Plugin specializing in reverse delay and reverb?

[Mr D]

Hi folks,

I'm imagining a plugin that specializes in reverse delays & reverbs.

So i mean: you set it to 1 bar (for example), then, in your DAW, you shift the source audio on the track 1 bar earlier time, et voilà, you have reverse reverb or delay preceding your sounds.

Perhaps such an effect already exists? Obviously one could just do it manually (reverse your audio, run it through the effect, reverse again), but it would handy to have it as a ready-made effect.

Cheers!

[Jac459]

There one I know the nearest of what you say is from Rob Papen.
https://www.robpapen.com/rp-reverse.html
I own it but don't use it much tbh.

Also there is portal from output but with a granular twist.

[Mr D]

Thanks, i checked out a RP-Reverse video on Youtube.

It's a cool plugin, but that's not what i meant.

Imagine you have a snare drum on the two and four.
You reverse it, then run it through a reverb. Record it, then reverse it again.
Now you still have your original snare sound, but it has a reverb before it that swells up from nothing, is loudest as the attack of the snare hits.

One variation on this would be that that the reverb is recorded on the unreversed snare, then (if you imagine you're looking at the audio track), the reverb is flipped in the vertical (y) axis at the transient point of the snare.

I appreciate this would all require some clever coding and management of the buffer, but it seems possible to me!

[Mr D]

EDIT: actually, i'm not 100% sure what i mean (which of the two examples would work best).

I just have the feeling there's a cool effect possible without having to manually reverse and bounce your audio.

Thinking about it some more, you would also want some of the same reverb (but normal) on your original sound, and also the ability to time-stretch (probably make it shorter) the reverse, preceding reverb, but with it still aligning correctly.

Calling all clever plugin coders!

[Jac459]

Thanks, i checked out a RP-Reverse video on Youtube.

It's a cool plugin, but that's not what i meant.

Imagine you have a snare drum on the two and four.
You reverse it, then run it through a reverb. Record it, then reverse it again.
Now you still have your original snare sound, but it has a reverb before it that swells up from nothing, is loudest as the attack of the snare hits.

One variation on this would be that that the reverb is recorded on the unreversed snare, then (if you imagine you're looking at the audio track), the reverb is flipped in the vertical (y) axis at the transient point of the snare.

I appreciate this would all require some clever coding and management of the buffer, but it seems possible to me!

Actually you made yourself very clear even the first time, I was just trying to find "approaching" plugins. But I agree this not exactly what you want.

[Mr D]

Gotcha! ..... actually i'm not sure that the RP plug doesn't do it, i'm gonna try the demo.

[CinningBao]

This one came out a few years ago and I gather it does the job of reverse delay a bit easier than the standard method (as you describe) but I've never actually used it so it might be a load of old tat.

https://unitedplugins.com/Mirror/

I think people (devs) who try to approach this problem of doing reverse stuff are doing it all wrong, but I appreciate there isn't instantly another way of doing it other than buffering the signal (which means playing it into the plugin) and reversing this 'stored memory' of the signal.

My question to the community of plugin devs is, when will you start using ARA in more advanced, experimental ways? It's great for capturing audio signals for advanced pitch analysis and manipulation. But it can also be used for this purpose.

So here's the challenge from the bottom of a thread about reverse reverbs/delays, who will be the first dev to use ARA in a reverse reverb/delay plugin? If I had the framework and time to do so, believe me, I'd be having a look, and I know it's possible, and it would literally instantly solve 'this' (doing reverse reverbs/delays the 'correct' way). I wonder who'll be the first?

[mellotronaut]

Mirror does it:


it is on sale too till tomorrow

[Mr D]

So here's the challenge from the bottom of a thread about reverse reverbs/delays, who will be the first dev to use ARA in a reverse reverb/delay plugin?

What's ARA?

Please explain!

[Mr D]

I tried the Mirror demo.

It sounds pretty bad.

Thinking about it some more, you would definitely also need some ducking built in, especially for something like vocals.

Needs a clever developer to tackle it. Someone with good ears.

Unfortunately Cubase only allows 2000ms of positive track delay. Longer might be needed, and also being able to set the delay in note values would be helpful. Ableton?

[CinningBao]

So here's the challenge from the bottom of a thread about reverse reverbs/delays, who will be the first dev to use ARA in a reverse reverb/delay plugin?

What's ARA?

Please explain!

It stands for Audio Random Access and is a tool devs can use to automatically dump the audio from a host track into the plugin for processing. I use it all the time in Melodyne to instantly populate the plugin with my vocals or whatever needs Melodyning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Random_Access

Currently it has to be loaded as the first instance in an effects chain so can only import the 'raw' signal, but that would be enough to make reversing effects 'within the plugin' rather than at the DAW level. There may be a point in the future where it could be placed into a chain of effects, such that the material inside the plugin is updated dynamically so the reverse effects are automatically updated with the newly affected material, but that's probably quite a way off.

[Mr D]

Ok, so if i understand correctly, the plugin first needs to "record" the audio in real time. And after that it plays it back in sync with the DAW. So if you want to change the audio on the track, you need to re-record to the plugin again?

[CinningBao]

No, when ARA is working perfectly, which I think it does in Studio1(?) and maaaybe Cubase (but not Logic due to the way the audio transport was built on the MIDI engine, or Ableton I think(?)) it automatically populates the plugin buffer with the changes. In Logic you have to hit play to get it going but since Presonus helped invent it with Celemony, it works pretty seamlessly from what I understand.

[legendCNCD]

Valhalla delay has reverse modes, but does not specialize on them.

[jules99]

We're simply not there yet for plugins that do reversed swells before the actual sound. As it has been mentioned, this would be a use case for ARA which has not been adopted by Ableton, Bitwig, and FL Studio, three major DAWs in the world of electronic music production.

And what you are talking about is sound design, not vocal production, where plugin's can be sold at much higher prices at the moment.

So until that point, where ARA is everywhere and more companies publish plugins supporting it, and most importantly. ARA runs more stable in more DAWs (such a headache in Logic), you'll just HAVE to do it manually: re-sample with reverb on to new audio track, reverse, slide clip before the actual audio clip. No one's going to realize that you did it manually, I promise.