Question about Early Reflections in Verberate and Verberate 2

[jsg]

Hi,

When I listen to Verberate 2, the only way I can hear the Early Refection's effect on the sound is to turn the dry signal completely off. With Verberate, I cannot seem to hear the early reflections at all, no matter what the dry or reverberation level are set at.

I am accustomed to ER being independent of the dry signal and also hearing discrete echo (to some degree) so can someone explain how ER is actually working in both Verberate and Verberate 2?

Thanks!
Jerry Gerber
www.jerrygerber.com

[Winstontaneous]

We can wait for Stian to chime in about Verberate 2, I asked this about Verberate in this thread and here's his response from 2018. I have to admit the Acon implementation of ER/LR/Dry is still the most confusing of any reverb I use regularly. Especially weird is that 1) I believe ER fader is an offset on top of the Reverb fader, so 2) The Reverb fader affects the level of ERs even when Reverb fader is unchecked. I generally prefer an ER/LR balance control and a Wet/Dry control, or I'm fine with individual Dry/ER/LR controls as long as they are independent.

Hi Jens,

While I think Verberate sounds quite nice and convincing, I am really puzzled by the extremely low output gain of the ER - even at +18dB (and dry @unity) it's barely audible and for the life of me I could not tell a difference between the different modes/algos... what do I not get?

The ER level is a post fader and dependent on the reverb level. You can solo the ERs by disabling the dry and late reverb signal using the check boxes to the right of the text entry fields.

Best,
Stian

Hi Stian, I generally use Verberate as a Send effect with Dry signal off and Reverb level locked. By doing so, am I hearing presets with the Early to Reverb ratio intended by the patch creator? Reading your reply above, I feel like the answer is "yes," but I want to be sure. This is the one aspect of Verberate's operation I find less than intuitive...I generally prefer plugins with a single Early/Late balance control for this reason. Thanks!

Yes, that's right. The dry signal toggle doesn't affect the early reflections level and you hear the presets as intended. An early / late balance control could maybe be more intuitive than the current approach. I'll consider that.

Best,
Stian

[stian]

Hi guys!

Sorry for the late reply regarding the early reflections in Verberate 2. I know the ER works a bit different in Verberate than in other plug-ins, and the reason is that we want a natural transition between early reflections and the late reverb tail. So, there's not really an ER level setting, but it's called "ER boost". High ER boost levels will amplify the "attack" of the early reflections so that they are more pronounced, but the ERs are faded out to the late reverb level for a natural transition. Here are two impulse responses measured from the "Large Hall - Natural" preset -- one with a high ER boost level and the other one with a low ER boost level:

High ER boost:


Low ER boost:


Best,
Stian

[Winstontaneous]

Thanks, Stian, a couple questions.
- Is the timing of the transition from ER to LR governed by Size and ER algorithm?
- How does the Bloom parameter fit into the fadeout from ER to LR?

From the Verberate 2 manual:

VIVID HALL ONLY – Bloom (%) The bloom parameter changes build-up time of the reverb and is specified in percent relative to the room size. The late reverb build-up gets quicker with Bloom values less than 100% and slower with values above.

[stian]

Hi!

Thanks, Stian, a couple questions.
- Is the timing of the transition from ER to LR governed by Size and ER algorithm?

The transition timing is governed by the room size parameter alone, actually.

- How does the Bloom parameter fit into the fadeout from ER to LR?

The bloom parameter doesn't affect the transition point in time, but the late reverb level will be lower at the transition with higher bloom values. Hence, the early reflection level at the transition is reduced equally.

Best,
Stian