Why Are Rooms Better Than Reverbs (& How To Mix Big Rooms With Small)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 เม.ย. 2019
- We're all a bit too obsessed with tail, in this video I discuss why its what happens at the front of a reverb that lets the side down. What are your favourite reverbs and do you have any strategies to imitate that all important early reflection.
Get that guitar sound free (Peel Guitar): www.spitfireaudio.com/labs/
The strings pack that I used against the quartet: www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-... - เพลง
I strongly disagree with your points:
you first said that a real room is more epic and sounds better and all, whatever that means in practice, mostly because a reverb processors aren't real-life-accurate at producing early reflections, and to show your point you opened a low-mid end reverb processor, dialed it to sound different from the room (2.8ms ER delay instead of about 1.8ms of the actual room, less high end, a more dense tail with different damping factors at the same frequencies and a longer decay) and compared it to the original room.
If you did the same test with a Bricasti M7, Exponential Audio Nimbus, Acon Verberate v2, or other high quality realistic reverb processor and dialed them to sound like that actual room you'd get a much, much closer sound because, apart from the more accurate settings, good reverb processors employ algorithms that can realistically imitate a room's ER.
Then you said that the sampled drums you played from your speakers and re-recorded with your stereo mic sounded "much more dramatic, even if this room is a bit shit".
Again, I have no clue what you meant there but the re-recorded audio didn't sound any more dramatic to me - rather, it sounded just like a sound played in an average mixing room and re-recorded with a ribbon mic.
Then you insisted a lot about very abstract things about rooms, they convey, reflect and amplify not just the sound of the instrument, but the sound of the performance, they sing with you, they amplify emotions, and that's why they're better than reverb processors.
There's really nothing here to say that rooms are "better" than reverb processors, save for the fact that you seem to like them more, and at that point even a bad room would sound better than a good reverb to you, solely because it's a room.
The point about the re-recorded drums you made earlier should also be moot now since there was no performance there, just the exact same midi playback that went through the reverb processor.
And lastly, you said that "in a space like this, [the performance of a violinist] will never be as good as it is in, say, Wigmore Hall or Air Studios - it's just a fact".
Now this isn't something that can be agreed or disagreed upon - it's plain false, and the fact that you're yet to find a violinist who can play as nicely in a small and dead-ish room as they can play in Wigmore Hall (if that's true and doesn't only arise from the fact that you seem to like reverberant rooms more than reverb processors) is by no means an indication of the fact that nobody exists that can do that - I've heard some stuff from professional violinists in very bad sounding practice rooms that, judging from what you said in this video, you might literally not believe.
To say that it was necessarily worse than the evening performance in a real hall would be to heavily discount their work.
Also, to joke a bit about the "controversial" title if you will, no physical room exists that sounds like a 480L vocal hall, so from that we can easily conclude reverb processors are at least as good, if not better, than real rooms.
I believe you made some interesting points, but most of what you talk about in this video should be thought of and analyzed in much more depth than it was here to provide an informative explanation and insight.
Great to hear your POV, I speak on this channel not as an educated man but as a man of experience and an opinion garnered from that experience. I have written 50 orchestral film scores, over 200 TV shows, few of which don't feature musicians. I have worked with some of the greatest engineers and producers in the business and as a sample developer have probably booked more time in rooms like Air studios than most people. The company I own pays out royalties to over 400 musicians twice a year, most of them orchestral, all of them I have met and worked with. Whilst you could spend a lifetime finding a violinist who loves playing in a dry room.... no strike that, who prefers playing in a dry room and plays better in a dry room than in say the Wigmore Hall, I would in the first instance simply find a better space to record them in, spend money on that not a 480L. Again I don't speak to you as an educated man, I speak to you as a very experienced one, and this very rare experience that I have been fortunate enough to enjoy is something I'm sharing with you beyond what we can study on the page. Again, I really enjoyed your feedback, please excuse my hearty response, I am merely trying to defend any sense that I am some random dude in a shed stating false claims with "cheap" reverbs (albeit ones I used on BAFTA nominated scores!).
Yes brother! great comment
boom roasted
@@AshrafElziftawiMusic hopefully it was clear that we were arguing rather than roasting each other, and also, hopefully it's clear from reading Chris' response that he thoroughly explains where he and his opinions come from, but didn't refute any of the points I made in my comment, so I can't see anybody who was roasted here : )
It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that could be proven scientifically, but it is intuitive that musicians in general will be able to play better when their instrument sounds better, and that better sounding rooms make instruments sound better.
The one point that Christian made that people advocating for software keep glossing over is that many instruments are directional. Violins radiate different frequencies in different directions. A dry violin convoluted might sound good, but it is impossible for it to sound sound the /same/ as if it were played in the space where the impulse was recorded. In fact, because the violin radiates different sounds in different directions, if it's recorded with a single mic in a dry room you won't capture all of it's sound so it won't sound as good to begin with.
Very true. I'm a huge advocate of early reflections. They have such an important role to play when it comes to creating the depth of a sound. Especially in busy mixes, tail doesn't bring any actual depth whatsoever. ER do. It's the psychoacoustic effect of the delays.
I know what reverb is, theoretically and mathematically, I recall my lectures at university about it and time spent in the studio studying it. But I've never heard a better "musical" explanation of it. Love it!
convolution or algorithmic or plate?
Really great video, I super appreciate the thought and effort that you put into these videos. Learning a lot, cheers!
Convolution for ERs into Pro R for the tail. Works well. Short Plate on Brass for the early reflection slap is pretty groovy. Subtle eighth-triplet tape-style echo on solo instruments separates them out quite magically.
how much decay time for strings?
Between 2 to 3 seconds seems right.@@captainvoluntaryistthestat3207
and for bass?
It's definitely an interesting question. If possible I would love to hear the same comparison but with a convolution reverb of the same room the sampled instrument is recorded in. I once did such a comparison myself (with vocals) and got very close to the original room sound. Would be nice to hear the same experiment with orchestral instruments.
I was just going to say the same thing. Would definitely be interesting to throw a convolution reverb into the comparison.
I love convolution, but its static and cannot capture the interaction of the sound waves with the room over time. It's just a momentary snapshot. I would say it captures 80% of the real thing.
Great video Christian. Happy to see you share my thoughts regarding reverb in general. No I can work on using less standard effects to mimic the acoustics of a room or hall.
Thanks!
Great video, thanks for sharing Christian! I recorded some drum samples with my good friend how is an excellent drummer. We sampled it in an old converted factory's stairwell, which had a long decay. We used a close mic and a tree mic further away on the same level.
I love the sound of both microphones, especially mixed together, however it is true that the sound of the room captured that "epic" sound which is created by the early reflections.
I haven't been able to create that similar sound on the close mics with a reverb plugin (using VSS3 which is one of the best according to you, Jake Jackson and other great engineers/mixers). I never really gave it much thought until you mentioned it in this video, but that's why it sounds so epic; the early reflections.
Thank you once again for the video, it has made me think about the sound of room much more and why it's important to capture that in recordings/samples, and not just the instrument/performance itself.
That was a very interesting analysis of reverb vs room. My thoughts have generally been that the room provides a sum of the individual player reflections. As the players sit in different locations, the room naturally blurs the reflections by the time they make it to the tree mic. A reverb plug-in essentially operates from the perspective of the tree, and will add reverb to the sum of the players. I think that is a substantive difference: the room provides a sum of the reflections whereas as an algorithm adds a reflection to the sum of the players. Thanks for a interesting subject
This is one of the most informative video's i've seen in years Christian. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with us!
Everytime you put out any orchestral piece I'm simply mesmerized by it. New Wave Djent - Metalcore - Hardcore guitar player here, that frankly does not have a closed mind for inspirations coming from other genres of music. I'd call myself a total newbie in music making, so I just cannot apreciate enough those tons of tech-related knowledge flowing from your videos, just neatly hidden between the lines - Keep em commin ;)
Cheers from Poland!
I like your ratifications, pardon rarefaction and micing some speakers in your room or bath house is very old school cool! Thanks for bringing this back
Awesome video! Our studio rooms are calibrated in 0.024ms just for that cause. When mixed with a dry signal, the recorded instruments gets a totally new tonal dimension.
I love the "thin veneer" as you cleverly stated. I actually believe that to be the absolute best way to use samples, in conjunction with the real performances. Often time if I program drums, I'll setup some ribbons mics in a Mid/Side configuration and playback from my speakers just as you did and even just the smallest amount of that mixed in makes them feel very real. Well done and as always, thanks for wat.... errr I mean making these videos for our community.
I really dig how you consistently and unpretentiously explain things so any newcomer might feel welcome and unintimidated when approaching these subjects.
This is an enjoyable and informative episode.
Excellent really loved the sound of the live musicians enhanced with the samples for fullness.
This was brilliant, thank you!!
One of your best videos ever! Something I think about a lot. Over-sending to reverb always makes my mixes sound worse.
people don't talk enough about the underlying effect of a room/environment on the performance! awesome video thanks
Absolutely fabulous content.
I'm all for re-amping. Whenever I've recorded guitar I don't obsess over quad tracking, as long as I have a DI'd guitar and a live amp sound it's a blend of the two works the best I feel. Good to see this technique used with samples. I would love to see a video of warbling science on more of this. Adding humanity and realism to music, whether it's strings or guitar, maybe looking at techniques of this other than re-amping.
I find with bass it's really important to have DI and a close miced amp. The DI on it;s own sounds too smothered and the amp on it's own is too weak. But together they have a punch. As for guitar I just mic it *really* close with my SM57 for a similar feeling to DI reamps and then a condenser across the room. Try it out! Make sure to check phase.
@@TheAnthraxBiology will do! Thanks for the tip!
First time watching your channel, very good video
I've been composing for a long time, but just started getting into serious orchestral MIDI stuff recently. All your videos have been like my Reverb 101 course (and beyond) so... thanks for making them!
I'm using either a pure IR reverb with a sampled hall for mockups of concert work, or for soundtrack-ish stuff, an IR of a nice space from a close/conductor position to get a kind of early stage, and then an algorithmic reverb (or an IR of one) for the tail mixed in.
great video!
I have been listening' to rooms my whole life. I hear that which you are striving for in the mix with the orchestra swell, like you are conducting. The 'presence' of the live players just adds so much that I would probably want to bring them forward too. Decisions, decisions.
Bruce Swedien in interviews and his book talks about how emotional values/sonic personality are inherent in the initial transients of sounds. You've just made sense for me what Swedien was talking about.
Love this channel :)
Well, now you've done it. I'll be experimenting with every mic, speaker, room, reverb, delay, sample library ... See you in a bit.
Fascinating, Christian. Once you start thinking about the incredible complexity of a group of players, never mind an orchestra, the infinitesimal amount of interactions that occur, the individual differences in time, expression and intonation, you appreciate that however wonderful your samples are, they can't get close to the real thing. I am glad you emphasise the emotional impact, because so often these discussions descend into (pseudo) scientific arguments.
I think if you read up about film mixer and sound designer Walter Murch you will find that he was a great advocate of recording spaces too - in fact he coined the word, 'worldizing' for rerecording sounds through speakers in various environments. He famously did this first on American Graffiti, where he needed the sound of the music in a variety of different settings, which he couldn't replicate with outboard gear and reverb. So you are following in illustrious footsteps.
I don't doubt that some people will say you could do better with some high end reverbs, but artificial complexity, however good, just doesn't match the more infinite variety of real complexity.
It is very promising to think about sampling in the context of live playing, instead of as two separate, competing things, and it makes me think Spitfire could really pioneer some moves in this direction.
You make a great point, Christian! That piece you shared is absolutely stunning - really elevates the emotional intent once you swept up the automation of quartet vs symphony. Effectively, could you get a similar result (like the example of the Bass Drum) using an Air Studios impulse response but through Altiverb or Melda MultiBandConvolution? I'm thinking of projects where you can only afford a small ensemble but still want the feeling of air particles diffusing/reflecting through a beautiful space like Air.
Thank you for sharing this video :) I need to send you some of my samples haha
There's also the added complexity of how different frequencies interact differently with different parts of the surrounding surfaces according to how different materials resonate and absorb differing frequencies and how the distance from the source to a surface mathematically correlates with specific frequencies. Floors and ceilings might be more complex than walls in that regard
Mike Verta has a great class on template balancing and he shows a great technique of eq'ing in to and out of the convolution to push back certain sounds into the room realistically. The results are quite amazing.
Interesting topic -- often have thought about recorded ambience vs. reverb later. The recorded ambience certainly has its advantages in terms of how the end result sounds. Of course, the flip-side, is that with the ambience baked in, not able to do much in terms of creatively modifying/adjusting after the fact. Been experimenting a bit with Studio Orchestra and Spaces II (which has some nice stereo convolutions). Similar outcome with reverb applied during mix. Appreciate your time with this one.
So correct me if I'm wrong: What you're missing is basicly ray-tracing to not only emulate reflections, but refraction and diffraction as well. I don't think I've ever seen a ray-traced reverb anything before, but if there is, you could use graphic cards to accelerate the (very intensive) process of raytracing the simulation.
But I have no idea about that, just tossing ideas. :P
There are a few I think. Quikquak Rayspace comes to mind, but it's pretty old now. Something like InDoor by Audio Ease? I vaguely remember another product that was similar 5 or more years back where you could model a space and simulate reverb environments, also geared towards post production.
Considering the RTX graphics cards are the new kids on the block, I doubt any real ray tracing reverbs really existed before. But with that functionality now present in top end cards...maybe they’ll start being coded in the next few years!
Since I have a number of libraries that weren't recorded in great spaces, I tend to put those VI's into a convolution reverb. For which I have well over 200 IR"S sampled rooms and spaces that at least gives me tree mics via a convolution reverb. And for placements. I also use a delay line on horns and some winds to set hem back on the stage more. I have used Altiverb 7 for the convolution verbs and Fabfilter Timeless 2 or Replika XT for the delay plus a number of plate and room reverbs: Black Hole and Mangledverb From Eventide. Lexicon PSP42. Valhalla Room and Vintage Verb. VSS3 from TC Electronic.
I'm only half through the video but I want to say the Softube TSAR verb does the early reflection and following tail really well.
There is a plugin called Virtual Soundstage 2 that does exactly what you described at 6:30. It does a fantastic job of creating early reflections from a close mic'd source and you can free position multiple sources and mics within the space
Another fascinating video in a great series Thanks! Did you ever take recordings into a church or hall and set up speakers and room mics to capture the ambience of the playback for use in a studio mix? Might be an individual and reliable way to add "reverb" once you've figured out speaker/mic placements, especially if you have somewhere local.
The problem of wet samples is making various libraries sounds good together. Making coherent room reverb is not possible with various libraries from various companies. With dry samples it is possible to choose ER and tail.
Yeah, so far I never mixed various rooms, but maybe it's doable ;)? Would love to hear some tips on mixing different rooms/wet samples. For now it's me, my tired ears and clients :D.
Being more interested in metal drums and guitars, I'm after a drier sound. But having attended a choral/orchestral school in Liverpool and then a uni with decent studios I can appreciate room sounds. Add in a catholic upbringing and several years helping out with piano hire and set up in and around Hamburg, there are rooms that you can't forget and others you'd rather never have heard :)
VST-wise I like Soundtoy's Little Plate and Slate's Lustrous Plates.
Geek-wise it's great to share IRs with people and experiment.
Best still is to teach a high school DAW class and then introduce them to reverb. Hearing jaws drop and smash into desks is a real perk of the job :D
There's an album I fell in love with recently, cello and voice, kind of like Arvo Pärt meets Ne Obliviscaris. I think its interesting how they use the sound of recording in a church to get a Black Metal-ish vibe: thevisit1.bandcamp.com/ .
@@BillyPalmerMusic Cheers man. Whenever we tuned a piano I'd be checking the room out for natural reverb. Gonna give that a link whirl this evening :)
If i want to make something sound more roomy I just tend to use a Medium Chamber or Room (mostly Lexicon, if a Quantec is available than I'd definitely use that) as an insert on the stem or at least with a far higher wet than dry level; combined with whatever main reverb "tail" I choose it tends to work quite well.
I often have to deal with micing brass directly in the bell (well, less than a foot away, which is never the best choice) and over time have developed my plugin chain of LexChamber -> TVerb -> VSS3; it often seems like a waste of resources, but using the relative wet/drys (or virtual mics) you can pretty much get your mix of various distant mic positions.
Experimenting with delaying the various mic positions to be in time is always worth doing if you want a tighter sound from a big section in a big room that still has the width and depth of said section and room.
Eq going into the reverb, to either minimize the low-end boom, or accentuate or mellow the top. Also, I frequently put a little Decapitator after the reverb to add some harmonic distortion to the room. Often brings it to life.
Hi Christian ; I had noticed this on the previous video as well ; how do you get to have 2 different stereo outputs in logic ? Does anyone know as well? Thanks in advance!
Also I used to love the videos on your templates and routing ; I'm guessing it has evolved since ; would you consider doing one vlog on your 2019's version? thanks
I love you. That's all I can say or the best compliment I can give 🙏🥂
At what used to be the Power Station-then Avatar-and now Power Station Berklee NYC, I have fond memories of a re-amping room there where engineers like Bob Clearmountain would do just that...also: facing a mic on a stand in front of the amp in the opposite direction-in a room-hallway-to capture that which blended can be magical.
Very nice, Christian. So two things I wonder about regarding this:
1) What about the reverb you would get from striking a drum, say, in a canyon. Same principles apply as you discussed, but time dilated due to the canyon size. Interesting to think about.
2) I wonder if doing some experimenting with several random delays going into a reverb would allow for getting closer to the real room sound.
Thanks!
I seriously would want you to discuss this topic with Jake Jackson. Haven't seen him on this channel for a while.
I'm with him today!
@@TheCrowHillCo you better bring your camera
excellent video!!! i think i can truly say i´m a reverb nazi. its the most fascinating thing to me. i´ve had a fair share of all the greats over the years in my studio (EMT140, 246, LEX 480, 224XL,70,81,91, bricasti, AMS RMX etc). one of the most revealing moments was when we were jamming with a little 5 piece band and the violin player when from my not very reflective control room into the hallway - WTF! this tiny sounding little violin became an arena main stage rock star in a second - so much personailty and power, just insane.
nevertheless i also think reverb is the most difficult subject (or maybe i´m simply not good at it) and i´m constantly struggling with it. oh well - live and learn! and enjoy because i get to be in my awesome studio every day instead of some office)
My request: I would love to know more about your approach or approaches to compose melodies and harmonies; your musical style seems to be clearly defined.
Flippin' heck Christian, that string passage at the end there is the most beautiful I've ever heard, wow! (Am just a beginner in these things btw but does convolution reverb capture more of a 'room' as opposed to other types of reverb?).
I had an amazing experience with a unique room accousticly, it was a dome home under construction amazing sounding room 15 meter diamiter you should try that if you ever get the chance.
Fun and interesting topic.
Only thing with this example is that Fabfilter R is not a particular good reverb to do this exercise in. Doesn't have good ER-engine to make a fair comparison. (Does it have any at all?) And the Fabfilter reverb isn't really well setup at all : ) Should get much better results using your TC or Bricasti?
Although I certainly think that real room captured in the samples is a lot better sounding. That what's makes Spitfire instruments sounds really nice. (And unfortunately also sometimes out of phase when using multiple mic combined... but that's something for the tech team to hopefully solve.)
When recording drums at home, I love placing a few room mics around the house in different rooms. It always gives me interesting and honest results especially the fact that no one else can get those exact sounds. ;-)
Thanks for this! Are you able to provide stems from the example at the end? I would love to practise mixing a quartet into samples..
Back in the day I worked at a studio that had a reverb chamber. It was about 10'x10'x15' and had a speaker and some nice mics in the corners. One of the mixing tricks (when there was time) was to get a decent reverb mix on that buss, and then record a few different reverb pair tracks at different tape speeds, effectively growing or shrinking the chamber. Mixing them together gave some of the initial drama you're talking about here, especially after experimenting with phase in this reverb mix. Next time you're at AIR, pay their hourly to record the room to tape at different speeds. Fun. :-)
Hi what if you compared it with a conv rev of Air studio.....
I started using crappy rooms rather than reverb plugins a few years ago, and it makes a huge difference! Reverbs still have an important role to play, but they can't compete with real spaces. Regarding guitar software, there's plenty of plugins now where you can't tell the difference between that and the real thing, but like you pointed out, the sound of the room is such an integral part of the sound of anything, and no one has managed to recreate that convincingly in software yet....At least not to my ears.
I always wondered how a complex reamping session might sound. eg] Play sampled instruments recorded in a dry environment through various speakers placed around a nice sounding room. Piano through one (or more) speaker, violin from another elsewhere in the room etc... Would the difference still be very apparent? Would having more control over the wet-dry relationship improve the final mix? These questions demand answers!
Please do more tutorials on using correct reverb settings on strings.
Curious how IRs of halls would compare. Or a combination with VSS
What do you think of trying something like Virtual Sound Stage to simulate the ERs?
Would combing Reverbs & IR from different providers get closer do you think?
It's not necessarily better, there are occasions where a room sound would be better than reverb (for example, room mics for a drum kit), but also there are things that reverb can do way better than a room (for example, reverb on a synth pad patch, or ambient guitar sound). It's very context dependent which one you use. And I find having a purpose oriented mind to be helpful when it comes to recording and mixing. Having a vision and try to achieve is always way more efficient for me than just noodling around expecting an Eureka moment.
All in all I think it's a stretch to say rooms are better than reverb processors. I'm not trying to diminish your points (I partially agree, because as I said, it's context dependent), just trying to say it's probably better to phrase it as "why rooms are better in x, y, z scenario"
Awesome treatise on the subject... but it was the use of the word churlish which ultimately got the thumbs-up. Spiffing job.
Christian, I have a question. On the reverb test you made a while back, you concluded that the Fabfilter Pro R was not as good as say the Lexicon PCM, and other reverbs. So how come you continue to use the reverb if it's not the best quality to your ears?
I was wondering if spitfire audio ever made any impulse responses of the Air studio. I think it would be interesting to record pulses from the place where the percussion would typically be, and sweeps from the places where for example strings would be. That way you can have different responses from the room and maybe even have a blend of staccato and legato responses. Have you ever worked with Altiverb?
It really depends on what you're going for! If you want a darker, simpler, or cleaner sound that's easier to control - reverb can really be the best choice. I also use it for something a little more synthetic.
How about playing the samples in a room and recording the speaker? (with tree mics etc)
That bright 3 mike tail from from the drum could be interesting to use as a basis for a convolution reverb
Off to try a bit of re-amping to make my instruments sound gooder!
Interesting video. Noone can argue that the spaces in the sample libraries here don't sound great. I think there might be some artificial reverb plugins that could get a little closer to the big bright impact thing with early reflections though.
how can I start working in doing that kind of job making samples and working in a studio like that?
One useful thing about (orchestral) samples recorded "in a room" is that they are often recorded with the musicians in the "correct" place in the room, so that with no panning whatsoever, you already get a nice "wide" sonic image.
Except.
A lot of the time, I'm writing for a small chamber ensemble and I don't want them positioned as they would be in an orchestra. Maybe solo violin, alto flute, harp, string ensemble in 6 parts - 2 violin parts, 2 viola parts, 2 cello parts - or perhaps a wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon)
How can I get the benefits of the room recording AND place them as I want within the room, rather than as they were placed when originally recorded?
I wonder how this would sound if you had Impulse responses from Air Studios. That would be much better comparison than using regular algorithmic reverb I believe.
Great video. That quartet sounds amazing! Who are they?
And the mix of the two is fascinatingly beautiful! Wow! Eye-ear-opener once again....
Correct. me if I'm wrong, but isn't AudioEase's Altiverb 7 designed to do exactly what's being described in the video?
Record an impulse response in a specific location to recreate the sonic signature of that environment?
www.audioease.com/altiverb/
apologies if adding a url is frowned upon
Where's the "link above"?
EDIT: I suppose he refers to this video: th-cam.com/video/YbbBGYKucHY/w-d-xo.html
Imitating early reflections: Copy a close mic track half dozen times. Nudge the copies a few milliseconds. Each copy gets an eq. Several narrow-Q bumps and cuts seem to work best. Make it a little ugly. Most rooms are. Close mic and all the tweaked unique copies gets summed / grouped to new channel. Verb goes on that.
Perfect? No. Damn close? Can be. You can fool with math and be purposeful with decisions or just play with it random see what sounds good.
Keep Haas effect in mind.
Next time Spitfire is recording at Air Studios, perhaps you could record an impulse response (IR) of the room and see how putting that on a dry instrument recorded in a different “dead” room stacks up against the same instrument recorded at Air. I’m sure a lot of people would be interested to know how close convolution reverbs compare to the real thing.
When you say "reverb", are you referring to algorithmic reverb or convolution reverb?
I'm curious as to your feelings about convolutional reverb vs. more "artificial" kinds. To my (admittedly non-professional!) ear, convolutional reverb is virtually indistinguishable from natural. I would imagine it depends to a large extent on how the original impulse was recorded. BTW, I agree that actual room presence is unbeatable. But, as a software engineer, it seems to me that a digital re-creation at least COULD be a good substitute, assuming that the proper care is taken to reproduce the accoustic signature of the space.
depends on the directionality of the instrument and the space.
hm. if chopping off the early reflections gets you fairly close to an algorithmic reverb. maybe some clever application of multi-tap delay with no feedback gets you closer to a room sound.
Have you had a chance to mess with seventh heaven or a bricasti yet? Mechanics Hall with early reflections turned up a bit is the closest I've gotten to a good hall sound...
Which of your sample libraries did you use on the last orchestral piece (with the 4 real players)? It sounds beautiful.
Guido M Albion Tundra
Along with ERs, there's also the factor that the walls aren't perfect reflectors, so they're in effect doing some filtering and EQ on the sound as it bounces around. Trying to replicate that with just a reverb, or even a reverb, a delay, and an EQ is going to be impossible.
I bought the Joby Burgess Percussion library recently - yeah completely because of the Air sound. The demos of rhapsody Percussion, whilst amazing value, just didn't impress me as much for this reason.
I always prefer having real musicians in a real room if I can help it and it’s always something I’ll push. I have a couple of different venues I go to for any kind of classical recording and I made an effort to go to them and actually test out the room first before I say I want to record here, luckily they don’t charge a lot to use the space so it’s easier to do the convincing
God those string are beautiful.
I think the 3D vs. 2D (or 1D) analogy works here. An instrument emits waves of sound into a myriad of directions, and all of them are different from each other. A room reacts off of that. A reverb can no longer work with the actual three-dimensional object that the instrument is and instead has to rely on the one-dimensional “image” of that object, created by the microphone.
I would love to hear spitfire team up with Steve Albini for a rock drum library. His room sounds have always added so much aggression to what he does and none of the other drum libraries have captured that. Also what ever happened to the spitfire collaboration with Josh Freese?
you could make the fabfilter reverb more bright to make it more similar to the room
also if you adjust the close-far knob and the eq and predelay you can get the reverb to sound much more like the tree mic. I did some testing of my own on your albion drum samples and got them sounding very similar (imo)
What about MIR Pro?
It should be possible to use a technique based on ray tracing to get a realistic reverb, where a software reverb can trace sound waves based on the simulated topology of the room (I gotta check my AES account that I pay but remains unused to see if there's research on this, but I'm sure there is). In theory, this should be very close to what a real room sound is because it's modelling the real physics of the moving air as it moves in all the directions that can hit the microphone capsule, including all the late reflections and all the bouncing. For a full realtime use our computers CPU are not fast enough to process this information without restricting the rays (and hence the reflections), and even although high level GPU can generally process math faster, their architecture is still somewhat limited for raytracing processing for the needs of the many memory accesses that a ray tracer entails. There's some interesting advancement from Nvidia however and some years ago intel created a ray traced Quake if I remember that used a GPU based on a very large number of old pentium cores, I think this was the basis of their Larrabee hardware. I would be curious if some hardware based simulations (like the Universal Audio Ocean Way Studios) use a version of this technique.
Good to see someone else paying their AES dues without using the benefits (the apple discount and rare visit to the convention). I like to think of those guys writing the "white papers" and keeping the standards current a little like Santa's elves. So when I need something for the sleigh, it's there when I need it.
carl stephen Koto the discount is only in US, Canada and Japan afaik though, but indeed people writing research papers have my uttermost respect, although most of the AES papers are encumbered by patents unfortunately, which is the main reason I don’t really use the site (similar note valid for the ACM).
Love your work, but for the love of God use the SM57 properly.
I would say that the live string players in a smaller room/hall without added reverb or samples touches me way deeper, but as a concert goer and a musician I also generally prefer a small ensemble of brilliant musicians over the more anonymous crowd sound of a symphony orchestra.
Christian, you really need to clean that CCD of your camera. (or is that a dirty lens?)
j-flix 狠角色 dirty lense, that volcano is a wet blowy place!
Does the same count for Convolution Reverbs? I guess there is no way to simulate a real room, hall or venue.
You need to talk to Italo de Angelis, a man who can tell you how different monastic chanting traditions are related to the character of the reflections from the materials used in their respective buildings, among many other things about reverb.
using a set of IRs recorded by the original mics and a convolution reverb would have been a better comparison
I shit you not..when his dog got up (I hadn't noticed it laying down in the first place) my first thought was "what the fuck is that?! Run buddy!!" looked like a yak or something for about .2 seconds