# Sample Modeling brass ER/Reverb methods thread



## Jeast (Sep 9, 2017)

Hi!

As some of you know, in the past I created a small comparison on how I got good results with SM's brass in an orchestral settings. This topic is still relevant and I receive quite a lot of questions about how I did it and what I did. So I decided to create a separate topic on this, since I updated my settings as well.

Please note that this is not the holy grail, these are only the settings which are based on my opinion/taste. Nonetheless I hope that some of you may find it helpful. SM brass are great instruments to have in your orchestral template.

Here we go! I will start by pasting my old forum post and then underneath it place my latests settings.

The SM instruments are very dry. This means that just sending the to a verb won't be enough, the mix will still contain the too dry sound. What you have to do is replace that dry sound 100% with a wet ER sound. This may sound drastic but it works wonders. VSS is a tool which can do this, but the ERs included in VSS are not that great. This is why I solely use VSS2 for panning purpose by using the open field setting which does not contain any ER whatsoever. I have tried multiple settings for wetting the instruments with ERs, QL Spaces, ValhallaRoom and Reverberate.

My reverb of choice is the Boston hall A, I just love the sound/space so thats what I tried to achieve. All 3 instances can do this space. The first one to drop out was Spaces. This is because you don't have any control over ERs and tail. What I want to achieve is to replace the sound for a 100% wet ER sound, and send THAT to the tail, so there is no dry sound left. If you don't do this, the dry sound will still be there. In this example I only have a send to the Boston Hall A Bric M7 preset for Reverberate


As you can hear, the dry sound is still a bit there.

Both ValhallaRoom and Reverberate have options to only have the ER's without the tail. I have tried and used VRoom for this purpose for a while by dialing in the Boston hall A settings. This worked quite well. After a while I upgraded my old Reverberate to the new Reverberate 2 with the M7 fusion IR's, and I love the Boston hall A preset included. So I switched Vroom for Reverberate 2. This is what happens when I use Reverberate as an insert with the Boston preset and only using ER's (mix 100% wet)


As you can hear this is more of a defined space and sounds a lot like an instrument recorded from a distance, just as other libraries sound)

Sending this to my main reverb bus, Boston preset and the ER's dialed out because all my instruments already have ER's baked in. I stopped worrying about depth too much and use send level to create depth for my sections (and maybe some high shelving EQ)

This is how it all sounds together.



Important side note is that I did a pretty drastic EQ cut around 240hz on all the samples to cleanup the midrange.

In the past I bought Virtual Sound Stage and while this never really found a way into my template, I decided to try it on SM's brass and really like it.



Here you will only hear the dry + ER (without Reverb tail).
Again I also did a very drastic HPF cut (around 250)

Now the same sample but with a reverb send. The reverb used is the ACME stage from East West Play.



Important note:
While I dude use VSS in the samples above, the same could be done without VSS. Even in the latest versions of SM brass there are ER settings included and you could use those as well. The reason I did not use it is because I don't find the settings very intuitive. The knobs and numbers are hard to read (pan is for example 1-127 instead of L - R) VSS makes those settings very visual and easy. Soundwise I don't think there is much of a difference.


Please feel free to post your own settings as well, lets improve the thread all together.

Jeast


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## DANIELE (Sep 9, 2017)

I'm very interested in this. Great idea.


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## jonnybutter (Sep 10, 2017)

Great of you to take the time, before and now


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## Jeast (Apr 10, 2018)

Unfortunately I cannot add more than 5 media objects to the opening post, so here is an addition:

Since Sample modeling brass version 3 there is a Soundstage included in the VST. This adds ER and more advanced placement (panning and distance) options.

Below 2 Horns recordings, one with just the soundstage and another one with the soundstage + a reverb hall send. I have tried playing them as dynamic as possible so you can hear the effect on the full dynamic range.


_Above the version with both the soundstage enabled and a QL Spaces reverb send. See the settings below.


Above the version with just the soundstage enabled. See the settings below.
_
Settings I used for the Soundstage:






Hope it is helpful.

J


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