Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Stratus reverb - still worth it?

I

igorsco

New Member
Hey everyone,

I'm trying to decide if I should get the Stratus reverb. Mainly for orchestral/cinematic music - VI instruments. I'm demo'ing Cinematic Rooms and Stratus by Liquid Sonics. CRs is stunning - I can't really recreate the 3d depth it creates, especially on percussion. I missed the BF sale, so I'm definitely waiting a year to get it, but in the meantime, would it be worth to get Stratus? It's only $25 on sale right now.

Plus, what is the proximity knob doing on CRs? I can't really recreate it on any other reverb. The closer I got was delaying the Early reflections on Stratus.

Anyway, any thoughts on it would be appreciated. Thank you!
Click to read more...
 
igorsco said:
Well... for anyone who's interested, put a stereo widener before the reverb on a send bus. Or a sample delay plugin and delay one side. It'll really open up the image on your reverb. Symphony then sounded fairly close to CRP.
Click to expand...
I suppose you suggest to do this in addition to setting the width slider inside stratus to wide?
 
Yes - when comparing the two reverbs, even the "wide" turned up all of the way on Stratus, the reverb wasn't as wide as CRP.
 
I love Stratus and greatly prefer it to Cinematic Rooms (which I've only tried on a trial basis); but they are very different. Stratus can give you a wide range of realistic reverbs without adding special character. Cinematic Rooms is like a virtual reality space where everything sounds that little bit X - where is X is something other people seem to like much better than I do.

As you say, there are ways of introducing extra complexity to reverbs. For depth, modulation can help, low passing late reflection relative to early ones, and so on. I'm not sure which methods are more realistic, but certainly increasing the pre-delay makes a huge difference. And, yes, stereo widening will add to the sense of space.
 
igorsco said:
Yes - when comparing the two reverbs, even the "wide" turned up all of the way on Stratus, the reverb wasn't as wide as CRP.
Click to expand...
Interesting. That makes me think that the stereo width in Cinematic Rooms must be quite over-hyped - and that people seem to like that over-hyped sound. Maybe, the reason for the over-hype about Cinematic Rooms.
 
Bee_Abney said:
I love Stratus and greatly prefer it to Cinematic Rooms (which I've only tried on a trial basis); but they are very different. Stratus can give you a wide range of realistic reverbs without adding special character. Cinematic Rooms is like a virtual reality space where everything sounds that little bit X - where is X is something other people seem to like much better than I do.

As you say, there are ways of introducing extra complexity to reverbs. For depth, modulation can help, low passing late reflection relative to early ones, and so on. I'm not sure which methods are more realistic, but certainly increasing the pre-delay makes a huge difference. And, yes, stereo widening will add to the sense of space.
Click to expand...
Yes - I actually going to buy Symphony, which is slightly different than Stratus. Symphony has the same controls as CRP and it's a fraction of the price at the moment. On a direct A/B comparison I couldn't really tell the two apart. CRP has the distance know which affects only the early reflections and it's super handy, but I found that you can achieve the same result when adjusting the early reflection parameters in Symphony. A bit more time consuming, but it works.
 
drjee said:
Interesting. That makes me think that the stereo width in Cinematic Rooms must be quite over-hyped - and that people seem to like that over-hyped sound. Maybe, the reason for the over-hype about Cinematic Rooms.
Click to expand...
It must be. When I A/B'ed the two I kept liking CRP better. Once I opened up the image on Symphony, the difference was very very small.
 
igorsco said:
It must be. When I A/B'ed the two I kept liking CRP better. Once I opened up the image on Symphony, the difference was very very small.
Click to expand...
Did you check mono compatibility? Liquid Sonics makes a lot of fuzz about the allegedly advanced decorrelation of CR.
 
igorsco said:
Yes - I actually going to buy Symphony, which is slightly different than Stratus. Symphony has the same controls as CRP and it's a fraction of the price at the moment. On a direct A/B comparison I couldn't really tell the two apart. CRP has the distance know which affects only the early reflections and it's super handy, but I found that you can achieve the same result when adjusting the early reflection parameters in Symphony. A bit more time consuming, but it works.
Click to expand...
Yes! I could kick myself - I should have mentioned Symphony as something you might like more that Stratus.
 
EDIT: Ignore this post; I was mistaken.

By the way, did you realise that the main developer of both Stratus/Symphony and the related Izoptope reverbs is the same one as with Cinematic Rooms/Liquidsonics? I can never keep track of these things - or people's names - but I'm sure that's what I was told. It makes a lot of sense.

EDIT: Ignore this post; I was mistaken.
 
Last edited:
Not at all.
Michael Carnes formerly of Exponential Audio and before that did the stuff now sold by izotope.
He is now very retired.

The Liquidsonics team are entirely different. Matt Hill and I believe one other person (who may not be a programmer).


rsp
 
Last edited:
Bee_Abney said:
EDIT: Ignore this post; I was mistaken.

By the way, did you realise that the main developer of both Stratus/Symphony and the related Izoptope reverbs is the same one as with Cinematic Rooms/Liquidsonics? I can never keep track of these things - or people's names - but I'm sure that's what I was told. It makes a lot of sense.

EDIT: Ignore this post; I was mistaken.
Click to expand...
Maybe, you mixed it up, because Michael Carnes has a much more impressive record than being involved with Liquidsonics. He used to be the main developer for Lexicon (PCM96 and other high end hardware) before he left Lexicon and continued his work with his own company (Exponential Audio) which now is part of iZotope/Soundwise.
 
drjee said:
Maybe, you mixed it up, because Michael Carnes has a much more impressive record than being involved with Liquidsonics. He used to be the main developer for Lexicon (PCM96 and other high end hardware) before he left Lexicon and continued his work with his own company (Exponential Audio) which now is part of iZotope/Soundwise.
Click to expand...
That makes sense, yes!
 
Stratus and Symphony are still great. I have been an Exponential Audio fan since the original release of PhoenixVerb and R2; I also did beta testing and contributed presets. I still enjoy the Michael Carnes reverbs today and think they sound great. I also quite enjoy Liquidsonics products and bought all of them. I have a slight preference for Liquidsonics because there is still active development going on, and I really like what they are releasing these days. I don't think you can go wrong with either brand, and they both can achieve similar ends in the hands of a skilled user.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom