Exponential Audio announces new surround reverbs.

[Michael Carnes]

Exponential Audio is proud to announce a pair of new surround reverb plugins. PhoenixVerb Surround and R2 Surround are modeled on the popular PhoenixVerb and R2 plugins and support every popular format from mono to 7.1. Both are native plugins, and support AAX, AU, VST and RTAS on both Mac and Windows in 32 and 64-bit forms. PhoenixVerb Surround is a pure, natural reverb that subtly blends with any source material. R2 Surround is a more active character reverb that makes any track stand out.

Both reverbs feature a brand-new early reflection section which allows source material to be placed with tremendous flexibility. Whether the mixer needs a wide, natural distribution for scoring or a tight, well-placed position for foley, it's easy to get the necessary result. This is followed by the reverberator itself, with its own rich set of controls. Each plugin has hundreds of well-organized presets, with many more to follow. There are halls, rooms, exteriors, plates, futzes and more. The engineer can easily mark any of these as a favorite, making quick work of finding just what's needed for the mix. Preset review is quick, with smooth and quiet parameter changes. Both plugins integrate with Avid® and Euphonix® consoles by means of EUCON®.

PhoenixVerb Surround and R2 Surround are the result of two decades of reverb design by Michael Carnes, designer of reverbs used around the world. They have undergone extensive review with many of the leading audio post engineers in the business and are already in production work. PhoenixVerb Surround will sell for $359 and R2 Surround for $459. There will be a bundle price for the pair. Release is expected before the end of November, 2013. More information is available now at http://www.exponentialaudio.com.

Exponential Audio is a private company located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

[valhallasound]

Congratulations on the upcoming release!

I'd say I am looking forward to trying the demos, but I would need to buy some more speakers to properly appreciate what you have been working on.

Sean Costello

[Michael Carnes]

Congratulations on the upcoming release!
I'd say I am looking forward to trying the demos, but I would need to buy some more speakers to properly appreciate what you have been working on.
Sean Costello

Thanks, as always, for your kind remarks Sean. I can't say this has been an inexpensive project for me. My office isn't exactly huge to begin with, and now I'm squeezed into the middle of a 7.1 system. Let's just hope I don't have to add Atmos any time soon!

[valhallasound]

Congratulations on the upcoming release!
I'd say I am looking forward to trying the demos, but I would need to buy some more speakers to properly appreciate what you have been working on.
Sean Costello

Thanks, as always, for your kind remarks Sean. I can't say this has been an inexpensive project for me. My office isn't exactly huge to begin with, and now I'm squeezed into the middle of a 7.1 system. Let's just hope I don't have to add Atmos any time soon!

The cost involved with adding 5 additional monitors + 1 sub to an existing setup is pretty considerable.

I hadn't known about Dolby Atmos before your post. I'm not sure how to handle this in surround format, other than to create an Ambisonics reverb and create some matrices to convert from B-Format to whatever the hell format Atmos uses.

I wrote a paper on Ambisonics reverbs, but I'm not sure if I believe in Ambisonics:

http://ambisonics.iem.at/symposium2009/ ... nload/file

The reliance of opposing phase in Ambisonics (as opposed to intensity panning) works great if you are a point source in the center of a room. Most people aren't point sources, and aren't in the exact center of a room. Still, if you need to create a reverb that can scale to N number of channels, Ambisonics might be a good place to start.

EDIT: Just found a Dolby Atmos white paper:

http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/Asse ... Cinema.pdf

It seems like reverb would best be delivered as a "bed," instead of trying to distribute itself over the various "object" channels.

Sean Costello

[Michael Carnes]

I hadn't known about Dolby Atmos before your post. I'm not sure how to handle this in surround format.

Atmos is really cool. We have an Atmos theater here and I've seen a few films in the format. 'Gravity' was stunning, both visually and in terms of mix. One of the things that makes Atmos neat is the object-based nature of it. The various audio objects are stored with positional metadata (including active panning info) and the processor in the theater takes control of mapping those to available speakers. If there are physical speakers, the audio goes right there. If not, it invokes the appropriate pan laws to give the best perceptual placement. This means a theater may have 60 speakers or 50 or 20, at Atmos will do the rest. Our theater here has 54 channels. I caught a couple of Dolby techs over there back in the summer and they gave me a nice description.

In terms of mixing, film mixers have to mix for so many formats that they leave themselves a lot of flexibility. For example, John Rodd mixed the score for 'Elysium'. He delivered the mix in 13 5-channel stems (actually 5.1). This left a lot of flexibility in final dub to fit the mix into Atmos, Auros, 7.1, 5.1, etc.

I wrote a paper on Ambisonics reverbs, but I'm not sure if I believe in Ambisonics:

I know I don't. All of this matrix business was a stopgap for the time that we only had stereo recordings. By screwing around with phase, you could create this indistinct sense of space. It is so dependent on sweet spot, and I don't really like sweet spot. I've always been pretty sensitive to phase tricks and it generally makes me uncomfortable.

I like surround that doesn't depend on a sweet spot--for me, it really needs to be robust no matter where the listener might be. A signal--whether reverb or source--needs to be a discreet signal that isn't simply a tweaked copy of another channel. It's really too bad that surround audio didn't catch on a few years back--manufacturers got greedy and couldn't converge on a decent distribution format. But boy oh boy, does the real thing sound nice!

[Michael Carnes]

It seems like reverb would best be delivered as a "bed," instead of trying to distribute itself over the various "object" channels.

I generally agree, with a couple of caveats. The Atmos bed is 7.1 low and 2.0 high. 7.1 is nice for the lateral stuff, but the 2 channels up top aren't really enough. Contrast that with Auros 3D which is 5.1 down, 5.0 up and a single channel directly overhead. Better high, weaker low. Still beats the heck out of stereo though.

You'd probably want to map some reverb to objects if you had some important off-screen event for example. But the mapping doesn't have to be permanent. It can just be for the life of a scene.