ValhallaVintageVerb 1.7.1. Two new reverb modes (Chaotic Hall, Chaotic Chamber)

[cron]

You might like to consider Youtube as your demo platform if Soundcloud isn't cutting it. Its audio quality is vastly superior to Soundcloud's at all video sizes other than 240p (assuming you upload your vid with lossless sound, of course).


720p+ - 192kbps AAC
480p - 128kbps AAC
360p - 128kbps AAC
240p - 64kbps MP3

Youtube's stats are mind-bogglingly detailed too (well, it is Google). All for free.

edit: Now I think about it, as a dev selling a product I guess there'd be pressure to actually supply some video content along with the sound (not like us musicians who just stick a static picture in the background). Oh well, maybe not the easy solution I thought it was.

[hibidy]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm (strokes beard), is it possible that a name could have powers beyond it's boundaries? (hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm)

I've been looking into soundcloud and it's a trip to be certain. Much to like, much to dislike. But very popular.

[valhallasound]

I've been looking into soundcloud and it's a trip to be certain. Much to like, much to dislike. But very popular.

I love the waveform view with SoundCloud, and how things look & behave when embedded into a forum post. The sound quality bugs me. I'm not a snob, but 128 kbps isn't high enough quality for my purposes (i.e. audio effects demos, versus compositions). 192 kbps would be fine. I guess I should just start pasting "download for highest quality" into all of my postings at SoundCloud.

Sean Costello

[hibidy]

You SHOULD be a snob though. You make some damn fine plugs and they SHOULD be able to be displayed w/o so much loss.

People unite!

[antithesist]

I've been looking into soundcloud and it's a trip to be certain. Much to like, much to dislike. But very popular.

I love the waveform view with SoundCloud, and how things look & behave when embedded into a forum post. The sound quality bugs me. I'm not a snob, but 128 kbps isn't high enough quality for my purposes (i.e. audio effects demos, versus compositions). 192 kbps would be fine. I guess I should just start pasting "download for highest quality" into all of my postings at SoundCloud.

Sean Costello

This. Upload 44.1/24 and allow downloads. Think of the steaming 128 as a preview. Oh, and leave at least 1 dB of headroom, though I wouldn't do much more than that, plus a half second of silence at the beginning and end. If you are working at 48, I'd probably go with that instead of SR converting. If you work higher than 48, I'd SRC to 44.1 with the best SRC you have for your source. Dither from 32 bit float processing to 24 bit fixed point wav files with flat TPDF.

[antithesist]

Continued: if SC takes FLAC uploads, that's probably the most universal lossless format, though it won't play directly in itunes. I would use the above 44.1/24 or 48/24 PCM to encode FLAC to the same.

SRC comparisons: http://src.infinitewave.ca/

I use izotope SRC with Weiss-like settings for most conversion.

The best free option a few years back was audiomove by a co-worker of a good friend of mine at LCS/Meyer. I don't think the public version has been updated in awhile: https://public.msli.com/lcs/audiomove/index.html

[bmanic]

(Sorry for offtopic post Sean!)

@antithesis: May I ask what the "weiss like" settings for iZotope SRC are? I'm planning on purchasing RX2 Advanced at some point and this intrigued me enough to try the demo again.

Would be interesting to hear how it stacks up to the default settings (one of them being a very steep filter all the way down to noisefloor). If I recall correctly you can set the filter to not remove everything and thus alias a tiny bit but get a better transition band.

I know these are subtle details but I've been very picky about sample rate conversion lately. I'm still using mainly R8brain pro as I really like it's simple work-flow but because we'll be needing RX2 for our sound design work and restoration part of our studio services it comes as a very nice bonus.

And before somebody asks: Yes, it is possible to hear differences between the various sample rate conversions. Especially if you go from 44.1 to 96 and back to 44.1. I've done this ABX test enough times to ensure it's not always placebo (sometimes it is as it seems to be very signal dependent).

Cheers!
bManic

[valhallasound]

You SHOULD be a snob though. You make some damn fine plugs and they SHOULD be able to be displayed w/o so much loss.

Thanks! The thing is, my sentiments have traditionally been with lower fidelity. In the 1990s, I loved to track down vinyl records from Flying Saucer Attack, Sebadoh, and other bands who recorded to 4-track cassette. My plugins downsample, distort, bit crush, add noise, use crappy noisy interpolation, all in the name of making things darker and blurrier. I love the ambiguity that comes from layers of distortion, noise, and modulation, where you don't know if the sound comes from a Casio or an orchestra.

So you would think that I wouldn't mind lower fidelity MP3. But it actually bugs the heck out of me. I think it is all about the spatial imaging. Low fi analog can sound VERY wide, due to the decorrelated noise between channels. Low fi MP3 sounds narrow and dull. I'm surprised that a web service with "Sound" in its name has made the decision to stream its audio in 128kbps, as it just doesn't flatter the source material at all.

Sean Costello

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

So you would think that I wouldn't mind lower fidelity MP3. But it actually bugs the heck out of me. I think it is all about the spatial imaging. Low fi analog can sound VERY wide, due to the decorrelated noise between channels. Low fi MP3 sounds narrow and dull. I'm surprised that a web service with "Sound" in its name has made the decision to stream its audio in 128kbps, as it just doesn't flatter the source material at all.

Sean Costello

There's "good-bad," and "bad-bad." I firmly believe 128kbps will never be considered good-bad. In the days of Napster I'd just delete bad sounding 128kbps MP3s because of the garbled high end, and those were the days where it was hard to find 160kbps or higher. This was also before LAME conversion really took off (did it exist) and improved MP3 quality dramatically. 128kbps AAC still sounds bad to me, but it's better than those early 128kbps MP3s.

On the other hand, low level noise doesn't bug me. I can listen to vinyl without issue, cassettes sucked IMO, but it was the overall fidelity, not the hiss. The only time tape hiss bothers me is when I'm listening to a remaster and the hiss suddenly cuts out for 2 seconds as the CD goes from one track to another (why most mastering engineers don't just leave the hiss in is beyond me).

Why the hell any website would stream music at 128kbps at this point though is entirely beyond me. We have the bandwidth to download hi-def movies in a fraction of the time it takes to watch them, so low quality audio streams are just completely unacceptable at this point.

[Andrew Souter]

You SHOULD be a snob though. You make some damn fine plugs and they SHOULD be able to be displayed w/o so much loss.

Thanks! The thing is, my sentiments have traditionally been with lower fidelity. In the 1990s, I loved to track down vinyl records from Flying Saucer Attack, Sebadoh, and other bands who recorded to 4-track cassette. My plugins downsample, distort, bit crush, add noise, use crappy noisy interpolation, all in the name of making things darker and blurrier. I love the ambiguity that comes from layers of distortion, noise, and modulation, where you don't know if the sound comes from a Casio or an orchestra.

So you would think that I wouldn't mind lower fidelity MP3. But it actually bugs the heck out of me. I think it is all about the spatial imaging. Low fi analog can sound VERY wide, due to the decorrelated noise between channels. Low fi MP3 sounds narrow and dull. I'm surprised that a web service with "Sound" in its name has made the decision to stream its audio in 128kbps, as it just doesn't flatter the source material at all.

Sean Costello

Good to know what you like I guess...

I guess sc will offer some new and improved format at some point. We'll see, but hard to argue with the convenience and usability. That's for sure.

[Andrew Souter]

I predict in 2050 kids will want the "retro vibe" of the mp3 sound, and whatever future lossless format of the day will be perceived as "cold and sterile" as made into a meme by some manufactured celeb...

[bmanic]

This is already true today. As I recall, the massive blind test results a few years ago showed that the vast majority thought 128kps mp3 sounded better than any higher format, including non compressed 24bit Wav.

Surprising? Not really. It's been like this always.

In the end "sound quality" is just a subjective term when looked at from the human perspective.

I've also had people at the studio who did not like analogue processing at all. All the "good" qualities that I perceive in compressing something in analogue were deemed "weird". They much preferred a typical plugin compressor for it's "punch" (their words, not mine). There's going to happen a big generation change at some point not far in the future where this desire for analogue emulations will have faded. People want new, neverbefore seen things. I already feel a little like this myself when it comes to synthesizers. I'm a bit bored by the typical analogue leads and basses.. but due to my history with some of these classics I will always love them, no matter what.

I'm sure there will be a time where some VST and VSTi plugins (or any other format) will be considered "vintage" classics. People will scourge long forgotten old computer equipment and operating systems just to be able to run these. Mark my word! It WILL happen.

Cheers!
bManic

[Sampleconstruct]

Flagolet guitar (Alchemy, processed with Twin Tube and some compression) improv linked to a soft synth pad (Diversion) in the background meets VVV (Sanctuary) and Shimmer (octave droner), Shimmer was also sent into the same instance of VVV. So if you're into orgasming about superlush reverb tails, like myself - check it out:

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/f ... erland-and

[penguinfromdeep]

I understand Bmanic your point but the analogue scene is very thriving. The kids at some point will seek something else than the cold digital lifeless plug-in world it seems. Just to be different and not to sound like everybody else. Lot of analogue boutique hw makers are thriving and lots of companies (even Arturia and such) are producing hardware analogue synths. I don't see the future as bleak as you, I think the analogue will keep it's charm and even grow in the future.

[valhallasound]

This is already true today. As I recall, the massive blind test results a few years ago showed that the vast majority thought 128kps mp3 sounded better than any higher format, including non compressed 24bit Wav.

Surprising? Not really. It's been like this always.

In the end "sound quality" is just a subjective term when looked at from the human perspective.

Back in my youth (i.e. around 1990), I took a class "Cognitive Psychology and Psychoacoustics for Musicians," taught by Max Mathews and Roger Shepard. For my research paper, I conducted blind listening tests on MIDI files of classical music, with different amounts of rule-guided "humanization." The idea was that the computer would follow certain rules to determine when rubato should be applied. I conducted the tests on friends of mine, and there was no statistical preference to the "proper" amount of rubato, versus the rigidly quantized files. My theory is that most people had spent the decade listening to sequenced music (MIDI, Linn Drum, Fairlight, that sort of thing) and were already completely acclimated to inhumanly perfect tempo.

The Dark algorithms in ValhallaRoom were a similar experiment. The first run of ValhallaRoom algorithms (Large Room, Medium Room, Large Chamber, Bright Chamber) used high quality delay interpolation where it was appropriate, ran at the full sampling rate, all the things that DSP books have talked about for ages. Dark Room hearkened back to the limitations of early DSP hardware: linear interpolation, deliberate quantization of the interpolation, and a lower internal sampling rate. People really LIKED this sound. Which is good, as I didn't know how the Dark algorithms would be received.

ValhallaVintageVerb uses different algorithms than VRoom, but the 1970s and 1980s modes can be viewed as an extension of the Dark modes of VRoom, in that I am trying to replicate the "faults" of the older reverb hardware. In the case of VintageVerb, I based these "faults" upon specific pieces of older hardware. The modulation sidebands are based on the Lexicon PCM70 and 300, while the convertor noise in Sanctuary is based on analysis of an AMS RMX16. Future algorithms might add cruft to the sound that has less of a "physical" basis, assuming that the cruft experiments are successful.

I'm still not sure why these lo-fi techniques would work well in a reverb. My theory is that the physical world isn't that hi-fi in the first place. A reflection off of a wall is a far different thing than a digital repeat of a signal. Real reflections are far more diffuse, and don't have a lot of high frequencies due to air absorption and the material of the reflection surface. Plus, look at the complexity of the room you are currently sitting. EVERY ONE of those little surfaces will create its own complex reflections and absorptions. Maybe the digital "cruft" of the old hardware did a good job of simulating the complexity of the real world. Maybe the lower sampling rate more accurately reflections high frequency loss of real room. Or maybe the digital cruft helped to conceal the flaws in the older reverb algorithms. Whatever the reason, there is some interesting stuff to explore in that old hardware.

Sean Costello