ADPTR AUDIO Utopia is here

[zerocrossing]

Yeah - at one point during development Marc (ADPTR) and I threw around some other labels than just "reverb". But in the end, calling it "spatial ambience synthesis" or whatever didn't feel very helpful, and we're fine with it just being an unconventional reverb.

I'd say that's a bit of a conundrum since when people see the word "reverb" they automatically roll their eyes. It's a bit of a running joke here.

But I can understand that something like "spatial ambient synthesis" sounds a little too vague and come across as being a little pretentious/serious and people will probably go "it's just a reverb" anyway!

That being said, what's really impressing me is how you can take it into really uncoventional territory where the word reverb really doesn't convey what it's doing.

I'm getting some really creepy sounds with the blocks setting really low and adjusting the other parameters. And with the various eqing options you can easily tame it if it gets too annoying. Very very cool.

This was one of those good back-and-forth things you get in a partnership.

My first prototype had something similar, which (because the piano is my main instrument) was linked to lifting the sustain pedal, since I naturally did that when changing chords. As I iterated the algorithm, that slowly got replaced by Auto Clear, which works completely differently, but could treat different frequencies separately and also worked without the sustain pedal.

Then two months before release (after 3-5 years of product dev), my partner asked for a manually-triggered clear again, and I realised doing partial buffer resets could be fun and fit in well with the dynamics-envelope stuff, and now it's one of the funkier features.

It's a really cool feature. Unfiltered Audio tried some automated buffer swapping thing with Tails and I found it never really worked properly and ended up too unpredictable for my taste. But kudos to them for trying something new.

I really like the partial clear aspect of it. It makes it way more usable imho.

Really excellent work. I'm having a ton of fun with it.

It's a spectral spatializer.

[pekbro]

Pretty unstable for me in Bitwig sadly, causes my audio driver to die and restart soon as I pass any audio through it. It does work elsewhere.

[aMUSEd]

What's the latency like for this? I don't use Tails because it's too much and Adaptiverb is only just usable in realtime.

[Funky40]

it reports no latency (GP)

[kraster]

The manual (and videos) mention that the spectral knob is a macro control that controls two other behind the scenes controls called Focus and Atmosphere.

I'd love an option to go even further under the hood with this.

It's a great reverb but it's an even better weird atmosphere generator and I'd love the ability to be able to explore that aspect of the plugin even further.

[aMUSEd]

Ok just trying this now. Compared to Aadptiverb it has much better responsiveness to real time playing and is also less intrusive - and the sound is clearer, but Adaptiverb can create more complex tuned and experimental effects. Compared to Tails it is also much better in realtime, Tails is pretty much impossible to use in real time, but as a send it can create some lovely spaces that are much cleaner and denser than Utopia, but it isn't as good for more experimental fx. So I would say out of the 3 Utopia is likely to get the most use.

[Funky40]

....... but it's an even better weird atmosphere generator and I'd love the ability to be able to explore that aspect of the plugin even further.

yeah, bought it for that.
Yeah, pronounce those uses even better vs. it´s further development. That´d be nice.

as a reverb is the soundquality vs. what i´m used to, and vs. what i like to have, not on par to replace that nice, decent Room ambience Space, or hall reverb.

But to combine both types of reverbs is a great thing.

[kraster]

Ok just trying this now. Compared to Aadptiverb it has much better responsiveness to real time playing and is also less intrusive - and the sound is clearer, but Adaptiverb can create more complex tuned and experimental effects. Compared to Tails it is also much better in realtime, Tails is pretty much impossible to use in real time, but as a send it can create some lovely spaces that are much cleaner and denser than Utopia, but it isn't as good for more experimental fx. So I would say out of the 3 Utopia is likely to get the most use.

Yeah, that's my conclusion. Adaptiverb definitely does the pitch/key tracking thing exceptionally well but it's extremely resource heavy and feels kind of weighed down by it.

I never really got on with Tails. I found its USP of buffer swapping never really worked properly. For example the release time of one buffer into another always feels too short and the triggering of the buffer swap was really inconsistent.

Also the basic reverb algos in Tails just don't sound particularly good to me. There are one or two that sound decent but a lot of them have a very prominent sonic imprint that seems way too specific. They seem to be derived from the algos in Silo. They work great in Silo since it leans more into sound design/sound scape territory by default.

Utopia gets a lot right. The partial buffer clear along with being able to trigger it with different methods works really well. It's not as automated as Tails but given the fact that Tails doesn't really work I think this is a better solution.

All the other additions to Utopia make it extremely flexible. The eqs for reverb decay and the separate eqs for output are really useful.

I also like how you can load separate tonal presets into the overall reverb presets. Each preset contains a unique setting for the spectral characteristics (which is apart from the block setting) as well as eq settings.

[kraster]

....... but it's an even better weird atmosphere generator and I'd love the ability to be able to explore that aspect of the plugin even further.

yeah, bought it for that.
Yeah, pronounce those uses even better vs. it´s further development. That´d be nice.

as a reverb is the soundquality vs. what i´m used to, and vs. what i like to have, not on par to replace that nice, decent Room ambience Space, or hall reverb.

But to combine both types of reverbs is a great thing.

Yeah. I wouldn't turn to it as a default for real spaces but for more artificial soundscapes/tails it's fantastic. As I said above it's similar to a cloudy granular reverb/delay but more controlled and flexible.

[enCiphered]

Has anyone compared it to TAL G-Verb, specifically in the experimental sound territory?
It is currently 10% off, so I'm wondering if it’s worth picking up or if I should try Utopia instead.
I’m mostly interested in unnatural, interesting reverb textures.

[escalona]

This looks / sounds terrific. Can any users comment on the CPU / latency hit?

Showing as zero latency in Live, no huge cpu hit I noticed

No latency and 7% CPU hit on a i9 13th gen 24 cores

[sl1200mk2]

Pretty unstable for me in Bitwig sadly, causes my audio driver to die and restart soon as I pass any audio through it. It does work elsewhere.

EDIT: Saw your posts on another forum regarding specs.

Sorry it's not working well for you. Maybe share details to determine differences, but it's working well for me in Bitwig. I'm using Win 11, Bitwig 5.3.5, and the VST3 version.

[pekbro]

Pretty unstable for me in Bitwig sadly, causes my audio driver to die and restart soon as I pass any audio through it. It does work elsewhere.

EDIT: Saw your posts on another forum regarding specs.

Sorry it's not working well for you. Maybe share details to determine differences, but it's working well for me in Bitwig. I'm using Win 11, Bitwig 5.3.5, and the VST3 version.

Thanks, not overly worried about it, there are "too many" other things I'd like to get than just
that, all of the comparably priced sadly...

[kraster]

Has anyone compared it to TAL G-Verb, specifically in the experimental sound territory?
It is currently 10% off, so I'm wondering if it’s worth picking up or if I should try Utopia instead.
I’m mostly interested in unnatural, interesting reverb textures.

Tal G verb is one of my favourite plugins. It's insanely capable. Basically a granular processor and delay into an FDN reverb or vice versa.

It's exceptionally good for granular cloud stuff. The grain pitch sequencer is really useful and from a granular standpoint it's really easy to understand. The FDN reverb is very deep and a bit too cryptic for me. But very powerful. You can go from lush to metallic by adjusting a few parameters.

Utopia is more like Adaptiverb where it's a more traditional reverb but with more control over the spectral content. You can definitely go really weird by adjusting the spectral blocks size and the ability to eq the decay of different frequencies. (I would love to see a bit more tweakability around the spectral end of Utopia)

There's obviously going to be some overlap but ultimately they are pretty distinct from one another.

I think that G verb is more tweakable and is effectively two plugins in one but can be a bit cryptic when it comes to the FDN.

Whereas Utopia is more accessible and quicker to dial in but as a result a bit less deep in terms of getting to the basic building components.

Both are very capable of producing some really otherwordly and ethereal results.

Both are fantastic.

[c_voltage]

Oh lol (sorry oftop) reading about TAL-G Verb (and some discount), i'm going to official site, downloaded demo, installed (ie deleting all except vst2), launch daw and finding out in list two different variants of vst2 TAL-G reverbs.
I'm sitting in a stupor and thinking, wow, this is cool coding. From one dll.
And I notice a sign that it is already registered.
And then it dawned on me, that I bought it once upon (and this is v2 already).
Damn, this is already a GAS clinic. Seriously, usually there's at least some recollection.
Upd: No, for example i always excellent remember that i have\bought TAL_Dac. But in reverb case, absolutely no association.