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anonymous 4 May 2003

There's been some discussion on the alt.sekd board about impulse responses and convolution. Brock Stapper (also a member here) passed on a link to ["http://www.noisevault.com"]NoiseVault[/], which has a lot of user made IR's aswell as links to other IR sites.

Anyway, I've been messing around with some IR's I've found and I'm really amazed. One of the links on the site is to BeamSonic, who has made IR's of all his out board gear (some pretty high-endstuff) including a Studer 1/2" mastering deck! I messed around with the Studer IR's across the master bus of a mix I'm working on and all I can say is WOW! What a difference! I read, somewhere, about a master compressor button on SSL consoles that is revered as the "Record" button, 'cus when you push it, it makes the mix sound like a record. Well, I won't go so far as to say the studer had that result, but that was the first thing that came to mind when I put it in.

So, anyway, I just wanted to pass on these links to those with convolution capability and to recommend getting the capability to those without it. It really is some cool stuff.

Oh yea, for anyone still wondering which is the best plugin reverb...try convolution. You won't want to use anything else. Unless, of course, you have a high-endoutboard reverb. But, then, you can get IR's for most of those.

I think theres a link on NoiseVault to a free convoluter, for those wanting to experiment. I've never used it, so I can't attest to its quality. There are a number of recording software's that have convolution built in, including Samplitude, which is what I've been using, Sequoia, Nuendo...I'm sure there's more but I can't think of any. Also there's AltiVerb for PT users and SF Acoustic Mirror for DX.

OK, well, I'll leave you all to explore. Have fun!

Mitchell

Comments

anonymous Mon, 05/05/2003 - 05:14

It's groovey baby!

The free convolution plug is SIR. It's vst and works in real time with set latency (stated on the guy's site... I can't remember the site or the latency right off the top of my head, but do a search and it will show up...). It does have certain limitations and any convolution is pretty cpu hungry, but worth it... The plug is excellent and it is hard to believe that this labor of love was placed out there for all to enjoy. I am a Samplitude user as well, but haven't upgraded to 7.x yet so use the sir for real time. It's limitations are that it is limited to 16 bit impulses (although he has stated that the next version will allow 24bit impulses) and there is a time limit for the impulses (as there are in all convolution that I know of...). Samplitude still is the best in my opinion as it allows floating point impulses which is really the shizit...

The trick with all convolution is to have quality impulses. Luckily there are people willing to share out there but I am deffinately longing for the impulses that come with Samplitude 7.x as they are incredible...
best to you guys,
Brock

anonymous Mon, 05/05/2003 - 09:59

well, thought it was kinda' rude of me not to post the link so here it is...

http://home.t-online.de/home/520073787260-0001/index_plug.html

and this is directly ripped off from the site...
***********************************
So far I solely tested the plugIn on my Athlon-PC with Cubase SX and VST 5.1. To what extent there may be problems on Pentium-CPUs (i.e.: denormalisation) or on other sequencers (i.e.: Logic and Co) I cannot say at this time. The current version can only handle wav-files in the following format: 44.1 kHz and 16 bit stereo. The files should not exceed 18 sec.

Due to technical reasons the plugIn works with a fixed latency of 16384 samples that is compensated for by the VST-host (in Cubase this applies only to Audio-track inserts right now, unfortunately not for group or send-channels).
****************************

Special thanks to this guy as he has developed a pretty impressive tool. Thanks to the digital fish phones guy as well...

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/

And extree KUDOS to DIETZ for turning me and many others on to these really cool, AND FREE!!, tools...

Guest Mon, 05/05/2003 - 10:00

Brock, forgot to mention that they can suck alotta juice. Have you seen the Freeze feature in Samp7.1? Man, it's cool. I can't explain it too well, but it basically makes cpu hungryplug-ins like the room-sim, a non issue. Just set up the track how you want it then freeze it. No more cpu drain. If you want to make changes, unfreeze it. Pretty simple and you may never need to upgrade your computer again, or atleast any time soon. Anyway, they had there think'n caps on when they came up with that one. :D

:c:
Mitchell

anonymous Mon, 05/05/2003 - 10:28

you got that right, Mitchell. That's my next "computer hardware" upgrade... get 7.x... The freeze feature has been around in a few other apps (ie, logic) but the steini folks are clamouring away for it as we speak.

Everybody here should be downloading that digital fish phones stuff right now... Really, check it out. Another that Dietz threw out there is this reverb plug... Ambience...

(Dead Link Removed)

And there you go folks. No copy protection, no high prices, just cool folks that are way smarter than I am giving away tons of hard work for free... hey, wait a minute... maybe I'm not that dumb after all! :p

check out those avalon mic pre impulses that are on the http://www.noisevault.com site as well... That just floored me... Sure I would rather have a half a dozen avalon stereo pres, but...

so people really live in Nevada?

:c:

Guest Mon, 05/05/2003 - 10:59

Eh...more like surviving in Nevada. :D It's really pretty if you hate green :D Or, like brown.

Downloaded the DFP stuff. Haven't tried it yet.

Just downloaded Ambience...that was fast. I thought I only downloaded the link...happens sometimes when the download doesn't work with a downloader. Thanks for the link.

Think I'm gonna go get that Avalon IR.
:c:
Mitchell

anonymous Fri, 05/09/2003 - 16:20

The Avalon IR is cool... I wish someone would do some better quality impulses of these pres, though. Still, on an acoustic guitar it blew me away. I'm gradually getting the hang of using the IR's of comps and tape in conjunction with compressionplug-insto more accurately simulate those guys... pretty cool...

Also, for those samplitude users it can be tricky using these non-verb impulses. Try normalizing (virtually via the object editor so as to not actually make a change other than temporary gain change...) the intended object to about -1 db or so. then in the room simulator put the original % to 0 and the verb level way up there... this more acurately gives you the flavor of this type of gear. Mix of original can be adjusted to taste of course...

anonymous Tue, 05/13/2003 - 07:15

Update:

Tried Ambience upon Dietz's reccomendation. Didn't like it, but ymmv...

The digital fish phones stuff is amazing. The blockfish compressor is NICE! You should get these! REALLY! The saturation isn't something I was crazy about, but with the saturation off the compressor is really, really nice. Did I mention I liked it? There is also a multi-band in this package of plugs, but I haven't tried it yet.

So go get 'em...

anonymous Fri, 05/16/2003 - 07:29

Yeah... I have to admit, convolution is THE shit!!! I use Alti on my Mac and my mixes have taken a 180 degree turnaround! I'm just going to do a G5 and see what happens there.... SCARY!!!!! I hope to see more impulses of the pres and other outboard for the Alti, that would be really nice. I'm still a firm believer of doing it before it hits the converters though!

anonymous Fri, 05/16/2003 - 07:39

You're right there Harley...

Things happen dynamically with pres and tape that can't be simulated in a linear process such as convolution. Good for adding that flavor and character if you don't have that kind of outboard, though...

I wish someone would do some really nice 24bit impulses of this stuff...

anonymous Tue, 05/20/2003 - 15:21

OK guy I've downloaded the files and unzipped them but they all have the .wav extention.I tried using them in cool edit pro, but because they don't have the .imp extention I can't use them.
How do you convert them to .imps or am I missing something.What do I need to do to use them?
I am very new at this and I need all the help I can get.

thanks in advance.
Dudley

anonymous Wed, 05/21/2003 - 07:08

Hi Dudley,
Not a CEP user here so I'll try and help. In samplitude when you load a wav for use in convolution it automatically makes a samp file (actually a copy with the samp extension for impulses I believe) out of the wav... So try loading it anyway and see if CEP does that for you. If that doesn't work try making a copy of one of the .wav impulses and simply renaming the extension. This possibly might fool CEP into loading it...

Good luck!

Hey Marshall,

Lot's of real rooms available out there for download. Unfortunately very few of those are of sufficient quality in my opinion. There are some available though... gotta' hunt for them. Also try the http://www.noisevault.com although I have had trouble breaking into the vault today they do have impulses of acoustic spaces there. I'm sure as more people (like myself) get involved more acoustic spaces will show up there as well...

Good Luck!

Hey Falcon,
Yep, VST... This has it's benefits as well actually... Don't forget the fixed latency with which this plug operates.

Best to all,
Brock

falkon2 Wed, 05/21/2003 - 09:13

Brock: I was actually answering Dudley's question. ;P

CEP (and SONAR, which I use, incidentally) are based off the DXi architecture. The DXi I linked to (VST wrapper) allows the use of VST plugins like SIR in either program.

This was the only way I managed to get .wav impulses working in Cooledit thus far, but it works like a charm. AFAIK, there *WOULD* have to be some program that made .imp files (or what would the format be there for? ;) ) but so far, I haven't seen any really outstanding .imp files, and I like what I'm hearing through the SIR plugin, so I'm not going to bother sourcing it out.

Pez Wed, 05/21/2003 - 18:22

Some of the Lexicon impulses off of the Noisevault site sound pretty good. I would recommend these reverbs to anyone especially if you can't afford a UAD or Powercore card. I haven't heard about the Avalon pre impulse. I'll have to check that out. I'm looking forward to the 24 bit version of Sir. If everyone could post their favorite IRs then it might save some time trying out all of those freebies available now on the net. Sure wish someone on this board would give a review of Samp 7 as I've been curious how it will compete with Nuendo 2.0 (which is in production now finally BTW)

chrisperra Thu, 05/22/2003 - 12:31

i checked out the sir plug in, it looks great. how do you go about using it though?

the information given is a little vauge. i know you are supposed to get the ir's and load them in, but for asy the manley ir, there are 25 of them.

i realize that this one might not work because it needs to be stereo and 16 bit with the sir.

but say i fingd one that does work, what do i do with it? throw it in an insert? or effect out?

i'm totally green at this,so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

also i'm using cubase sx 1.51

chris perra

anonymous Thu, 05/22/2003 - 19:13

yep, the lexi 960's are my GO-TO verbs now.
Just listning to the impulse responses, you can definitely tell they are much smoother then anything else...

THe quantek yardstick impulses are very choppy. I haven't really tried them, but i don't understand why people love this verb.

I'd like to hear the system 6000 verbs
Marsh

lambchop Fri, 05/23/2003 - 07:01

chrisperra!

You can use SIR as an insert in Cubase. Power it up and load one of the impulse or wave samples. I just tried it with a reverb wav sample and got some very interesting results. The jury is still out but it definately looks promising. I really like the idea in everyone posting what they felt are their favorites, and why. I'll get back with mine. And DEFINATELY notify everyone when SIR comes out in 24 bit!!

Pez Fri, 05/23/2003 - 10:59

Chrisperra, Do like Lambchop just said. You can run Sir just like you would any other plugin with SX. Then it's just a matter of pointing Sir to the file folder that has your IR impluses in the wave format. If you click on one it will load the entire file of impluses into Sir so that you can try them all. You will notice a considerable amount of latency but it should be possible to listen to the verbs in real time. Print it to the file if you like it to save CPU overload.

k.w.blackwell Sun, 05/25/2003 - 23:02

Originally posted by Dudley:
I tried using them in cool edit pro, but because they don't have the .imp extention I can't use them.
How do you convert them to .imps or am I missing something.

Edit wav, select entire wave, Copy.
Effects|special|Convolution, Clear, Add Sel
(which means add the selection in the clipboard),
then Save.

You might want to try a few different values for the 1/x factor or overall volume, make sure you select mono/stereo correctly before "Add Sel", etc. I think CEP might have a limit on the length of WAV it will allow as an impulse.

Convolution is linear and will not give you anything dynamic, such as compression or chorus-like effects, both of which can be important components of reverberation simulation. But it is a wonderful and powerful tool.

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