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

[Andrew Souter]

Hey let's get this out of the gutter (or bathroom) and into the clouds...

how about this:

Dry (intentionally as raw/simple as possible):

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/ ... ds_Dry.wav

Wet:

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/ ... her150.wav

Preset:

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/ ... Preset.2ca

nothing else used other than this preset... try for yourself...

...but as Audio News Room warns:

So much fun to explore and create new sounds that you may not get any mixes finished.

Serious risk of inspiring you to do the 3 DVD soundscape concept album you've been thinking about all these years.

http://audionewsroom.blogspot.com/2010/ ... everb.html

...what can I say, my first passion was ambient music...

[Aloysius]

Me like the Preset!!!

[vespers75]

I'm sure other reverb manufacturers might have other issues with your comparison chart.

As someone who frequently uses Aether (it's gobbling up CPU cycles as I write!), all I can say is:

The manual doesn't really need the chart; Aether speaks for itself.

Of course, some people who like to compare apples to oranges to spiked maces and rotten bananas may think they need it.

The safer route may just be a list of the existing "virtues." No comparison is really needed, BECAUSE (wait for it, wait for it...) nothing I've used compares to Aether.

Except for, like, you know -- REAL canyons, cathedrals, theatres, etc.

Meh, your opinion, of course.

Aether does sound pretty good, but so do some other reverbs out there too. I nearly bought Aether after demoing it, but the render time was a deal breaker for me. Yes, yes, I'm aware you can lower some settings to get a little speed improvement as was mentioned earlier...but if I have to do that, the price is no longer justifiable for me personally. Particularly in the light of other reverb choices. (just my opinion, of course)

38 minutes to render one guitar track with one instance of Aether? f**k that.

[John-E34]

38 minutes to render one guitar track with one instance of Aether? f**k that.

Thats only four beers, Increase the render quality to a six pack...

[Andrew Souter]

Meh, your opinion, of course.

Aether does sound pretty good, but so do some other reverbs out there too. I nearly bought Aether after demoing it, but the render time was a deal breaker for me. Yes, yes, I'm aware you can lower some settings to get a little speed improvement as was mentioned earlier...but if I have to do that, the price is no longer justifiable for me personally. Particularly in the light of other reverb choices. (just my opinion, of course)

38 minutes to render one guitar track with one instance of Aether? f**k that.

Interpolation setting is what causes longer renders. Keep it at 1-Excellence, and render speed will be much faster.
From the manual:

1 - Excellence

o Provides the best compromise between CPU usage and sound quality

o Results in some additional uncontrollable high frequency decay, though this can be considered to be natural for the most part and could be thought of as "air absorption" in real physical spaces

o Is competitive with or superior to all known competitive products on the market

2 - Perfection

o Is available for Offline use only and requires substantial CPU power

o Will result in slower bounce speeds and long render times

o Results in almost no unwanted high frequency decay within the bandwidth

o Suppresses all aliasing and noise to around -120dB

3 - Obsession

o Is available for Offline use only and requires extreme CPU power

o Will result in VERY SLOW bounce speeds and render times

o Results in effectively no unwanted high frequency decay within the bandwidth for any and all possible permutations of Aether parameter settings including intentionally extreme ones

o Suppresses all aliasing and noise to less than -144dB even when using the most extreme preset settings
o Is effectively mathematically perfect within the stated bandwidth and dynamic range

o Is complete overkill for 95% of all musical needs

o Is close to indistinguishable from the Perfection mode for 95% of real-world release media and playback environments

o Is offered mostly as proof-of-concept for experimental use or extreme audiophile projects at this time - it
is simply too heavy in CPU usage to be practical for daily use in most production environments at this time

[sazb30]

Hey let's get this out of the gutter (or bathroom) and into the clouds...

how about this:

Dry (intentionally as raw/simple as possible):

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/ ... ds_Dry.wav

Wet:

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/ ... her150.wav

Preset:

http://www.2caudio.com/products/aether/ ... Preset.2ca

nothing else used other than this preset... try for yourself...

Wow! Sounds great Is this a custom preset or will I already have it in one of the expansion packs?

[Andrew Souter]

it's just quick preset I made earlier today... you can move it to your presets folder if you like... just copy it into User, or into Factory Mystical if you like... "Creativity Expansion Pack" has a bunch of presets like this too.

[dhalfen]

...but as Audio News Room warns:

So much fun to explore and create new sounds that you may not get any mixes finished.

Serious risk of inspiring you to do the 3 DVD soundscape concept album you've been thinking about all these years.

...what can I say, my first passion was ambient music...

And this was readily apparent to me when I first tried it -- I couldn't join the Group Buy fast enough!

And Audio News Room pretty much summed up my experience thus far with Aether, on BOTH counts.

Robert Rich's "Somnium" isn't destined to hold the title much longer.

[dhalfen]

Oh, yeah, I finally forked over the moolah for those expansion packs the other day - now I have soooo many presets, I don't know where to begin. Thank goodness for the "Deselect All" option.

You know, I could always do the work myself, but with all of the interface options, I'm sometimes MUCH happier letting you do it for me!

[Andrew Souter]

Robert Rich is awesome! Very talented, incredibly brilliant, and a truly independent creative thinker! He (and others) via Hearts of Space (label and radio show) introduced me to electronic/ambient music... Much respect for RR...

HOS: "Slow Music For Fast Times"... we could us more of that these days...

[elxsound]

Andrew,

Is there a way to have the preset browser defaulted to having no presets selected? Don't worry, this is no deal breaker for me, but simply a preference.

I'm late to the discussion, but I'll be checking out Robert Rich later today.

[Andrew Souter]

No way currently...

actually, personally I think we should get rid of "deselect all" and instead simply have a single click select only one folder and automatically deselect the others. And shift-click could select multiple folders... that might be better/faster. we might try it later. We want to do some other things with the browser too.

[dhalfen]

actually, personally I think we should get rid of "deselect all" and instead simply have a single click select only one folder and automatically deselect the others. And shift-click could select multiple folders... that might be better/faster. we might try it later. We want to do some other things with the browser too.

Yeah, tough to decide -- this is obviously still a "work in progress," although clearly improved from v1.

Really, for the time being, I would think that the "Deselect All" works quite well -- why add a "shift-click" when one can currently just "click-on/click-off" the desired folders? ("Deselect All" is also a good thing for "clearing the mental tables," creatively speaking. )

Robert Rich is awesome! Very talented, incredibly brilliant, and a truly independent creative thinker! He (and others) via Hearts of Space (label and radio show) introduced me to electronic/ambient music... Much respect for RR...

HOS: "Slow Music For Fast Times"... we could us more of that these days...

Indeed, we could!

Steve Roach & Michael Stearns (who seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth) are in the same league, too! I'm using that "Some Other Chords" preset to generate some very "Chronos"-ish textures right now.

...but I'll be checking out Robert Rich later today.

Hmmm, I wouldn't know where to start -- he does just as much rhythmic/experimental stuff as true ambient/drone work, so you could find a lot of hit-or-miss with him, depending on your preferences.

His "experimental" side (AKA "glurp" music) is something that I find to be more interesting as education than enjoyable as a listening experience. BUT if modular-synth weirdness is up your alley, then have at it!

Otherwise, you'll find PLENTY of good "space music," too! (And he's a master of "ambient flute.")

[elxsound]

No way currently...

actually, personally I think we should get rid of "deselect all" and instead simply have a single click select only one folder and automatically deselect the others. And shift-click could select multiple folders... that might be better/faster. we might try it later. We want to do some other things with the browser too.

That would be cool. I'm getting more and more used to the NI browsers, and I think this is the only reason it started to bother me now. It definitely would be faster, as you mentioned, but I look forward to whatever you guys come up with for browser improvements.

[Andrew Souter]

Steve Roach & Michael Stearns (who seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth) are in the same league, too! I'm using that "Some Other Chords" preset to generate some very "Chronos"-ish textures right now.

Yes exactly... the holy trinity of american ambient music IMHO...

MS: Encounter, Planetary Unfolding, Baraka...
SR: Structures from Silence is the classic.... but he is still quite active actually.

HOS Fathom etc. awesome stuff!

Actually I chatted with RR a while ago to get his thoughts on Aether, but he was on PPC at the time. I should check agin... this reminds me...