# Reverb Blakus



## Musicam (Oct 25, 2016)

I have watched the videos of Blakus and... AHHH Awesome! Now I am going to buy Lexicon Reverb but I think now that B2 is the best. Whatdo you think?


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## Daryl (Oct 25, 2016)

Bricasti M7


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## Will Blackburn (Oct 25, 2016)

Prefer B2 over the Lexicons aswell for stage positioning (far/mid/close etc) although im still looking for a non algo master 'polishing' reverb that is not Altiverb.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 25, 2016)

Right now I'm using Altiverb and Valhalla. I should try the R2 Surround as Alan Meyerson seems to like it and says it's somewhat similar to the Bricasti. The new Slate Digital will have a Bricasti emulation so I'll probably give that a show and see how it sounds although I've never used a real Bricasti so I wouldn't really be able to compare its authenticity. I need to get into algo programming more in general as I'm not very good at getting great sounds out of them.


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## Musicam (Oct 25, 2016)

The sound of Lexicon is awesome and very ease to use but I believe that B2 is more complete, its certain?


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## Daryl (Oct 25, 2016)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Right now I'm using Altiverb and Valhalla. I should try the R2 Surround as Alan Meyerson seems to like it and says it's somewhat similar to the Bricasti. The new Slate Digital will have a Bricasti emulation so I'll probably give that a show and see how it sounds although I've never used a real Bricasti so I wouldn't really be able to compare its authenticity. I need to get into algo programming more in general as I'm not very good at getting great sounds out of them.


A real Bricasti is not like the software versions, to my ears. The sound seems to live more, has more vitality, but none of the thickness that gets in the way of clarity. Particularly on Strings it seems to work really well.


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## Musicam (Oct 25, 2016)

The sound of Blakus is awesome!


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## Fleer (Oct 25, 2016)

Since I got Zynaptiq's Adaptiverb I never looked back.


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## tack (Oct 25, 2016)

A new reverb will not suddenly make you sound like Blakus.


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## Musicam (Oct 25, 2016)

TRUE but the technical aspects are so important. Cheers. Money is the money. The vst is not the artist.


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## novaburst (Oct 25, 2016)

tack said:


> A new reverb will not suddenly make you sound like Blakus.



Oooooh darn


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## Musicam (Oct 25, 2016)




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## Silence-is-Golden (Oct 25, 2016)

.... and , why on earth do you want to sound like someone else......if there is even such a thing?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Oct 25, 2016)

Daryl said:


> A real Bricasti is not like the software versions, to my ears. The sound seems to live more, has more vitality, but none of the thickness that gets in the way of clarity. Particularly on Strings it seems to work really well.


Apparently the new Slate Digital has some different modelling going on. Not a convolution. Considering that most of their plugins have critical acclaim I think this will be the closest thing yet. Fabrice Gabriel seems to be on a whole 'nother level. I'm not planning to get it but maybe if it does actually sound like a Bricasti I'll pick it up.


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## Daryl (Oct 25, 2016)

It doesn't really matter whether or not it sounds like a Bricasti, as long as it sounds good.


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## jamwerks (Oct 25, 2016)

Daryl said:


> It doesn't really matter whether or not it sounds like a Bricasti, as long as it sounds good.


Wouldn't that be great if it sounded even a little bit more like an M7 than anything else we have so far!?


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## Blakus (Oct 25, 2016)

I've gone down this wormhole before, myself. It lead to months of shootouts and comparisons, and in the end, I discovered that there is no one "secret" reverb that will rule them all (in the plugin world at least). I was able to produce great results with a large number of plugins including, Relab 480, Exponential Audio Verbs, B2, Valhalla Vintage Verb etc. In the end it really comes down to which one you get along with personally. My choices now are not only about the sound, but also the system resources they use. B2 was my favourite for a long time, but its CPU usage was just unsustainable for me; forcing me to work in a clunky way with frozen tracks etc.

My 2 favourites at the moment are Nimbus (or PhoenixVerb) and Valhalla Room. Great sound, light on resources.


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## milesito (Oct 25, 2016)

Blakus said:


> I've gone down this wormhole before, myself. It lead to months of shootouts and comparisons, and in the end, I discovered that there is no one "secret" reverb that will rule them all (in the plugin world at least). I was able to produce great results with a large number of plugins including, Relab 480, Exponential Audio Verbs, B2, Valhalla Vintage Verb etc. In the end it really comes down to which one you get along with personally. My choices now are not only about the sound, but also the system resources they use. B2 was my favourite for a long time, but its CPU usage was just unsustainable for me; forcing me to work in a clunky way with frozen tracks etc.
> 
> My 2 favourites are the moment are Nimbus (or PhoenixVerb) and Valhalla Room. Great sound, light on resources.


Thanks Blakus! Are there any pre-sets in PhoenixVerb and Valhalla Room that you find as magical as Berlin Hall from B2?


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## Blakus (Oct 25, 2016)

milesito said:


> Thanks Blakus! Are there any pre-sets in PhoenixVerb and Valhalla Room that you find as magical as Berlin Hall from B2?


For all of the Exponential Audio verbs, their default presets seem to work really well for me with a few tweaks, depending how bright you like your verb. Valhalla Room has some really nice presets too, I like a number of the algorithms; Large Room, LV-426, Dense Room all sound great!


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## Maestro1972 (Oct 25, 2016)

While you're at it, @Blakus will you come over and set up my template, balance my libraries, and bestow upon me your wonderful talent as a composer? Thought I'd ask seeing that you are being so generous!


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## milesito (Oct 25, 2016)

Blakus said:


> For all of the Exponential Audio verbs, their default presets seem to work really well for me with a few tweaks, depending how bright you like your verb. Valhalla Room has some really nice presets too, I like a number of the algorithms; Large Room, LV-426, Dense Room all sound great!


Thanks Blakus for the great tips!


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## JC_ (Oct 25, 2016)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Apparently the new Slate Digital has some different modelling going on. Not a convolution. Considering that most of their plugins have critical acclaim I think this will be the closest thing yet. Fabrice Gabriel seems to be on a whole 'nother level. I'm not planning to get it but maybe if it does actually sound like a Bricasti I'll pick it up.



I'm excited to try this out as well. Supposed to be out this week.

"VerbSuite Classics captures the actual tone and modulation characteristics of a reverb using LiquidSonics' proprietary Fusion-IR processing technology. Unlike static impulse responses found in a typical convolution reverb, Fusion-IRs are able to reproduce the evolving character of modulated digital reverbs which makes it possible to create the lively and convincing acoustic spaces so essential for hit records. "


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## JC_ (Oct 25, 2016)

Thanks for sharing, Blakus. I did not know Nimbus was released - will have to try it out. 

Exciting times!


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## bap_la_so_1 (Oct 25, 2016)

Me too find b2 resorces heavy, only use it when exporting tracks
Now i use vintageverb, instead


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## NYC Composer (Oct 25, 2016)

+ 1 for Valhalla Room. I tried B2 and LOVED IT, but it ate my CPU like a snack. Valhalla sounds really good and is a very light load.


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## zacnelson (Oct 25, 2016)

Musicam said:


> I have watched the videos of Blakus and... AHHH Awesome! Now I am going to buy Lexicon Reverb but I think now that B2 is the best. Whatdo you think?


What are these videos of which you speak?


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## Blakus (Oct 25, 2016)

zacnelson said:


> What are these videos of which you speak?


Hey Zac, I think the one in this thread is the one mentioned: http://vi-control.net/community/threads/star-wars-drones-walkthrough-video.56786/#post-4005938



Aoiichi said:


> Interesting, Blakus; I'm still using the custom B2 preset you made to place the Sample Modelling instruments. What's the current preset you're using to do this with Valhalla (or Phoenix, Nimbus)? Or do you not use that much of SM anymore?


I find myself not using SM all that much anymore. I'm in love with the control, but the battle to get it to sound right seems never ending to me :D



Maestro1972 said:


> While you're at it, @Blakus will you come over and set up my template, balance my libraries, and bestow upon me your wonderful talent as a composer? Thought I'd ask seeing that you are being so generous!


Hahaha! I'll service your lawn mower while I'm at it :D


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## col (Oct 26, 2016)

Blakus thanks for the info . I missed whether you use hardware reverbs at all ?

Cheers All


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## Blakus (Oct 26, 2016)

col said:


> Blakus thanks for the info . I missed whether you use hardware reverbs at all ?
> 
> Cheers All


No hardware verb here. Although I do find myself constantly resisting selling myself on a street corner to get a Bricasti 
Must, resist!


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## Anders Wall (Oct 26, 2016)

Blakus said:


> No hardware verb here. Although I do find myself constantly resisting selling myself on a street corner to get a Bricasti
> Must, resist!


Just get one, they are so SO SSSOOO much different than software.
I've got a M7, a TC4000 and a real plate, they are on everything I deliver.
Never had a single regret buying them.

Best,
Anders


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## Daryl (Oct 27, 2016)

WallofSound said:


> Just get one, they are so SO SSSOOO much different than software.
> I've got a M7, a TC4000 and a real plate, they are on everything I deliver.
> Never had a single regret buying them.
> 
> ...


Yes, I'm debating on getting another couple of M7s, as that would make my life a lot easier. However, there are more important things to spend money on at the moment so I'll just have to wait.


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## brett (Nov 24, 2016)

@Blakus - I'm late to this thread, but interesting that you reached the same conclusion that I have - that B2, while great, is simply too CPU heavy and restricts me to really only one or two instances given everything else I have going.

Lexicon have a BF sale on their PCM native bundle (JRR have it for crazy cheap) which I'm considering. Do you have any thoughts on how it stacks up to B2 with respect to sound quality and resources? Or would you recommend grabbing a couple of the Valhalla verbs instead?


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## Andrew Souter (Dec 10, 2016)

Hi guys, if I can comment:

It's a completely valid observation that B2 *usually* uses a lot of CPU resources.

B2, for the most part, takes a "get the absolute best sound quality at any cost" approach. Its design goal was not to be the lightest on your CPU -- others are lighter. It's goal was not to be the cheapest -- others are cheaper. (Our Breeze product fills this spot for us.) B2's goal was simply to sound the best no matter what. I'll let others comment on whether or not we achieved that.

So that said, we are fully aware that the biggest, and really only, complaint about B2, is that is uses a lot of CPU resources (other than maybe its inherent complexity). It's true. It can use a lot of resources depending on the preset, and usually does because most people tend to use the higher end of potential settings. The alg simply does an sh*tload of calculations, particularly at its highest settings. Nothing is wasted though as far as we are aware, and the sound quality we achieve is definitely in large part bc of these huge number of calculations. We simply get more excited generally by pushing the bounds of what is possible in algorithm design on today's hardware than trying to be the cheapest or the lightest product that sounds "good enough for most people". I guess we are sort of extremists.

But in my thinking we are talking about a $250 product ($175 at the moment during our holiday promo) that gives you a better sound, and is a billion times more diverse, than hardware devices that used to cost $10,000. If you are composing/mixing/editing/sound-designing major film/game/tv projects, a great solution that many have done is to set up a VEP slave to run B2. Intel Skylake 6700k CPUs can be obtained for a couple hundred dollars which give a VERY good "bang for the buck". The entire VEP slave could be built for around ~$1k I guess. So for $1k + $250 you have an ultimate reverb machine with zero CPU load on you main machine, and you are free to run B2 in its most extreme settings with many instances...

We will take a look at our verbs again in the coming months and have already done a ton of RnD for some incredible new things. We will take another look at "beating our code into submission" and bringing down CPU more if at all possible without sacrificing the sound quality because that is what is most important to us. We were able recently to achieve pretty massive speedups in Kaleidoscope maybe we can find such tricks in our verbs, but it less likely that we can get obtain crazy figures such as 300, 400, 500% or more efficient as we were able to do in KS. We will absolutely give it our best effort though.

Finally, CPU usage in B2 is EXTREMELY variable. It CAN already be lighter than the competition in SOME settings, but these are not the normal/average settings, so we do not claim it to be low CPU on average. The settings that most effect CPU usage are:

the Density/Diffusion switch that has NANO, LO, HI, XTRM settings. This is what effects CPU uage the most. XTRM is easily 10x as much CPU or more than NANO for example. The difference between HI and XTRM is usually fairly subtle. If CPU resources are tight, try not to use XTRM. Note the famed "Berlin Hall" preset that seemed popular here, is using the XTRM setting. Try changing it to HI and you will save almost 50% of the CPU resources.
Oversampling. 2x does two times the calculations. Plus the work of actually changing the sample rate perfectly with perfect anti-aliasing. 4x is more than 4x as intensive. In general you should NEVER use 4x for real-time use. you can optionally use it for bounces. Also our oversampling settings are NOT very intelligent. 2x ALWAYS means 2x, 4x ALWAYS means 4x regardless of host SR. If you are running at 96K session and using 4x B2 is running at 384k, which is generally insane. I would suggest if you are running at 96K, that you do NOT use oversampling and just keep everything at 1x.

Modulation: Lo, Med, Hi settings. And disabled. Disabling modulation saves A LOT of cpu resources. Modulation is pretty CPU intensive. Convolution verbs do not generally have any modulation. Phoneix verb AFAIK does not seem to have any kind of "normal" modulation either. So using SOME presets WITHOUT modulation is perfectly fine and valid. And you do NOT always have to use Hi.
Dual engine. If you use both engines, with identical settings, it is 2x as much CPU as one. Just like two instances.
Offline interpolation options, "perfection" and "obsession" give extreme quality on renders, but use extreme resources to do so. This does not effect real-time use, but if you turn these on, render times will be long.
There are others, but these are the most major influences on CPU usage.

Hope it helps.


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## Vin (Jan 4, 2017)

Blakus said:


> I've gone down this wormhole before, myself. It lead to months of shootouts and comparisons, and in the end, I discovered that there is no one "secret" reverb that will rule them all (in the plugin world at least). I was able to produce great results with a large number of plugins including, Relab 480, Exponential Audio Verbs, B2, Valhalla Vintage Verb etc. In the end it really comes down to which one you get along with personally. My choices now are not only about the sound, but also the system resources they use. B2 was my favourite for a long time, but its CPU usage was just unsustainable for me; forcing me to work in a clunky way with frozen tracks etc.
> 
> My 2 favourites at the moment are Nimbus (or PhoenixVerb) and Valhalla Room. Great sound, light on resources.



Same here. I was going to buy B2 since many people here loved it and then I demoed ValhallaRoom, B2 and PCM extensively. Then I figuered out ValhallaRoom sound as good as B2 (and I must say I preferred both to PCM). I could easily match ValhallaRoom to B2 Berlin Hall for example, and then I made some custom presets that I liked even more (Bricasti Boston Hall / Lexicon Large Hall hybrid) than that famed Berlin Hall. It also uses much less CPU than B2 as mentioned.

So I bought VRoom - absolutely love it. I'm sure Phoenix/Nimbus is great as well


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## storyteller (Jan 4, 2017)

I picked up Phoenix over the holidays based on the recommendations here. There is a whole lot to like about it and I would definitely recommend it! The word "transparent" is often used to describe it and I think that is the perfect word for it. I'm really finding it to be great on live acoustic instruments as well as my "glue reverb." That said, I think it wise to have numerous reverbs for different situations. It isn't mentioned here often, but the RC24/48 verbs in KU are really great as well and shouldn't be overlooked.


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## erikradbo (Jan 8, 2017)

Vin said:


> Same here. I was going to buy B2 since many people here loved it and then I demoed ValhallaRoom, B2 and PCM extensively. Then I figuered out ValhallaRoom sound as good as B2 (and I must say I preferred both to PCM). I could easily match ValhallaRoom to B2 Berlin Hall for example, and then I made some custom presets that I liked even more (Bricasti Boston Hall / Lexicon Large Hall hybrid) than that famed Berlin Hall. It also uses much less CPU than B2 as mentioned.
> 
> So I bought VRoom - absolutely love it. I'm sure Phoenix/Nimbus is great as well



Cool! Would you mind sharing your VRoom settings?


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## Vin (Jan 8, 2017)

erikradbo said:


> Cool! Would you mind sharing your VRoom settings?




Sure, here it is, just paste it from clipboard:

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.1.1" presetName="Boston Hall Custom" mix="1" predelay="0.05000000074505806" decay="0.020020019263029099" HighCut="0.39664429426193237" earlyLateMix="0.89899998903274536" lateSize="0.40999999642372131" lateCross="1" lateModRate="0.090909093618392944" lateModDepth="0.15000000596046448" RTBassMultiply="0.36666667461395264" RTXover="0.019191918894648552" RTHighMultiply="0.44444447755813599" RTHighXover="0.23825503885746002" earlySize="0.029029028490185738" earlyCross="0.10000000149011612" earlyModRate="0.090909093618392944" earlyModDepth="0" earlySend="0" diffusion="0.56000000238418579" type="0.083333335816860199"/>


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## erikradbo (Jan 8, 2017)

Vin said:


> Sure, here it is, just paste it from clipboard:
> 
> <ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.1.1" presetName="Boston Hall Custom" mix="1" predelay="0.05000000074505806" decay="0.020020019263029099" HighCut="0.39664429426193237" earlyLateMix="0.89899998903274536" lateSize="0.40999999642372131" lateCross="1" lateModRate="0.090909093618392944" lateModDepth="0.15000000596046448" RTBassMultiply="0.36666667461395264" RTXover="0.019191918894648552" RTHighMultiply="0.44444447755813599" RTHighXover="0.23825503885746002" earlySize="0.029029028490185738" earlyCross="0.10000000149011612" earlyModRate="0.090909093618392944" earlyModDepth="0" earlySend="0" diffusion="0.56000000238418579" type="0.083333335816860199"/>



Awesome, thanks a bunch!


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## chapbot (Feb 15, 2017)

Blakus said:


> I've gone down this wormhole before, myself. It lead to months of shootouts and comparisons, and in the end, I discovered that there is no one "secret" reverb that will rule them all (in the plugin world at least). I was able to produce great results with a large number of plugins including, Relab 480, Exponential Audio Verbs, B2, Valhalla Vintage Verb etc. In the end it really comes down to which one you get along with personally. My choices now are not only about the sound, but also the system resources they use. B2 was my favourite for a long time, but its CPU usage was just unsustainable for me; forcing me to work in a clunky way with frozen tracks etc.
> 
> My 2 favourites at the moment are Nimbus (or PhoenixVerb) and Valhalla Room. Great sound, light on resources.


Thank you Mr. Blakus, I just went down the reverb wormhole myself this week and tested the top verbs mentioned on these forums. I wanted something to make my pop strings sound warmer and glued - wow did Nimbus work immediately!


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## NYC Composer (Feb 15, 2017)

I gave it all up a while ago and went Valhalla Room for the same reasons. I almost always start with a Den preset.


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