Best reverbs !?

[audiouser720]

Does anybody compare Primavera and Twangstrom from U-HE?

I compared a bunch of spring reverbs a couple years ago and wrote about it here. This was before Primavera or Fuse Audio V-REV 63
existed. But Twangström ranked pretty low on my list even then. It just doesn’t sound like a spring.

Here’s what I said about it then:

I found u-he Twangström to be pretty artificial sounding too. There's something uncanny about it that just never tricks my ear into thinking it's a spring. It's too clean and nice, and just sounds like a generic reverb plugin to me.

I think our opinion regarding Twangström is one of the only things where the cat and me are in full agreement.

It really just doesn't really sound like a spring reverb at all.

(For a number of reasons, each of which Sascha (its developer - who generally speaking I hold in hight regard) would flat out deny. It's pretty save to say that he personally has no real experience of his own when it comes to using spring-reverb - prolly hates the things with a passion.)

Twangström is to spring reverbs what Blue Cat's Spinal Vibe is to rotary speakers.

Its sibling plugin Colour Copy doesn’t sound exactly like BBD either. It’s more like an approximation and it is a rather smooth and lovely sounding delay. I think it’s made by the same person (Sascha?) so perhaps Twangstrom is similar in a way, so that it is not an accurate emulation just a spring-ish sounding reverb. I think these two plugins are ports from their synths (Repro and Bazille). I use Colour Copy all the time. However, I reach for TENS when I need a spring in the box, which is a unique one as well as it sounds more like plate rather than your typical spring. The only spring reverb reference I have is the one in my Moog Granny

[Medenka]

u-he's hardware 'emulations' are soundgoodized. That is done on purpose, because he wants to sell. They sound better than the actual hardware, and don't have any of HW's problems. These guys know how to code, and you can't blame them of being incompetent, or not knowing the actual hardwares. I mean - including their HW emu synthesizers.

[audiouser720]

u-he's hardware 'emulations' are soundgoodized. That is done on purpose, because he wants to sell. They sound better than the actual hardware, and don't have any of HW's problems. These guys know how to code, and you can't blame them of being incompetent, or not knowing the actual hardwares. I mean - including their HW emu synthesizers.

What does soundgoodising mean please. This post seems to be controversial. You praise u-he, but they also don't know what they are doing and are incompetent?

[DJErmac]

u-he's hardware 'emulations' are soundgoodized. That is done on purpose, because he wants to sell. They sound better than the actual hardware, and don't have any of HW's problems. These guys know how to code, and you can't blame them of being incompetent, or not knowing the actual hardwares. I mean - including their HW emu synthesizers.

What does soundgoodising mean please. This post seems to be controversial. You praise u-he, but they also don't know what they are doing and are incompetent?

No, you didn't understand correctly. He wrote nobody can say they are incompetent.
A soundgoodizer is a "sound-good-izer", something that makes anything sound good, sound better. So he wrote that their emulations have something that make them sound better than the real machine, they are "sound-good-ized".

[audiouser720]

Yeah I might have misinterpreted that, sorry

[DJErmac]

As you see, all is fine.

At the moment I'm only using Cinematic Rooms Pro. I think I'm having a crush...

[Medenka]

u-he's hardware 'emulations' are soundgoodized. That is done on purpose, because he wants to sell. They sound better than the actual hardware, and don't have any of HW's problems. These guys know how to code, and you can't blame them of being incompetent, or not knowing the actual hardwares. I mean - including their HW emu synthesizers.

What does soundgoodising mean please. This post seems to be controversial. You praise u-he, but they also don't know what they are doing and are incompetent?

https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... odizer.htm

First it was a plugin/effect, then it became a word. Lots of people are using it (the word) on music software forums.

[rasmusklump]

In the short time since it's release, PSP Easyverb 2 became my standard reverb for nearly all situations.
Fantastic plugin. Love this reverb.

[jens]

u-he's hardware 'emulations' are soundgoodized. That is done on purpose, because he wants to sell. They sound better than the actual hardware, and don't have any of HW's problems. These guys know how to code, and you can't blame them of being incompetent, or not knowing the actual hardwares. I mean - including their HW emu synthesizers.

Lol... that doesn't make any sense. A plugin that claims to emulate a spring reverb should sound like a spring reverb. You can't say it's perfectly fine if it doesn't fullfill that promiss at all because it's "soundgoodized" - seriously: that's some of the biggest zealot BS I've read in quite a while.

(And boards like KVR (and Gearspace, etc.) are stuffed with zealot BS.)

Oh, and no, Twangström doesn't sound better than a spring reverb at all in my opinion. I own the thing and literally never use it because I just don't know what to do with it. And I would if it had anything else to offer besides sounding like a failed attempt at emulating spring-reverb.

[jens]

Its sibling plugin Colour Copy doesn’t sound exactly like BBD either. It’s more like an approximation and it is a rather smooth and lovely sounding delay. I think it’s made by the same person (Sascha?) so perhaps Twangstrom is similar in a way, so that it is not an accurate emulation just a spring-ish sounding reverb. I think these two plugins are ports from their synths (Repro and Bazille). I use Colour Copy all the time. However, I reach for TENS when I need a spring in the box, which is a unique one as well as it sounds more like plate rather than your typical spring. The only spring reverb reference I have is the one in my Moog Granny

TBH I think Colour Copy sounds really nice though and has a high useability factor.

Not sure about CC, but Twangström is certainly really supposed to be a perfectly accurate spring-reverb emulation. It's just that the transducers are missing or so because Sascha thought they weren't important - something like that - I'm not really sure anymore.

Maybe he's gonna chime in.

[justin3am]

Oh, and no, Twangström doesn't sound better than a spring reverb at all in my opinion. I own the thing and literally never use it because I just don't know what to do with it. And I would if it had anything else to offer besides sounding like a failed attempt at emulating spring-reverb.

These days, I'm mostly using spring and plate reverbs, in hardware and software. Twangstrom can sound very similar to my Wellspring or like a less noisy version of my Fostex 3180. It takes more work to get it to sound like the spring tank in one of my guitar amps but it can get there when I want it to (which is not very often). I honestly ignore all the talk about modeling stuff and just ask if it does the job I need it to do.

[jens]

Oh, and no, Twangström doesn't sound better than a spring reverb at all in my opinion. I own the thing and literally never use it because I just don't know what to do with it. And I would if it had anything else to offer besides sounding like a failed attempt at emulating spring-reverb.

These days, I'm mostly using spring and plate reverbs, in hardware and software. Twangstrom can sound very similar to my Wellspring or like a less noisy version of my Fostex 3180. It takes more work to get it to sound like the spring tank in one of my guitar amps but it can get there when I want it to (which is not very often). I honestly ignore all the talk about modeling stuff and just ask if it does the job I need it to do.

TBh I never heard of either of them but a quick look seems to indicate that these can sound rather untypical for spring-reverbs (at least the Wellspring is also alot more than a pure spring reverb).

Care to post some examples? That would be nice.

All the spring tanks I have (~10) Twangström can't really touch imo. We've had that discussion back in the day with Sascha - I ended up posting some vocals that I had sent through a Type IV and then Sascha approached it with Twangström. And while I'll gladly admit that his result came a lot closer* than my own experiments with his emulation, it wasn't really there.
He said as much, mentioning it was the missing transducers iIrc - I dunno for certain.

But then again these vocals weren't very dynamic to begin with and the dynamic build up of "boinginess" and "splashiness" is what is imo the most typical ingredient of typical spring reverb. (Something Sascha flat out denied by the way, if I don't remember it wrongly.)


*which made me give in and purchase Twangström - something I feel buyer's remorse over until this day.

[comfortablynick]

The UAD plugin is a direct port of the hardware

That's for the 224. But Lexicon approved the 480.

There seems to be some debate about this; Michael Carnes said the 224 algorithms were lost long ago when they got rid of the old computers it was on (!). The UAD 224 sounds great though, whatever its provenance.

Relab claims the LX480 is sample-accurate to the hardware, and it also includes the improved "RHall HD", which is what I use most of the time. I'm not sure how much better the reverb is on the UAD but if it has the effects, that's something we don't have with the Relab. I wonder why UAD is taking so long making the native version available. Maybe for Signature bundle 3?

[justin3am]

Care to post some examples? That would be nice.

All the spring tanks I have (~10) Twangström can't really touch imo. We've had that discussion back in the day with Sascha - I ended up posting some vocals that I had sent through a Type IV and then Sascha approached it with Twangström. And while I'll gladly admit that his result came a lot closer* than my own experiments with his emulation, it wasn't really there.
He said as much, mentioning it was the missing transducers iIrc - I dunno for certain.

Ah okay. That boing/splash/drippy sound isn't typical of studio springs, that's more typical of small tanks/guitar amps. The stereo springs I've used all sound closer to plate reverbs. I frequently use the 3180 as one of my main reverb sends on mixes, if that tells you anything. The sounds of my Fender '63 or any of my more guitar oriented springs are much boing-ier/drippier. I agree that sound is more difficult to achieve with Twangstrom.

I'll see if I have any examples I can post, on hand.

[jens]

Ah okay. That boing/splash/drippy sound isn't typical of studio springs, that's more typical of small tanks/guitar amps. The stereo springs I've used all sound closer to plate reverbs.

I see now where you're coming from - I sometimes like and use the more plate-like high end spring reverb emulations too, but even then I vastly prefer the afore-mentioned Klanghelm Tens (absolutely fabulous) and Fuse Audio Labs VREV-305 (really wonderful too)...


having said that: Twangström doesn't really aim to emulate these, I think - its name already strongly hints at the sort of spring reverbs I was referring too earlier, plus - what's more - U-He themselves claim that it features:

3 different reverberation tanks, inspired by the most popular ones built in the guitar & instrument amps that made rock ’n’ roll

so the kind of more plate-like studio spring reverbs you're hearing in it (And I'm not doubting it) is apparently not at all what Sascha was aiming at when developing Twangström. So we're expecting something else from it than you do. And it doesn't deliver.

I'll see if I have any examples I can post, on hand.

Please do - certainly very interesting either way and an opportunity to look at Twangström from a different angle and to learn something in the process.