Reverb is stupid
- Thread starter Joël Dollié
- Start date
Living Fossil
Senior Member
Joël, that's an amazing video with very insightful and substantial aspects and arguments!
jbuhler
Senior Member
Clickbaity but in a good way, I think.
blaggins
Senior Member
Another great video @Joël Dollié, thanks for sharing!
OP
OP
Joël Dollié
Active Member
Glad you guys like it! I think it's easy to forget that no matter how good the wet part is, things can never be truly convincing if the dry part isn't good.
Reverb is a band aid designed to increase depth but the design of a reverb send itself makes it fundamentally impossible to get a truly perfect result.
Ideally you would have a magical reverb 100% wet as insert and whatever comes out sounds just right.. Such a reverb would need a completely different design.
Maybe one day. I have no clue how it would look like. Something that wouldn't sound too wet but would reshape the source properly. Not just add a layer..
Reverb is a band aid designed to increase depth but the design of a reverb send itself makes it fundamentally impossible to get a truly perfect result.
Ideally you would have a magical reverb 100% wet as insert and whatever comes out sounds just right.. Such a reverb would need a completely different design.
Maybe one day. I have no clue how it would look like. Something that wouldn't sound too wet but would reshape the source properly. Not just add a layer..
InsomniaEmperor
Active Member
That was pretty insightful. I learned from going to an orchestra concert yesterday that real instruments aren’t as drenched in reverb just because you sit on the far back. Adding reverb can’t really replicate depth. My takeaway from my last few mock ups is that reverb is like make up where it enhances appearance but too much of it makes things ugly.
Trash Panda
Clueless nitwit
Smells like the beginning of a new JD Factory plugin!
I am curious if Matt from @LiquidSonics has any insight to add on top of that great video.
I haven’t watched your video yet but I think Inspirata does it in that way.
(From their blog)
Even though in the direct sound, the soundwave does not collide with any hard surfaces, the frequency dependent absorption of air itself, the small turbulences, the temperature and pressure fluctuations and the flow of the medium will cause a location specific distortion of the direct sound. In INSPIRATA we aimed for the most realistic approach possible, so we did not oversimplify the direct sound as a perfect impulse, but we use the measured, real waveform experienced in the space.
https://www.inspiredacoustics.com/en/inspirations/blog/insert-or-send-wetdry-mixing-inspirata/view
Dietz
Space Explorer
May I humbly ask if you have ever tried Vienna MIR? The default setting is not "100%" wet, as the dry source is processed to take the place of the direct signal component in a hall, but otherwise most of your wishes should be fulfilled, namely source positioning, directivity, timbre and so on. Oh, and it indeed relies on a "completely different design" (that slowly finds some followers, too.).
OP
OP
Joël Dollié
Active Member
That would be very difficult to make haha. But who knows.
OP
OP
Joël Dollié
Active Member
I have (a while ago) and I use such plugins to place things in a space, such as 2c audio precedence, SP2016 (in 100% wet mode).. but I find that the quality of results vary based on the type of source you feed it. I think MIR is more for very dry mono sources? It's tricky when you have a stereo sound like a Decca tree but the room is too small and you want to make it better...May I humbly ask if you have ever tried Vienna MIR? The default setting is not "100%" wet, as the dry source is processed to take the place of the direct signal component in a hall, but otherwise most of your wishes should be fulfilled, namely source positioning, directivity, timbre and so on. Oh, and it indeed relies on a "completely different design" (that slowly finds some followers, too.).
Say an eastern European orchestra in a less than ideal room. You don't want to change the stereo field or anything, just change the texture of everything to make it as if the room was bigger to begin with. I haven't heard a plugin which does that perfectly yet. Tricky because there's already some ER as well
Dietz
Space Explorer
Mono is ok. However, good stereo recordings will work better. "Individual instruments" or "ensembles of similar instruments" are preferable. (Admittedly, full mixes or submixes aren't the intended application.) "Very dry" is a question of definition; bone dry sources aren't a necessity at all, as long as there's no actual reverb tail. Proper spot mics will work in most cases. Some examples shown in these tutorials:
I understand what you are asking. I've done literally dozens of productions where I've positioned and enhanced the recordings of a real orchestra by adding MIR fed from the spot mics to the main mic array, be it a Decca mic or some other, more delicate set-up. The great thing about this approach is that you get immaculate positioning and very vidid, colourful reverb with little effort.
.... nothing wrong with adding some additional algorithmic reverb to this as "sugar on top" for feathering even soft modulation, but it doesn't have to do the heavy lifting any more.
Welcome to my world! :-D That was exactly the premise of this contest-winning song, 9 years ago:
re-peat
Senior Member
A transient designer can be sensationally effective to help suggest distance. Here’s a little video (quickly made) showing the effect that the Sonnox Oxford TransMod has on the perceived distance of a dry, close-up drumloop. By doing nothing more than decreasing the strength of the transients, these drums can — without the use of any reverb — be effortlessly pushed back quite some distance or, when increasing the transients, brought considerably closer. (Works with most other instruments too, but for demonstration purposes, transient-rich drums and/or percussion illustrate the effect most clearly)
If you then bring in a reverb (and an EQ to attenuate the highs, plus maybe a good panner for left-right positioning), there’s very little that can’t be done with regard to placing an instrument anywhere you like in your mix.
Ircam SPAT — it was inevitable that I would bring this up — has all these tools built in: transient processing (position-dependent and fully controllable), roll-off of the highs (again: position-dependent and fully controllable) plus dozens of other parameters to control width, projection, orientation, absorption, immersion, imaging, diffusion, etc.
It’s the closest thing to Joël’s “100% Magical Reverb Wet” in existence. SPAT is not a reverb, it’s a virtual space (of whatever size and character you need it to be) in which you place your source sounds. Like a real room, it has no dry/wet slider, it’s always 100% wet.
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If you then bring in a reverb (and an EQ to attenuate the highs, plus maybe a good panner for left-right positioning), there’s very little that can’t be done with regard to placing an instrument anywhere you like in your mix.
Ircam SPAT — it was inevitable that I would bring this up — has all these tools built in: transient processing (position-dependent and fully controllable), roll-off of the highs (again: position-dependent and fully controllable) plus dozens of other parameters to control width, projection, orientation, absorption, immersion, imaging, diffusion, etc.
It’s the closest thing to Joël’s “100% Magical Reverb Wet” in existence. SPAT is not a reverb, it’s a virtual space (of whatever size and character you need it to be) in which you place your source sounds. Like a real room, it has no dry/wet slider, it’s always 100% wet.
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Noeticus
Motion Picture Producer
FireGS
Senior Member
Real rooms aren't pleasing to the ear, though, in most cases, 100% by themselves. Thats why multiple mic positions are used, to dial in how much of the room you want, like a wet/dry slider.
SPAT seems to do exactly what the OP is talking about in the video. Mimicking what we hear and think is going on with instruments in the room. Inspirita appears to take what migh be considered a more scientific approach. Possibly more accurate in relation to a real space. That is, if I understand the blog post correctly. I would guess that either could be more pleasing, depending on the listener. I would love to hear a side-by-side comparison of the two.
I think the same snippet, was posted on here by the developer. However, I never read the full blog post. Very interesting stuff.
Edit: I also am not a fan of the Clickbait title. Very unfortunate.
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re-peat
Senior Member
Depends on the room, I would think, no? There are some very pleasant-sounding rooms on this planet. People who can afford it, will pay lots of money to record in such rooms.
Anyway, in SPAT you can make your room as present or as inconspicuous as you like. It’s always 100% there, but depending on how you define its responsive (or reflective) behaviour, it can be anything from a very subtle to a very pronounced presence.
And, obviously, where you place your source in that room, also has a big influence on the balance and interaction between source and room.
Here’s another video (quickly made): same drumloop as in the previous video, but now sent into SPAT where I fiddle with several parameters to demonstrate the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. (It’s a bit longer than the first video but that’s because there is so much you can do in SPAT. And I’ve still showed only 5%.)
Also note — and it’s important because almost everything in SPAT can be automated — that you don’t hear a single crackle or calculation hick-up throughout the entire video, despite me moving, in real time, the drums all over the place, adjusting many spatialization parameters and even changing the early reflections (length and distribution) as well as the reverb decay. Not a single glitch.
(Were I to change the dimensions of the room though, then you would hear the familiar recalculation noises. But that’s the only parameter that causes it.)
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Noeticus,
The version of SPAT as sold by FLUX: isn't free, no. It's actually quite expensive. But the same, or similar, IRCAM technology is apparently also available in free software. Don’t know much about that though, as I have the FLUX:: version. In an earlier SPAT-related thread however, all the details about, and links to, the free alternative were posted.
Also be aware that the version demoed in that video above is an older version of SPAT. The current one — and, sadly, the only one that FLUX:: sells and supports — is called SPAT Revolution which is even much more powerful, but also much, much, much more unwieldy to work with.
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FireGS
Senior Member
Generally speaking, sure, but even still; there are usually spot/close mics utilized to dry up the room when needed.
