It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 3:01 am


Cheapest Reverb

A discussion forum for anything even marginally Hauptwerk-related.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline
User avatar

Stephen Phillips

Member

  • Posts: 153
  • Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 8:04 am
  • Location: Brisbane Australia

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 12:15 am

Hi everyone,

Just caught this thread, reading through I wanted to add my two cents' worth about Gigapulse. I have some experience with it in GS3 Orchestra, where a single 'instance' pushes my 2.4 GHz P4 from basal 6% activity up to around 24%.

Of the commercially released IR-based reverbs of which I have experience, it is audibly ahead. I work in large rooms and concert halls everyday as a violinist, and sing in church spaces with our latin choir, so I am a pretty tough customer. I do use Space Designer with Logic Pro 7, but none of its many many choices sound as 'unbelievably' real as the Gigapulse patches. Supplied with GS3 is the extremely lovely IR provided by Csaba Huszty (of NDB fame), carrying the imprint of the Matthias Templom, Budapest (preset 028 in the main bank) - a sizeable cathedral space. There are many adjustable parameters, but this - and all the other studios, rooms, etc provided - have a hauntingly 'real' quality I've yet to experience with other systmes. I did hear some custom IRs through SIR which sounded fabulous but I think there is a latency issue.

Altiverb is very popular in professional circles and has a large library of spaces available. I understand it is not a 'true' IR convolution, rather an audio engine which 'utilizes' IR material. Then again, Gigapulse has a (defeatable) CPU-saving tail-synthesis feature which is recommended for regular use. In the end I don't much care HOW it works - so long as it works!

Of course, different source materials will be more or less 'suitable' for convolution processing - the more present & 'dry' the better, it seems - which is naturally the state of affairs in real life.

Spatial location and mutliple IR requirements (in theory at least) are discussed at some length in the appendices to Martin's guide to recording sample sets for Hauptwerk (v.1). There are posts elsewhere on this forum tackling various issues of IR and pipe organ sample sets.

The jump from generic, synthesized reverbs to the substantially different effect (no pun intended) of even mediocre IR-type processors is immediately perceptible. I think there are exciting times ahead.

Cheers,

Stephen.
Offline
User avatar

Csaba Huszty

Member

  • Posts: 366
  • Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:18 pm
  • Location: Budapest, Hungary

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 2:51 am

Hello everyone,

I also believe that convolution reverbs sound much better than conventional/synthesized, especially in the case of long reverbs, e.g. a cathedral.

We are conducting acoustics measurements in cathedrals for years now. A bit later this year, you can expect some exciting things to come.

Csaba
Offline

Anton Heger

Member

  • Posts: 323
  • Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:14 pm
  • Location: The Netherlands

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 4:58 am

For the last two subscribers: does this solution fit with the title of this subject?
As far as I know is GigaStudio not really the cheapest option.
But maybe I am wrong?
Offline
User avatar

Stephen Phillips

Member

  • Posts: 153
  • Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 8:04 am
  • Location: Brisbane Australia

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 7:00 am

Hi Anton,

Point taken — I guess it is a matter of what you mean by 'cheap'. A few years back the Yamaha REV 7 was the best around (mono) that was even vaguely 'affordable'. Cost around US$1000. Things keep moving, and the goal-posts for value move with them.

In the end, no one chasing the realism that Hauptwerk provides wants to dilute or compromise the result with a ho-hum reverberation. The wet sample sets are capable of near photo-realistic ambience, with some compromise on staccato notes (multiple release tails address this issue). Dry sets in smaller (ie. residential) spaces will likely require electronic reverb assistance.

With the infrastucture of a modern PC already in place (which is the case for all Hauptwerk users), the path to software IR-based solutions is economically extremely competetive with low-end hardware solutions, which cannot compete in realism. Hence I think a thorough examination of this option is very pertinent to the original question.

For a long time I used whatever reverb I could get hold of. Now we are somewhat spoiled by affordable, and sonically beautiful, choices. The market's expectations rise to the challenge of the engineers and sound designers. I don't think anyone minds being shown the 'next rung up' even if they end up opting for the economy seats.

For me, the attractive combination of deluxe sound and affordability of Gigapulse etc. make them a natural inclusion in such a discussion.

Cheers,

Stephen.
Offline
User avatar

Csaba Huszty

Member

  • Posts: 366
  • Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:18 pm
  • Location: Budapest, Hungary

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 7:26 am

Hello,

Shortly: yes.

Being on the developer side, I think the IR based solution is really an alternative. There are two issues however:

1) IR reverberation needs computing power. At least a computer that is 'fast', so probably not the cheapest, but much cheaper than a dedicated high-end conventional reverb unit.

2) IR reverb engines produce different results in sound quality. Many of them use some sort of simulation to reduce power requirements, so their are some kind of in between real convolution and conventional reverbs. And only some of them offer the ability to creatively adjust the parameters of the reverberation, something you got used to with conventional reverb units.

We are keeping these together in our mind, and we hope to come up with cheap, yet adjustable real convolution alternative. Soon.
Offline

stevetil

Member

  • Posts: 128
  • Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 11:18 am
  • Location: Oregon, US

Gigapulse

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 9:08 am

Are we talking about the Gigapulse VST plugin module?
A quick google found that Tascam's list price is US$299
and some suppliers showing as low as $200, free shipping.
That is less than the Midiverb that I thought was cheap
about 20 years ago. Holy Cow! Too bad it seems to be
Windows only, I just won't do windows.

And is there any impulse reverb for the Mac?
Or is there a way to run Hauptwerk on a Mac and feed the
reverb signal to some cheap stripped PC to run the reverb?
Last edited by stevetil on Fri Aug 24, 2007 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Offline
User avatar

toplayer2

Member

  • Posts: 1071
  • Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:15 pm
  • Location: Michigan, USA

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 10:43 am

stephenphillips wrote:Just caught this thread, reading through I wanted to add my two cents' worth about Gigapulse....


Welcome, Stephen, and thank you for your very well stated thoughts. As a Gigapulse fan, I of course agreed heartily. I took the liberty of cross posting your remarks on another favorite forum:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/theatre-sf/message/10158

Joe H.
Offline
User avatar

BachsFugue

Member

  • Posts: 443
  • Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2003 1:02 am
  • Location: Springfield, Ohio, USA

PostFri Aug 24, 2007 4:48 pm

Do any of these VST reverb solutions work on Win XP64 in 64-bit mode? (This is a question that's been buzzing around off the Forum.)
Cole Votaw -- Springfield, Ohio, USA
Offline
User avatar

Stephen Phillips

Member

  • Posts: 153
  • Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 8:04 am
  • Location: Brisbane Australia

PostSat Aug 25, 2007 12:27 am

Dear Stevetil,

I imagine any VST host would do the trick. I have used Savihost:

http://www.hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm

with complete ease, check out the website — it's a free download.

I'm not sure about routing the (I assume 2-track) audio into this plug-in as a stand-alone, probably not too difficult a task.

If you activated the Gigapulse plug-in from within an VST-hosting audio suite, then it would just be a matter of constructing a stereo audio track and having it 'listen' to the incoming line-level audio, routing to the Windows machine's audio card and — there it is.

All the best,

Stephen.
Offline
User avatar

mdyde

Moderator

  • Posts: 15441
  • Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2003 1:19 pm
  • Location: UK

PostSat Aug 25, 2007 6:05 am

Do any of these VST reverb solutions work on Win XP64 in 64-bit mode? (This is a question that's been buzzing around off the Forum.)


Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a single native 64-bit VST reverb or convolver plug-in for Windows at the moment. This website has a very useful search facility for plug-ins and hosts, in which you can select to search only for x64-compatible VST plug-ins of a given type, for example:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php

I'm aware of only three VST hosts that have native native 64-bit versions, i.e. would allow you to use Hauptwerk with more than the 2-2.7 GB per-application memory limit inherent in 32-bit Windows:

Cakewalk Sonar 6:

http://www.cakewalk.com/x64/default.asp

DarkWave:

http://www.experimentalscene.com/experi ... /darkwave/

N-Track Studio 5:

http://cent.ntrack.com/index.html

(Hauptwerk has only been tested with Sonar, of those three.)

64-bit Sonar has a very useful feature whereby behind the scenes it runs a separate 32-bit VST host at the same time as 64-bit Sonar and its 64-bit VST host, allowing 32-bit VST plug-ins to be loaded transparently within that 32-bit host but routing audio between the 64-bit and 32-bit hosts. The end result is that it you can load 32-bit VST plug-ins within it as well native 64-bit ones (e.g. 64-bit Hauptwerk) and route audio seamlessly between the two. That's fine because a reverb/convolver plug-in wouldn't normally need to access more than 2-2.7 GB of memory itself, so applications that do (Hauptwerk) can run as 64-bit, whilst those that don't (reverb/convolver) can run as 32-bit.

Of course, you don't get the speed benefit of native 64-bit code (typically 25 percent more performance or thereabouts) in the reverb/convolver because it's only 32-bit. But it does at least allow you to apply software reverb/convolution to Hauptwerk's output, whilst still getting the full memory and speed benefit of native 64-bit Hauptwerk.

Sonar is the only application to my knowledge that has that ability at the moment.

If anybody knows of any native 64-bit VST reverb/convolver plug-ins, please do let us know.

Best regards,
Martin.
Offline

AquaStill

Member

  • Posts: 54
  • Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2004 2:03 am
  • Location: Le Chesnay-Versailles France

PostFri Nov 09, 2007 8:59 am

Bonjour Zurek,

I have two questions related to Reaper/HW and to the Voxhendo/impulse responses that I got some time ago from you.

First, Reaper : when I open HW and Reaper, it appears that in most of the cases the sound provided by reaper is correct (including reverberation) except the pitch which is one octave lower than the correct pitch, and this for all the pipes ! The only work around, but a little bit complex, is to open HW and load an organ with audio output connected to the Asio sound card, then to connect the audio output to a direct sound device (e.g. the on board device), then to open Reaper, then to connect HW output audio to Asio reroute or Reaper !!! Do you have an explanation and a solution to avoid this ?
Another question related to Reaper/HW is how to launch the programs in a given sequence (e.g. HW first then Reaper) at the starting of Windows ?

Second, Voxhendo and impulse responses : you have provided me with two parts of each impulse response, the Left file and the Right file. I do not see within Voxhendo how to apply the L to the left input channel and the R to the right imput channel : both channels use the same Left or Right file. Is this normal ?
Offline
User avatar

Gert

Member

  • Posts: 257
  • Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2007 8:57 am
  • Location: Netherlands

Latency problem with Reaper

PostFri Nov 16, 2007 6:55 am

Because many of you prefer the dry sets (e.g. Litomysl dry), I want to proof that.

I installed Reaper, Voxengo Pristine Space and the impulse responses of Jiri.
Indeed the sound is nice.
But..., I had a lot bigger latency than when I don't use Reaper and use the reverb of my soundcart (EMU0404). I understand that Reaper is an extra step in the way between HW and the speakers but the latency is unacceptable for real life playing.

In HW I set the buffer at lowest as possible (3ms).
In Reaper I select Directsound with buffers 3x1024 (latency 69 ms) because when I choose for ASIO, I hear only a helicopter like sound, also when I increased the buffer to the maximum latency (100ms).

Is this behaviour normal?
Are my settings ok for a EMU0404?
Offline
User avatar

toplayer2

Member

  • Posts: 1071
  • Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:15 pm
  • Location: Michigan, USA

Re: Latency problem with Reaper

PostFri Nov 16, 2007 10:36 am

While not trying to discourage experimentation, a state-of-the-art convolver is very high on Martin's list. He has shown that he can deliver upgrades with astonishing speed. An intergrated solution should prove to be the optimal one. I am quite eager for this one myself.

Joe H.
Offline

Anton Heger

Member

  • Posts: 323
  • Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:14 pm
  • Location: The Netherlands

PostFri Nov 16, 2007 11:18 am

Hi Gert,

To me, the ASIO setting is very critical.
In Hauptwerk, I use ReaRoute with a buffer size of 128 sample frames.
In Reaper I use the ASIO driver. Values between 2 until 16 ms gave teriibe sounds indeed. But at 20 ms the sound is excelent.
Click on ASIO configuration in REAPER and see what value you use at this moment.
The latency is fairly low on my system.

Regards,
Anton
Offline
User avatar

Gert

Member

  • Posts: 257
  • Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2007 8:57 am
  • Location: Netherlands

PostSat Nov 17, 2007 5:56 am

Thanks Anton,
The problem was solved when I restarted Reaper and Hauptwerk.
Indeed it's a nice reverb without latency, it plays better (for practise) than the Litomysl wet but it's a little 'digital organ' sound, for more realism I prefer the wet set(s).
The Marcussen organ of Moerdijk sounds also better with additional reverb.

Regards,
Gert
PreviousNext

Return to General discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 20 guests