Arts Acoustic Reverb appreciation thread

[bduffy]

well, he probably meant, that in reality a lot of users won`t use this option, as they`d have to freeze/bounce all the time. a lot of users are working entirely in their sequencer, arranging, synths, fx, mixing and mastering in one go, which is way more intuitive for most. so they cannot afford a waste of cpu cycles. that`s what more and more musicians/engineers go for. that`s why we made the ArtsAcoustic reverb for.
it`s hard to keep control over a mix if you allways have to freeze/unfreeze or bounce/unbounce all the time. especially with a reverb, which is mostly set up as a send fx. so, in fact, he might be wrong by saying so, but reality seems to proove different thinking more and more on this topic. allthough there are, of course, users that still work that way, and as long they are happy with the result, everything is fine.

I'd just like to say that what he described here (apart from the great sound) is exactly what appealled to me so much about this reverb. It's light on CPU and it's set up mainly to be a send; it feels like patching hardware in! I am a 1-man-band, so this kind of thing is important.

PS: I was trying to be funny earlier, but for the record, a honeymoon is the vacation a couple takes to celebrate getting married. (EDIT) Agh! Bobby beat me to it. Good explanation!

[bduffy]

...I'm dropping the natural convolution reverbs and my powercore reverbs on almost every track, and the improvement is worth the trouble.

Wow! Are you saying that (to you) it sounds better than the other ones? Everyone seems so reluctant to say it's better than convo or DSP-card ones. Personally, (to me) AAR sounds as good as it gets. But Golden Ears I'm not.

I'm trying to figure out a way to free up some cash so I can use AAR on my soon-to-be-finished album too.

[nick at artsacoustic]

probably not a huge issue with a Wet reverb send. An extra 5ms predelay probably doesn't hurt. But as an insert effect you want to compensate for the latency. I'm not sure how PoCo handles that, but i'm pleased I don't have to worry about that!

no, in fact it`s the double time of latency.
say, you have set your card to 5 msec latency, that would lead outwards 5msec and backwards 5 msec = 10 sec latency.
also i don`t see your point with the send issue:
it`s the same running a signal via send to the reverb or as an insert. in both cases the signal is routed outn of the audiocard into the dsp card and back.
but you can forget about all that, if the powecore/uad reports the latency to the host (assuming full latency compensation is supported by the host).
exeption is if you use it live.

[nick at artsacoustic]

what`s that honeymoon thing?
or does it simply mean that you will review our reverb here on kvr?

Here's a long explanation, with a few detours:

I'm always wary of comments by people who just bought the item a few days before; it's just our nature to try to justify the purchase, and often we're a lot more glowing the first few days than we would be a month later.

right, i see it that way, too.
most gear is prooved by simply knowing it.

A 'honeymoon' is tradionally the month after a wedding, tho now it more often means the vacation the couple takes right after the wedding. It is, interestingly, a word of somewhat mysterious origin in English. My favorite speculation is that it's related to the honey wine drunk in Ireland (and elsewhere, generally called 'mead'); by tradition, the happy couple would be drunk on honey wine for the first month of the marriage, presumably to mitigate the shock of, well, 'married life' for the teenage girl. In English idiom, the idea of a honeymoon is connected to the idea that, after the honeymoon, the less happy reality sets in -- 'the honeymoon's over.' So, then, a 'honeymoon review' is one written during the blush of a new purchase. I don't mean to say that I expect my enthusiasm to wane, but only that anyone reading should have fair warning that I'm in the 'honeymoon' period.

Whew.

well, then i thought right in my first go.
but yes, that was a detailled explanation, deeper i didn`t know.

I'm really loving the AAR. No energy left after all that to say more, except I'll say that I'm remixing the record I've been finishing up to bring the AAR into almost every song. I'm dropping the natural convolution reverbs and my powercore reverbs on almost every track, and the improvement is worth the trouble.

thats great to hear.
well, finally, more and more users get a real impression of the capability of the ArtsAcoustic reverb.

[greendoor]

So the good reverbs on a PoCo take up 60% cpu on a P4 2.8? Yikes! I thought the hardware provided the CPU, but latency seems to be a big problem. I found a recent user quote: "I also own powercore and simply avoid using the plugs on busses. (well I use the reverbs one, but treat the latency as a pre-delay)"

That's sort of what I guessed might be the case. Say I was using a PoCo with Cubase SX. I can't afford 60% CPU for reverb, so I would use PoCo without the latency compensation? As long as I just used it as a reverb send effect, the latency on the returning reverb tail would simply become a little more pre-delay, which is usually acceptable as an artistic choice.

I accept I could be very wrong here - i'm just trying to understand what PoCo users have to put up. I'm know TC reverb is good, but I'm so grateful that AAR exists and I don't have to go there!

[greendoor]

From the UAD vs Powercore thread:

With the TC Powercore you get 14 highend plugs that don't use your CPU.

Not really. It's an illusion to think using a dsp-audiocard will not load your host-cpu.

Dunno exactly what but there are some processes; like ASIO-stream, calculation of GUI etc ..

On my AMD Thunderbird 1400 8 ClassicVerbs f.e. make nearly 40 procent of cpu usage.

I was very disappointed 'cause i thought their marketing is true.

[bobby yarrow]

There's no problems with latency or cpu load on my powercore. I have the older PCI one, and I can run a bunch of instances of the reverbs with latency compensation in SX3 or Samp7 without gobbling much cpu. I have a very normal computer . . . I think 2.8 P4 is right. I don't know what people are talking about -- no plugins on busses . . .

Anyhow, the problem with the powercore is that the stock reverbs don't do what I want them to do without a lot of coaxing. The classicverb is great for, well, classic big ole reverb. The megaverb has never made it as the final choice on any track, except in the tinyest of ambience settings.

So, yeah, as I'm putting together this record, I'm pulling off my powercore reverbs and my convolution reverbs and putting on the AAR. It's a pain in the ass, the band's coming in next week and I don't have unlimited time for the project, but it's an appreciable improvement.

To my ear. For this band. In my humble opinion.

[nick at artsacoustic]

There's no problems with latency or cpu load on my powercore. I have the older PCI one, and I can run a bunch of instances of the reverbs with latency compensation in SX3 or Samp7 without gobbling much cpu. I have a very normal computer . . . I think 2.8 P4 is right. I don't know what people are talking about -- no plugins on busses . . .

that seems to be the logic users, who work on pc or on mac on 6.x.
logic only supports full latency complesation on the newest version, afaik.
on the older versions the compensation is only there for audio/instrument tracks.
i assume, that`s why --- no plugins on busses, that produce latency. which sadly includes a lot of native plugins, too.
not the ArtsAcoustic Reverb though .

Anyhow, the problem with the powercore is that the stock reverbs don't do what I want them to do without a lot of coaxing. The classicverb is great for, well, classic big ole reverb. The megaverb has never made it as the final choice on any track, except in the tinyest of ambience settings.

So, yeah, as I'm putting together this record, I'm pulling off my powercore reverbs and my convolution reverbs and putting on the AAR. It's a pain in the ass, the band's coming in next week and I don't have unlimited time for the project, but it's an appreciable improvement.

well, i hope this gives a significant positive change then.
let me know,

[ericj23]

powerocre really uses a nonexistant amount of your cpu - I can certainly load 8 classic verbs and use less than 10% of cpu

the 60% is when using the top notch reverb in zero latency mode - if used with normal latency it uses nothing (or almost anyway)

But AAR is the best native reverb - and i ahve tried them all - but i'm afriad i'm still not going to buy it - far rather save for the vss3 which is simply miles better

[RoyNoahJones]

The AAR sure sounds good, but hard to compare/compete with poco reverbs specially the VSS3.

I think it wasn't in the plans of AA to do so, but to develop their own unit and own character, which might work well on some of your tracks.

comparisons can be dangerous, it reminds me of that folk stating that he bought a R66 and sold his 480 or so, coz R66 was better and made his 480 useless, nobody believes that and then even though the product is good, it loses some credibility.

Let's enjoy these tools for what they are, and not for what they're supposed to beat...

just my 2cents

[bobby yarrow]

Let's enjoy these tools for what they are, and not for what they're supposed to beat...

You're exactly right, and I hope for my part I was clear. I don't think there's silver bullet reverb or anything else.

I actually have a love/hate thing with reverb in particular. There's always this idea that the right reverb is going to take a track to the promised land, and that's just never enough. 80% of my reverbs are undetectable by my wife, the measure of the 'good but uninitiated ear.' The other 20% wouldn't be identified by her as reverbs at all. So it's important to understand that when I say I'm finding the move from one reverb to another to be worthwhile, it's pretty particular to my way of working, the record I'm working on, and my undoubtably misguided belief that I hear well.

[bduffy]

The AAR sure sounds good, but hard to compare/compete with poco reverbs specially the VSS3.

I think it wasn't in the plans of AA to do so, but to develop their own unit and own character, which might work well on some of your tracks.

comparisons can be dangerous, it reminds me of that folk stating that he bought a R66 and sold his 480 or so, coz R66 was better and made his 480 useless, nobody believes that and then even though the product is good, it loses some credibility.

Let's enjoy these tools for what they are, and not for what they're supposed to beat...

just my 2cents

Absolutely. It's just hard not to compare, with all the expensive, industry-standard legends lurking in our minds...we all want a Lexicon in our corner - for $100!

[bobby yarrow]

Let's enjoy these tools for what they are, and not for what they're supposed to beat...

I don't think there's silver bullet reverb or anything else.

For the benefit of Nick, I'll do my etymology in advance. The 'silver bullet' is fabled to be the only thing that will kill a werewolf. So, a 'silver bullet' is any magical solution that will fix a problem by itself.

As an aside, please consider all of my posts as a collective application for the job of polishing the English translation of your manual . . .

[nick at artsacoustic]

For the benefit of Nick, I'll do my etymology in advance. The 'silver bullet' is fabled to be the only thing that will kill a werewolf. So, a 'silver bullet' is any magical solution that will fix a problem by itself.

hehe, i understood this. my english is not _that_ bad .

As an aside, please consider all of my posts as a collective application for the job of polishing the English translation of your manual . . .

well, we had a pro translator for that.
what is it that you find misleading, etc?

[bobby yarrow]

what is it that you find misleading, etc?

I should be clear, I'm really only joking. I can understand the manual, and have no interest at all in re-translating it. However, it does not read like it was reviewed by a native English speaker. In fact, your excellent English seems consistently better than the manual, really.

A few little examples, grabbed quick:

"Our greatest point of attention was making the plugin most flexible and at the same time as effective as it can be, thus allowing the user to reach best results with any production in the shortest time possible. To this, some factors contribute:"

"All faders can be operated by mouse, as you are used to do with other plugins."

These are just clunky, non-native sounding bits. Other bits are actually hard to even understand:

"The mousewheel, if your mouse has one and your system supports that function the plugin editor supports hoover function, wich means that the current value is displayed in the info window when moving the mouse over a slider/knob."

Setting aside the spelling error, it's hard to even get that one.

A couple are pretty funny in English.

"More features of the reverb as Level, EQ, Damping, Echo, Modulation and Quality can be controlled by the turning knobs (so called “poti”) in the lower section."

The plural of pot in English is of course pots. There is no word 'poti,' but it evokes the word 'potty,' which means toilet.

And my personal fave:

"Besides the simulation of a room, artificial reverberation should also serve as an effect to upgrade your mix, or alienate or refine a sound."

Everyone who hears my music agrees I sound alienated, but I don't think that's what's meant here . . .

(Because tone is so difficult to convey in a forum like this, I'll just come right out and say again that I'm just having a little fun. This is no knock on the product at all.)