Lexicon vs. Valhalla Reverbs

[Beatworld]

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.

Wow I had no idea my "shoot out" would still be talked about 18 months later

The test was not simply using factory presets for each verb.
I started with some presets Den (Xtrax) created for B2 but then did spend time trying to match settings across all the verbs.
None of the final settings on any instance of each verb were factory settings.

I would be happy enough to post pics of the final settings for each verb - but don't have time now to do that.
If I did that then I guess you (warp69) could tell me where I went wrong as far as the 480 is concerned.

The test obviously had limitations and who knows what, if anything, that it proved.

cheers

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Warp, would you mind sharing some insight into CSR? Like, what it's modeled off of (if anything), what you feel it's good at, tips, etc? For a while I was using it exclusively, but stopped using it regularly while waiting for it to go 64bit. By the time it did, I never really went back and revisited it. Would be curious what you think about it all these years later.

[Fritze]

What I really like about the 480L is the spaciosness it can create - when I close the eyes and try to visualize the simulated space - I feel I'm inside a room where the sound can propagate naturally around the environment. On the other tests I feel a very narrowed space (most of the reverberation energy is in middle - monaural).

This is a strong statement. So how about a short demo? Please show a short snippet wich demonstrates this and then please post the dry audio so that we can test how other reverbs hold up against yours! Cool?

[Andrew Souter]

The thing about verb is it is ALWAYS about the preset/settings and there is NO master preset for all needs. I never really quite understood the desire to try to match presets from different developers and often different alg/methods/topology.

Also for almost all cases of desirable characteristics in a reverb preset I can present a case where XYZ characteristic is NOT desirable.

It is highly dependent on the source material. One could even argue, semi effectively, that the song tempo and even key (to the extent that they are fixed) could also influence the ideal preset, to say nothing of the stylistic and creative needs of the material.

IMHO the ideal alg is something like B2 that is extremely modular/versatile and can handle a huge diversity of needs. (sorry if it's biased, but if I thought differently I would change our products.) B2 can be configured in an almost unlimited number of ways...

Additionally our PS 2.5 bundle offers over 3,000 presets. Why worry about one magic preset? There really isn't such of thing for all needs and tastes.

There are a ton of great Lex-like things out there. Warp recreated the 480. It is the same as the hardware according to his posts, and I believe him. the 480 is a great classic sound and is a very useful tool. If you like the sound of classic Lex it seems a good option to me.

I would have to wonder if a person needs ALL the lex-like stuff out there though. One or two would seem sufficient to me, and then perhaps maybe try something different that compliments instead of competes in the "more lex than you" battle... just MHO...

[valhallasound]

i have all valhalla plugins and i often get Lexicon reerbs recommended for Dark ambient like this one (i love the reverb!):

To answer your original question: Any of the Valhalla reverbs can get the sounds in this video. Most of the Lexicon plugins could get these sounds as well. As could a bunch of different plugins.

The key aspects I am hearing in this (very cool sounding) example:

- There are a lot of real-world sounds in this track that are recorded with a good stereo microphone. These sounds have their own "ambience" embedded within them, in the form of actual room reflections, left/right phase differences, that sort of thing. So, if you want to get those cool stereo environmental noises in your music, start with a good stereo microphone.

- The recorded sounds and synths are being processed by a digital reverb. You will want to use a true stereo reverb on the stereo environmental recordings, in order to avoid weird cancellations when the stereo mike signal is summed to mono. With the Valhalla plugins, pretty much all of the algorithms are true stereo, with the exception of the mono reverb mode in Shimmer (mono input, stereo output) and the Sanctuary mode in VintageVerb. I think all of the Lexicon plugin algorithms are true stereo.

- For the recordings of environmental sounds, you will probably want to turn down the early reflection level in whatever reverb you are using. The Attack control in ValhallaVintageVerb controls this, while IIRC the Lexicons have direct control over the ER levels.

- The reverb in this track sounds DIGITAL. A real acoustic space would have shorter high frequency decay. Reverb setting wise, you will probably want to use a brighter algorithm, with less "damping" of the high frequencies.

- Do you want a warm and wet reverb, or cold and icy? The modulation depth control allows you to make the choice! A reverb with a lot of modulation tends to sound more liquidy. For reverbs that decay away like a heartless glacier, turn the mod depth down, or the mod speed way down.

A bit of ambient reverb history (we're going to skip past a few tens of thousands of years of caves, and jump to the early 1970s):

In the pre-Lexicon days, people were able to get huge reverb-esque spaces by cascading tape echos. Vangelis used 3 RE-201 Space Echos in series to get this huge decay:



The wow/flutter/tape crinkle of the Space Echos resulted in an early example of modulated reverbs. There is a CRAZY amount of pitch modulation going on in a tape echo, and running 3 of them in series compounds this.

By the early 1980s, the Lexicon racks had become the ambient reverbs of choice, usually of the 224/224XL vintage. Brian Eno would work with whatever tools were in the studio (AFAIK, he didn't own his own fancy DSP processor until the Eventide H3000), but he would certainly work in studios that featured the 224, or the EMT250:



In general, the reverbs were owned by a higher end recording studio, with a few exceptions for the über rich. $8500 was a lot of money in the early 80s.

Flash forward to the early 90s, and a lot of ambient musicians had set up at home. Undoubtedly the lower priced Lexicon PCM70 was in use, but a lot of other musicians made heavy use of the much cheaper Alesis processors. The early work of Aphex Twin and Autechre was saturated with the Alesis Quadraverb (RDJ recently confirmed this in an interview):



Today, there are a wide variety of reverb plugins and processors that would work well for ambient music. The allpass loop topologies of the Lexicon, Alesis and AMS reverbs are in use, as well as the feedback delay network reverbs that had their roots in academia before being featured in Eventide hardware. All of these will add different colors to your sound.

I look at reverb algorithms as being similar to stompbox schematics. A tiny tweak here and there can result in huge changes to the sound. 2 stompboxes using the same schematic, but different transistors, can have very different sounds (compare the germanium Fuzz Face to the later silicon transistor revisions). Different designers will make component choices in order to dial in the sound they are looking for.

So, what is the best choice? It is what works for you. Remember, all this stuff is subjective. People will resonate with some sounds and not others, and will be inspired or repelled by a given user interface. Some people want less controls to dial up sounds quickly, while others want all the parameters they can get their hands on for detailed tweaking. All of this is up to you, and you get to make your choice!

Sean Costello

[egbert]

Great post, Sean.

[Sound Author]

Even the great David Griesinger admits (in retrospect) that he wishes he would have spent more time working on spaces that don't exist in nature instead of spending almost three decades trying to recreate natural spaces. Lexicon reverbs are perhaps THE MOST natural sounding algorithmic reverbs in existence.

That being said, Sean Costello's early "superhall" algorithm featured in Audio Damage EOS embraces unnatural digital hugeness in ways that Lexicon reverbs often do not. However, Lexicon has made some wonderful hall algos over the years, but I think their reverbs are best suited for more traditional applications for recording and mix engineering, whereas Valhalla reverbs are more aimed at the experimental side of electronic music production, with electric sheep to spare

[Warp69]

What I really like about the 480L is the spaciosness it can create - when I close the eyes and try to visualize the simulated space - I feel I'm inside a room where the sound can propagate naturally around the environment. On the other tests I feel a very narrowed space (most of the reverberation energy is in middle - monaural).

This is a strong statement. So how about a short demo? Please show a short snippet wich demonstrates this and then please post the dry audio so that we can test how other reverbs hold up against yours! Cool?

I believe I have posted a lot of files demonstrating the above on this forum, but here's another one.

Settings :
No Early Reflections - only reverberation.
Dif : 100%
Predelay : 0ms
ReverbTime : 8 sec
Reverb Decay filter (lowpass) : 3.6kHz (6dB)
Output Filter (lowpass) : 6kHz (6dB)
Attack/Shape/etc : 0 (fast attack)
Mix : 50% (you might need to change this depending on the overall reverb volume)

Standard Stereo mode.

http://www.relab.dk/downloads/sound/KVR ... x_Size.wav
http://www.relab.dk/downloads/sound/KVR ... x_Size.wav
http://www.relab.dk/downloads/sound/KVR ... f_Size.wav

The two different Hall algorithms with maximum size and Random Hall with half the size.

Dry : https://www.gearslutz.com/board/10565489-post167.html

[Warp69]

Lexicon reverbs are perhaps THE MOST natural sounding algorithmic reverbs in existence.

I do think highly of David Griesinger and I can say a lot of positive things about the reverbs, but the above is not of them.

[dwozzle]

Lexicon reverbs are perhaps THE MOST natural sounding algorithmic reverbs in existence.

I do think highly of David Griesinger and I can say a lot of positive things about the reverbs, but the above is not of them.

Agreed. Lexicon verbs are gorgeous, in part because they're unnaturally rich and modulated.

[jens]

Great post, Sean.

Indeed - for me especially the Vangelis bit was an eye-opener... could be extremely helpful on my quest to go more and more analog/out of the box

*off to ebay to score a tape-delay*

[Sound Author]

Lexicon reverbs are perhaps THE MOST natural sounding algorithmic reverbs in existence.

I do think highly of David Griesinger and I can say a lot of positive things about the reverbs, but the above is not of them.

Agreed. Lexicon verbs are gorgeous, in part because they're unnaturally rich and modulated.

Well, as Sean pointed out, it's purely subjective, but I thought some of the spaces in the PCM 90 were impressively "natural" sounding.

Of course, I could get all "new age" and argue that humans and their technology are just as much a part of nature as anything else, encompassed within a perfectly natural universe .....

..... but yeah, I see what you're saying

[xx JPRacer xx]

You really should update your blog with all these great posts Sean!

[Sparky77]

Wow, this has become educational.
Who would have thunk it?

[egbert]

Wow, this has become educational.
Who would have thunk it?

KVR at its best