must be someone's demo" is something most of us try to avoid... well, ultimately if we aren't actually just making demos... except these days with the tools it is fun to see how far you can take a tune. Make it sound like it is already on the radio? You could probably do that with this tune.

Good stuff! Write more now. (I should talk... I need to write more and perhaps finishing a tune now and then as well would be nice). Thanks for sharing Mike!

[Mikem]

The guitar part needs work in my opinion. A little stiff especially in the solo section. It needs some bends, vibrato and some more feeling in general.

Thanks for listening, Squids!

And I think you vastly overestimate my abilities as a guitarist.

[TeleJuan]

Thought I'd post something for other folks to listen too....

No vox, just the tracks and the mix is probably too wet, specially the electric guitars but it's kinda the feel I was looking for anyway. I used some slightly tweaked presets of long and short plate, room and hall. Check it out, it's the "CSR Mix" song:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemus ... dID=363188

[mlyon]

I'm in. (Thanks much, Elijah!) Thanks to everyone for the demos and really good reviews/feedback in this thread and others. They were helpful to me since I don't (currently) own a Synchrosoft dongle and didn't want to buy one just for a demo.

Picked up the crossgrade and the BunE Mini Paks at the same time (which also are really quite good....nice job on the REXing, guys!). Should get CSR sometime next week (you gotta like downloads of the MPs, just for the instant gratification).

Cheers,
Mark

[Kingston]

I've just finished two days of mucking around with CSR (demo). I'm sure bmanic and jmh will be here commenting the reverb shortly as they were testing it as well.

Yes, it's hands down the best native reverb! It's a no competition type thing. 6-0 win. It really is that good. And no, it does NOT sound metallic. The plate does, but then, it IS metal. No shit sherlock.

bmanic had a batch of lexicon PCM90 sampled material with him, presenting the full range of its capabilities. The CSR is a very near carbon copy of the sound. Lexicon had a touch more resolution, just enough for it to be perceptible. It can be heard with A/B comparison as slightly more defined high end, and more "oil can" in the low frequencies. In practise, it's negligible. Lexicon also had a notch more of the algorithmic movement in the reverb tails, more "organic" in a sense, but even that was a very close match.

The unfortunate thing is how IK has limited some of the parameter ranges, so that CSR can't go quite to the extremities of PCM90. bmanic found it a severe limitation, especially with the room algorithm.

As a compensation the PCM90 isn't capable (AFAIK) of doing the inverse algorithm quite to the extent of CSR, which IMO is the most useful of the 4 available ones.



I'll absolutely most definitely buy this thing, and would happily recommend it to anyone.

[bmanic]

If Kingston dares to do a lame copy and paste from another thread, then I do to!

Oh, and by the way, I had Lexicon PCM 90 (!) examples with me.. not 91.

===================
Yes, the CSR reverb is definately the best, most flexible native reverb to date (IMNSHO!).

Here's a little teaser: CSR doing "that tarnce thing", and here's the preset for all you lucky CSR owners.

Cheers and good nite!
bManic

[Kingston]

If Kingston dares to do a lame copy and paste from another thread, then I do to!

well else what can you do with 27 separate but in all ways equal CSR threads.

Oh, and by the way, I had Lexicon PCM 90 (!) examples with me.. not 91.

[edited]

[Mikem]

Thanks for the preset. More preset sharing, please!!

[jmh]

Ok, since I got the call from Finnish Audiophile Mafia HeadQuarters...

Yeah, CSR by far exceeds everything else soundwise in the land of plugins. Period. It was almost scary to hear what it's capable of, doing some basic comparisons with convolution stuff and so on. (Too bad I missed the second session with bManic and those Lexicon impulses)

I guess Kingston and bManic have gone to details about what's "missing" compared to the highest end stuff, so I won't reiterate the same points.

Instead it surprised me totally and gave me a completely new attitude towards IK, at least when it comes to the sound quality of the product.

JMH