Lots of good points on this thread. I agree that the liquid would be much less controversial if it were advertized just as a pre/comp with a number of different (generic) flavors. But it would also lose marketing edge in this era of 'if you can't beat 'em, model 'em, or better yet, convolve 'em.'
Convolution is for linear time invariant systems only. Unfortunately, that's a bit of a paradox. Linear time invariant systems are rare in nature, although more common in man-made systems, specifically those in the digital realm.
Think about it: A room, hot and humid today, dry and cold tomorrow, will produce two distinct reverbs. And a pre in the room will have two different sounds. Simply because the air affects the travelling sound waves and device components. Step to the left a foot, and the reverb changes. Step to the right a foot.... Stretch the time period far enough, and basically any system varies.
An analogy would be the study of gravity in the earth's atmosphere. Take out air friction (which they do until sophomore level undergrad physics) and it becomes a LTI system. Add it in, and there is no way to calculate any velocity, acceleration, or position of any object in the earth's atmosphere precisely, on a piece of paper, let alone a stack of college ruled binders full of paper. You can get accurate, on a supercomputer cluster, but not precise.
Another drawback in Altiverb is that it models reverb characteristics from a point source, a speaker. In a chamber, the cello on that side will experience a different reverb than the viola on the other side. The audio does not originate at a point source.
Having said that, Altiverb sounds superb.
I think the technique used in the liquid pre is something akin to sampling the response of the pre at all possible input levels, with all possible knob settings. Which attempts to account for the variance in the response to input level for a given set of parameter values. And including harmonic distortion as a separate variable, which attempts to account for model variance.
They may get close, They may get astonishingly close. But never will they produce a 100% clone of any piece of gear. No one will ever do that. The staggering amount of variables are entirely too much to overcome, especially at this stage in technological evolution. As technology progresses, its kind of like the logarithmic curve. It will forever approach 0, but never reach it.
However, close is good for me, mr. no budget. Hell I'm still using and AT-3050 going into OMNI Studio Pres. (liquid's gotta be better than that) And its good for a lot of people. And its good for Audioease's, Focusrite's, Bomb Factory's, and Universal Audio's marketing staffs.
Times are a changin, for better or worse. I, for one, applaud the efforts of the emulator manufacturers in allowing me to approach a higher quality of sound on a demo budget. There are those who abuse the technology (so did the manhattan project), but as a beginner, I have learned that technique is supreme to tool. I have approximations of the tools, and I am learning the technique. If and/or when the technique I've learned allows me to do this for a living, then I'll buy the proper tools. Until then, I am happy to know that I can have $50,000 in compressors and EQs for $599, and $100,000 in pres for $3500.
mitz
