[Intro pricing extended] Available now: T-RackS Sunset Sound Studio Reverb

[glokraw]

Well, when you've been a KVR member for all of 2 weeks, and almost all of your posts are in this thread, people are going to wonder.

Two weeks and post-count have squat-all to to with credibility.
There's a lot to read 'elsewhere out there' if
1. you don't believe kvr members positive comments
2. you don't believe developers positive comments
3. you don't believe that a former employee of the studio
might corroborate such comments, and add their personal experiences.
4. you don't believe positive comments from other
websites.

Beyond that, some great reverb plugins arrived in
2018/2019/2020, Replika, Twangstrom, Dragonfly
and Raum, not to mention those emerging from
Reaktor devs, and other industry leaders.
They each serve their own purpose, which
is shared only partially with sssr.

Recording music using some those might
make you happy.
Cheers

[Teneyetus]

I understand the interest in having variation in mic placement. Having said that, over the past couple days I was texting with my old co-worker who actually helped setup and record when they were capturing the rooms. He said he helped make the calls on the spots they used in the rooms, and in my experience, they are the standard room mic positions. Anyone who’s worked in the rooms for a while knows the standard go-tos. There were a couple based on documentation from older sessions too - for example Position 3 in studio 2 was one I hadn’t seen before, I had heard people who worked there before me mention it as something that had been done, but I hadn’t seen it in use. Apparently it was based on recall sheets the owner had around.

More than the actual placement of the room mics in each room, since often times they were in relatively the same position session to session, I was interested in how they captured the booths. I wouldn’t normally think about how to mic up the booth ambience - so it was cool to get the low down on what they did.

He also told me that they did captures at varying gain levels on the pres as well.

Maybe if the plug in is well received they’ll consider doing a V2 with some more captures?! I’m sure anyone who has worked there over the years has seen some interesting mic placements, but based on listening I think they captured the essence of the rooms in the most frequently used mic placement areas really, really well.

I do enjoy the dampening options too. Often times gear/cases, mic power supplies etc, would get stacked up in the way of the built in sliding or swinging baffles along the walls, so once you a had settled on a configuration, it would be a chore to reconfigure - nothing like trying to reconfigure a room that people have been working in for a while without touching any mics! Now you just click and audition while you sit back and take another sip of coffee.

[Elektronisch]

Squids,

first of all, dont get any negative thoughts, i just find it funny, but is there a scenario where you are able to answer with just 2 lines instead of whole essay ?

p.s. no need to answer

[rj0]

Two weeks and post-count have squat-all to to with credibility.

There's a lot to read 'elsewhere out there' if
1. you don't believe kvr members positive comments
2. you don't believe developers positive comments
3. you don't believe that a former employee of the studio
might corroborate such comments, and add their personal experiences.
4. you don't believe positive comments from other
websites.

Excuse me? I never said that I didn't believe any of those.

I may be a bit of a marketing skeptic (inside experience), but I'm highly appreciative of useful and informative knowledge from all of the above, and he and Squids both have a wonderful collection of informative and entertaining stories, experience, and information, and are quite credible.

[glokraw]

You said "people are going to wonder", questioning a poster's
credibility. If someone actually reads the content in the posts,
and accepted the opinions at face value,
why would they wonder? I think a certain famous bearded artist
known to sometimes video-demo IK gear, also has a low post count.
Likely related to a rigorous practice regimen.

[evo2slo]

I understand the interest in having variation in mic placement. Having said that, over the past couple days I was texting with my old co-worker who actually helped setup and record when they were capturing the rooms. He said he helped make the calls on the spots they used in the rooms, and in my experience, they are the standard room mic positions. Anyone who’s worked in the rooms for a while knows the standard go-tos. There were a couple based on documentation from older sessions too - for example Position 3 in studio 2 was one I hadn’t seen before, I had heard people who worked there before me mention it as something that had been done, but I hadn’t seen it in use. Apparently it was based on recall sheets the owner had around.

More than the actual placement of the room mics in each room, since often times they were in relatively the same position session to session, I was interested in how they captured the booths. I wouldn’t normally think about how to mic up the booth ambience - so it was cool to get the low down on what they did.

He also told me that they did captures at varying gain levels on the pres as well.

Maybe if the plug in is well received they’ll consider doing a V2 with some more captures?! I’m sure anyone who has worked there over the years has seen some interesting mic placements, but based on listening I think they captured the essence of the rooms in the most frequently used mic placement areas really, really well.

I do enjoy the dampening options too. Often times gear/cases, mic power supplies etc, would get stacked up in the way of the built in sliding or swinging baffles along the walls, so once you a had settled on a configuration, it would be a chore to reconfigure - nothing like trying to reconfigure a room that people have been working in for a while without touching any mics! Now you just click and audition while you sit back and take another sip of coffee.

Yes, the dampening options are great. It's really nice to be able to quickly compare them.

Personally, I'm not all that interested in various mic placements. I think they sound great where they are and it's cool the session engineers helped with that. Every room has a sweet spot (sometimes a few more than one, but not many) and it's nice not having to scour through a ton of different impulses to find the one with the best mic location. In the chambers I agree with Squids that it's preferable to have the mics and speakers set where they always are. ISO is also a no brainer in that you want the mic where it always is for the singer. Stereo mics in this case, but I would think the placement would be the same. Or maybe they did something different? If you could share what your friend did for that I'd be curious to hear, but I understand if that's confidential..

The lack of placements that concern me are just the speaker placements in the live rooms. In all three rooms it's just in one single location. Whenever I record impulse responses of a room I always move the speaker to the different places in the room where the musicians would be, while leaving the mics as they are. This way the different instruments in a mix can actually be placed within a room and the early reflections of each will be much more accurately represented than as though they were all standing on top of each other in a single spot. When everything is all set up for an IR capture it is so easy to just move the speaker to a few different places, so it's disappointing that they chose not to do this.

It's interesting that they did captures at varying gain levels on the preamps. I guess this is what Squids was referring to as dynamic harmonic modeling. I understand that the convolution technology that IK is using is proprietary so I don't expect much in the way of explanation, but there is nothing in my use of this reverb that indicates different saturation levels based on input gain. I just did a quick test of the same input at +6dB and then -6dB. After level matching the output they perfectly null.

Maybe I'm missing something in how the various gain level captures are implemented, but to me these really do come across as standard IR convolutions. Very good sounding ones at that, but nothing dynamic about them.

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

I understand the interest in having variation in mic placement. Having said that, over the past couple days I was texting with my old co-worker who actually helped setup and record when they were capturing the rooms. He said he helped make the calls on the spots they used in the rooms, and in my experience, they are the standard room mic positions. Anyone who’s worked in the rooms for a while knows the standard go-tos. There were a couple based on documentation from older sessions too - for example Position 3 in studio 2 was one I hadn’t seen before, I had heard people who worked there before me mention it as something that had been done, but I hadn’t seen it in use. Apparently it was based on recall sheets the owner had around.

More than the actual placement of the room mics in each room, since often times they were in relatively the same position session to session, I was interested in how they captured the booths. I wouldn’t normally think about how to mic up the booth ambience - so it was cool to get the low down on what they did.

He also told me that they did captures at varying gain levels on the pres as well.

Maybe if the plug in is well received they’ll consider doing a V2 with some more captures?! I’m sure anyone who has worked there over the years has seen some interesting mic placements, but based on listening I think they captured the essence of the rooms in the most frequently used mic placement areas really, really well.

I do enjoy the dampening options too. Often times gear/cases, mic power supplies etc, would get stacked up in the way of the built in sliding or swinging baffles along the walls, so once you a had settled on a configuration, it would be a chore to reconfigure - nothing like trying to reconfigure a room that people have been working in for a while without touching any mics! Now you just click and audition while you sit back and take another sip of coffee.

This is probably the most important post in this thread.

Also, combined with the engineers that actually worked there not only being involved but those that weren't involved in the plugin but who also made amazing recordings there telling us the plugin truly feels like they are back at Sunset Sound says a lot.

Plus the comparisons that were posted in combination with the above quoted post, all together says A LOT.

[MooneyTunes]

It doesn't take a genius to see what's gone on with this thread. The saddest part is that KVR allows this and that other new releases will undoubtedly emulate it. Looking forward to an 8 page response of why I'm wrong and SSSR is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[imrae]

It doesn't take a genius to see what's gone on with this thread. The saddest part is that KVR allows this and that other new releases will undoubtedly emulate it. Looking forward to an 8 page response of why I'm wrong and SSSR is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

If you're really lucky, they'll give a (probably garbled) version of your comments to a big-name producer and come back with a condescending quote.

[Bombadil]

I went from 'no way José,' to 'better wait for the inevitable 70% discount,' to 'have to wait due to other expenses' to buying it. I think it is really good. I'm def not a shill.

Question: if an acoustic instrument or voice is recorded in less than an optimal setting, how will placing that track in one of the rooms or iso chambers improve it?

[evo2slo]

Question: if an acoustic instrument or voice is recorded in less than an optimal setting, how will placing that track in one of the rooms or iso chambers improve it?

You would want to deaden the less than optimal recording space as much as possible. If that can't be done, then try applying a de-reverberation plugin, or decreasing the sustain with an envelope shaper, to the recorded track before adding the room reverb.

[Bombadil]

Thanks for the tip. The 'studio' is our livingroom, which is fairly 'cosy,' (i.e. lots of book cases, a nice carpet, desks, couch, etc.) It isn't a sparsely furnished room, with lots of reflections. Still, it isn't an 'optimal' recording space.

[rj0]

You said "people are going to wonder", questioning a poster's
credibility. If someone actually reads the content in the posts,
and accepted the opinions at face value,
why would they wonder? I think a certain famous bearded artist
known to sometimes video-demo IK gear, also has a low post count.
Likely related to a rigorous practice regimen.

That's drawn from long experience at KVR (I read a heck of a lot more than I post).
From his experience, his knowledge, and his genuine enthusiasm for the product,
he's clearly credible.

Opinions inform about facts, but the two are very different things.

Choosing to believe only positive opinions, or only negative opinions, as a general approach to life, is clearly naive (as is uncritically accepting everything presented at face value), but treating opinions as genuine expressions of perspective and personal value by the individuals, is not. In other words, we can believe opinions are genuine (real experience and belief), without falling into the sense that we absolutely must agree with them. Rather, we learn by listening, critically analyzing, asking questions, and coming to our own personal perspectives and conclusions.

In the above case of our poster, he's provided a lot of solid knowledge, experience, and information. That's strong towards credibility (and there's a lot to be learned from what he's described), but it doesn't necessarily fall from that that I would appreciate the products he likes as much as he does.

[evo2slo]

Thanks for the tip. The 'studio' is our livingroom, which is fairly 'cosy,' (i.e. lots of book cases, a nice carpet, desks, couch, etc.) It isn't a sparsely furnished room, with lots of reflections. Still, it isn't an 'optimal' recording space.

"Lots of bookcases" to me equals a dream recording space, as long as you're willing to modify them somewhat. Try arranging the depths of the books in the bookcases to a 0,1,4,2,2,4,1 ratio - this emulates an N7 quadratic diffuser. So for example the furthest book to the left would have its spine flush to the edge, the next book 1" back from the edge, the next 4" back, etc... See what the furthest back you can push your books is and use that as the deepest ratio, so for example if you can only push the books back 5cm then go 0cm, 1.25cm, 5cm, 2.5cm, 2.5cm, 5cm, 1.25cm and keep repeating the pattern for however many books are on each shelf. If some books are thicker than others then place the thinner ones together. Try to get the widths of each "well" (in this case "books") as uniform as possible. Use your thickest books to determine the widest well width.

It doesn't have to be exact, even shuffling the depths randomly will have a nice diffusive effect, but best results will be gotten by following the quadratic residue series as closely as possible. Position yourself when recording so that the first early reflections hitting the microphone are reflecting off the bookshelves rather than smooth surfaces. Imagine mirrors that from where your instrument is you would see the microphone in, these are the first reflection locations and are the deadliest of enemies in non-optimal recording spaces.

Hope that helps, and sorry to others for going off topic.

I'd like to hear more about the dynamic harmonic modeling in the Sunset Sound Reverb if anyone from IK is willing to share. Is this referring to the impulse response recordings going into the preamps when they were captured, or an emulation within the plugin of the preamps?

[Bombadil]

Thanks again for the tips!