MTurboReverb preset making action, let's make the ultimate reverb! ;)

[Chandlerhimself]

Well, fellow preset designers, my entry in the competition to make a MTurboReverb preset is one geared towards percussive sounds, but can also thicken up pads and other sounds. I’m not using any early reflections; here is the late reverb algorithm:

a(0.7;11);a(0.7;23);a(0.7;9);a(0.7;19);p[#an[fl;a;fh;a;v;a]]

By having in the front only four allpass filters, and hand tuning the diffusion and length of these first four critical allpass filters (I simply made the decays relatively prime to each other and gave them about as high of a diffusion as I could before the allpasses started making an unpleasant ring), we can get a nice diffuse field quickly (especially when size and decay are small) which, while a bit colored, builds up quickly enough to be really nice for drums (as well as piano sounds or synth pads).

We brute force the decay portion of the reverb; because of the nature of the “an” (all-pass normalized feedback loop) module, the maximum decay is about 4 or 5 seconds. While I’m a big fan of huge reverberant washes, those are less challenging to make (when in doubt, just add some more allpass filters), and I want something a little more tricky for my preset.

Right now, the preset has only one knob: Decay (which affects both size and decay time). I will add some more knobs to the preset before sending it off to Melda for consideration.

I just tried it and it does sound good. I like the overall sound of it. It seems like the same design as the eventide blackhole, but with fewer allpass filters. The only criticism I have is that it doesn't follow the decay time well. I think if you can work that out it will be a really nice preset.

A word of a advice to everyone making presets. It is better to work from the presets already there and add your stuff "under the hood" rather than try to redo the GUI. If you do that things will go much quicker and I'm sure it will be less stress for you and Vojtech

[Roman Empire]

Can you unlock Phil Spector with this???
No VST reverbs I´m aware of can do this convincingly.

Best Regards

Roman Empire

Ok let me rephrase this:

Can you emulate echo chambers as they sounded on Spectors 60s records, or also dusty old 140´s assumed to be used here:



(Sorry bout Saville)


Best Regards

Roman Empire

[wildcafe]

I love the topic!
@caulixtla: thanks for your algorithm. It's some kind of tutorial for me to get my career as "reverb designer" started ...

[Sampleconstruct]

Here is another warped experiment, processing another EP impro (caution - too much jazz!) with a custom preset, combining warped delay effects with a long tail (2 LR modules, no ER modules involved), tweaking the assigned Macro on they fly, an LFO is also participating for more subtle warp effects.

[XComposer]

Lovely "silky" effect. I hope that a preset of this kind will be present.

[caulixtla]

Can you emulate echo chambers as they sounded on Spectors 60s records, or also dusty old 140´s assumed to be used here:

I actually have been researching this yesterday. To get the “Wall of Sound”, we need:

* An early reflection wash based on an impulse response of a chamber similar to the ones Spector used
* The decay will have to be fairly few allpasses in series to make the diffusion, but with the delay coefficients tuned to get the same color as, say, the snare reverb at the beginning of “Be My Baby”.
* A lot of really good musicians in a room which also has reverberation. To properly simulate this, we will need good musicians (open up your wallet!), and we will need the room they recorded those hits in. Without the room, we will need to make multiple impulse responses of the room, one for each musician’s position.

In terms of the comment about the decay time, the decay knob in this algorithm does not have a time, but a percentage (I don’t see a way of compensating for the decay time change when I have nested allpasses like this in MTurboReverb, but I can change what the decay knob says). It affects both the size and the decay, since the algorithm I posted sounds weird with big size — small decay, and downright resonant with small size — long decay. I also have a “density” knob which affects the complexity of the reverb.

For people who want to understand allpass, comb filter, and delay line based reverb topologies, one good way to do so is to read Sean Costello’s writings, such as https://valhalladsp.com/2012/08/21/buil ... laubermod/

[caulixtla]

a(0.7;11);a(0.7;23);a(0.7;9);a(0.7;19);p[#an[fl;a;fh;a;v;a]]

A word of a advice to everyone making presets. It is better to work from the presets already there and add your stuff "under the hood" rather than try to redo the GUI. If you do that things will go much quicker and I'm sure it will be less stress for you and Vojtech

Thanks for this advice. What I am going to do is take the plate preset, and just change a couple of the knobs, and probably removing a bunch of knobs in the “easy” mode having to do with early reflections. I know this is a Melda product, but I want the easy mode to have relatively few knobs (decay, density, low shelf, high shelf, predelay and probably a couple of others).

[MeldaProduction]

Ok, folks, so a little video tutorial for the reverb designers

[meloco_go]

Well, um, one thing I still don't understand is how to actually same active preset.

Also, with the idea I have I need to be able to add some sort of dampening to the ER, preferably separately. Is it possible?

[DarkStar]

You cannot save it back as an Active Preset; instead just save it an an ordinary preset (click the 'nine dots' Preset button at the top). All the Easy screen config will be saved too.

I wouldn't think that the ERs would have any dampening.

[MeldaProduction]

Correct. As explained in the first post and the video, just send the preset over via email. Dampening in ER doesn't make much sense to me. If you need that, us LR.

[Roman Empire]

Can you emulate echo chambers as they sounded on Spectors 60s records, or also dusty old 140´s assumed to be used here:

I actually have been researching this yesterday. To get the “Wall of Sound”, we need:

* An early reflection wash based on an impulse response of a chamber similar to the ones Spector used
* The decay will have to be fairly few allpasses in series to make the diffusion, but with the delay coefficients tuned to get the same color as, say, the snare reverb at the beginning of “Be My Baby”.
* A lot of really good musicians in a room which also has reverberation. To properly simulate this, we will need good musicians (open up your wallet!), and we will need the room they recorded those hits in. Without the room, we will need to make multiple impulse responses of the room, one for each musician’s position.

In terms of the comment about the decay time, the decay knob in this algorithm does not have a time, but a percentage (I don’t see a way of compensating for the decay time change when I have nested allpasses like this in MTurboReverb, but I can change what the decay knob says). It affects both the size and the decay, since the algorithm I posted sounds weird with big size — small decay, and downright resonant with small size — long decay. I also have a “density” knob which affects the complexity of the reverb.

For people who want to understand allpass, comb filter, and delay line based reverb topologies, one good way to do so is to read Sean Costello’s writings, such as https://valhalladsp.com/2012/08/21/buil ... laubermod/

Wow, that´s alot of research you´ve done there! Sounds like the most difficult reverb to reproduce in the world!
The closest I´ve heard was a guy who made an IR from... guess what: Be my baby. Didn´t sound bad, just not very organic. If this will be possible with MTurboReverb, I´m so gonna buy it!

Best Regards

Roman Empire

[MeldaProduction]

Just out of curiosity - does anyone has an IR of this "Spectors" thing? (personally I don't it will be too complex, but who knows, without actually checking anything that would do such a reverb, it's sort of impossible)

[Ah_Dziz]

Just started fiddling with this thing this afternoon. I've built a whole bunch of algorithms from the ground up to figure out whats going on under the hood. This thing is damn impressive. I am terrible at assigning macros and whatnot because I usually do all my programming on a song by song basis. I'm curious though. would anybody be interested in a collection of FSU weirdo reverb Active presets? I've made some insane drum rooms and lush piano verbs as well as some cool spatial ER effects, but the things that this does when you abuse the algorithm programming are crazy and something I feel I could contribute to. With the more regular reverbs I feel like I could make a great collection of normal presets, but that's just because I'm tuning the algorithm to the source type I'm working with. So does anybody want batshit crazy reverb active presets that will make anything you feed them sound nuts? I'm thinking mostly stuff with just a few knobs that do weird rhythmic stuff and whatnot.

[Ah_Dziz]

Are people trying to get that big reverb sound on the drums from "Be My Baby"?