Daz Diamond is back with another wacky, experimental effect. When we last joined Daz, he was sharing strange and wonderful granular, delay, and sidechain effects. Now, he’s been thinking about buckets (as in brigades, as in sets of delay lines combined to form a reverb). He writes:

Hi Peter, I’m at it again, and have just put out bucketEER MK I – a stereo reverb/delay fx inspired by bucket-brigade style machinery – simple, quite primitive, and surpirisingly good sounding – also interesting for unusual delays with lots of taps …

Full specs on his site, but here’s what I like about the fact that it’s very much in “beta”:

At the moment, when changing from one preset to another, the buffers may get stuck for a few seconds resulting in a glitchy effect. this may or may not be a bad thing, and may or may not happen depending on your host.

So, quick, go grab that before he fixes the problem, and add some organic glitches to your reverb!

Some powerful features:

• Pre and Post effect shelving filters


• Predelay with control over level and time


• Size and Time controls


• Width and Mix controls


• Central readout of knob values


• 17 Randomize buttons – ‘global’ and ‘local’


• Freeze Function


• Bypass switch for each bucket and slot


• Output level meter


• 8 presets

Daz welcomes donations. I may also give this a go on Linux — enjoying Windows VST compatibility on one machine.

Updated – somehow left out these links. Been a bit out of it this week; sorry!

whiteLABEL bucetEER Product Page and Download
Daz Diamond / whiteLABEL Google Discussion Group

Despite the embarassment of riches that is available effect plug-ins, sometimes an effect is special enough that, on its own, it becomes a favorite. If you feel like there’s a gap in your reverb collection, Audio Damage’s new Reverence could become one of those plug-ins.

Classic vintage digital reverbs were capable of unique, rich plate simulations unlike any other kind of reverb. (Yes, digital hardware is now old enough to be called vintage.) You’ve probably already used a preset that attempts to recreate this sound, but if you’re using the typical reverb bundled in your DAW, the results are often downright awful. Many convolution reverbs include lush sampled plates, some of them even recorded from impulse files of digital gear, but a convolution interface is rarely the best way to control these effects and this technique is tremendously CPU costly. There’s hardware like the Lexicon MPX series, but most of us want plug-ins.

Reverence is the new plug-in from Audio Damage built specifically as an emulation of digital ‘verbs of yore. (The front panel recalls the Lexicon 200.) I’ve been throwing it into mixes since a pre-release version came out last week. While I’ve generally trimmed down the number of plug-ins I use, this one has fast become essential.

The focus on doing one thing and doing it well pays off here:

1. Clear front panel and simple controls: In this case, emulating hardware makes everything easy to see and follow conceptually. Reverence’s controls are pretty much limited to what you’ll need.
2. Light on CPU: Audio Damage claims this uses an “optimized algorithm” and sure enough, even on the long reverbs the CPU meter doesn’t tick. (My test machine this week is an Athlon64 x2 3800+ PC running Reverence as a VST in Ableton Live 5.2.) If you’re looking for a live performance reverb, this could be a good choice, especially compared to using plate and digital impulses in a convolution reverb like Apple Space Designer.
3. MIDI learn: Like Audio Damage’s other controls, VST MIDI mapping capabilities are included. The controls also mapped perfectly to my Novation ReMOTE SL, which always benefits from having a few, simple controls to manipulate. You wouldn’t want to use the size control onstage, but you could get effects by adjusting the output mix, input mute, and reverb stop controls.

Most importantly, this plug-in sounds terrific. Plates rock. You can hear some more creative examples of Reverence working on synths and vocals in the examples from Audio Damage. I’ll second that, but subtle effects on vocals, synths, keyboards, and drums are also in order. Here are two typical examples.

First, using the piano plate preset, applied to the Steinway D from Native Instruments’ Akoustik Piano. Dry, the piano already has some resonance, captured in NI’s samples:

Dry piano

But wet, the plate adds a lot of sparkle, particularly at the high end:

Wet piano

Switching to acoustic drums, first a backbeat loop included with Live 5.2 with reverb turned off:

Dry drums

You could add some typical reverb, but I find this often sounds flat. A plate can add some badly-needed punch, using the Big Eighties! preset on a send:

Wet drums

The presets are neatly organized into send effects (like the drum plates) and insert effects (like the piano), as pictured.

Audio Damage already has a near-cult following for their plug-ins, and developer Chris Randall’s loud-mouthed blog Analog Industries, where they have been some interesting discussions of this plug-in, and plug-in development in general. Word must be spreading, or this must be filling a niche others don’t have, because it’s already AD’s best-selling plug-in ever.

I will echo the calls for a “reverb” pack. I’ve long been a fan of one plug-in that Audio Damage reports hasn’t been terribly popular, the excellent, dark Deverb plug.

In the mean-time, though, Reverence is a must-have. The combination of light CPU usage with great sound at US$39 is just about perfect. Now we’re just left to wonder what gear Audio Damage has their eyes on next.

Compatibility: Mac VST/AU (Universal); Windows VST
Cost: US$39
Official product page [Audio Damage]

The original Altiverb was infamous for its creation not only of soaring churches and halls, but the back of a Ford Transit van and a toilet. Ah, you say, but I don’t want a Ford Transit van. I want a Ford Ka — no, wait, make that a Peugot Partner. And I don’t want the sound of the toilet while I’m in the loo — I want to hear that same sound as though I were listening from the living room. Wait, forget the toilet entirely: I want the sound inside an old factory tank north of the Netherlands. But I want to run that through a spring reverb — no, wait, make that a cheap plastic echo toy.

All this and more can be yours, thanks to the extensive boutique of impulse response recordings over at AudioEase.

They’re free, but only to registered Altiverb users. Then again, how else can you recreate the sound of music playing in your downstairs living roo– oh, yeah, actually, I guess you could easily record that. But I bet you don’t own a Ford Ka (and if you do, you probably can’t squeeze your whole band into it).

New-fangled convolution reverbs may be capable of perfectly
reproducing real audio spaces, but what if you want a classic reverb
sound? IK has launched Classik Studio Reverb
(CSR-1) with just that need in mind. Four models cover hall/room,
ambience, plate, and inverse reverbs. And if you're the kind of person
who gets uneasy when "90s nostalgia clubs" open, get ready for this:
we're now modeling digital reverbs. (Digital emulation of . . . digital?)

The plugs look gorgeous and have an endless slew of sonic controls,
with high-quality DSP, a customizable modulation matrix, parameter
morphing, built-in LFOs and filtering. This is flying first-class, no
question.

Every Mac/Windows format available (VST/RTAS/AU/DX, TDM on the way); US$/EUR 399.

This isn't just a reverb plug-in. This is a hugely tricked-out ultimate convolution reverb with all the stops pulled.

Altiverb first popularized the use of sampled spaces for software reverbs via a digital technique called convolution. As I reported here, Altiverb 5
brings plenty of new features, including new controls for where your
audio is 'heard onstage,' four band reverb EQ for controlling separate
frequencies of your sound, and CPU controls so you don't max out your
processor.

• Mac OS X Only with support for every format: HTDM / RTS / AudioSuite (Digidesign), MAS (MOTU), and, of course, VST and Audio Units
• Reverse reverb mode because there's nothing quite as sweet as hearing reflections first
• Explore reverb visually with three-dimensional waveform views, pictures of sampled spaces, and even VR movies

And lots more. Copy protection evidently lets you choose between iLok and challenge/response.

Now here comes the sticker shock:
US$595 buys you first-class convolution luxury. (US$895 for Pro Tools
users.) If you're an AltiVerb vet, though, you can upgrade for $169-269.

Just want the sampled impulse responses? US$39.95 buys you the impulses
for loading into reverbs like Logic Pro's Space Designer. But no VR
movies, of course.

Sure, it's fun playing around with convolution reverbs like
Apple Logic's Space Designer, but if you really want ultimate
flexibility and realistic space modeling, you need Altiverb. It was the
first software plugin to feature convolution, and with upcoming version
5, there's no question it's the Rolls Royce of reverb.

Check it out:

• Multichannel IRs and waveform preview, with 3D time/frequency plot
• Preview sounds
• Triple band damping and absurd number of gains and delay controls plus 2-band parametric EQ
• Virtual placement of sound source
• Altiverb site still features lots of great IR samples for real-world spaces; huge included library
• CPU optimization controls

Oh yeah, and it looks really gorgeous: photos of the actual spaces as
in previous versions, plus useful, gorgeous new 3D views. Pricing and
availability TBA — I'll let you know, okay?

There's just something about an echo chamber, magical spaces that have the power to transform sound.

An article in Nature (discussed at collision detection some weeks ago and more recently at aptly-named blog Echo Generation with anecdotal evidence) Mayans may have built the El Castillo
pyramid with specific audio-filtering capabilities. Echoes can sound
like chirping birds and falling rain. The Mayans may have been
performing aural imaging along with visual effects created naturally be
the space.

For modern echo chamber creation, look no further than UK media artist Chris O'Shea's Echo Chamber (via near near future),
where glitchy electronic sounds emerge from a gorgeous 3D soundscape –
enter an audio input with a mic, and a 3D sprite version of it
interracts organically in the virtual space.

To me, though, the more successful of the two sonically and
conceptually is the Mayans. Modern society has some catching up to do.
(Then again, we don't kill people for losing sporting events — lucky for the NY Jets.)

Ever routed audio a few feet to an outboard effects
processor? How about routing your audio all the way to Oberhausen,
Germany?

Thanks to the online Tank-FX
(link in German), you can. A server feeds your audio sample into the
tank and records it with a pair of Rode NT-5s, adding a nice, natural
reverb tail of a few seconds, created by the actual acoustics of this
steam locomotive tank. You can then download the result. (via Dave's Imaginary Sound Space, which has an extended discussion)

Of course, thanks to the magic of convolution, you could get the same
effect with a convolution reverb. You can even design your own impulse
responses, which model acoustical reverbs, using the graphic interface
in Impulse Modeler
(US$39.95, Windows) which was just updated this week. For Mac or PC
users with their own convolution reverb of choice, Voxengo has free impulse response files available for download, too!

But it's nice to go organic every now and then.