Altiverb Windows (emphasis on the doze)
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
I’m sure I’m not alone in not caring about this. I’m of the considered opinion that there are two kinds of reverb: the kind that comes out of high-end hardware, and the shitty kind. Altiverb falls in to the latter catagory, of course. As far as I’m concerned, anyways. But lots of people seem to be excited about this, so here you go. No demo for PCs yet, but I’m kind of anti-demo, anyways, so that doesn’t bother me. (I mean, would you buy a car if you got to take it home and drive it for a month, but it only went 35 MPH and the horn beeped every 45 seconds? I didn’t think so.)
If you’re not in the know (there have to be at least 6 of you out there that aren’t) Altiverb is the original IR ’verb. Whether it is the best or not is open to interpretation. It is certainly one of them.
27 comments
I always thought there was two kinds of reverb... the kind that comes from a spring and the shitty kind.
wow, I didn't know anyone hated Altiverb. I think it's amazing. I a-b'd my AKG BX 15 to the included BX 10 and BX 20 impulses, and it was extremely close to the 20 in every respect (kind of surprising, but there you go). A friend compared it to a couple different EMT hardware digital verbs and found it nearly identical. He also made some fine impulses himself which he finds satisfactory. I've also made some of my own signal chain impulses which I've found very useful. And the smallish and studio ambiences are very useful if you record in a dry room... I know you'll say "not nearly" or "wrong room", but it really gives you the ability to place recordings in a variety of realistic spaces, after which you can post process with an algoverb if you like.
Ooh, RexRhino shoots and scores!
Reverb is definitely a taste issue. I've said in pretty much every post on this subject that _I_ don't like IR. But it works for a lot of people. The difference between an EMT digiplate and an impulse of an EMT digiplate is that you can adjust the real thing. But, again, that's just me.
Really, I think that IR 'verbs sound choked. Squeezed. Compressed. Whatever. Having spent a _lot_ of time in "real" studios, with the real deal, I'm just used to 'em, and prefer 'em. I don't think an IR of a 460L sounds any more like a real 460L than the 460L presets in a PCM-91 do. There is something about those big digiverbs that is just _right_ and I can't explain it any better than that.
(Why we're on the subject, can someone explain to me why a PCM-91 costs $500 more than a 300 does? That just doesn't make any fucking sense. I'm sorry, but it doesn't.)
-CR
As long as reverb's on the table, is anyone using the Guyatone tube reverb?
i can tell you for sure that you aren't alone in not caring about this.
(heheh devil's advocate time here: Doesn't Audio Damage make, ahem, a couple of reverb products? ;)
Just one, Deverb, and it isn't meant to "accurately simulate your bathroom." It is meant to be a completely fucked reverb. Ratshack Reverb is, of course, not a reverb at all but an analog delay.
-CR
i have to disagree, im definetely happy to see its out for windows. but mostly so i can stop hearing the local mac whore engineer say its for mac only and can only run on a mac. ive personally heard it and seen it used in the studio and it seems a hell of a lot easier to dial in than an h8000 and more often than not it gets used over the h8000 for reverb, unless an over the top reverb is desired. its not like were plugin junkies either between this and the sony oxford eq its about the only plugins that see the light of day in a session. itll be interesting to see how well it runs on windows though, something tells me as good as everything else on a pc. thanks for the news.
Convolution reverbs are different animals than hardware-emulated froot-de-froot. Personally I can't deal with simu-verb after using convo-verb.
Unfortunately for Altiverb, SIR already exists on the PC and it's free.
I don't care about this Altiverb. I also don't care about Waves either. I've tried them both, plus Voxengo's Pristine Space and SIR. I think that SIR is the best, especially if you want a really saturated sound. SIR also never crashed on me.
Chris, have you ever thought about doing a spring reverb plug-in?
well it's easier to dial than the sony convolution hardware . personally I think Altiverb and the likes are not that musical but do very well for post production work for film. If you want a band to sound like they are playing in a cathedral, rent a god damn cathedral. But if your trying to match an overdub dialog to a specific space I think impulse responses from that space can be used to do so.
Yeah, you're right about that.
As for the spring reverb, it is more or less impossible to emulate a spring in software, as you'll no doubt know from the any number of really shitty spring 'verb emulations out there. There are just too many variables.
We'd certainly like to, FWIW. But it is unlikely to happen unless some New Tech pops up to make models like that possible.
-CR
I don't believe altiverb was the first; I think that was Acoustic Mirror. But I've never used one on any platform as good -- complete, stable -- as Voxengo's Pristine Space. As for hardware? If it isn't a room and it isn't a spring and it isn't a plate, it's an algorithm. It's artificial. Hardware, software, whatever. They're all hardware and software.
"If it isn't a room and it isn't a spring and it isn't a plate, it's an algorithm. "
No shit, dude? I always thought the 460 was a tiny rack-mounted room full of Magic Smoke that made it seem bigger.
I vastly prefer the (good) artificial 'verbs to real springs and plates; I think they sit better in the mix for music purposes. That's my own taste, of course; YMMV. But as the man said, if you want a big room sound, record in a big room. This IR shit is for the birds. I think it sounds whack as hell.
And, by and large, dedicated 'verb hardware sounds significantly better (again, because of the magic smoke) than any native-based 'verb code I've heard, with the possible exception of Princeton Stereo Room, which sounds pretty much exactly like the 2016 they put out, but lacks about 80% of the features, which is kind of a bummer.
-CR
Ahh, magic smoke. Of course. That's what it is.
But I tell you, I've got a bunch of Magic Smoke impulses that sound great...
altiverb is yr god... for what it is. or maybe you are Vincent Gallo. you purist nazi, f-i tweeb. or that love to hate freaks shit is at:
http://www.drowninginbrown.com/
seriously, it's what you make of it Soundhack is still king for me 14 years later. but altiverb is a great palatte. EXPLORE.
Well, on the top of reverb...
Can anyone recommend a good sounding reverb or reverbish echo/delay pedal? It doesn't need a lot of high-end sound, as I am using it with a lo-fi homemade sampler with 8khz sampling rate, so high frequencies are not that important, and neither is if it is noisy. I really like spring reverb, and was considering the Dan Electro Spring King, but it looks fragile (I like sturdy things) and I would also like something in stereo.
rexrhino,
price?
You can actually do quite a bit of editing in Pristine Space. Funny, after man, many years of the real not real thing, I don't share your distaste for IR's.
(It's actually quite possible that you've got a better listening enviornment than the Koreatown apartment I do most of my work in in these convolution-friendly post-"real" studio days.)
However, I will say that if my old Ampeg Echo SuperTwin wasn't so dirty (what do expect from a 44 year old tube amp?) that reverb would kill anything: as lush as tera misu and thick as LA air.
This whole thing reminds me of the Dynamic Delay on TC M300 which is just one of the 20 odd algorithms it comes with, and it's suppose to be the exact same thing as a 2290. Well, fuck that shit! It's funny how the same deal goes with many of the PCM series algorithms comparing to the ones in 480L.
Don't even get me started on 95% of plug-ins, those are much worse. I mean any DSP programmer can write a code that sounds somewhat close to a specific algorithm. But writing an algorithm from scratch and designing the hardware for it, is not easy. It's very time/money consuming. Which is the reason behind the high price of highend gear.
On the other hand, it's a fact that the pro musician/engineer community is much smaller than the "wannabe" one, which explains the focus of big companies on making crappy/cheap shit.
Those who don't see it the way it is, still have "industry dues" to pay!
- BMU
viz. cheap delay: I recently purchased a Akai headrush E2 for live/band shit. the thing rules. 23 second looping time. an space echo mode with 4 seperate "playback heads" and a seperate 1/4 in. out for each head. and it clocks in at under 200 dollars. rediculous.
After reading through this tread i went and bought a TC M-OneXL online on a whim (is there any other type of online purchase.) I've got a 8 track reel to reel upstate that I needed an effects processor for and it seems to fit the bill. I used to own a M300 and liked the effects/verb a good bit. But I never liked the set engines and the lack of editability. So the M-Ones dual engines and deeper editing should make me happy.
oh and I picked up a Furman RV-1 springverb on Craigslist for peanuts. Totally rules.
If you want a rackmount spring reverb, and you have some coin handy, there is a Demeter rackmount one on Analog Haven right now that is, in short, The Shit:
http://www.analoguehaven.com/used/
$499, but worth every single penny. I've been thinking about buying it, but since my system is all AES/EBU I/O now, it's kind of a pita for me to use it. I'd have to break my cardinal rule of not ever giving Digidesign any money ever again, and get an M-Audio Flying Cow or some shit to be able to use it as an insert effect, and that would blow.
The TC M-One and D-Two are fantastic boxes for the money, I couldn't agree more. If I had a budget home studio... hey, wait... let me put that another way: if I _didn't_ have an Eventide Eclipse, I'd have both of those. Right now, I'd really like to have another Eclipse. Or a Lexi 300. Or a Seven Woods Space Station.
-CR
The low end TC stuff:
Really Chris? Last cheap TC box I used was Fireworx, which specialized in making everything sound like shit even before applying it's whack-ass dsp.
Re Altiverb: AudioEase's strength in the convolution reverb market is their IR collection, I'd say. They clearly put a worthwhile amount of effort into creating their IRs. I was excited about the release of the PC version (I don't share my co-officer's dislike of convolution reverb) until I noticed that it uses PACE copy protection, which I now boycott. I'll keep using the Voxengo convolution plug-in for IR processing, the UAD-1 for its plate 'verb, the PoCo for other reverb stuff, and oh yes my shiny new Eclipse once I have time to take it out of the box and figure out where to put it.
Re spring emulations: yeah, we'd love to build one, but it's not something that anybody--and I mean anybody--knows how to do. Seriously, do any of the spring emulations sound any good at all? No, aside from IR-based processing and there's no need for us to get into that market. I tried a PSP freebie (came with the latest issue of CM) recently, and it doesn't sound anything like a spring. I had high hopes for the UAD-1's RE-201 emulation, but the reverb in it sounds awful. I don't have an RE-201 handy to compare it to, but it just sounds bad, and not bad in a good way. (The delay section is not bad, but in the end I decided that Ronin and DubStation cover that territory for me well enough.)
Re the pricing of the PCM-91 vs. the 300: it probably has a lot to do with relative age.
Re the low-end TC stuff: to me it's okay but sort of lacking in character. I had an M-One and thought it was fine, but sort of plain-vanilla-sounding. I sold it when I got the PoCo. The D-Two has some really interesting ideas in it, and I'll probably not be able to resist acquiring one for much longer. I've been saved largely by the presence of Waves SuperTap on my music PC, but that's going to work for only so long; I have a weakness for hardware. We could use a D-Two for *cough cough* inspiration...
--Adam
I thought the springverb ensemble that came with Reaktor was a pretty good sounding emulation, but totally not worth the rediculous cpu overhead to run it. The psp verb with the spring setting has to be one of the worst verb plugs Ive ever heard (stick to the dynamics boys). Who cares, between Deverb, WaveArts' Masterverb and my Furman I'm happy..
My 2 favorite reverbs:
Furman RV-1
Yamaha R100
I really can't be bothered by convolution reverbs in my own music.
When I do a classical session, with real instruments, I prefer to use a real acoustic space - I've found several nice sounding churches in the bay area that are happy to rent out for sessions for not very much money. And if I need to add any adittional reverb, my MPX1 or SPX900 tend to sound much "nicer" than most plugins. I own both waves and altiverb for my mac, and I wish I had spent the money on a PCM91 or something. I have a TC Fireworx, and not a fan of it at all. I think it's going bye bye real soon.
The Yamaha R100 is I think a 12-bit 32khz low-res reverb from late 80s. It's a very unassuming little 1/2 rack box, but whenever I use it in my tracks, people cream themselves over the spaciousness. Has an "infinite" reverb that just decays into beautiful icy-cold noise washes perfect for blasting acid lines into.
The Furman is permanently patched into an ADA s1000 digital delay, and then into a noise gate. I use the delay for some pre-delay, or echos, and then set the gate to slowly and gently close after each hit. Works wonders on 808 snares.
I have acquired a ratshack reverb too - but it is only making crackling sounds at this moment. Got to take it apart and see what's up.
Reverb is overused in music anyways. I always try to program synth voices to have all the "space" they need. And sometimes just a little bit of delay, or some squashy compression, can do the trick nicely.
That's true; in many cases reverb -- like religion and politics -- is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Amen to all the above. While I like TC's better products in general, I dislike the Fireworks immensely.
Also, don't forget that ol' standby, the Active Bass preset on the REV5. One of those settings that Just Works for most anything.
-CR
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