Valhalla FutureVerb

[medienhexer]

Seriously though, I expected a bit more from a reverb that calls itself "FutureVerb" than a 1970s digital reverb design paired with a 1970s digital delay.

Every time I see Size, Level, and Density on a so-called "realistic" reverb I get stabby. Instead we should be seeing Height, Width, Depth, and Absorption.

My understanding is this is about realism, but also about sounding good. If someone is really emulating sound pressure propagating inside a room filled with boundaries of a defined density (or acoustic porosity) in a strictly box-shaped room, then there are many more combinations of dimensions and materials that sound crap than combinations which sound beautiful.

There are scattering reflections, standing waves, comb filters, really unfortunate early reflection times which cause all sorts of masking and phase issues.

This plugin seems to be creating „in a room“ acoustics in kind of an idealised way, which avoids a lot of these issues. If it‘s really modeling the physical conditions at all (could just be a different methodology like a Quantum), he‘s probably sticking to ideal room dimension relations. The Size parameter would then act as a multiplier to the ideal ratio. I‘m fine with everything about this.

[jamcat]

This plugin seems to be creating „in a room“ acoustics in kind of an idealised way, which avoids a lot of these issues. If it‘s really modeling the physical conditions at all (could just be a different methodology like a Quantum), he‘s probably sticking to ideal room dimension relations. The Size parameter would then act as a multiplier to the ideal ratio.

This sounds reasonable. But even assuming all of this is correct, why give the user absolutely no frame of reference for the actual size of the room being modeled? Instead of some meaningless percentage devoid of context, why not display some meaningful metrics instead?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Lame.

If Valhalla actually wanted to make a "transparent and realistic" reverb, it would have 3D metric room dimensions that calculate reflections through ray-tracing, instead of simple delays derived from a percentage based size.

Just what the hell is a 50% sized room, anyways? 50% of what?

Lame!

Just use IR's or ray-traced room simulators. That's not what this is.

This is clearly trying to put advanced reverb algorithms, that try to do very specific things, into an easy-to-use interface. It's meant to be closer to the Exponential Audio verbs or Tai Chi from a sound/architecture perspective, while keeping the control set simple and easy to digest.

[pekbro]

Nice! Tho I probably won’t be picking this up for a while yet.

[vanerio]

I notice a big cpu bump compared to its brothers:
x4 Valhalla VintageVerb
x2 Valhalla Room

Sound is cool!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

This plugin seems to be creating „in a room“ acoustics in kind of an idealised way, which avoids a lot of these issues. If it‘s really modeling the physical conditions at all (could just be a different methodology like a Quantum), he‘s probably sticking to ideal room dimension relations. The Size parameter would then act as a multiplier to the ideal ratio.

This sounds reasonable. But even assuming all of this is correct, why give the user absolutely no frame of reference for the actual size of the room being modeled? Instead of some meaningless percentage devoid of context, why not display some meaningful metrics instead?

So if he just arbitrarily added an m at the end of the numbers you'd like it more? Oh ok, 9m got it! Now it's a 9m room! Just pretend then.

At least try it out and listen with your ears and determine if you like the sound.

[kraster]

Not the best. Just the cheapest.

Nope.

You're conflating price with quality.

One of the things that makes Valhalla so respected is the quality for the price.

I've spent multiples of the asking price of Valhalla's products on other reverbs and they're nowhere near as good.

[medienhexer]

Lame.

If Valhalla actually wanted to make a "transparent and realistic" reverb, it would have 3D metric room dimensions that calculate reflections through ray-tracing, instead of simple delays derived from a percentage based size.

Just what the hell is a 50% sized room, anyways? 50% of what?

Come to think of it: Does ray-tracing account for Phase? Is it based on the wave or the particle traits of light? Sound pressure doesn‘t have polarity like light rays have. Not sure ray tracing would work for reverb. Sound pressure isn‘t physically related to radiation.

[cryophonik]

Meh, why does anybody even bother to be bothered by marketing jargon anymore? It's an evil necessity that usually just says a big bunch of nothing. Read the feature set and listen to the demos or demo the plugin itself if you want to know what you're getting and let the words just be words.

[pekbro]

Ray Tracing is a good way to measure distances and calculate angles of reflection. Which does pertain to sound.

[jamcat]

Lame.

If Valhalla actually wanted to make a "transparent and realistic" reverb, it would have 3D metric room dimensions that calculate reflections through ray-tracing, instead of simple delays derived from a percentage based size.

Just what the hell is a 50% sized room, anyways? 50% of what?

Come to think of it: Does ray-tracing account for Phase? Is it based on the wave or the particle traits of light? Sound pressure doesn‘t have polarity like light rays have. Not sure ray tracing would work for reverb. Sound pressure isn‘t physically related to radiation.

Ray-tracing does work for reverb. It's simply a geometric method for tracking propagation paths of any type of wave that follows wave mechanics. If you know the path length, then you know the time delay, and from the time delay, you know the phase shift. So ray-based methods absolutely accounts for phase. This should be self-evident from the room modes created by room modelers.

As for light-based ray-tracing, it also is just geometric wave approximation that treats propagation as straight-line energy paths.

[trusampler]

@ Valhalla , Beautiful work as always !

[medienhexer]

Ray Tracing is a good way to measure distances and calculate angles of reflection. Which does pertain to sound.

Sound is the travel of waves of high and low air pressure, though. And the perception then is a measurement of air pressure again. It‘s a function of the medium in the room, you don‘t have moving particles or radiation along a vector. Sound waves propagate in orbs around the sound source.

You can determine the reflection angle for any specific vector of propagation, but you have an infinite number of vectors in all three dimensions. You would need an incredible resolution, but you would also need an incredible amount of memory. Sound which is reflected is always a mixture of frequencies. The reflectivity of walls is very frequency-dependent.

Also, effects based on resonance (standing waves, waves whose wavelength exceeds the room dimensions) need a certain time/number of repetitions to ramp up and to fade out. And they exist for each room dimension. But these non-moving phenomena are themselves „modulated“ by the propagating pressure waves from ALL directions.

That‘s not at all covered by mere ray tracing. Light has incredibly short wave lengths and you assume something physically moving and bouncing off boundaries.

[Puduku]

This raytracing/room-calculating talk reminds me of my good old beloved QuikQuak reverb...
https://www.quikquak.com/prod_rayspace.html

Still using it and loving it.

[pekbro]

You can do simple ray tracing. Depends on your needs. And ray marching, casting etc.