Cheapest Reverb

Neil Odlin · Post by **Neil Odlin** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:23 am

I have just got my mac pro running with the mw3-31. I now need a cheap reverb having blown all my budget on everything else. What is the cheapest way to achieve this?

imcg110 · Post by **imcg110** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:10 am

Perhaps wait until it is included in Haupwerk????? I am in a similar position, about to buy the bigmac but loathed to spend a lot on external reverb when it will be available by software upgrade. Perhaps Martin could give us a hint as to when the release might be.

Post by **mdyde** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:33 am

Hello Iain,

Not for a while yet, I'm afraid, but it's a very high-priority enhancements and will definitely be done as soon as resources allow.

Best regards,
Martin.

imcg110 · Post by **imcg110** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:01 am

I think that means go buy a Lexicon :-)
You can always resell on ebay!!

Neil Odlin · Post by **Neil Odlin** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:25 pm

I really wanted to avoid buying a lexicon at this stage if I could. Does anyone have any other ideas, I have a laptop which I could use.

Neil

dhm · Post by **dhm** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:54 pm

Have you considered the Alesis Nanoverb and Picoverb?
Approx £59.00 and £45.00 respectively.

Douglas.

dna · Post by **dna** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:53 pm

I have the MW3-31 running on a Pentium D and have no problems with polypony. This has to mean that your Mac Pro cores are loafing along, bored, and looking for something to do. There are a number of software reverb programs that would do at least as good a job as a Lexicon at a lower cost and still leave you enough CPU to run MW3-31. There has been some discussion on software reverbs on this forum in the past. Perhaps you can find something useful by searching the forum for "reverb".

Here is one that is free that has received some favorable comments:

http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html

(I don't know how CPU intensive this one is or whether it runs on whatever OS you are using.)

Marco · Post by **Marco** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:28 pm

[quote="dna"Here is one that is free that has received some favorable comments:[/quote]

as much as SIR is nice (and free) as an IR, you can't really use it for live playing as far as I know due to its fixed 8000+ samples latency. SIR2 might fix this, but it's currently not out yet (was supposed to be out in Q2 2007 but it's not there yet)

dna · Post by **dna** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:57 pm

Marco,

Searching the web I see there are a number of other free and inexpensive software reverbs. Do you know if any in that price range that are decent sounding (as good as the hardware reverbs mentioend above) and useful for real-time use?

(By the way, I'm asking mostly out of curiosity. I have a Lexicon MX400.)

David

Neil Odlin · Post by **Neil Odlin** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 4:19 pm

Is there anything that can be used with Hauptwerk as a standalone? i.e not vst plugin.

Neil

Post by **mdyde** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 4:29 pm

Hello Neil,

Jiri Zurek mentioned a utility called 'Reaper':

http://hauptwerk.cz/Litomysl/Litomysl_reverb.htm

I haven't tried it myself yet. On the Mac there is a similar utility mentioned in another relatively recent forum post.

Best regards,
Martin.

imcg110 · Post by **imcg110** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 4:42 pm

Mac version of Reaper here:
http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4220

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 4:52 pm

What I find lacking from discussions on the software reverb options, is whether the reverb-effects can be rendered in real-time. I know that many reverb-effects software packages use much CPU power and actually take many seconds (sometimes minutes) to provide output. I would definitely like to learn what software is available that can in fact be used in real-time. I'm sure this is important to other Hauptwerk users as well.

Regards,
Ken

toplayer2 · Post by **toplayer2** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 5:49 pm

Ken wrote:What I find lacking from discussions on the software reverb options, is whether the reverb-effects can be rendered in real-time. I know that many reverb-effects software packages use much CPU power and actually take many seconds (sometimes minutes) to provide output. I would definitely like to learn what software is available that can in fact be used in real-time. I'm sure this is important to other Hauptwerk users as well.

The following comments reflect the opinions of the commentator (me) and not necessarily those of management...

The single most important thing you can do to make your digital organ sound real is to recreate the acoustics of the type venue in which the analog version (i.e., pipe organ) is typically housed. This can be done with varying degrees of success by playing your samples in a real theatre, concert hall or church (best, but not too practical); by using wet samples; by using a software or hardware digital reverb (e.g., the Lexicon MX400); or with an impulse response convolver. The latter may be regarded as "sampled" reverb. I believe that a high quality convolver beats the socks off even the most expensive digital reverbs. It must be emphatically noted that not all IRs and not all convolvers are created equal. There are good ones and bad. As with everything else in life, you tend to get what you pay for. The product I use is Tascam's GigaPulse Pro which is a component of GigaStudio Orchestra. A VST version is available (list price $299) that can be used with HW2 if run in V-Stack. Major advantages of this product are 1) it is likely the most frugal user of CPU resources in its class. It has a patented algorythm for tail modeling that very significantly reduces CPU usage without affecting perceived quality. 2) it comes with a library of very well produced IRs, 3) it can be used to create multi-channel surround field which emerses you in the virtual accoutic space. The effect is quite uncanny. To give you a taste, consider reading through the very educational "Creating a Soundstage" tutorial on Tascam's website:

http://www.tascamgiga.com/gp/soundstage.html

Joe H.

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:07 pm

Thanks Joe !

I read the material in the link you provided and indeed the software looks great. I found the following statement:

"At idle this consumes 38% of my AMD Athlon64 3000+ (1.8 GHz) processor. In other words, I can run in all in real time on a single, modest PC."

I am still not confident that this software can be run on a single computer at the same time a large organ is loaded into and played back by Hauptwerk. Can you please confirm that this is indeed possible without adding substantially to latency? Also, if you have first-hand experience, can you describe the computer hardware specifications that have been used?

Thanks,

Ken