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Post by henge on Mar 28, 2014 6:50:42 GMT -6
So I love the Ambience programs in ValhallaVintageVerb. The "Very Small Ambience" and "Ambience Tiled Room" always put a smile on my face. VVV does that thing where when you take it off the source it just shrinks in size and space.
What are your guys fave small rooms etc. ? Btw I don't have any hard verbs so please also list your software choices. Thx
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Post by svart on Mar 28, 2014 7:17:30 GMT -6
Sorry, I don't have any software verbs, only hardware!
But I do agree on small ambiances. I love em. I try to get them at the source by opening up the distance between the source and the mic a bit, and the compression I usually add helps too. In the end, I'll add some small ambiance to the vocals too, before adding room reverb and such.
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Post by jazznoise on Mar 28, 2014 10:46:08 GMT -6
I'll always have a small room reverb going and I'll usually be sending various amounts of that on to other reverb channels. If drums are too dry, it's a particularly effective method to send them to a convolution model of a small room. I'm using plain old ReaVerb and some impulses I like - my favourite 2 small room/ambience sounds are a Masonic Lodge and some stone room from an old French building. Anything that needs to be smaller than that I can get from my house!
As with Svart, I'd prefer to make something so it already has the correct amount of reverb and pre-delay before I record it..but people aren't always clear on their direction before tracking. And of course people can bawk at a very distant mic being used for, say, a guitar solo. When they hear it, the opinion often completely flips.
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Post by svart on Mar 28, 2014 11:34:05 GMT -6
As with Svart, I'd prefer to make something so it already has the correct amount of reverb and pre-delay before I record it..but people aren't always clear on their direction before tracking. And of course people can bawk at a very distant mic being used for, say, a guitar solo. When they hear it, the opinion often completely flips. Oh man have I had that happen too many times. Once they hear it for real, they suddenly flip their opinion, or they simply no longer have any idea what they want. Artist before: "I LOVE room sound, I want lots and lots of room sound" Artist after: "Uhh.. That doesn't sound like I like, your room doesn't sound good" Me; "ok, do you have an example?" Artist: "Here, listen to this" Me: "uh, this is a live recording and that's a stadium they are playing in." Or Artist before: "I LOOOOOVE reverb and delay. I want as much reverb and delay as you can put on it" Me: "ok, here it is" Artist after: "Why can't I hear each instrument clearly? You must not be mixing it right" UGH.
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Post by jazznoise on Mar 28, 2014 13:51:33 GMT -6
Reminds me of one from about 2 years ago! This artist was talking about this guitar part he had where he wanted a very specific delay effect. When I think back, it's probably one of the only times the guy described something totally off the wall and I managed to get it. Everything from crunchier toms to punchier vocals (he couldn't stay in tune, so he said they needed to be more compressed) was requested. Anyway, I said that was fine, and I asked him to describe it and he did an imitation of the part -
"Dun dun dun da dun dunnnn"
and then he said he wanted the delay to make it go
"Dun dun da dun dunnnnn-un-un-un-un".
So me being the good little engineer setup a delay send and sent the last note to an 8th note delay with about 50% feedback.
"Uh, no, that's not really it. It needs to be clearer."
So I set it to a dotted 8th? Nope, the rhythms right but the feeling isn't. Okay, maybe he wants it more separate, so I put a 100% wet single 8th note before it.
"Eghhh, that's closer! But it's not it, no."
I try a bunch of other version - delay on all the notes, change the levels, EQ the delay, gate the delay. It's about 20 minutes of fiddling with a god damn 8th note delay. We've been tracking all day, and I needed an air break so I go out and he goes to a local shop for cigarettes. Came back in and decided to play with some other effects to see what I'm not doing. My classic I'm-bored-and-no-one-can-hear-me-be-silly go to is a Ring Modulator. The artist comes in and sort of comments on how weird the effect sounds and I'm like:
"Yeah, it's really cool when you crazy sweeps like this"
and I swept it from like 5Khz down to about 10 Hz - WEEEEEEURRRRRBRRRHHHNNNNGGGGHHHHHUGUGUGUG UG UG UG
"OMG THAT'S IT! THAT'S THE EFFECT! WHAT'S DELAY IS THAT!?!?!"
"What!? Really? That's not a delay!"
"What?"
"That's a Ring Mod, but I have it set to give a tremolo effect."
"A tremolo??? Well, whatever man, that's the effect! Save that!"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2014 14:23:59 GMT -6
What are your guys fave small rooms etc. ? I don't have a fave, I just use the Sonitus reverb bundled with SONAR with appropriate parameters. But I totally agree about the value of small-room reverb. It adds a very nice sense of the instruments being right there in the room with you. A decent plug-in also has a more linear response (RT60 versus frequency) than most real small rooms. So I'd rather record in a room that's mostly dead, and add the reverb later when mixing. --Ethan
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Post by RicFoxx on Mar 28, 2014 14:29:00 GMT -6
Vahalla Room is my choice to!
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 28, 2014 15:37:31 GMT -6
I'll always have a small room reverb going and I'll usually be sending various amounts of that on to other reverb channels. If drums are too dry, it's a particularly effective method to send them to a convolution model of a small room. I'm using plain old ReaVerb and some impulses I like - my favourite 2 small room/ambience sounds are a Masonic Lodge and some stone room from an old French building. Anything that needs to be smaller than that I can get from my house! As with Svart, I'd prefer to make something so it already has the correct amount of reverb and pre-delay before I record it..but people aren't always clear on their direction before tracking. And of course people can bawk at a very distant mic being used for, say, a guitar solo. When they hear it, the opinion often completely flips. I just did this with some drums...I thought the VVV room sounded better than the actual room mics...muted them and used VVV.
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 28, 2014 15:39:21 GMT -6
So I love the Ambience programs in ValhallaVintageVerb. The "Very Small Ambience" and "Ambience Tiled Room" always put a smile on my face. VVV does that thing where when you take it off the source it just shrinks in size and space. What are your guys fave small rooms etc. ? Btw I don't have any hard verbs so please also list your software choices. Thx I love the VVV rooms too. That Ambient Tiled Room preset is the bomb...sometimes I'll switch the 1980's modulations off...but I use that alot...
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kcatthedog
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Post by kcatthedog on Mar 28, 2014 17:19:43 GMT -6
if people have ua lex or relab, sliders fully down is its/their smallest setting and you can increase pre delay by rising just its slider to taste
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Post by nico on Mar 28, 2014 18:11:16 GMT -6
vvv rocks! ambience used on every mix here since I got it, several times have 2-3 different of the ambience instances going on ( the default one, the very small ambience and the tiled one, I like to lower the high cut frequency ). Otherwise the Altiverb AMS-RMX16 impulses work well ( the very short decay presets, forgot the names, like nonlin-something and a few others as well, and didn't have the chance to use a real one...well with the AMS plugin coming might be closer to there . With Altiverb a lot of small recording studiorooms impulses can do an ambience-like sound, only a bit more dark then artificial ambience. Also Altiverb: some nice Lexicon ambience presets, though not every emulation is great.... UAD EMT 140 set with supershort decay ( and the A type plate for a brighter sound ) can do something ambience-like as well, although not as subtle as not intended for it. AudioDamage ADverb : nice 80s style ambience, and wide range of textures, pretty unique plugin that does not suit every scenario, but when it does it delivers. Worked with a hardware Quantec QRS a few years back in a studio, and it is very good at ambience. Top of my list must be something I tried a few month back in the liveroom of the newly built studio : on a lead vocalist : put a pair of sdc omnis at face height of the singer in a triangle configuration ( with each mic pointing to the singer at approx 45°, a non-isocele triangle, mics approx 350cm apart, but each at approx 150cm from the singer ), when I brought these in the mix at subtle levels ( only felt and not really audible as reverb ) o.m.g., surpasses anything I have tried regarding small rooms / ambience. The depth, width, air it gave around the singer, without ever sounding like " oh it's a reverb ", could push it way more up in the mix than any verb I have, singer loved it and we will use it on probably more than just one song:) The live room here has an RT60 of approx 0.8 seconds, so I guess with singers unlikely to trigger the full decay of the room it is less thus very close to ambience like presets. Btw, didn't look this one up, but does anyone know the fundamental difference between what is considered ambience or small room? best, Nico
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Post by WKG on Mar 28, 2014 18:13:33 GMT -6
I've been using Exponential Phoenix with whatever room setting fits best. Usually one of the live rooms and dialing it back a bit and to taste.
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 28, 2014 18:19:01 GMT -6
Yeah - aren't the Quantec's one of the hot verbs right now? Never even seen one... I'm surprised cowboycoalminer hasn't mentioned the UA Ocean Way plugin...I know he really loves that as small room ambience (maybe large too). I demo'd it again the other night - really tried a lot of the re-mic settings...and it's really good. For me, I didn't feel like it was something I HAD to have...I felt like I could get similar results from VVV and Altiverb. It wouldn't bother me one bit to have it, though!
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Post by jazznoise on Mar 28, 2014 18:36:53 GMT -6
vvv rocks! ambience used on every mix here since I got it, several times have 2-3 different of the ambience instances going on ( the default one, the very small ambience and the tiled one, I like to lower the high cut frequency ). Otherwise the Altiverb AMS-RMX16 impulses work well ( the very short decay presets, forgot the names, like nonlin-something and a few others as well, and didn't have the chance to use a real one...well with the AMS plugin coming might be closer to there . With Altiverb a lot of small recording studiorooms impulses can do an ambience-like sound, only a bit more dark then artificial ambience. Also Altiverb: some nice Lexicon ambience presets, though not every emulation is great.... UAD EMT 140 set with supershort decay ( and the A type plate for a brighter sound ) can do something ambience-like as well, although not as subtle as not intended for it. AudioDamage ADverb : nice 80s style ambience, and wide range of textures, pretty unique plugin that does not suit every scenario, but when it does it delivers. Worked with a hardware Quantec QRS a few years back in a studio, and it is very good at ambience. Top of my list must be something I tried a few month back in the liveroom of the newly built studio : on a lead vocalist : put a pair of sdc omnis at face height of the singer in a triangle configuration ( with each mic pointing to the singer at approx 45°, a non-isocele triangle, mics approx 350cm apart, but each at approx 150cm from the singer ), when I brought these in the mix at subtle levels ( only felt and not really audible as reverb ) o.m.g., surpasses anything I have tried regarding small rooms / ambience. The depth, width, air it gave around the singer, without ever sounding like " oh it's a reverb ", could push it way more up in the mix than any verb I have, singer loved it and we will use it on probably more than just one song:) The live room here has an RT60 of approx 0.8 seconds, so I guess with singers unlikely to trigger the full decay of the room it is less thus very close to ambience like presets. Btw, didn't look this one up, but does anyone know the fundamental difference between what is considered ambience or small room? best, Nico Not sure on the ambience/small room definition. I guess most guys take ambiance as being largely first order reflections where as a small room is a full set of reflections but for shorter delay lines due to the rooms size. Everything always triggers the full ambiance of the room, FYI. But with an ambient noise floor of 50 dB, the full tail of reverb of an 80 dB impulse is masked much more than a 110dB impulse. As your hearing would mask various reflections as you pushed it up and down, reverberance arguably changes from "Ambiance" to "Small Room" depending on the level used. Perception is weird like that!
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Post by henge on Mar 28, 2014 18:50:13 GMT -6
Sorry, I don't have any software verbs, only hardware! But I do agree on small ambiances. I love em. I try to get them at the source by opening up the distance between the source and the mic a bit, and the compression I usually add helps too. In the end, I'll add some small ambiance to the vocals too, before adding room reverb and such. Totally agree about getting the size at the source.I was doing some of those big whooaa's that are all the rage and tracked some of them about 12 ft back from a ribbon. They add a largeness and depth without a large decay.
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Post by nico on Mar 28, 2014 19:00:43 GMT -6
jazznoise : thanks for the info! care to say a bit more about first order reflections of ambience vs small room ? And thanks for correcting, yes you are right about the triggering of the roomsound, I meant that with miking a lead vocal ( with soft to medium volume range, not a belting diva with a cardioid condenser at one foot or less distance, the microphone does not ( or at least not very audibly ) pick up the triggered ambience, or not in its full length at much frequencies as would a hard hitting snare drum with similar setup. Not sure I am expressing correctly as its getting late, but I think this makes some sense @ admin: I think Quantec QRS have been overshadowed immensely by Lexicon, well it is a room simulator and not as versatile nor widely used nor inducing as much GAS as a 480.....only pretty expensive....and used ones as well....and vintage ones not so easy to find ( but didnt search recently ) regards, Nico
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Post by nico on Mar 28, 2014 19:03:44 GMT -6
PS : didn't hear any of their recent models, but I heard from two mixers they are awesome, and much more versatile than the old ones, maybe they excel at small ambiences? anyone used recent Quantec and cares to comment?
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Post by henge on Mar 28, 2014 19:22:15 GMT -6
PS : didn't hear any of their recent models, but I heard from two mixers they are awesome, and much more versatile than the old ones, maybe they excel at small ambiences? anyone used recent Quantec and cares to comment? Yeah! has anyone used the new quantecs?
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 28, 2014 19:31:54 GMT -6
$5200...I think I'll reach for the Bricasti first...Or hell, I think I could put a chamber in my basement for that price.
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Post by jazznoise on Mar 28, 2014 19:42:03 GMT -6
nicoYou're expressing yourself fine and your idea makes perfect sense - it's more my own semantics. All the tiny little reflections down to the Nth.. order still exist in both scenarios, but louder sources with big transients make them more obvious! As for first order reflections vs. a small room reverb. If you can imagine you speaking in a square-ish room, the sound leaves your mouth and hits all 6 surfaces and comes back. Those are first order reflections. Now you hear some of them, but the sound flys past you again and doubles back - 2nd order reflections. Each time this happens the sound tends to "break up" a little bit and instead of getting single instances from each surface they're less discrete and more a wall of fragmented sound. This is the "Build up" of a reverb, and early reflections are where that starts. They're how we tell how far surfaces are and how big a room roughly is. This is where some reverb settings quite literally stop, and it just gives a vary bare sense of space. Slap delays and other FX were crude attempts at emulating this. I have some plugins that do this, but I don't tend to go for it much..just a taste thing, maybe. So now that reverb has built up, it has to decay off. And, as you know, the RT60 is a measure of how long it takes for the dB SPL to drop 60dB. This defines the tail of the reverb in terms of perceived length. Small rooms are generally under 1.5, but it depends really on the roll off for various frequencies that defines the the actual perceived length - what 'small' is to you is going to be subjective. They pretty much behave like any other reverb apart from that. Non convolution reverbs vary in their ability to do small room sounds - I'd recommend using anything these folks have suggested. I'm sticking to my meek impulse library for the meantime. VoS' EpicVerb is a delay line based reverb that lets you go through all this stuff and the crossover function is way cool. I'm not a big of that style of reverb, but he does a reasonable job at it. Certainly a good tool for getting your head around reverbs!
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Post by delcampo on Mar 28, 2014 20:40:58 GMT -6
Keep meaning to check out the UAD ocean way but I do find the EMT 250 in some cases very usable for small spaces.
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Post by nico on Mar 28, 2014 21:19:40 GMT -6
nicoYou're expressing yourself fine and your idea makes perfect sense - it's more my own semantics. All the tiny little reflections down to the Nth.. order still exist in both scenarios, but louder sources with big transients make them more obvious! As for first order reflections vs. a small room reverb. If you can imagine you speaking in a square-ish room, the sound leaves your mouth and hits all 6 surfaces and comes back. Those are first order reflections. Now you hear some of them, but the sound flys past you again and doubles back - 2nd order reflections. Each time this happens the sound tends to "break up" a little bit and instead of getting single instances from each surface they're less discrete and more a wall of fragmented sound. This is the "Build up" of a reverb, and early reflections are where that starts. They're how we tell how far surfaces are and how big a room roughly is. This is where some reverb settings quite literally stop, and it just gives a vary bare sense of space. Slap delays and other FX were crude attempts at emulating this. I have some plugins that do this, but I don't tend to go for it much..just a taste thing, maybe. So now that reverb has built up, it has to decay off. And, as you know, the RT60 is a measure of how long it takes for the dB SPL to drop 60dB. This defines the tail of the reverb in terms of perceived length. Small rooms are generally under 1.5, but it depends really on the roll off for various frequencies that defines the the actual perceived length - what 'small' is to you is going to be subjective. They pretty much behave like any other reverb apart from that. Non convolution reverbs vary in their ability to do small room sounds - I'd recommend using anything these folks have suggested. I'm sticking to my meek impulse library for the meantime. VoS' EpicVerb is a delay line based reverb that lets you go through all this stuff and the crossover function is way cool. I'm not a big of that style of reverb, but he does a reasonable job at it. Certainly a good tool for getting your head around reverbs! thanks jazznoise ! so if I get it correctly to sum things up, ambience verbs stop ( after 1st order reflections ) where small room starts ( with those reflections bouncing , breaking off, and building early reflections etc...)? unfortunately won't be able to try EpicVerb ( OS X here.......) following your info, just out of curiosity, could an ambience type sound be made of more advanced delay plugins like Soundtoys Echoboy, or Logic's delay designer, or do these 1st order reflections also have directional info ( like a delay whose feedbacked-repeats would be panned to simulate directions ? ) to the OP : as I come to think of it, and checked my library, there are MANY ambience presets in Altiverb, all from different hardware devices now something worth checking, might be to test how IR amb presets compare to Algo amb presets, as these are very short decay times, anyone compared the two? IR are often criticized for not being able to emulate realistic decay over longer times due to static response linked to impulse, where algos simulate modulation and what not.... regards, Nico
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Post by nico on Mar 29, 2014 14:26:30 GMT -6
Hi, didn't figure out in my last latenight post that I had both Altiverb and VVV to compare regarding small ambience....so after a good night, was able to put 2 and 2 together again just tested over 20 Altiverb small ambience presets as well as VVV's. On acoustic guitar tracks (ribbon & DI), male vocals and snare drum, with all presets level-matched. For Altiverb, most are Lexicon 224,300,480, PCM70-90 based impulses regarding small ambience, although there are a few QRS that I must have overlooked over the years, that sound nice, and the RMX16 I wrote about earlier ( preset 1-decay 0.5 & preset 8-decay 4.0 NonLin2 btw ) My findings: * For any small ambience (0.2 to almost 1sec decay) Altiverb is good at delivering some extra air, depth and width and manages to stay pretty "invisible", although the sound is very clean,neutral... * VVV...well how to put it, let's just say I like VVV much much better for small ambience ....it is simply great, it sounds "alive" for lack of a better word, gives smooth air, depth and width...and the added controllability of the sound vs impulses, you can go anywhere without having to switch presets.... When checking VVV on a highly dynamic acoustic guitar track, the level/scaling of how subtle nuances of the playing/frequency range trigger the reverb differently was to me the biggest difference between the impulse vs algo small ambience here So I guess that doesn't bring the OP much further, only to say again VVV is in this case amazing at small ambience! Regards Nico
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Post by jazznoise on Mar 29, 2014 18:06:44 GMT -6
It wouldn't be strictly first order reflections, but rather the reflections that occur before it builds up into an actual reverb tail. Sort of complex to describe, google and I'm sure someone has drawn some pretty pictures!
Nothing wrong with everyone thinking a programs really good re: Valhalla. Sounds like I'd run it, if I had the dollars for such things!
As for impulse vs. algo, it's not fair to say. Impulses can be made badly and algorithim design dictates the sound extremely heavily. Allpass filter usage, use of allpass stages in feedback taps from delay lines, delay line modulation etc. effects the quality of reverb algorithims so heavily as to make categorizing them as a single entity a bit meaningless. Google "Reverb Subculture" on Gearslutz if you want a good geeky read on designing reverb algorithims..they get into some really interesting stuff, particularly in relation to the limitations of early Lexicon designs!
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Mar 29, 2014 19:09:01 GMT -6
I do indeed like the UAD Ocean Way for room ambience. I think I mentioned it before though that it's damn hard to use sometimes. As a reverb on a send it's not bad but mic replacement mode can get hairy.
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