KVR Audio

Syn · Post by **Syn** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:30 am

Hi,

Has anyone heard John Foxx Cathedral Oceans or his collaborations with Harold Budd? For example: http://open.spotify.com/album/7h8nEWfoOa7ywTj9guOJDh

I wonder which reverb(s) they might use? As far as I know, John uses software. The reverbs sound quite wonderful and don't contain artifacts at all. Some reverbs have a tendency to sound metallic, but in this case, the sound is warm and round although the tail of the reverb is extremely long.

Anyone?

/Mike

MHC Synthesizers and Effects
http://www.mhc.se

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:51 am

you're specifically looking for algorithmic reverbs on that purpose, or not necessarily ?

Shy · Post by **Shy** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 11:08 am

He also uses a lot of hardware synths and effects (partial list for example) and it's most probably not a software reverb. If you want a high quality reverb in software, you only have a few choices. LX480, PCM Native Reverb, ValhallaRoom and ValhallaShimmer are ones you should check.

kvaca · Post by **kvaca** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 12:28 pm

with cathedral reverb you have 3 options/from best=most realistic to good=a little artificial,but all 3 are usually usable/:

1.record your instrument dry at home or studio and play it on good monitors in real cathedral and record it again with apropriate distance via very good small diagram mics,like DPA or Schoeps

2.use good IRs with cathedral of your choice,the biggest collection of cathedral and church IRs on net you can find here:
http://www.hauptwerk.cz/irs/index.htm

3.use Lexicon reverb hardware or plugins and dedicated presets...

mystran · Post by **mystran** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 12:31 pm

I think the trick here is modulation inside the reverb algo; gives a sort of dream-like character and pretty much totally eliminates any obvious "metallic" ringing.

IIRC the Valhalla stuff at least has some modulation options (and sound decent even without), so I'd start by downloading the demo of ValhallaRoom (yes, I hate to admit it, but when I heard ValhallaRoom my current prototype reverb went straight back to drawing board) and see how far it can get you..

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:07 pm

A quote from John Foxx talking about his 1981 album "The Garden":

I had also just gotten a Lexicon digital reverb, which creates a computer-analyzed acoustic space; with the touch of a button, it can give you a cathedral sound, because the sound is like what it would be if it was released into a cathedral.

IIRC, the only Lexicon reverb available at the time was the 224. All of the algorithms in the 224 have the "MODE ENHANCEMENT" setting, which modulates the length of delay lines embedded within allpasses. The Concert Hall is the "classic" example of this sound. Higher settings of MODE ENHANCEMENT will go beyond the subtle sonic improvements of lower settings, and will produce audible chorusing in the reverb, with the amount of chorusing increasing over time.

So if you are going for absolute authenticity of this sound, the UA Lexicon 224 model would probably get you there. A hardware 224, 224XL, or PCM70 (running the Concert Hall algorithm) would do the job as well. The later Lexicon-influenced algorithms (such as those in the Lexicon LXP bundle and the excellent Relab LX480) used a different modulation scheme that was first introduced in the 480L.

EDIT: I would also wager a guess that John Foxx held on to his 224. If you paid $8500 for a digital reverb in 1981, I would doubt that you would ever want to sell it. The 224XL followed the 224, but by many accounts had a considerably different sound. The sampling rate in the 224 was 20.980 kHz, while it was 32 kHz in the 224XL. The effect of this sonically is that the 224 has a HARD cutoff around 8 kHz, which is raised to 15 kHz in the 224XL.

EDIT#2: This link shows that John Foxx is still using the Lexicon 224 in 2011, along with an EMT140 plate, Roland Space Echo, and Ursa Major delay:

http://www.electricity-club.co.uk/html/foxxmaths.html

If I may be so bold as to plug my own work: ValhallaRoom, running the Dark Room, Nostromo, or Narcissus reverb modes, will do a good job of getting these dark, overmodulated reverbs as well. ValhallaShimmer has similar modulation scheme to those "darker" modes in ValhallaRoom, but with a slower attack than what is heard in the Foxx/Budd clips I found on YouTube.

Another reverb I worked on for Audio Damage, Eos, has a preset called "This Budd's For You." I'll readily admit that the Budd/Eno stuff was a big influence on my own algorithm design, as I just love that sound. I also didn't know about the John Foxx album with Budd - time to track that down.

ValhallaRoom has several Cathedral presets, based on acoustic measurements of European cathedrals I found in a super nerdy library book. These will sound more "realistic" than the overmodulated stuff used by Foxx/Budd. If you are trying the ValhallaRoom demo, try switching to one of these presets, changing the reverb mode to Nostromo or Narcissus, and turning up the Early and Late Mod Depths.

Sean Costello

glokraw · Post by **glokraw** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 12:04 am

@ Sean: Hi, if you have some spare time, I would appreciate your opinion on the
reverbs in zynaddsubfx

download link to latest windows version: http://www.mediafire.com/?yk5ncdh8el6or8m

(forum topic: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... &start=195 )

Thanks for the informative reverb post!

ericzang · Post by **ericzang** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 3:50 am

It's also worth a try sending the instruments to a delay with modulation in it, giving some amount of chorusing. On the delay aux return, I put a send to the same big reverb that the instruments are going to. Sounds heavenly.

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 11:49 pm

Here's a "piano cathedral" preset for ValhallaRoom, using the low CPU Narcissus reverb mode:

Code: Select all

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.0.8" presetName="NarcissusPianoCathedral" mix="0.552999973" predelay="0.000199999995" decay="0.119119123" HighCut="0.664429545" earlyLateMix="1" lateSize="0.689999998" lateCross="0.270000011" lateModRate="0.234343439" lateModDepth="0.300000012" RTBassMultiply="0.373333335" RTXover="0.0909090936" RTHighMultiply="0.533333361" RTHighXover="0.564429522" earlySize="1" earlyCross="0.0399999991" earlyModRate="0.135353535" earlyModDepth="0.400000006" earlySend="1" diffusion="1" type="0.75"/>

To try this out in ValhallaRoom, select all the text (including the opening < and closing > tags), click on the preset name in the GUI, and select "Paste from clipboard" in the popup menu options. If anyone has any dry piano they want to hear this on, feel free to post a link to the file, and I will post the results.

Sean Costello

Syn · Post by **Syn** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:30 pm

Checked out your web page on ValhallaShimmer and the demo sounds really nice, but it'd be cool to hear it process an ordinary instrument, like an acoustic piano. The same with ValhallaRoom. Any more samples online perhaps?

Good work there!

/Mike

MHC Synthesizers and Effects
http://www.mhc.se

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 6:55 pm

Syn wrote:Checked out your web page on ValhallaShimmer and the demo sounds really nice, but it'd be cool to hear it process an ordinary instrument, like an acoustic piano. The same with ValhallaRoom. Any more samples online perhaps?

I found a nice public domain recording of Erik Satie Gymnopedie No.1, as recorded by Robin Alciatore. Here's the results of processing this via the Narcissus reverb mode in ValhallaRoom:

http://soundcloud.com/seancostello/narc ... cathedral2

You can hear the randomized chorusing, similar to the Lexicon 224 used in the Foxx/Budd recordings.

The preset used for the above example:

Code: Select all

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.0.8" presetName="NarcissusPianoCathedral2" mix="0.5" predelay="0.000199999995" decay="0.118918918" HighCut="0.664429545" earlyLateMix="1" lateSize="0.689999998" lateCross="0.270000011" lateModRate="0.266666681" lateModDepth="0.219999999" RTBassMultiply="0.373333335" RTXover="0.0909090936" RTHighMultiply="0.533333361" RTHighXover="0.564429522" earlySize="0.0984985009" earlyCross="0.0399999991" earlyModRate="0.135353535" earlyModDepth="0.300000012" earlySend="1" diffusion="1" type="0.75"/>

The same sound file, processed by the Dark Chamber reverb mode in ValhallaRoom:

http://soundcloud.com/seancostello/dark ... ocathedral

The chorusing in the Dark Chamber reverb mode is far more diffuse, and is more of a "detuning" sound than the random pitch changes in the Narcissus mode. Dark Chamber can produce decays that have internal chorusing, without the risk of jumping around in pitch.

The preset used for the Dark Chamber example:

Code: Select all

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.0.8" presetName="DarkChamberPianoCathedral" mix="0" predelay="0.000199999995" decay="0.118918918" HighCut="0.664429545" earlyLateMix="1" lateSize="0.689999998" lateCross="0.270000011" lateModRate="0.266666681" lateModDepth="0.310000002" RTBassMultiply="0.373333335" RTXover="0.0909090936" RTHighMultiply="0.533333361" RTHighXover="0.564429522" earlySize="0.0984985009" earlyCross="0.0399999991" earlyModRate="0.135353535" earlyModDepth="0.300000012" earlySend="1" diffusion="1" type="0.5"/>

I need to head out for a little while, so I don't have time to generate new examples of ValhallaShimmer, but here's an older example of the same Satie piece being processed by 4 series instances of ValhallaShimmer:

http://soundcloud.com/seancostello/satieintothestargate

The architecture of ValhallaShimmer allows things to be run in series without the metallic coloration that would happen with other reverbs run in series (ValhallaRoom doesn't sound all that hot when cascading a bunch of instances). Use different pitch change for each Shimmer instance, and pretty much any input comes out sounding like a planetarium soundtrack.

Sean Costello

Bronto Scorpio · Post by **Bronto Scorpio** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 7:26 pm

Great demos Sean!
I posted these demos in the VRoom thread some time ago. Not really a cathedral preset but some other kind of huge space

http://www.bronto-scorpio-music.com/Music/VRoom_PWM.mp3
http://www.bronto-scorpio-music.com/Music/VRoom_FM.mp3

Here is the preset:

Code: Select all

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.0.7" presetName="Andromeda" mix="0.300000012" predelay="0.0399999991" decay="0.0590590574" HighCut="0.328859061" earlyLateMix="0.800000012" lateSize="0.850000024" lateCross="1" lateModRate="0.13131313" lateModDepth="0.699999988" RTBassMultiply="0.666666687" RTXover="0.0707070678" RTHighMultiply="0.333333343" RTHighXover="0.266442955" earlySize="0.0790790766" earlyCross="0.200000003" earlyModRate="0.13131313" earlyModDepth="0.349999994" earlySend="0.699999988" diffusion="0.5" type="0.583333313"/>

Cheers
Dennis

liquidsonics · Post by **liquidsonics** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:44 pm

I've always enjoyed the IRs in Waves' IR-L (or IR-1) package and think there are a few good Cathedrals in there as they're well sampled and decent spaces, for $49 it's a great source of IRs if convolution is at all under consideration. A little modulation using convolvers that could perhaps load the Waves IRs and add a little twist might also be of interest... sorry I try to avoid too many blatant promos but couldn't resist this time as I get so much milage out of this particular combo when I'm producing

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 11:24 pm

liquidsonics wrote: A little modulation using convolvers that could perhaps load the Waves IRs and add a little twist might also be of interest... sorry I try to avoid too many blatant promos but couldn't resist this time as I get so much milage out of this particular combo when I'm producing

I am SO OFFENDED that you come into this thread and hijack things with your blatant promos!

buy ValhallaRoom...c'mon, you know you want to...all the cool kids are doing it...

Sean Costello

t3toooo · Post by **t3toooo** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 12:10 am

... i own both.

Best cathedral reverb?