Understanding reverb(s)

[lee]

Dietz asked me to ask these questions about ER and vsl in this forum (not only northernsounds). (Thank you Dietz!)

Early reflections and vsl:

1. Do the vsl samples include early reflections, and how do you deal with it (when adding reverb)?

2. Do you use a fade in on the hall IRs to get rid of their ERs? (since vsl samples already got enough ER?

3. Do you use IRs of both early reflections (ER) and "hall" type reverbs? Scoring stage IRs?

4. do you set predelay for only the ERs? And dont change the timing for the reverb tails?

5. What is a scoring stage? (reverb-time, early reflections, usage of IR?)

6. OT: When using stereo IRs, not true stereo, is there any difference if monoizing of the dry sound is done before or after sending to the convolution reverb? Is it best to send monoized sound to the stereo ir reverb? Does it really matter? (I´m asking since I want to monoize the dry sound in the host, Cubase SL, instead of in Kontakt2, since I think it consumes less cpu.

7. Are there any good free scoring stage irs?

Feel free to give your comments on my newbie questions.

/Johnny (Opus 1, Kontakt 2.11 user, only freeware IRs so far)

[lee]

bump

[:)]

Maybe these questions have been asked many times before. I didnt find so many answers searching the forum though.

Anyone?

[DG]

Or maybe in Vienna they don't work at the weekend. [:D]

DG

[lee]

haha yeah... I´m too impatient for my own good. [:)]

Thanx for the tip, DG.

/Johnny

[Dietz]

Welcome Johnny,

nice to see you here. Yes, it's a weekend, but I'm trying to catch up with my work nonetheless [;)]

Regarding your questions:

@Another User said:

6. OT: When using stereo IRs, not true stereo, is there any difference if monoizing of the dry sound is done before or after sending to the convolution reverb? Is it best to send monoized sound to the stereo ir reverb? Does it really matter? (I´m asking since I want to monoize the dry sound in the host, Cubase SL, instead of in Kontakt2, since I think it consumes less cpu.

From a purely technical point of view you should mono-ize the _send_ to a mono-to-stereo-IR, otherwise you will lose certain aspects of the instrument in the resulting reverb-trail. This is quite understandable as you would just reverberate the left or the right part from your dry signal. - Most modern DAWs take care for this by themselves, BTW.

But in the end, let your ears decide (and maybe your CPU, too)! [;)] You know - if it sounds right, it _is_ right.


HTH,

[lee]

Thank you Dietz!

I appreciate your answers and hard work! [:)] I understand that you dont want to give away too many secrets, since MIR is a product built with these in mind. [;)]

I will surely use my ears as much as I can to get the sound I want. However, the physics and maths behind music can help me understand why something sounds the way it sounds and I`m a helpless "wanna understand it all"-guy!

Is it true that alot of the "room size" and feel of a sound/reverb comes from many factors, including the predelay of the ERs and tail, and the character of the ER and tail? The built in ERs in the samples all have the same predelay and character (not strong) right? Can that be a problem?

When does using two ERs (those built in, and those from another reverb, IR or digital) on top of eachother become a problem?

Do you sometimes use reverb so that you hear
1 direct sound
2 built in ERs
3 predelayed ERs from reverb
4 tail from reverb

I mean that you predelay the reverb so you get actually two ERs before the tail? And what does this do to the sound?

/Johnny

[Dietz]

@lee said:

[...] When does using two ERs (those built in, and those from another reverb, IR or digital) on top of eachother become a problem?
[...]

Actually not more than in any case you used artificial reverb, unless you have recorded something in an anechoic room (or under the sky over a salt lake). Each studio has a certain sonic signature, read: more or less reflections and even reverb. The ear tends to be very forgiving to these seemingly odd combinations, unless you're trying to do the impossible [:)]