Lexicon vs. Valhalla Reverbs

[Fritze]

Here's a shootout between 4 reverbs including Valhalla VintageVerb and LX480:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-sho ... -vee3.html

And here's is a post by Beatworld who did the shootout including the VintageVerb presets:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 6&t=372920

My impressions:
- Empty250 sounds OK, on the sidesticks it doesn't sound good
- B2 sounds artificial here
- Vintage'Verb sounds best here, rather natural and pleasant, sidesticks sound good
- LX480 sounds OK here, on the sidesticks it's very un-diffuse echoey what I dislike

Not a straight Lexicon shootout but interesting nevertheless at least because of VintageVerb vs. LX480 which is highly praised as a Lexicon 480L copy.

[Warp69]

That was not an actual reverb shootout - the test was more about comparing presets. It sounds like the presets didn't use the same reverb time, size nor diffusion etc.

To do a real reverb shootout, you need to match the settings and in most cases you can't rely on the values displayed on the GUI. There's of course the RT60 definition, but most plugins have completely different reverb time even though they all display 2.3 sec. It's a very lengthy process.

When I match various reverbs - it takes me around 2+ hours to just match the tail (this is without early reflections or other functions) per preset.

[Fritze]

Yeah, I see your point. To me this shootout is sufficient to hear some general characters of the reverbs. And it shows me that VintageVerb sounds really good and these 3 others don't sound superior. For sure not without tweaking the tail for 2 hours.

[Lotuzia]

Exponential Audio and Lexicon both use iloks. So no deal for me. Dongle on a laptop? No way...

So, actually, you did not demo them ?

[Lotuzia]

Definitely.
Whilst the CSR stuff to me sounds good (well they did when they came out, haven't listened to them for awhile) and were afaik done by one of the best, it is more based on older lexicon stuff than the pcm stuff that is sold by lexicon. Very very different flavours.
But I still prefer exponential audio, which I think is on sale still.

rsp

CSR was more PCM 70 oriented iirc. Found it a bit difficult and long to make it sound OK _for me-. As a result I just did not reinstall it on my last system, as I recall the install and autorisation process was a bit difficult ( Maybe this has changed ). Maybe some day in the future.

[Warp69]

To me this shootout is sufficient to hear some general characters of the reverbs.

I'm impressed. Much better than me. You're one of the very few that can determine the general character and quality of reverbs by listening to a single test posted on the internet.

[Warp69]

CSR was more PCM 70 oriented iirc.

You're not remembering correctly

[Sparky77]

That was not an actual reverb shootout - the test was more about comparing presets. It sounds like the presets didn't use the same reverb time, size nor diffusion etc.

To do a real reverb shootout, you need to match the settings and in most cases you can't rely on the values displayed on the GUI. There's of course the RT60 definition, but most plugins have completely different reverb time even though they all display 2.3 sec. It's a very lengthy process.

When I match various reverbs - it takes me around 2+ hours to just match the tail (this is without early reflections or other functions) per preset.

Exactly

[Lotuzia]

CSR was more PCM 70 oriented iirc.

You're not remembering correctly

Wich one so ?

[kmonkey]

Apart for the sound which can be mimicked to small degree with Valhalla how on earth you people fail to not see number of parameters which is SIGNIFICANTLY larger on Lexicon then on Valhalla, meaning one can design and shape and alter virtual space in SIGNIFICANTLY different and in context larger degree then on Valhalla?

Lexicon hardware is generally disliked by live engineers for exactly that reason. In the heat of a gig you don't want to wade through a hundred obscurely named parameters looking for a simple "reverb time" control!

Like seriously..

Haha i have yet to see live engineer disliking Lexicon reverb

You sure you talked to right one. I never seen any engineer making changes to reverb on live concert EVER in my life. Ususally lexicon reverbs are known for "set it and forget it" but even so - they can store edited presets they like so your engineer does not have to "tweak" it on live gig. And FYI there are few knobs solely for that reason. Easy editing. I mean i am talking about essential workflow when it comes to live gig reverb usage.

Zvenx for the record i never said more paramters is more or less important. As you can clearly see in Valhalla this approach is working amazing. In the limits and context of what one can achieve. What i am saying is that i can't understand how people can even compare these two? I mean really how? It's clear valhalla is aimed for less demanding reverb tweaking users (and nothing wrong with that) but if you are into it (if you need reverb and control it) there is no question to be made - that simple

[IIRs]

I clocked up twenty years of live sound until I "retired" a couple of years ago. PCM60 is the only really popular lexicon unit for FOH guys: just 4 preset buttons to press!

You can't judge reverbs in an empty room during soundcheck. You have to tweak those when the audience is in, while you're running the show. Unless it's an outdoor gig, in which case it's probably a festival and you probably didn't get a Soundcheck anyway.

[IIRs]

Of course these days you're more likely to be dialling in effects within a digital console, rather than with outboard... The Lexicon reverbs built into the Soundcraft Vi desks for example are limited to 16 editable parameters, and are (in my opinion) more useful in a live context as a result.

[Fritze]

Exponential Audio and Lexicon both use iloks. So no deal for me. Dongle on a laptop? No way...

So, actually, you did not demo them ?

No. No ilok, no demo.

[Fritze]

To me this shootout is sufficient to hear some general characters of the reverbs.

I'm impressed. Much better than me. You're one of the very few that can determine the general character and quality of reverbs by listening to a single test posted on the internet.

I wonder what your comment on this would have been if I would have found out from this flawed shootout that your reverb is absolutely superiour and that I "OMG, WTF, this is incredible, ..." would have to IMMEDIATELY buy it.
Sure you would have warned me in the same way: "Come on guy, don't trust your ears and test the demo extensively for at least half a year. You know, it takes ME 2 hours to match a tail alone so you can't say from this ugly audio demo that the LX480 is vastly superior, IMPOSSIBLE!!!"
Come on, I know you can do better than talking such nonsense mixed with dumb assumptions about what I base my decisions upon.

[Warp69]

I was actully thinking of your comments regarding B2 - I repeated the conclusion from the thread you linked. After the revised version of the B2 preset - some people prefered B2 which they didn't previously - they demonstated it was a preset shootout and nothing else. Very few people have the knowledge or time to conduct a real reverb shootouts - I don't believe I have ever seen one. Unfortunately I'll have to disappoint you - the amount of people interested in Lexicon 480L and iLok 2 on this forum is.... ehm.... rather low - I would imagine than less than 0.001% actually own/use one. I don't assume anything - I responded directly to something you wrote.
David Griesinger did the actual design of the 480L algorithms (well the Random Hall and HD that is) and I personally love some of the characteristics, but I'm not emotional about the actual algorithms since I'm not the original designer - the only thing that I do respond to is the quality of the emulation.