# Altiverb: Do the ER in Altiverb affect how the Tail sounds?



## SwedishPug (Sep 23, 2021)

I've read somewhere on here a while back that some people make two instances of Altiverb - one for early reflections and the other for late reflections because they don't like how the two together sound? Do the early reflections in Altiverb affect how the tail sounds? What's happening there?

Thank you!


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## Bernard Duc (Sep 23, 2021)

SwedishPug said:


> I've read somewhere on here a while back that some people make two instances of Altiverb - one for early reflections and the other for late reflections because they don't like how the two together sound? Do the early reflections in Altiverb affect how the tail sounds? What's happening there?
> 
> Thank you!


I'm not sure what you mean, early reflections are simply the first few milliseconds of a reverb, there is nothing special to them except that our ears don't really hear them as being part of the reverb yet unless if there is enough pre-delay.


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## Dietz (Sep 23, 2021)

SwedishPug said:


> I've read somewhere on here a while back that some people make two instances of Altiverb - one for early reflections and the other for late reflections because they don't like how the two together sound? Do the early reflections in Altiverb affect how the tail sounds? What's happening there?
> 
> Thank you!


One of those urban legends that seem to live forever on the 'net ... This is just _one_ of many possible ways to use AltiVerb, in a kind of "hybrid" configuration (and a slightly convoluted (!) one at that ). :-D


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## Trash Panda (Sep 23, 2021)

Dietz said:


> One of those urban legends that seem to live forever on the 'net ... This is just _one_ of many possible ways to use AltiVerb, in a kind of "hybrid" configuration (and a slightly _*convoluted*_ (!) one at that ). :-D


I see what you did there.


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## gsilbers (Sep 25, 2021)

SwedishPug said:


> I've read somewhere on here a while back that some people make two instances of Altiverb - one for early reflections and the other for late reflections because they don't like how the two together sound? Do the early reflections in Altiverb affect how the tail sounds? What's happening there?
> 
> Thank you!


Yes, the famous Todd ao configuration was something done a lot to get a more realistic sounds from very dry sample libraries like Vienna and lass back in the day. 

The idea was to add a shorter ir of Todd ao for only early reflection and that would be full wet or mostly wet. 
Then the tail would be different but used more normally. Was done to sections to change the perspective and direction and then all would be sent to a common reverb , maybe algo. 

This of course went out of fashion with libraries having diffeeenr mic perspective . This wasn’t needed anymore. 

But the main concept is still used in some plugins or apps. I think vsl has mir but several apps play around with convolution to recreate perspectives etc.


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## Casiquire (Sep 26, 2021)

Agreed with what gsilbers said above. In my experience though, there IS an advantage to playing around with ERs versus tail depending on what you're trying to do with reverb. What I've noticed in my experience is that there's often a lot of mud right at the front end of many reverb impulse if I'm using reverb on a recording that already has a lot of room sound. I don't necessarily use Altiverb's built in "tail" and "ER" controls. I use their attack knob and my ears instead until i reach a point where the sound suddenly starts to lift and lighten and my instruments become clearer but keep the pretty tail.

The only time i might do the opposite is if I want the reverb to provide color but not add much room or tail. That's an unusual situation because usually I'd just use ER, but maybe i want a little bit of controlled chaos in certain situations.


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