Replacing reverb early reflections with a delay plugin

[jamcat]

This is exactly what Virtual Sound Stage does.

I use it on physically modeled string quartets and such.

VSS looks pretty awesome, with loads of control for positioning of instruments. Will look at it further. Positioning seems to be the main control of early reflections, but still, wow!

I have a few basic convolution-based reverbs, but my frustration with them is that the IRs define the space, and that space is what it is, which leads me back to wanting to have the space flexibility of algorithmic reverbs.

Right, VSS calculates the delay time of the early reflections based on where each sound source is located within the room. So a cello in the back right is going to have a totally different ER than a violin in the front left.

You would also send all of your (dry) sources to an algorithmic reverb with the ER turned off, just as you described in your initial post. I use Phoenixverb for that.

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[MadDogE134]

i have been using a slap back style delay setting for early reflections when creating IRs for layered reverbs in REmatrix by Overloud. imo it works rather well

cheers

[apan]

In a crowded mix it can be useful to manipulate depth with as little added sound as possible. A single delay tap, panned with the source, can make a huge differece in the percieved distance, even mixed in very subtly. If the element is hard panned and wants to contribute more to the sense of a "room" then adding a slightly longer tap on the opposite side and/or up the middle can give it some 3dness without much added clutter. (Tends not to work as well with percussive elements though)

[The Noodlist]

I've been experimenting with early reflections to try to add depth ITB. A free VST below.
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/3401/

[_al_]

Melda's multiband reverb has 6 bands, with 2 delay taps in each band.
If you change the crossover mode to "Parallel", that will give you 12 independent taps, with control of filtering, tempo fluctuation and a whole world of fun inside his modulators, including pitch tracking, envelope following etc.

Not sure if that would be enough taps for you, but you could always give FB to some taps to increase the number, and slightly modulate the tempo of the tap to give it an organic feel

4 modulators, so you could have one following envelope, one tracking pitch, one set to random, and one as a normal bipolar mod.

Might be worth a look?

edit:
Actually, if you change the tap mode to classic, the first delay hit will be separated from the feedback path, so that would give you 24 taps, with tempo adjustments down to 0.001 ms.
You'll probably want the FB set to zero when doing this though, or you'll get a big ringing mess.

Or maybe you could gate the FB and have a 200 tap delay