Hardware Impulse Responses - right or wrong ?

[andyt]

I hunted down the SIR convolution engine mentioned in one of the recent threads on this Forum (because it is apparently more efficient than accoustic mirror).

On the site I also followed the links to sites offering free impulse responses.

I was astonished to find collections of IRs of premier league Reverb Units ... including Lexicons, TC Electronics and Sony.

So we\'ve had many debates about software and library piracy (and I don\'t for an instant want to re-start those) .... BUT I\'m guessing there are no laws YET about making IRs of hardware equipment, but certainly feel it is morally questionable. If I worked for Lexicon I would certainly feel pissed off at the thought of someone \"photocopying\" the \"essence\" of my reverb units.

I don\'t have enough expertise to comment on whether IR\'s of hardware devices are effective or offer the same degree of \"tweakability\" as real unit, but would probably guess they don\'t.

[KingIdiot]

you cant tweak the same way. And some reverb units have \"moving\" sounscapes that you cant capture correctly with IR\'s

Also in the real of dynamic processing (if there\'s compression going on in the unit, or saturation) you cant reproduce that accurately with standard convolution (you can do much more accurately with dynamic convolution, but I\'ve only seen hardware boxes for that, tho I ahve my own ideas on how to make a ghetto dynamic convolver using as many as 256 instances of SIR images/icons/smile.gif hehee )

still yah I\'d see people getting pissed about it.

[Owel]

But the impulse response will only be copying (1) particular setting of the hardware reverb... and you\'re stuck with it. You can\'t change the behaviour of it.

If you have the real thing, there are many parameters you can adjust independently.

[KingIdiot]

truth be told, you COULD grab an impulse of EVERY setting and make a GUI that would mimic the interface of the hardware images/icons/smile.gif

thats sort of the idea behind dynamic convolution, only that it takes multiple \"snapshots\" at different volumes.

[Not Dudley Simpson]

Andyt

I downloaded some real acoustic IRs yesterday - big halls and churches. They were quite hard to find. I\'m currently testing them with SIR on a orchestral (a real orchestra) recording. So far the results sound very good. I haven\'t tried them with samples yet. They appear to be free to use without obligation. Maybe you could slip the guy a thank you note, or a donation.

http://www.editions-ihs.com/transfert.htm (\"http://www.editions-ihs.com/transfert.htm\")

The IRs of the PCM90 are also superb. I think you can still find them at soundvault (if you don\'t already have them).

Hope it helps
Heath

Oops - for \"soundvault\" read \"noisevault\".

[Nick Batzdorf]

And some reverb units have \"moving\" sounscapes that you cant capture correctly with IR\'s <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">In the case of Lexicons (the higher-end ones), that would be the Spin parameter, which is chorusing the tail to smooth it out. You can do that to sampling reverbs too if you want.

What sampling reverbs do so astonishingly well is create real spaces. They can do freaky stuff as well, but they\'re better at different freaky stuff.