Alitverb Experts: clarify a few things for me please :)

[mplaster]

 Hello. I'm not yet n altiverb user, but i am sick to death of Logic's Space Designer and my TC verbs are simply just not the right type for VI orchestral stuff. That being said, im probably going to get Altiverb soon, but wanted to clear up a few questions..

First, how much of a CPU-hog can it be (in general; i know there may always be exceptions, but on average....) Im on a Mac Dual G5 with 4.5G of RAM and rarely load so much that i run into problems.

Do AV's impulse responses load into RAM or stream? i know that may be somewhat of a novice question, but ive never fully understood all about convolution verbs.

And finally, on the Audioease website they mention a feature called Orchestral Stage Positioning. Is this useful? Wouldnt this, in a sense, make directional panning and VE's power panning options unneccesary? Do you use them to augment each other, or is it a "use one or the other, but not both" situation?

Any tips and info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

> michael

Oh yeah, and PS.. the MIR Project wont really be an option for me whenever it is released, so that doesnt really need to be addressed here. but thanks :) 

[mplaster]

hello? Anyone? or does no one here use Altiverb?  [;)] 

[Mahlon]

Michael,

As far as 'power hungry', I wouldn't say it's that bad. I'm on Windows 32 bit XP, with 4 gigs RAM (3 GIG switch), so about 2.7 Gigs available to me. I'm running six separate instances of Altiverb and my CPU usage (according to Sonar/ haven't checked task manager) runs about 25%. I've got several busses running to the 6 Altiverbs. This may not help you, as you're on a mac, but if you've used a PC before then it may give you a comparison. Also, running several VSTs so that's taking a some of the CPU as well.

As far as loading into RAM, I have no idea. Haven't noticed that I'm not loading more sounds than usual, though.

The stage positioning may be useful to some, but I am using another method to position the instruments. Much more like the Special Edition demo -- where you send a certain amount of dry signal via the instrument's fader to the reverb. I use VE power panning to pan the instruments before they enter Altiverb.

I'm no expert at Altiverb yet by any means, but like others have said, it's hard to go 'wrong' with Altiverb.

M.

[JWL]

IR's in general use more resources, but 4-5 Altiverbs plus one or two more on a G5 should work comfortably well before you hit the threshold of pain, depending upon your CPU. RAM speed is at least as important as the amount of RAM, so the later model G5's fare better in this department and Intels are a notch better yet. Altiverb appears to use part of your DAW host's RAM. You can monitor this in Activity Viewer as you load additional instances. If your DAW host's RAM size goes up with each instance, then you know for sure that the RAM is shared. ---- Stage positioning in Altiverb was a very nice feature which I used from day 1. VE's features hold their own, but the stage positioning feature (imho) is critical for fine tuning psycho-acoustic effects even if you are using VE's power panning. It's a very nice GUI that takes some of the guesswork out of dialing in numbers on many other reverbs.---- But I would also suggest that you go hear Altiverb in action before buying it, if possible. There are so many people who swear by TC, especially the System 6000 emus, so clearly it's a matter of taste which reverb will best serve ones needs.

[RedLeicester]

Erm.... I use Altiverb, periodically, but my main reverbs are VSS3 and VSS4 (soft and hardware respectively) - what is it you don't like about the TC reverbs?!

[reid]

Fancy meeting you here Red.... To the OP - I'm using a dual 2.5 G5 with 6Gb RAM. In my experience Altiverb can really make the difference between an OK sounding mock-up and a great sounding one. The orchestral positioning isn't just about left / right panning; as JWL said, there's a whole psycho-acoustic thing going on when using them which is subtle but essential. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of using 10 'positioning' instances of Altiverb for the various orchestral sections and then a 'master reverb' instance using the Todd AO IR. That plus about 25 instances of EXS / Vienna Instrument will play nicely all day on my computer at around 85% showing on each core. For a spacious soundstage I've found it helps to use the DirMix plug in Logic on each instrument to really nail positioning. I've yet to fire up Vienna Ensemble in anger, so maybe this is doing the same thing as the power panning feature? I've yet to meet anyone who's ever regretted buying Altiverb....

[synthetic]

Wow, I'm running a 1.8GHz dual G5 and can't even use ONE instance of Altiverb 6 in Logic 8 without constant clicks and pops. (If I turn on "low performance/high latency" mode I get a 1-second predelay). There's a bug that keeps Altiverb inserted on an aux or buss on a single core in Logic 8, but I'm still not seeing the kind of performance you are. Are you using Logic 7? I really wish I could use multiple instances of Altiverb on my machine. It's not that much older than yours...

[reid]

Yup, I'm using Logic 7 - I've had 8 for about six months but it's staying in the box until it's out of it's beta testing stage...... Bear in mind that with 11 instances of Altiverb, only one of them is a 'full' reverb - the orchestral positioning instances use very little cpu grunt. And when everything is playing the cores are registering around 85% constantly - it's no walk in the park!

[jammusique]

Hi, Can you elaborate in some detail as to how you use the DirMix plug in? And you open 11 instances of Altiverb for a mix? I'm going to have to read up a bit on Altiverb and the "orchestral positioning". Do you have any examples posted anywhere? All best.......

[reid]

hi jammusique, For my orchestral template I have 10 Altiverb instances using the orchestral positioning feature. Each one is opened as an insert on a Bus in Logic: 1-Violins 1+2 / 2 - Violas / 3 -Cellos and Bass / 4 - French Horns / 5 - Brass / 6 - Hi Wind / 7 - Lo Wind / 8 - Perc Left (Timps) / 9 - Perc Centre / 10 - Perc Right. The eleventh instance of Altiverb uses a normal reverb convolution. Each EXS instrument that is running has its output assigned to a Bus (depending on which kind of instrument it is) and the output of each of the busses is assigned to the main stereo output - as is the output of the main reverb. Each EXS instrument also opens a send to Bus 11 to get the full reverb effect. Each EXS instrument has a DirMix plug opened as an insert on its channel strip, and then use it to position the instrument according to taste across the 'orchestral horizon'. Takes a while to set this template up and tweak it to taste, but once it's done you're ready to make music anytime.

[jammusique]

Hi, Thanks for the detailed info. I've spent some time at the Audioease site and the Altiberb really does sound nice. The stage positioning feature does seem to give the VSL mix the needed (in my opinion) spacial information that makes it sound "real". With Space Designer or Sonnox Reverb I can't seem to get even close. Think I going to soon be buying Altiverb! I've posted elsewhere here about the Bricast M7 reverb unit. It would be interesting to hear what a combination of various instances of Altiverb (with only early reflections for the stage placement) and the Bricast for the tail would sound like! All best..........

[jammusique]

Hi, a few more clarifications if you would. So do you use a pre or post fader send to each of these reverb buses? I've been using pre, but find that it isn't so easy to control levels. Do you then automate the send levels and also automate dry levels with the faders? And do you find that the Dirmix plugin adds to the spacialness the Altiverb does?