I'm not a regular viewer because I don't have time but can I just say: it is so damn comforting and reassuring to see how minimal your hardware setup is. Almost every single other professional composer on UA-cam has more hardware than selling my car twice over could ever get me. You instead make me want to sell all my -clutter- hardware
its about choice gear. the thing with hardware is that one unit that you love and use but only use on one thing takes up space. where as in software no space taken & you get to keep it. a great sound card & if you have active speakers then you ar all good. if not an amp.. If you record vocals then having some chain pre interface is really nice to have. I have the DBX 286s & thats more than enough for my needs. but I have nothing on my desk & I have 600 plugins xD
I also picked up Cinematic Rooms Pro…with Seventh Heaven as a ‘bundle’ deal in the Black Friday sales last year. I’ve honestly not used any other verbs since…gorgeous stuff. ✨
I've used LiquidSonics reverbs for years. We find them especially helpful when blending disparate sound sources for spatial response-matching. They cover our needs perfectly without drama and provide a complete reverb solution. I really enjoy your videos and often recommend them to those interested in sound design and composition. Thanks for your work.
As usual another great tutorial and review. Thank you for taking the time to explain how reverbs are implemented and the importance of a dynamic eq after the reverb!
The Lexicon made me say, "Wow, what a gorgeous reverb!" Cinematic Rooms made me forget that I was listening to a reverb demo. It just sounded like the flute was recorded in a great space.
Great comparison, thanks for this! Blackhole goes on sale for 29€/$ quite often, so that's definitely something to look out for. But really, all of those reverbs are great imho and you cannot really pick a "wrong" one. I totally agree that beginners shouldn't invest a lot of money in reverbs. Learn your stock plugins and from there maybe get Valhalla Room for 50€/$ or Blackhole on sale. These two will already cover quite a bit of ground.
Thank you for the great review. Very helpful and the flute examples are not only great to show the reverb characteristics but also very relaxing to listen to :-) Cheers from Berlin
Glad to see you back! And I am a fan of Valhalla. I honestly feel like I need more understanding of how to fit reverb in a mix to get the most out of reverb software. For the most part I am using alot of the native reverb in my VST's and just using a lighter mix of Val on everything to glue the sound a bit more. It works for a start at least.
The Cinematic Rooms sounds absolutely phenomenal, its EQ section sounds really good when you filter off everything below 40-50 hz, cleans it up. Awesome vid!
Thank you very much for your videos, Anne! I like your very straightforward way of explaining different topics, I wish these videos would have been available when I started out. It would have saved me a lot of struggle (and probably money for stuff I didn’t really need :D) Btw. I would also add FabFilter’s Pro-R to the list. Just like with their other plugins, I love their interface. It is very easy to tweak, especially if you’re already used to the FabFilter EQ. They also have some nice resources on their youtube channel ;)
Thank you for those valuable information! I really respect that you share your knowledge as a pro with us! And I definitely like the calm and nice style of videos and community! Valhalla Vintage is on of my favorites! It just has a sound (probably because of the modulation and color it has)!
Great video, thank you so much for your time showing and talking about all of these reverbs! Putting a dynamic EQ after the reverb is a great idea I'm definitely going to try! Personally I like to use either Cinematic Rooms Pro or Seventh Heaven Pro, depending on the piece. I find Cinematic Rooms to be more transparent and clean, so I use it for modern hybrid orchestral music, while Seventh Heaven has more character (at least to my ears) and I use it for more traditional orchestral pieces.
My understanding of Seventh Heaven is that it's essentially a convolution impulse response of the fancy M7 hardware reverb which is an algorithmic reverb. The web site seems like a fancy way of saying we sampled the M7 hardware, so you don't need to buy this really pricey piece of hardware. But I could be wrong. I found some free impulse responses on the internet years ago of the M7 and I still occasionally use those with either the built in Reverence Convolution reverb in Nuendo/Cubase or with another Convolution Reverb called Convology XT.
What they say is that it's essentially not one IR, but a mixture of different IRs that are blended together in order to be able to change parameters within the reverb as if it still was an algorithm. This makes it possible to capture dynamic components as well. They compare it to the difference of taking a photo of a car driving by nighttime and a video of the same car. The photo can not really capture the motion, it's just blurred into one picture. If you want to really capture the motion you have to take many pictures that form a video. That's kinda what they do with IRs.
I LIKE YOUR HONESTY AND SELF-CRITICISM. I have the Revolution, the vintage verb and the FabFilter r2. I missed only the WAVES H-REVERB and the Native Instruments stuff RC 24 RC 48... But I would agree with every word in derber videos. Well done!
Listening to your comparisons I've figured out why Seventh Heaven has been my first choice since I got it about two years ago. Besides not masking the source sound it also has the best stereo clarity. Great value.
I've had great results in the past with Lexicon, but I have to say I'm really impressed with the built-in reverb plug-in in Reaper, too. Lots of good choices in this video to check out. And forgive me for saying so, but your purple eye shadow is AMAZING! Love it!!
Anne probably you won't have the time to read this comment but I really want to thank you a lot because your channel and your explanations have changed my life for the better. Now the resuIts I have applying the knowledge I have acquired from you makes me sound more professional. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU ...
That Blackhole has a magic to it that is so unique. maybe not as good for live sounds. I use it a lot in Ambient & psychic/Psydub. its incredible. & even tho the Valhalla super massive offers & almost bigger verb.. its not got that tight clarity that the blackhole has. sadly the modelled verbs are not really anything I use on anything more than percussion. Either way I live this video & I keep coming back for the flute! its haunting & I LOVE IT! Thanks you made my ears VERY happy
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have picked brand new Lexicon PCM90 & PCM81 hardware units for around $650 US each around 10 years. Still going strong with no issues. Really stunning units....
I also have these, plus a couple of 224s that someone else gave up on (a handful of chips to get them running). I really like the ‘Vocal Magic’ preset on the 91. Even for the age of the 224s, they are built tough and rarely break.
I bought Seventh Heaven Pro around 2 years ago and I haven't used any other reverb since then, it sounds wonderful, my current favorites for orchestra are the two Boston Hall presets
Thanks for this look at reverbs - great overview. I notice your Valhalla verb shows a preset called "Bricasti Concert Hall". This isn't in the demo so was it a made up one? is it available somewhere. Keep up the great work.
Another great video, Anne. I bet reverb is one of the most debated topics on composer forums! I think a part of what made EW Spaces so popular was that it has presets for every section of the orchestra - set and forget. Absolutely murders the CPU though, and it might be just me, but it sounds like it causes the low mids to mud up a tad too much. Mostly using Cinematic Room (Thank you, Black Friday) for orchestra nowadays. It just sounds so...clean.
Great video. I’ve used many different reverbs and settled on a Lexicon 224 (vocal plate) and a 224XL (usually hall for instruments). Sometimes I use the multi taps on a PCM70. I’m all out of the box (I record on two inch), so it has to be hardware for me. I’ve only had the 224s break down a couple of times, they were pretty easy to repair though.
Thanks for the comparisons of all of these reverbs! I've found Overloud Rematrix to be quite good too - it's a convolution reverb that lets you mix up to five IRs together in different proportions.
I've weirdly come to love the Exponential Audio ones. They're quite cheap on sale, and the GUIs aren't lovely but the R2/R4 nails the Lexicon classic sound, and Phoenixverb/Nimbus do more realistic styles super well. I love the EW Spaces IR ones too.
Great video! I’m really enjoying your channel, great insights and super helpful on my journey. I love the Irish flutes you use. Which library are they from? They sound gorgeous…
I went through the Fusion-IR copy. Bleh... But I think I got it... Maybe... Converbs, as you know, record impulses. Make a bang in an environment, record it, track various frequency responses over time, use that as a map to smear and alter new sounds as they pass though. Cool. But Converbs can be a little dead inside. The reason for that is they don't account for the movement of an object within an environment. The reverb generated from a flute playing in one position in a room can change markedly if the player is moving the instrument as they play (especially in smaller environments for the mid-high frequencies). Fusion-IR is just Liquidsonics way of saying they sample the 'bang' environment multiple times from slightly different locations at different volumes (hypersampling), then cross-fade ('modulate') the different samples very quickly in sequence, so that quieter and subtle shifts are given more prominence as the reverb tails out. THEN.... a convolution map is made out of the result. It's a whole bunch of math for something that generally lasts a second before it starts muddying up the mix :)
Nice review of the most famous reverbs. The most affordable are Valhalla plugins of course. I also appreciate one which is a killer (I have the hardware version) it’s called VSS3 from TC Electronics.
This is a fabulous channel! Thanks for all the helpful information. Have you done a video yet on how you deliver your stems to the mix stage? As a film composer, I would think that takes priority and should come before what reverbs to use, because depending on the situation the mixing engineer might not want any reverb, right? Also what format do you deliver your stems? 2 channel stereo/5.1/7.1/Atmos/DTS Objects? And at what sample rate do you work in your DAW and what sample rate do you deliver to the dub stage? Thanks!❤❤
I bought Seventh Heaven around Black Friday last year and it's a very good plugin. I tend to use that for the room and Fabfilter Pro-R to fine tune the tail of the reverb. But I tried to stick to using just one reverb since most of my wet string libraries are from Spitfire (Air Lyndhurst) or Cinematic Studio Strings. Valhalla Shimmer for piano and texture/pads is what I'm getting next for this Black Friday.
The Lexicon reverbs are excellent. I know the Bricasti reverb algos are really popular, but I just never get that feeling them. If you haven't tried them then TC's VSS3 is great, and the Acustica Audio Nebula Plate Reverbs sit in a mix really well.
I get a laugh out of the auto-generated subtitles: [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause]. There is no applause so it must be something the reverb is doing, and I guess the foreign is for the flute?
Great video as always! Valhalla Room has some presets seemingly based on Lexicon reverbs, like “PCM Hall” and a couple of other presets with 480 in the title. I don’t own any Lexicon so I wonder how well the emulation is achieved, but I really like the sound so I’m using one of these presets that I tweak a little. EW Spaces II also has a “Digital Hollywood Hall” preset that appears to be modeled on the Lexicon 300 based on the picture it uses, and it sounds good but again I’m not able to gauge how it stacks up to the original.
Valhalla's creator Sean Costello talks about it in this talk I think. ua-cam.com/video/aJLhqfHrwsw/v-deo.html there's also a really good one by Thomas Erbe.
Cubase has also great Onstock Reverbs: REVerence (use own IRs!) and Revelation are top effects. In Revelation you can also use the early reflection section only, top sound!
Great demos of the various reverbs, I find myself using emulations of the Lexcon a lot. I like the effect on strings and some wind instruments and the flute. It can warm up some synth sounds make them really large as well. The 480 seems very popular and tweekable
Thanks again for a v cool and useful video! I think I saw on twitter you mentioned you were planning to get the Fabfilter suite - if you ever get to it would be very interested to know how you feel about the Pro-R reverb and how it compares to the ones you mentioned here...
Hi Anne. I'd like to ask a question about "the ideal reverb tail for orchestra" you mentioned on 42:49 - which I find true by the way, 1.8 to 2.5 seconds is the actual IR for recording stages... But... Don't Orchestral Libraries already have that reverb tail from their recording room/hall/stage, implemented in TREE, AB, SURROUND, or MIX mics? I think, the only way to use that short reverb tail correctly, is to use only the close/spot mics (best when they are in Stereo and not in Mono), while you are trying to - short of, "eliminate" the natural acoustics of the stage they are recorded in and "migrate" them into another "digitally simulated" recording stage. I believe the best thing you can do, is to try to find a bigger reverb tail like 3 to 4 secs (around -10 in send) that fits with the original reverb tail the orchestra has, which is actually an effort of expanding the natural reverb tail. Respectfully, (I enjoy and learned a lot from your videos)... Is the above logic wrong? Am I missing something...? :)
Close mics + reverb doesn't sound like an instrument recorded in a hall. It usually sound bad. The small (1-2 sec) reverb tail is more to glue things together, including wet samples.
Thanks for the video...appreciate you including the info on how you like to use these reverbs and where you put them in the chain. I notice you didn't label the scenic shots in the opening...is this somewhere near where the sessions were for The Claus Family 3?
I've reduced my use of reverbs quite a lot over the last few years. I mostly do acoustic guitar and vocal recordings now; singer/songwriter kind of stuff but some Americana and some blues. I like the immediacy of a drier signal, although I still put some delay and reverb (just a hint) on vocals. If it's a solo guitar project I'll add a little more, but I still like it to lean on the dry side. Too much, I find, and the intricate notes seem to get lost. But that's just me I guess, as it's certainly not the norm. The comment about using a bathroom was interesting. Years ago, when recording at Columbia Records, we had maintenance shut down the elevators in the building (it was the middle of the night) and we dropped a cable down (I think we were on the seventh floor...it's been a while) and fed a signal to an amp on the first floor, then stuck a mic into the shaft on the floor we were recording on. That was our reverb. It was pretty amazing. Back then we had real reverb chambers in the studios too, but it was fun doing stuff just because we could. And I had a friend who built a new waiting room/lounge outside his studio with hard tile floors and bare walls. Sometimes he would put two speakers along one wall and mics against the far wall and use that room as a reverb, which worked out very well. Now it's all apps and software, which makes it so much easier but not as much fun, nor are the results all that unique. But that's progress, I guess.
For me...if I had to start over, knowing what I know now, start with Valhalla Room, then get LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven/Cinematic Rooms. Then anything else is for effect and variety.
Also surprised (though it is now moot) that Exponential Audio Reverbs weren't on your list. Before Cinematic Rooms, I used R4 and Nimbus for almost everything....
I used to use so many different reverb plugins but I have recently pulled back substantially on the number I use. Now, I use the Sunset Sound live rooms and iso booths for most reverbs and I use the Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven professional version for more… “mechanical” reverbs (ie - nonlin, plates, etc). I use to fret so much about reverbs but, at least for my use cases, most the differences just don’t matter so I let go of many of them so I can be more efficient
17:05 Composers usually mention Cinematic Rooms, but I like the demos of Bricasti M7 emulation more, even though it colors the sound more. One word sallad for me too please, at least when it'll be on sale. There are also free IR's of the unit sitting somewhere on the net but didn't try those yet. 38:20 I love IK Multimedia Sunset Sound Studio Chamber IRs, even on acoustic instruments. Does this make sense? 29:02 Haha I always wonder how to pronounce Eventide too. I've read it's comparable to free Valhalla, Super Massive, I guess.
As most reverbs have some sort of dampening or Eq roll-off right on the plugin, I'm curious what is the advantage to placing an EQ on the FX channel before the reverb?
Maybe similar video about your favourite delay effects? BTW How did you do it that you don't have German accent? ;-) That is serious question. Do you have any hints how to do it?
You know, I'd love to see you talk about non-orchestral scoring. Not sure if that's a thing you do but there's a general lack of such content on UA-cam and you'd be a great person to talk about it if you do have the experience.
I also very much like Seventh Heaven. I was wondering what your thought are about VSL Vienna MIR Pro 3D. I’m an outsider but was under the impression that it was popular in the composer world. Oh, and there’s a demo.
Great video, as usual. I just discovers that if you link your channels in Cubase you can select what you want linked. So if you have a bunch of reverbs that you want to edit at once, you can just link them and then unlink them.
Yes, it's a great feature. But it doesn't solve the processing power problem and the moment you want to change something in one plugin only (like the reverb amount), this function no longer works.
If you're into the Bricasti , give Analog in the box E.A.R. series (Acustica Nebula Library) a shot. The sense of realism and how it blends with the source is excellent imo. Might work very well with your productions
Do you know that having a lot of LiquidSonics products makes you eligible to get a great rebate on ex-Reverb Foundry (now part of LiquidSonics) ? Their 2 reverbs (Tai Chi & HD Cart) are really great, I'm sure you'd love them. (for example, in Tai Chi, after 5 minutes I was able to get that shoegaze reverb).
one of the top 3 studios in London (not abbey road) uses valhalla fx constantly. It is great and highly regarded! price isnt everything in our world although it does get expensive and addictive! ha
...as for the reverbs, you could have ended the review at Lexicon, which has no equal...as a plug in, or vintage hardware (or even the PCM-92/96 if you want new).
I'm not a regular viewer because I don't have time but can I just say: it is so damn comforting and reassuring to see how minimal your hardware setup is. Almost every single other professional composer on UA-cam has more hardware than selling my car twice over could ever get me. You instead make me want to sell all my -clutter- hardware
its about choice gear. the thing with hardware is that one unit that you love and use but only use on one thing takes up space.
where as in software no space taken & you get to keep it.
a great sound card & if you have active speakers then you ar all good.
if not an amp..
If you record vocals then having some chain pre interface is really nice to have. I have the DBX 286s & thats more than enough for my needs.
but I have nothing on my desk & I have 600 plugins xD
Thanks!! for being the BEST real-world scoring educator on UA-cam.
Awww thank you!
Woo she's back! And conveniently reverbs was something I've recently been looking into
Perfect timing then!
I also picked up Cinematic Rooms Pro…with Seventh Heaven as a ‘bundle’ deal in the Black Friday sales last year. I’ve honestly not used any other verbs since…gorgeous stuff. ✨
I've used LiquidSonics reverbs for years. We find them especially helpful when blending disparate sound sources for spatial response-matching. They cover our needs perfectly without drama and provide a complete reverb solution. I really enjoy your videos and often recommend them to those interested in sound design and composition. Thanks for your work.
As usual another great tutorial and review. Thank you for taking the time to explain how reverbs are implemented and the importance of a dynamic eq after the reverb!
The Lexicon made me say, "Wow, what a gorgeous reverb!" Cinematic Rooms made me forget that I was listening to a reverb demo. It just sounded like the flute was recorded in a great space.
cinematic rooms is a real gem isnt it. didnt think algorithmic could ever sound so good
@@joederbyshire_ you know its good stuff when you go to the site & they have a "where to buy" instead of a "buy" button xD
Great comparison, thanks for this! Blackhole goes on sale for 29€/$ quite often, so that's definitely something to look out for. But really, all of those reverbs are great imho and you cannot really pick a "wrong" one. I totally agree that beginners shouldn't invest a lot of money in reverbs. Learn your stock plugins and from there maybe get Valhalla Room for 50€/$ or Blackhole on sale. These two will already cover quite a bit of ground.
Yes, that's how I finally got Blackhole - totally forgot to mention that in my video!
Thank you for the great review. Very helpful and the flute examples are not only great to show the reverb characteristics but also very relaxing to listen to :-) Cheers from Berlin
Thanks for all you do. I greatly appreciate all the time and work you put into these tutorials.
Much respect from Sydney..
I also use the Lexion PCM suite. It never gets old.
Ooh this is very timely - I was just looking at reverbs the other day!
Glad to see you back! And I am a fan of Valhalla. I honestly feel like I need more understanding of how to fit reverb in a mix to get the most out of reverb software. For the most part I am using alot of the native reverb in my VST's and just using a lighter mix of Val on everything to glue the sound a bit more. It works for a start at least.
The Cinematic Rooms sounds absolutely phenomenal, its EQ section sounds really good when you filter off everything below 40-50 hz, cleans it up.
Awesome vid!
Thank you very much for your videos, Anne! I like your very straightforward way of explaining different topics, I wish these videos would have been available when I started out. It would have saved me a lot of struggle (and probably money for stuff I didn’t really need :D)
Btw. I would also add FabFilter’s Pro-R to the list. Just like with their other plugins, I love their interface. It is very easy to tweak, especially if you’re already used to the FabFilter EQ. They also have some nice resources on their youtube channel ;)
Thank you for those valuable information! I really respect that you share your knowledge as a pro with us! And I definitely like the calm and nice style of videos and community!
Valhalla Vintage is on of my favorites! It just has a sound (probably because of the modulation and color it has)!
Cinematic Rooms My fav to use. I am set up in Quad so it sounds amazing with that Surround reverb
Great video, thank you so much for your time showing and talking about all of these reverbs! Putting a dynamic EQ after the reverb is a great idea I'm definitely going to try!
Personally I like to use either Cinematic Rooms Pro or Seventh Heaven Pro, depending on the piece. I find Cinematic Rooms to be more transparent and clean, so I use it for modern hybrid orchestral music, while Seventh Heaven has more character (at least to my ears) and I use it for more traditional orchestral pieces.
My understanding of Seventh Heaven is that it's essentially a convolution impulse response of the fancy M7 hardware reverb which is an algorithmic reverb. The web site seems like a fancy way of saying we sampled the M7 hardware, so you don't need to buy this really pricey piece of hardware. But I could be wrong. I found some free impulse responses on the internet years ago of the M7 and I still occasionally use those with either the built in Reverence Convolution reverb in Nuendo/Cubase or with another Convolution Reverb called Convology XT.
What they say is that it's essentially not one IR, but a mixture of different IRs that are blended together in order to be able to change parameters within the reverb as if it still was an algorithm. This makes it possible to capture dynamic components as well. They compare it to the difference of taking a photo of a car driving by nighttime and a video of the same car. The photo can not really capture the motion, it's just blurred into one picture. If you want to really capture the motion you have to take many pictures that form a video. That's kinda what they do with IRs.
I LIKE YOUR HONESTY AND SELF-CRITICISM.
I have the Revolution, the vintage verb and the FabFilter r2.
I missed only the WAVES H-REVERB and the Native Instruments stuff RC 24 RC 48...
But I would agree with every word in derber videos. Well done!
Listening to your comparisons I've figured out why Seventh Heaven has been my first choice since I got it about two years ago. Besides not masking the source sound it also has the best stereo clarity. Great value.
after watching this great video, I'll probably die with this flute melody stuck in my head 😂
Great video Anne-Kathrin and loving the eye liner and new hair colour, looks absolutely fabulous 👍
I've had great results in the past with Lexicon, but I have to say I'm really impressed with the built-in reverb plug-in in Reaper, too. Lots of good choices in this video to check out. And forgive me for saying so, but your purple eye shadow is AMAZING! Love it!!
Anne probably you won't have the time to read this comment but I really want to thank you a lot because your channel and your explanations have changed my life for the better. Now the resuIts I have applying the knowledge I have acquired from you makes me sound more professional. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU ...
So glad this is helpful to you!
That Blackhole has a magic to it that is so unique. maybe not as good for live sounds.
I use it a lot in Ambient & psychic/Psydub.
its incredible.
& even tho the Valhalla super massive offers & almost bigger verb.. its not got that tight clarity that the blackhole has.
sadly the modelled verbs are not really anything I use on anything more than percussion.
Either way I live this video & I keep coming back for the flute! its haunting & I LOVE IT!
Thanks you made my ears VERY happy
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have picked brand new Lexicon PCM90 & PCM81 hardware units for around $650 US each around 10 years. Still going strong with no issues. Really stunning units....
Owning a PCM90 and PCM80 i can fully agree. Pure magic!
I also have these, plus a couple of 224s that someone else gave up on (a handful of chips to get them running). I really like the ‘Vocal Magic’ preset on the 91. Even for the age of the 224s, they are built tough and rarely break.
I bought Seventh Heaven Pro around 2 years ago and I haven't used any other reverb since then, it sounds wonderful, my current favorites for orchestra are the two Boston Hall presets
Boston Hall is amazing! I use it a lot too
I love it, too.
Convolution reverbs are not only samples of spaces but can also be samples of old classic reverb boxes
Thanks for this look at reverbs - great overview. I notice your Valhalla verb shows a preset called "Bricasti Concert Hall". This isn't in the demo so was it a made up one? is it available somewhere. Keep up the great work.
Just wanna say thx for the first twenty seconds. Worked a treat. ;)
I loved the Lexicon I had back in 2002! incredible
Another great video, Anne. I bet reverb is one of the most debated topics on composer forums!
I think a part of what made EW Spaces so popular was that it has presets for every section of the orchestra - set and forget. Absolutely murders the CPU though, and it might be just me, but it sounds like it causes the low mids to mud up a tad too much. Mostly using Cinematic Room (Thank you, Black Friday) for orchestra nowadays. It just sounds so...clean.
Great video. I’ve used many different reverbs and settled on a Lexicon 224 (vocal plate) and a 224XL (usually hall for instruments). Sometimes I use the multi taps on a PCM70. I’m all out of the box (I record on two inch), so it has to be hardware for me. I’ve only had the 224s break down a couple of times, they were pretty easy to repair though.
Thanks for the comparisons of all of these reverbs! I've found Overloud Rematrix to be quite good too - it's a convolution reverb that lets you mix up to five IRs together in different proportions.
Nice to see other options for reverb other than fab filter 👍
I've weirdly come to love the Exponential Audio ones. They're quite cheap on sale, and the GUIs aren't lovely but the R2/R4 nails the Lexicon classic sound, and Phoenixverb/Nimbus do more realistic styles super well. I love the EW Spaces IR ones too.
I think they are great too. I believe that they're developer have at least one person in common with Liquidsonics.
Great video! I’m really enjoying your channel, great insights and super helpful on my journey. I love the Irish flutes you use. Which library are they from? They sound gorgeous…
I went through the Fusion-IR copy. Bleh... But I think I got it... Maybe...
Converbs, as you know, record impulses. Make a bang in an environment, record it, track various frequency responses over time, use that as a map to smear and alter new sounds as they pass though. Cool. But Converbs can be a little dead inside. The reason for that is they don't account for the movement of an object within an environment. The reverb generated from a flute playing in one position in a room can change markedly if the player is moving the instrument as they play (especially in smaller environments for the mid-high frequencies).
Fusion-IR is just Liquidsonics way of saying they sample the 'bang' environment multiple times from slightly different locations at different volumes (hypersampling), then cross-fade ('modulate') the different samples very quickly in sequence, so that quieter and subtle shifts are given more prominence as the reverb tails out. THEN.... a convolution map is made out of the result.
It's a whole bunch of math for something that generally lasts a second before it starts muddying up the mix :)
Nice review of the most famous reverbs. The most affordable are Valhalla plugins of course. I also appreciate one which is a killer (I have the hardware version) it’s called VSS3 from TC Electronics.
Excellent presentation as usual!
This is a fabulous channel! Thanks for all the helpful information. Have you done a video yet on how you deliver your stems to the mix stage? As a film composer, I would think that takes priority and should come before what reverbs to use, because depending on the situation the mixing engineer might not want any reverb, right? Also what format do you deliver your stems? 2 channel stereo/5.1/7.1/Atmos/DTS Objects? And at what sample rate do you work in your DAW and what sample rate do you deliver to the dub stage? Thanks!❤❤
I bought Seventh Heaven around Black Friday last year and it's a very good plugin. I tend to use that for the room and Fabfilter Pro-R to fine tune the tail of the reverb. But I tried to stick to using just one reverb since most of my wet string libraries are from Spitfire (Air Lyndhurst) or Cinematic Studio Strings. Valhalla Shimmer for piano and texture/pads is what I'm getting next for this Black Friday.
OMG. Superb. Thanks
Raum? Any thoughts on that one?
The Lexicon reverbs are excellent. I know the Bricasti reverb algos are really popular, but I just never get that feeling them. If you haven't tried them then TC's VSS3 is great, and the Acustica Audio Nebula Plate Reverbs sit in a mix really well.
Amazing channel! 🔥
Why do real professionals often prefer Cubase and pro tools over other daws like ableton? Thank you very much for your work!
I get a laugh out of the auto-generated subtitles: [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause]. There is no applause so it must be something the reverb is doing, and I guess the foreign is for the flute?
Great video as always! Valhalla Room has some presets seemingly based on Lexicon reverbs, like “PCM Hall” and a couple of other presets with 480 in the title. I don’t own any Lexicon so I wonder how well the emulation is achieved, but I really like the sound so I’m using one of these presets that I tweak a little. EW Spaces II also has a “Digital Hollywood Hall” preset that appears to be modeled on the Lexicon 300 based on the picture it uses, and it sounds good but again I’m not able to gauge how it stacks up to the original.
Valhalla's creator Sean Costello talks about it in this talk I think. ua-cam.com/video/aJLhqfHrwsw/v-deo.html there's also a really good one by Thomas Erbe.
@@RedSpark_ thank you for that link!
Cubase has also great Onstock Reverbs:
REVerence (use own IRs!) and Revelation are top effects.
In Revelation you can also use the early reflection section only, top sound!
Great demos of the various reverbs, I find myself using emulations of the Lexcon a lot. I like the effect on strings and some wind instruments and the flute. It can warm up some synth sounds make them really large as well. The 480 seems very popular and tweekable
Thanks again for a v cool and useful video! I think I saw on twitter you mentioned you were planning to get the Fabfilter suite - if you ever get to it would be very interested to know how you feel about the Pro-R reverb and how it compares to the ones you mentioned here...
Nice vid! Any plans to review Kontakt 7 in the near future? Super curious to your thoughts! Cheers : )
Very good reviews, greats tips, very good job ! Thank you very much !
Exponential Audio R4 is also very useful in cinematic composition.
Hi Anne. I'd like to ask a question about "the ideal reverb tail for orchestra" you mentioned on 42:49 - which I find true by the way, 1.8 to 2.5 seconds is the actual IR for recording stages... But... Don't Orchestral Libraries already have that reverb tail from their recording room/hall/stage, implemented in TREE, AB, SURROUND, or MIX mics?
I think, the only way to use that short reverb tail correctly, is to use only the close/spot mics (best when they are in Stereo and not in Mono), while you are trying to - short of, "eliminate" the natural acoustics of the stage they are recorded in and "migrate" them into another "digitally simulated" recording stage.
I believe the best thing you can do, is to try to find a bigger reverb tail like 3 to 4 secs (around -10 in send) that fits with the original reverb tail the orchestra has, which is actually an effort of expanding the natural reverb tail.
Respectfully, (I enjoy and learned a lot from your videos)... Is the above logic wrong? Am I missing something...? :)
Close mics + reverb doesn't sound like an instrument recorded in a hall. It usually sound bad. The small (1-2 sec) reverb tail is more to glue things together, including wet samples.
Very helpful! Thanks so much for the info!
Thanks for the video...appreciate you including the info on how you like to use these reverbs and where you put them in the chain. I notice you didn't label the scenic shots in the opening...is this somewhere near where the sessions were for The Claus Family 3?
I've reduced my use of reverbs quite a lot over the last few years. I mostly do acoustic guitar and vocal recordings now; singer/songwriter kind of stuff but some Americana and some blues. I like the immediacy of a drier signal, although I still put some delay and reverb (just a hint) on vocals. If it's a solo guitar project I'll add a little more, but I still like it to lean on the dry side. Too much, I find, and the intricate notes seem to get lost. But that's just me I guess, as it's certainly not the norm.
The comment about using a bathroom was interesting. Years ago, when recording at Columbia Records, we had maintenance shut down the elevators in the building (it was the middle of the night) and we dropped a cable down (I think we were on the seventh floor...it's been a while) and fed a signal to an amp on the first floor, then stuck a mic into the shaft on the floor we were recording on. That was our reverb. It was pretty amazing. Back then we had real reverb chambers in the studios too, but it was fun doing stuff just because we could. And I had a friend who built a new waiting room/lounge outside his studio with hard tile floors and bare walls. Sometimes he would put two speakers along one wall and mics against the far wall and use that room as a reverb, which worked out very well. Now it's all apps and software, which makes it so much easier but not as much fun, nor are the results all that unique. But that's progress, I guess.
Wow. Elevator building reverb! Would love to hear the song you did that with
For me...if I had to start over, knowing what I know now, start with Valhalla Room, then get LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven/Cinematic Rooms. Then anything else is for effect and variety.
:) I got my Cinematic Room last year Black Friday too :)... It quickly became my favourite (even from the demo when I tried it months before)...
Also surprised (though it is now moot) that Exponential Audio Reverbs weren't on your list. Before Cinematic Rooms, I used R4 and Nimbus for almost everything....
thank you very much for all this, have you tried ArtsAcoustic reverb? don't know if it it still exists, in my opinion the best one
Hi Anne, Please i would like to know the flute sound in which plug-in is. Thanks
Fantastic Video - as usual. Ms Dern - what type of keyboard is that in the background? Thank you!
I notice your Valhalla verb shows a preset called "Bricasti Concert Hall". I don t have it in my version of valhalla. Is it available somewhere ?
What headphones are you wearing? Thank you! Love your vids :)
Great video. Liquid Sonics is very good. Has the BM7 emulation and impulses included, along with a bunch of other verbs.
Love it! Thanks 🙏
I used to use so many different reverb plugins but I have recently pulled back substantially on the number I use.
Now, I use the Sunset Sound live rooms and iso booths for most reverbs and I use the Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven professional version for more… “mechanical” reverbs (ie - nonlin, plates, etc). I use to fret so much about reverbs but, at least for my use cases, most the differences just don’t matter so I let go of many of them so I can be more efficient
An amazing free reverb: DReverb by Stone Voices. It's also super light on the CPU, which is always a plus.
17:05 Composers usually mention Cinematic Rooms, but I like the demos of Bricasti M7 emulation more, even though it colors the sound more. One word sallad for me too please, at least when it'll be on sale. There are also free IR's of the unit sitting somewhere on the net but didn't try those yet.
38:20 I love IK Multimedia Sunset Sound Studio Chamber IRs, even on acoustic instruments. Does this make sense?
29:02 Haha I always wonder how to pronounce Eventide too. I've read it's comparable to free Valhalla, Super Massive, I guess.
As most reverbs have some sort of dampening or Eq roll-off right on the plugin, I'm curious what is the advantage to placing an EQ on the FX channel before the reverb?
Maybe similar video about your favourite delay effects?
BTW How did you do it that you don't have German accent? ;-) That is serious question. Do you have any hints how to do it?
Will convolution reverbs work well on synths and non real instruments?
You know, I'd love to see you talk about non-orchestral scoring. Not sure if that's a thing you do but there's a general lack of such content on UA-cam and you'd be a great person to talk about it if you do have the experience.
Interesting topic!!
In your workfield in would certainly look out to the VSL MIR 3D Pro. It is AMAZING. Real concert spaces
Thank you so much! Now I'm off to see if I need to use Fx to midi or wave...shm...I'm such a nooby🙂
What are your thoughts on the built-in reverbs of Cubase? REVerence in particular?
Revelation sounds much better for me. Revelation is a mix of convolution and algorithmic. REVerence is just convolution.
however, in a final mix you can't even hear individual reverbs in a full arrangement with many tracks and instruments... that's the point. ;)
I also very much like Seventh Heaven. I was wondering what your thought are about VSL Vienna MIR Pro 3D. I’m an outsider but was under the impression that it was popular in the composer world. Oh, and there’s a demo.
So I've got impulse responses of the Bricasti M7 and Lexicon 480L. Why would I ever use some other reverb?
Yes, you pronounced Eventide correctly, to the best of my knowledge.
which one do you prefer the best?
Surround Plate is great
Great video, as usual. I just discovers that if you link your channels in Cubase you can select what you want linked. So if you have a bunch of reverbs that you want to edit at once, you can just link them and then unlink them.
Cubase’s QuickLink is the best thing since sliced bytes - it is so easy to edit plugins across multiple tracks, e.g. tape sims or similar. Love it!
Yes, it's a great feature. But it doesn't solve the processing power problem and the moment you want to change something in one plugin only (like the reverb amount), this function no longer works.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer it's actually worse than I thought it was. It works with some plug in parameters, but not with others.
If you're into the Bricasti , give Analog in the box E.A.R. series (Acustica Nebula Library) a shot.
The sense of realism and how it blends with the source is excellent imo. Might work very well with your productions
Do you know that having a lot of LiquidSonics products makes you eligible to get a great rebate on ex-Reverb Foundry (now part of LiquidSonics) ?
Their 2 reverbs (Tai Chi & HD Cart) are really great, I'm sure you'd love them.
(for example, in Tai Chi, after 5 minutes I was able to get that shoegaze reverb).
Thanks 👍
Great video. Thank you.
What do you think about Fabfilter Pro-R (2)?
Thank you so much for this
The one way to make a reverb plugin sound better is to put some saturation and/or distortion on it.
How much $ was the bundle price on Black Friday?
Valhalla ist grossartig !!! Danke
Has Lexicon made an announcement regarding native Apple Silicon support?
I highly recommend VerbSuite Classics from Liquid Sonics and most of all Pro.R from Fabfilter. And for echo the Timeless 3 plugin from Fabfilter.
one of the top 3 studios in London (not abbey road) uses valhalla fx constantly. It is great and highly regarded! price isnt everything in our world although it does get expensive and addictive! ha
Strymon just announced a plugin version of their BigSky reverb pedal. It's $200, but I'm sure it sounds great lol
...as for the reverbs, you could have ended the review at Lexicon, which has no equal...as a plug in, or vintage hardware (or even the PCM-92/96 if you want new).