use two reverbs or just one?

[Xander S.]

I have another (fairly basic) question: As I understand it, reverb does two things:

1. It places an instrument in a room, respectively defines the room (which is mainly the early reflections' task)

2. it adds something to the sound, that adds warmth and glues the instruments together (which is mainly the "reverb tail")

Many people on the web seem to use one kind of (convolution) reverb for 1) and a different reverb engine (without early reflections) for 2). I, too, have considered Vienna Conv.Rev. for 1) and the Hybrid Rev. for 2).

When would I use this approach or should I try to get it all done with one reverb? Has anyone experienced fundamental differences between those two approaches (like washing away the position of instruments or interferences between the reverbs ...). Are there any such caveats?

[Dietz]

Hi Quioloy,

I can imagine you will receive quite a few answers (maybe contradicting ones!) to this question, that's why I hope you allow for a few words to keep things in relation: There almost as many approaches to artifcial spatialisation as there are people like you and me doing music mixes. I strongly suggest to take every advice you read on the 'net with a grain of salt, because even if it was presented to you with the best intentions, you never know the context it was meant to be seen (and heard) in.

There is no law (not even an unwritten one) that you have to use one, two, three or more reverbs in your mix. Sometimes more is less, but sometimes more is really "more". Advice like "you have to switch off the early reflections part" might be true in case of one algorithm, but it might not be helpful at all in case of another. 

The "hybrid" approach (IR "room", algo "tail") is capable of giving you wonderful results; it might fail miserably in other cases, e.g. for sources that come with lots of burnt-in room information. I'm a big fan of convolution-based reverberation, but keep in mind that an IR is just a sample (of a room). Much like you wouldn't play Chopin-etudes with a virtual piano based on a single sampe of the middle C, variation is the key to pleasant and believable acoustic results with IR-based reverbs too. In other words: Having at least two or three IRs for different depths is most certainly a good approach. The more, the better. :-)

HTH,

[Xander S.]

Thanks, Dietz, makes sense. I already suspected an answer such as "It depends". :) I had hoped, though, you could provide some guideline as far as VSL-only samples are concerned. More specifically put:

1. The impulse responses coming with Vienna Studio, are they meant to be used in combination, like Teldex near, Teldex middle and so on? Or am I supposed to tweak just one of them to fit the different sections of the orchestra?

2. Which combination of Vienna Convolution Reverb and Hybrid Reverb, if any, would you recommend (just as a point to start from)?

[Dietz]

As much as I would like to have a ready-made "cooking recipe" at hand - the short answer is indeed "It depends!", sorry to say so. 

... you might want to look into MIR Pro, though. This application is my more elaborated solution to questions like these! ;-)

Kind regards,

[stephen limbaugh]

@Dietz said:

In other words: Having at least two or three IRs for different depths is most certainly a good approach. The more, the better. :-)

HTH,

 

Dietz can you elaborate on this please?  I'm a little confused.

[jasensmith]

https://forum.vsl.co.at/topic/43207/Agree To Disagree/259352

[Dietz]

@Dietz said:

In other words: Having at least two or three IRs for different depths is most certainly a good approach. The more, the better. :-)

HTH,

 

Dietz can you elaborate on this please?  I'm a little confused.

I was cracking a joke, trying to say that gathering as many different IRs as possible from the same room, but from different distances (and different angles) was one of the ideas which lead me to the creation of MIR, back then.

😊

Sorry for the confusion.

[mw design]

Hi,

Iam using this Technique now, 3 Instances of Hybrid Reverb for early Reflections, Virtual Sounstage as Panning Tool and a Mastertailreverb. Ofcourse this is like experimenting until it sounds good. It would be a lot easier when place the Instrument in MIR Pro and get Things done. But, this Setup is so effective thanks to the Suite Plugins that I can have 50+ Instruments on Xeon Dualcore 2,4 Ghz, 16 Gb Ram.

Reverb Techniques

[mw design]

ok i finally found the latency button on MIRx, so i can use this now, no experimenting with selfmade Reverbs, MIR sounds so nice, yes ;)