Is 2C's Aether REALLY worth it? (the answer is: yes, certainly)

[ariston]

Regarding Masterverb, I get the impression that you didn't spend much time with it, and it's many controls, I don't mean to offend you, but did you actually read the manual and spend some effort getting to know all it can do ?
I ask simply because I can get so many different reverb characteristics using Masterverb 5

Now that's an original comeback not often seen here. I am simply dumbfounded with admiration.



Actually, no, I did spend a lot of time with it. I spent 4 days just testing and comparing reverbs on all types of sources, Masterverb among them. When I say "testing", I don't mean using presets.
Comparing it to Aether made me think they should have named it Apprenticeverb instead. The difference, as you can see, was well worth 50$ to me.

But then, all ears are different and it's subjective anyhow. So, thanks again for your input. It is appreciated, even if your cheap retort isn't.

[C-note]

Not to distract from the truly interesting discussion about muddiness and clarity, but having read so many criticisms of Aether's UI, I just wanted to add my 2 KHz into the mix by saying that I LOVE the UI. Every time I open the plugin, it screams "touch me". It really does, I swear it! I'm glad that you're offering alternative skins and are not replacing the original.

Blackinfinity, from what you say about Aether, I get the impression that you didn't spend much time with it and its many controls. I don't mean to offend, but did you actually read the manual and spend some effort getting to know what all those "ugly" knobs can do? I ask this simply because I can get so many different reverb characteristics using Aether.

Btw, I tried Masterverb while deciding, and while it's a good plugin, Aether won the direct comparison for me. I think it sounds richer, and it's better suited for sound design (which, in my case, can go to extremes). Thanks for the tip, though.

+1

[ozmoz2008]

... by saying that I LOVE the UI. Every time I open the plugin, it screams "touch me". It really does, I swear it! I'm glad that you're offering alternative skins and are not replacing the original.

That's a good idea for a promotion ad, Please, touch my new skin! (just kidding)

I think that some people use the term muddiness in a very strange way. In fact one of my friend engineer told me that he felt that Aether presets were having a little bit to much top end...see how personal it can be.

I even thought some hall in the 480l were also having too much happening in the bass and also some sort of muddiness in them, mostly the church hall if I recall correctly(not all the presets though), but I think that's something some people are looking for sometimes, it always depends of the circumstances when used.

But all these "eq" references are easy to adjust in Aether, and that is another good point about it.

But the typical colour is really awesome IMO and yes, it's a personal taste at the end. It seems that even the new Lex plugs are not the same colour as the Lexicon's hardware unit judging by some posts on KVR.

I don't think that Aether will replace all other plugs, since they all have something unique, and I don't think that Lex plugs will either. Maybe some will remember the days when we were having Lexicon, Yamaha, TC, Klark Teknik, Eventide and some other hardware reverb units, there was a reason at that time for that too. I think that it is not different with plugs, from what I have experience so far.

I like to have freedom of choice, but that's also a personal point of view.

[eduardo_b]

These "is it worth it" threads always strike me as wrong-headed. There's no objective answer to these questions. And, if the value is in the subtle differences among reverbs, it's a waste of money by the time the music is crushed to hell and back and then compressed down to a lower-bit format to be listened to on mediocre ear-buds. Seriously, there's nothing subtle about any of this.

[Andrew Souter]

David Griesinger has written some interesting stuff about clarity (as it relates to real halls), but the really, really short version comes down to something like: to improve clarity, lower the reverb energy in the first 100ms (or so) after the direct sound. In real acoustic places that typically comes down to eliminating some of the early reflections, but with plugins one can also do stuff like add pre-delay, or shape the tail of the algorithm to build slower, or whatever.

Yes, a good point.

In Aether you can try something like:

1) "Small-ish" ER size, maybe around 10-20.
2) Lower ER Gain
3) Fairly high LR-Attack. (large attack settings mean SLOWER attack in aether)
4) Slightly larger LR Size
5) Add pre-delay if needed.

BTW, we have added a separate pre-delay for the ERs in 1.5.0. This allows some interesting things.

[ozmoz2008]

These "is it worth it" threads always strike me as wrong-headed. There's no objective answer to these questions. And, if the value is in the subtle differences among reverbs, it's a waste of money by the time the music is crushed to hell and back and then compressed down to a lower-bit format to be listened to on mediocre ear-buds. Seriously, there's nothing subtle about any of this.

Compress or not, the colour of ambiences are important for me. Also, when the signal is "enhanced" in stereo, in many home systems, the ambiences becomes even more important, so it makes the good use and choice of them essential.

What's objective to you can also be subjective to somebody else. But that's an old paradigm debate. What is only objective and what is only subjective!

At the end, since we are all humans, everything is subjective, see and project from our own brain.

So....let's continue our "subjective" reverb discussion...lol...

[eduardo_b]

These "is it worth it" threads always strike me as wrong-headed. There's no objective answer to these questions. And, if the value is in the subtle differences among reverbs, it's a waste of money by the time the music is crushed to hell and back and then compressed down to a lower-bit format to be listened to on mediocre ear-buds. Seriously, there's nothing subtle about any of this.

Compress or not, the colour of ambiences are important for me. Also, when the signal is "enhanced" in stereo, in many home systems, the ambiences becomes even more important, so it makes the good use and choice of them essential.

Essential to you perhaps, but not to listeners. They couldn't care less which reverb is used or what differences in ambiance there might be. Which is to say, the discussions on reverbs are quite separate from the real world meaning to those listening to the results. I think this is often lost in these discussions.

[Andrew Souter]

I think that some people use the term muddiness in a very strange way. In fact one of my friend engineer told me that he felt that Aether presets were having a little bit to much top end...see how personal it can be.

I even thought some hall in the 480l were also having too much happening in the bass and also some sort of muddiness in them, mostly the church hall if I recall correctly(not all the presets though), but I think that's something some people are looking for sometimes, it always depends of the circumstances when used.

But all these "eq" references are easy to adjust in Aether, and that is another good point about it.

Well, to be honest, when I made a bunch of the presets, especially some of the more crazy ones, the flexibility of the Freq Decay curve was still very fresh and exciting and novel in my mind. So to some extent, I was tempted to make unusual and crazy decay curves, and sometimes this results in having highs that sustain longer than what people are used to. Maybe we will make a "Classic" preset folder the specifically leans towards low HF content presets?

Also we have added a Freq Profile menu in 1.5.0. This is a menu system like the Space Menu, where you can switch through different profiles in various ways and quickly change the freq controls as sort of macro setting. This is quite nice. We had this in mind since the beginning, but have finally done it now.

I found though things really depend on the source material. For example if you feed a signal with low HF content, it can be cool to have the HFs decay longer, as this can give a nice shimmer IMHO. But if you are feeding it a signal with a large amount of HF content to begin with, you may want to reduce the LR High ratio control. Another cool thing to try to use the Input EQ and the decay ratio is opposition to one another. So you may actually cut the HFs with EQ, but increase the decay, or vice versa. This can give interesting results.

My thought at the time that I made presets was that Convolution verbs were still king of the market. It's quite obvious that convolution verbs capture real/natural responses quite well (though with the limitations of convolution already discussed elsewhere). So my initial inclination was to explore areas that Convolution verbs could not do well. "Natural" is not always best for modern music styles.

Anyway, yes the nice thing about a product like Aether is that is it simple to adjust presets to the current need of the project. Want less HFs? Just lower the EQ and/or High Ratio, or increase HF Soft, etc.

OK. Back to work now...

[ozmoz2008]

Essential to you perhaps, but not to listeners. They couldn't care less which reverb is used or what differences in ambiance there might be. Which is to say, the discussions on reverbs are quite separate from the real world meaning to those listening to the results. I think this is often lost in these discussions.

I think you judge listeners as if they were all the same, which is not the case. IMO

Also, most listeners will be able to judge between music with "feel" and music without, always from their own perspective. Sometimes an ambience that is well adjusted could bring the feel up in their face a little more so they "feel" the music more. Just look at how people react when listening to choirs in churches. Bring the same choir in your bedroom, and I'm not sure they will have the same reaction.

They can't tell exactly what is the cause of their reactions, but they do react to your choices of ambiences accordingly.

Still an objective point of view, but a valid one judging from my past experience with people and clients.

BTW I don't say that cheap ambience can't be useful in some specific uses. It's all a matter of trying to make people react, and hopefully getting the reaction you were looking for.

[ariston]

Also, most listeners will be able to judge between music with "feel" and music without, always from their own perspective. Sometimes an ambience that is well adjusted could bring the feel up in their face a little more so they "feel" the music more. Just look at how people react when listening to choirs in churches. Bring the same choir in your bedroom, and I'm not sure they will have the same reaction.

They can't tell exactly what is the cause of their reactions, but they do react to your choices of ambiences accordingly.

I agree with this. Most people don't listen analytically, but care taken with a product, be it a coffee machine or a piece of music, will always come through in the end. Undiscerning listeners will feel it; they might not be able to explain why, but they will. They might still hate a track, but they won't be able to say it was done poorly.

Which is why it's important to select your tools with care. They have to be the ones that you like to use, because that too will be evident in your work. If you love a certain reverb, then you will get better results with it than with one which makes you go "ho hum, wellll, it's the only one I got, SO....".

Which is why I like reading (and in this case: starting) threads like these.

eduardo_b: in a way, though, I think you're right. Comments like yours should help us keep our ears to the ground and not lend too much importance to subtle differences.

[eduardo_b]

I think you judge listeners as if they were all the same, which is not the case. IMO

I think in general listeners are not taking apart music. That's a musicin/engineer thing. Listeners connect with the music as a whole, and I've not found any difference among them in this respect. They do not talk about the audio qualities of the mix...they do say how much they like this song or that. Nothing wrong with paying attention to the details, but sweating them to excess will not change how listeners respond.

[ozmoz2008]

but sweating them to excess will not change how listeners respond.

Maybe not, maybe they will too. In a pre-recorded situation, listeners' responses, skills and taste always have to be respected and not under estimated, in my book anyway.

I would agree with you more on the live aspect, often the way a musician will bounce his head will make people react more than the music itself, unfortunately.

I'm still looking for that "overproduced" track that people didn't like(I mean that didn't became expose largely to the public). Often in the past (we use to talk a lot about overproduced tracks), when people were referring to overproduced, it was in fact poorly produced, bad choices etc (like too much reverb on this and that etc).

The concept of putting too much to details is part of the personal process of each individuals, each artists, at the end it's part of what the person is known for. It is an artistic process.

It's funny but produced tracks and good results often go together (so far, always in my past experience). Music is all about details, silences etc...IMO

And don't forget that people with better listening skills are often people who decide if this or that fits their "formats", or are the people who will give reviews to your music etc.(obviously not all of them though)

Ok I have to get back to work now, really!

Thanx for the last post Andrew, good news for the update!

[jimvictor]

"Bring the same choir in your bedroom, and I'm not sure they will have the same reaction"



YIKES!

[A.M. Gold]

BTW, we have added a separate pre-delay for the ERs in 1.5.0. This allows some interesting things.

Dammit, stop teasing us!!!

[eduardo_b]

but sweating them to excess will not change how listeners respond.

The concept of putting too much to details is part of the personal process of each individuals, each artists, at the end it's part of what the person is known for. It is an artistic process.

I probably wasn't being clear. I didn't mean that the details don't matter, but rather how a lot of effort tweaking them is lost on the typical listener. You could have done it six ways and the response will still be positive or not if the song connects (lyrics, melody, beat, overall production values). I fix photos for people who ask me to, and despite all the tweaking of their images, it's always "looks better, not as dark" or something like that, with no mention of contrast, saturation, yada yada. It's how people tend to focus on the big picture, not seeing or hearing all the stuff that you or I might think important and will be noticed.