Any thoughts on gigastudio's verb?

[john grant]

Is it up to sblive standards? Is it better?

John Grant http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html (\"http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html\")

[IOComposer]

It\'s much better than SBLive\'s. Of course, reverb has so much to do with personal taste, but I find it quite nice and actually useful. I\'ve invested a lot of money in hardware reverbs, so I usually don\'t bother with soft verbs. However, the little bit that I\'ve used of the GS reverbs, I\'ve been very impressed. Moreso than of most soft verbs.
-IO

[Horst]

I don´t know SBLive reverb but I´d say considering that it uses only some 12% of cpu it is really not bad and quite smooth.

Compared to my old Microverb 2 I would say that GSt-reverb is less \"bubbling\" but the stereo-effect is better with the Microverb.

All in all good value for the price.

Horst.

[john grant]

Has anyone had an opportunity to compare it with timeworks?

[Simon Ravn]

Sorry but from the few tests I ran with NFX verb I say it sucks http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif Much worse than SB Live, and definitely very bad especially in high frequencies - it sounds way too clean and unnatural. Get a cheap Lexicon MPX 100, it\'ll be 100 times more realistic http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Simon

[john grant]

I ask for a couple of reasons. The first is that the only reason I would upgrade at this point would be for the verb. The second is that I\'m smarting a bit from criticisms made of my solo piano (Bach) at Mp3 that suggest that the \"give-a-way\" that the music is not a live recording is the verb. \"Too clean,\" meaning \"not enough room ambience\". I switched to Timeworks from Hyperism, because, given the filtering I\'ve done with the Steinway B sample, Timeworks emerges as the superior reverb. I think it probably is better than Hyperism and Native verb as well.

Anyway, I thought the new Gstudio verb might be an improvement on both Timeworks and Native. Frankly, I can\'t find much wrong with Timeworks in conjunction with Steinway B. For most solo piano it seems to me to sound incredibly good. (With on or two exceptions: some of my tracks are a bit muddy.) My \"fans\" disagree, however. \"Too much verb!\" they say. And \"Too clean.\" Go figure...

John Grant http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html (\"http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html\")

[LHong]

>>>\"Too much verb!\" they say. And \"Too clean.\" Go figure...<<<
I\'m not a great pinanist, when I listen to music, usually to put my ears into the taste of the NONE musician/producer. It would be true that the music what we produce for everyone...I like the way its reverb, that is exactly how the listeners want to, that could be more important...Yes, I want to say that the musician/producer have always had special ears and never been satified.

>>...the music is not a live recording is the verb...<<<
To my ears, I think you have done the good jobs for using the reverb into your pinano tracks, even you think that you don\'t have good verbs. At this point, I could be wrong but I see the key is not thing to do with verbs, try to mix it as DRY, you could see it as same way \"too clean\", \"not a live recording\"...it is some kind of computerization feel not a real human feel, that\'s all. The way you\'re playing also is described your personalities, I can tell that, every notes you\'ve played in relaxing...It is a style, might be some other listeners like that ways.
However, with the better recording card (not SB) and better velocity feels could change the song\'s personalities (not only the reverbs).
just a thought,
LHong




[This message has been edited by LHong (edited 10-25-2000).]

[john grant]

That raises the sound card issue. All I use SB for is to get my samples to wave files. The specs are so good (for what specs are worth) that I can\'t imagine another sound card being noticably better in that very narrow respect If I thought for a moment that I was not getting 20-20k flat and distortionless, I\'d consider an alternative. If I\'m talking rot here, by all means, tell me!

ps. I\'ve compared the sound quality of wave files in my computer through sblive to the original CD on my dayton wright pre-amp, Kef 104s and Mackie monitors... no difference whatsoever.

John Grant http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html (\"http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/42/john_lewis_grant.html\")

[This message has been edited by john grant (edited 10-25-2000).]

[teuf]

The NFX reverb is a joke. Maybe you can use it for temporary tracks as a convenience but I would not use it in any final track. I usually route an AUX output of the GigaStudio to an outboard Lexicon MPX100.

Unfortunately, it does not seem that you can use standard Direct-X plug-ins in Giga.

[Kenn159]

I have a sb live and a darla 24 sound card in my system and although I can\'t say that the SB live is the cleanist card Ive ever heard [around 87 DB signal to noise unwieghted , about the same as the turtle beach Monterery sound card that I used to have , and back in 95 it was considered to be one of the quietest in the $350 price range, but for today\'s specs it\'s fair.]but one thing I was impressed about the SB was the sound quality of it\'s effects ,since the SB is using a 1000 mips processor they can get a great reverb density unmatched by other sound cards Ive heard [for comparison my Darla 24 has a 80 mips processor ].
I also think the waves Trueverb is a nice sounding softverb.
I was not impressed with the sound quality of the NFX effects it probably has something to do with the low CPU use of those effects .
This isn\'t the only factor but you\'ll see a connection between High CPU draining effects and better sound quality .
Thats why the SB sounds so good ,but with the SBs own DSP , theres no drain on the CPU.

[Kenn159]

Oh yeah one more thing .
The waves trueverb is not a option for giga studio because it\'s not a midi effects reverb ,just a digital audio reverb.
It stay\'s greyed out in cakewalk when you try to apply it to midi instruments .
You would have to capture it to audio.

[john grant]

I should check out trueverb. So far Timeworks has seemed the best to me, followed closely by Native. The timeworks actually seems cleaner to me than the SB live \"concert hall,\" which I adjust quite a bit when I use it. Capture plus timeworks definitely provides less audible hiss than the SBlive verb and its own wave editing software. And the two verbs can be made nearly identical in sound. So I do the final mix with timeworks, but play with sblive.

[Damon]

I don\'t think the NFX reverbs are that bad. I\'ve heard alot worse! I think if you adjust some of the coloration by turning down the midrange and low, you can take some of that ring out of your reverb. Sure, it\'s not TC reverb, but for 300 bucks Gigastudio 96 packs a good punch regardless.
Hopefully in the future Nemesys will add alot more effects for Gigastudio.

[Jim Van Buskirk]

I thought you all might be interested in what has been published on this topic in various magazines thus far by well known veteran reviewers (more on the way, as the reviews are released):

“The effects sound very good: The reverbs, in particular, are smooth and spacious. The sound quality is especially remarkable when you consider these are extremely low-latency effects and don’t hog an excessive amount of CPU time. Each instance of the reverb/chorus, for instance, took about 6% of the CPU in the 600MHz machine. The “realtime” effects plug-ins in a typical computer based audio recorder generally buffer a certain amount of audio ahead of time, while the NFX effects, like those in a hardware processor, are true realtime effects.”
- Jim Aikin, Keyboard Magazine (USA), Sept 2000, pg. 96:

“The reverb is one of the most musical-sounding I’ve ever heard coming out of a PC..”
- Future Music (UK), Sept 2000, pg. 58

“..effects to die for”
- Ronan Macdonald, editor, Computer Music (UK), Sept 2000 pg. 3

“The reverb quality sounded like I was using a Lexicon PCM series processor -- it was that good. Actually, it wasn’t just good...it was perfect.” - David Hurd, MusicDish.com http://musicdish.com/mag/index.php3?id=1453 (\"http://musicdish.com/mag/index.php3?id=1453\")

[Simon Ravn]

Those guys must have very bad ears or maybe listening on a hangover....

[john grant]

Simon or Kenn (or anyone else who knows) would you care to comment on TC verb vs Timeworks vs SBLive used, let\'s say, on a Steinway b sample (solo)? Which would you go for, if you had to choose?

[Simon Ravn]

I don\'t know those verbs good enough, although I tried both Timeworks and TC a bit, but I use my hardware verbs instead. You sure you can\'t be convinced to buy something like a cheap Lexicon MPX 100? It\'s around 200$ and is very good especially for orchestral verb, as it\'s more muddy than TC for example.

[john grant]

I had one. For piano solo on GS--my headphones tell me there\'s a lot of \"fuzz\" or \"white noise\" when you turn the verb on full tilt. Much less with sblive and timeworks. Now, listening to sblive verb (which I\'ve played with to suit my tastes), I\'m starting to think it might actually have more \"air\" than timeworks, which BTW can produce quite good high end verb. It\'s funny how perceptions change over time.

[LHong]

>>>Those guys must have very bad ears or maybe listening on a hangover....<<<

Interesting,
>>>“The reverb quality sounded like I was using a Lexicon PCM series processor -- it was that good. Actually, it wasn’t just good...it was perfect.”<<<

Don\'t forget that, the guy who compares the verbs with Lexicon PCM serires which were designed about more than 15 years technology (might be not the latest model?). I used to have it for the Vocal at the old time, for accoustic-Verbs, I don\'t know? \"sounds not bad, many analog studios must had it\".

To my taste, I have tried many soft-verbs (including TC, Timework), due to the CPU (processing), PCI-soundcards, MIDI-interfacing, No. of loading tracks, frequency responding (bandwidth), cross-fading, parameterization (wet/dry at realtime)...You must probably need to dedicate (best use is insert-effs, not using busses) every two/four tracks using one verb in order to get best performances. Don\'t forget, it is a software processing, it is also an emulated-verbs \"not real dynamic processing\", it\'s always getting latency which is never seen on the hardware-verb. Try it with a few tracks (2~4), change the parameter at realtime with fast tempo (room size, EQ, wet/dry, etc)...it would sounds very funny, it depends on the CPU speed, some of those might takes 1/20~1/8 second to process. It\'s explained why to dedicate it.
This can be done but you need a few giga-hezts system when you run large of multiple-tracks mixing. The developers, of course they knew its limitation but they won\'t never tell us that...any words says that, your PC system (mother board, Harddrive, CPU, power-supply, memory) is special designed for proffesional recording studio? When you want it as the master tracks for production, it would be limited about 90% quality compare with other commercial one, other 10% would be done when you are ready to spend about $100,000 (USD) to get fully dynamic sounds. Anyone\'s here successfully having 30~40 mult-track-recording that used soft-verbs? If yes, we want to see the demo song? we want to verify if it\'s true? which verbs are popular for sound designing/sampling used?

For me, most of the soft-verbs are about same technology (no hardware change), they copied the source codes (same DSP formular) over and over. The diference is they give you more variable (better GUI) of pre-param-EQ, time delay, room or size/type, wet/dry (a little built-in mixer), decay, sustain, etc. It would takes you so much time if the developers don\'t give you the good presets to start with...

In additional, other solution for it is If your PC is fast enough, you could have them cascaded in parallel/serial even to deal them in multiple audio tracks like duplicated one track (Piano/Strings for example) in two~four tracks then having diferent Verb-parameters with the volume tracks as fader controller (same way how the proffesional deals with outboard-mixers).

However, don\'t forget that the verb won\'t gives you better sound (you still need a good sound source and sound arrangment) when you are using too depth effect-processing (reverbs), your music would sounds less (loosing) real-dynamic.
Just another thought,
LHong http://www.planetz.com/Pulsar/Music.html (\"http://www.planetz.com/Pulsar/Music.html\")




[This message has been edited by LHong (edited 10-29-2000).]

[Bruce A. Richardson]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Simon Ravn:
I don\'t know those verbs good enough, although I tried both Timeworks and TC a bit, but I use my hardware verbs instead. You sure you can\'t be convinced to buy something like a cheap Lexicon MPX 100?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Renaissance Reverb is by far the best available soft reverb. It surpasses everything to date; including TC, Timeworks, and Waves\' own TrueVerb by a huge margin.

It is the only software reverb I have heard that can compare with upper tier studio hardware, but it eats CPU like nobody\'s business. On my 850 mhz box, I can run one Renaissance Reverb and one C4 simultaneously...if I add another RVerb, the machine completely gaps out.

But oh, the sound...Waves really raised the bar with this one.

There\'s a 14 day demo if you want to check it out...if you mix like crazy, you can get a lot done in 14 days. <g>

[Doug]

How does Renaissance reverb compare to Kind of Loud\'s RealVerb? I\'ve been using Realverb (TDM) for a few months and love it. What uses would you recommend for one over the other?