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Reverb is stupid

FireGS said:
there are usually spot/close mics utilized to dry up the room when needed.
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You can’t dry up a room with spot mics, FireGS. All that you change, when using different microphone distances, is the balance between the direct signal, the room’s response and the interaction between the two. But the room’s reflective characteristics remain exactly the same. (Unless the room is very unevenly reflective in different places.)

If you wanna ‘dry up’ a wet room, you need to mount (or roll out) absorbent materials. Many studios have convenient systems in place that can easily and quickly be changed from absorbent (drier room) to reflective (wetter room).

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re-peat said:
You can’t dry up a room with spot mics, FireGS. All that you change, when using different microphone distances, is the balance between the direct signal, the room’s response and the interaction between the two. But the room’s reflective characteristics remain exactly the same. (Unless the room is very unevenly reflective in different places.)

If you wanna ‘dry up’ a wet room, you need to mount (or roll out) absorbent materials. Many studios have convenient systems in place that can easily and quickly be changed from absorbent (drier room) to reflective (wetter room).

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I think we're just disagreeing on terms, but


All that you change, when using different microphone distances, is the balance between the direct signal, the room’s response and the interaction between the two.
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Is the same thing Deitz is referring to in MIR with the Wet/Dry slider.
 
Hm, I get a lot of crystalline brightness from more distant recordings.
Those sounds are definitely way more distant than the dry drumloop and maybe roughly a similar distance as the emulated result. I've heard quite a bunch of recordings where things in the distance still retain a lo of that kind of brightness that would be cut away with a filter/EQ.

Quick example of the some of the sounds and their bright but fairly distant mics. Of course it's not super "far" but still rather distant.
View attachment Far Bright.mp3

And a Snare Ensemble from Bang Orchestra Dorado. First 3 Overhead mics combined then Surround + Main. Even though those are clearly much more distant they actually get brighter. There is even a lot of lovely airy high end that would also be cut away by a filter.
View attachment Snare OH vs Main + Outrigger.mp3

And VSL Zodiac 12 Horns - High Surround VS Close. I checked - no eq or other processing.
View attachment Zodiac 12 Horns High Surround vs Close.mp3

Tom Holkenborg Brass 12 Horns - 2 Close Mics VS Surround 1.
View attachment JXL 12 Horns Close VS Surround 1.mp3
Certainly the close mics are brighter (one is fairly dark, the other very bright) but the Surround still has so much beautiful airy fizz... would all be gone when high-cutting. I think the only more distant mic is the Ambient mic.
Those are the unprocessed mics (unless they secretly processed them), not the AMXL mics.
 
Joël Dollié said:
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...

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
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this is interesting


I wonder if MIR conflicts with ensemble patches that already sound good from the box


My personal solution is the binaural panner, for example when a library is one close mic only

But as a reverbophile, i toke the offense from the title ; )



 
Markus Kohlprath said:
It would be helpful if you elaborate a bit how Berlin Studio handles this topic. EQ, transient shaping etc. of the source material.
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Berlin Studio has an Align option with the purpose of attenuating transients by time-aligning the source and microphone signals, like what recording engineers can do with delay lines on close microphones. So, the source signal will no longer have brief "exposed" onsets before the effects of the main microphones kick in. This is not done with delays, but by trimming the corresponding leading sections of the internal impulse responses. This approach typically softens the transients in the source signal because the signals from the microphone signals is not 100% correlated with the source signal.

There is a five band equalizer for each "channel", for the source signal as well as for each "wet" microphone channel.
 
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Peter Roos said:
Berlin Studio has an Align option with the purpose of attenuating transients by time-aligning the source and microphone signals, like what recording engineers can do with delay lines on close microphones. So, the source signal will no longer have brief "exposed" onsets before the effects of the main microphones kick in. This is not done with delays, but by trimming the corresponding leading sections of the internal impulse responses. This approach typically softens the transients in the source signal because the signals from the microphone signals is not 100% correlated with the source signal.

There is a five band equalizer for each "channel", for the source signal as well as for each "wet" microphone channel.
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Thank you for explaining! Does this mean I do not have to mute the source signal if I use Berlin Studio as a send to prevent phasing with the dry signal? Or would you rather mute it, meaning 100% wet reverb, as is usual with sends?
I use it also as an insert but in some cases a send makes sense.
 
Markus Kohlprath said:
Thank you for explaining! Does this mean I do not have to mute the source signal if I use Berlin Studio as a send to prevent phasing with the dry signal? Or would you rather mute it, meaning 100% wet reverb, as is usual with sends?
I use it also as insert but in some cases a send makes sense.
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If you use it as a Send effect, you will always have to mute the source, because it is the same signal that also goes to your mix outside of the plugin.

The source channel has no processing (apart from its EQ), so it must not be added in a Send configuration. I am still pondering if I should add an Insert / Send toggle, to make this muting of the Source channel more explicit. The approach with "channels" makes the Dry/Wet mix not so clear...

The aligning is done in the reverb (microphone) channels and thus part of the effect.
 
Peter Roos said:
Berlin Studio has an Align option with the purpose of attenuating transients by time-aligning the source and microphone signals, like what recording engineers can do with delay lines on close microphones. So, the source signal will no longer have brief "exposed" onsets before the effects of the main microphones kick in. This is not done with delays, but by trimming the corresponding leading sections of the internal impulse responses. This approach typically softens the transients in the source signal because the signals from the microphone signals is not 100% correlated with the source signal.

There is a five band equalizer for each "channel", for the source signal as well as for each "wet" microphone channel.
Click to expand...
And more questions come to my mind.
Is the signal of the source what is sent to the mic channels? So it's not in parallel but a chain? This would mean with setting the EQ of the source I send an EQed signal of it to the mic channels. Is this correct?
 
Peter Roos said:
If you use it as a Send effect, you will always have to mute the source, because it is the same signal that also goes to your mix outside of the plugin.

The source channel has no processing (apart from its EQ), so it must not be added in a Send configuration. I am still pondering if I should add an Insert / Send toggle, to make this muting of the Source channel more explicit. The approach with "channels" makes the Dry/Wet mix not so clear...

The aligning is done in the reverb (microphone) channels and thus part of the effect.
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Ha next question kind of answered. Didn't expect it that fast. Thank you. Until now I muted the source of the sends of course. So I've been right. Thank you
 
Markus Kohlprath said:
And more questions come to my mind.
Is the signal of the source what is sent to the mic channels? So it's not in parallel but a chain? This would mean with setting the EQ of the source I send an EQed signal of it to the mic channels. Is this correct?
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What started with a silly remark by me is now turning into a topic highjack... ;) Sorry to Joel!

No, the Input channel is used as input for the mic channels.
The Source is a copy that can be panned and EQ-ed separately, and then mixed with the mic channels.
 
An amazing thread, I've learnt so much. Was just trying out the transient shaper as depth method, and it does sound magic. Here I've recorded using EQ drop off vs transient shaping using Boz Transgressor. H-Reverb is basically only providing tail reverb. No input echoes. Interesting how lowering the transient gain and rolling off the highs, stops that weird splashing effect that sounds so fake, makes the effect seem much more natural and real. To my ears, the transgressor/h-reverb combo gives a 3D like depth to the sound, very realistic.


View attachment 2023-09-18 17-31-25.mp4
 
Joël Dollié said:
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..
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This is... kinda what Berlin Studio does, more or less. It's why I switched to that one for at least all my placements. I then either use Berlin Studio's own tails or I use Stratus3D or Symphony3D to finish off the reverb part.
 
Thank you to all. I've enjoyed this thread so I've made a little experiment with a successful result.

A macro which maps one knob to "Proximity" (a free plugin ... https://www.tokyodawn.net/proximity/ ) plus a transient shaper and a reverb send. (I used Smart Controls in Logic Pro).

Basically:
* volume cut
* transients shaving
* EQ (high and low end roll off)
* stereo width narrowing
* time delay
* room reflections
* reverb tail

Works well. Only problem is I can't decide if I should call it "My Big Fat at a Distance Knob" or "The Joel Dollierizer).
 
Buzz said:
Thank you to all. I've enjoyed this thread so I've made a little experiment with a successful result.

A macro which maps one knob to "Proximity" (a free plugin ... https://www.tokyodawn.net/proximity/ ) plus a transient shaper and a reverb send. (I used Smart Controls in Logic Pro).
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What a cool idea! Proximity looks like it's no longer supported. Is there any other plugin that does what this does? I'm on Apple Silicon and am pretty sure this is not native)
 
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