# IRCAM Verb on offer...any user experiences?



## mikeh-375 (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi guys,
I see IRCAM Verb is on offer briefly for $99. I always regretted not getting SPAT3 before it morphed into Revolutions. 'Verb' is being touted as a halfway between reverb and spatialisation, anybody got any thoughts and experiences to share, is it a good buy for our faux orchestras?

https://www.flux.audio/ircam-by-flux-state-of-the-art-algorithmic-reverb/


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## re-peat (Sep 24, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> I always regretted not getting SPAT3



As well you should, Mike, as well you should.

But to say a few things related to your question: in my opinion, Flux exaggerates a little when they say that Verb3 is somewhere halfway between reverb and spatialization (if, by the latter, they mean what IrcamSPAT is capable of doing: placing a soundsource anywhere in any virtual space of your choosing).
Then again, they might be more correct than I think they are if you're working in a surround mixing environment (which is something I haven't done yet).

Whatever the case, Verb3 does have a few things up its sleeve — _bbbbunch of flowers!! —_ that set it apart from most other software reverbs, perhaps most notably the addition of a third reverb stage, in between the early reflections and the tail: the cluster stage. This cluster stage is a second stage of reflections, but more chaotic than the early ones and, unlike those early ones, not ‘localized’.

What’s also quite useful is that Verb has got a dedicated 3-band EQ for each of the components that define the reverberation: there’s a ‘Room EQ, an ‘Early EQ’, a ‘Cluster EQ’ and a ‘Tail EQ’.

Also very useful are the Panning and Width parameters. The Panning parameter is not just your common variety panner, it is, and let me quote from the manual here: _“Virtual source panning direction offset relative to input channels, in degrees. In a stereo-to-stereo channel configuration, this control allows one to gradually remap the input channels to each virtual source. In N-to-N surround configuration, the input channels are gradually remapped to their closest neighbors, in a circular, carousel fashion.”_ (Possibly this is part of the argumentation for saying that Verb3 is halfway between standard reverberation and spatialization.)

The Width parameter controls the width of the input chhannel.

Also unusual: Verb’s Diffuse parameter can be set separately for the early reflections, the cluster reflections and the tail.

The decay of the tail can be set for the lows, mids and highs separately, with adjustable crossover frequencies.

I like Verb3. I can understand that people disagree, but whatever one's taste, Verb3 is a versatile, powerful, high-quality reverberation tool. And if your field of operation is primarily orchestral mock-ups: Verb3 gets much closer to what it claims to simulate than anything in a sample-based orchestra.

Would love to do you some quick audio demos, but I’m in the middle of something else, I’m afraid, and I don’t really want to close this Logic document that’s staring me in the face at the moment. But if you download the FluxCenter, you can install a demo of Verb3 and take it for a spin. As well I would, Mike.

Here are two videos (which you might have watched already):




_


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## Living Fossil (Sep 24, 2021)

I just had a quick run with the demo and i think this is really a great reverb.

Does anybody knows if there are some resources that could be helpful with setting up the parameters in order to get different positions in the soundscape?
I'm experimenting in varying different start times (ERs, reverb etc.) and i think it's getting me somewhere, however i would appreciate to have access to some kind of a database...


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## CT (Sep 24, 2021)

I also think it's excellent. Not quite SPAT but it's got something rather special going on. For $99 I say yes.


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## givemenoughrope (Sep 24, 2021)

It came w SPATv3. Had a bud over just after I bought it (part of really successful TV composing team with a big studio w every piece of hw..if that matters to anyone) and he said it was one of the best reverbs he's ever heard. Demo it for sure.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

re-peat said:


> *As well you should, Mike, as well you should..........*
> 
> But to say a few things related to your question: in my opinion, Flux exaggerates a little when they say that Verb3 is somewhere halfway between reverb and spatialization (if, by the latter, they mean what IrcamSPAT is capable of doing: placing a soundsource anywhere in any virtual space of your choosing).
> Then again, they might be more correct than I think they are if you're working in a surround mixing environment (which is something I haven't done yet).
> ...



AAAAwww don't rub it in .... But I forgive you because you took the time to respond as you did...most appreciated @re-peat and encouraging. Why do you think some will disagree with your assessment of Verb though, anything in particular?
I will definitely take it for a spin seeing that you and the other chaps here have given it the thumbs up.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

gggrrrr...I can't trial it because I did so a couple of years ago and apparently I can only trial it once...gggggrrrrrrr. I've somewhat optimistically written to Flux to see if they will reset.
Here's why I'm hesitant to just go and get it. My Macs are pre-intel trashcans so I need to know if Verb3 will still run efficiently enough on such a system. I'm also awaiting a response from Flux on that, but in the meantime, does anybody know if it works ok on a pre-intel system?


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## re-peat (Sep 25, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> Why do you think some will disagree with your assessment of Verb though, anything in particular?



Mike,

Two reasons: the Verb3 is very unforgiving in the sense that it mirrors/reflects the frequency content of your source more than most other software reverbs I’m familiar with. The Verb3 is certainly not in the business of blurring or smoothing things for the sake of instant appeal, like some other reverbs do. (All Flux plugins, I find, are a bit like that: no inclination whatsoever to sugar-coat things, and also forcing you to _solve_ problems rather than masking them.)

If there’s a peak somewhere in the frequency spectrum of your source which isn’t all that apparent (or even passes unnoticed) when listening to it dry, there’s a very good chance you’ll hear it very well in the Verb3’s response and this might give the impression that the reverb sounds a bit 'meh' or 'yuck' or 'bwah' in some way or other.

When I first started using the Verb3, it was for this very reason that I wasn’t entirely convinced by what it did. Until I realized that what the Verb3 generates is 100% dependent on what you feed it. Of course, all good reverbs reflect the frequency contours of the source, but somehow the Verb3 does this in a more revealing or confrontational way than most others, I find. Any frequency anomaly or oddity in the source, and you can be sure you'll hear in the reverb. And (good) reverbs, by way of being, often tend to enlarge whatever frequency curves they receive.

Since I’m aware of all that, I’ve come to appreciate this merciless accuracy of the Verb3 and I sometimes even use it to tell me things my ears didn’t immediately pick up on, meaning: if I now hear something wrong in the reverberation of a source I thought sounded good on its own, I know I’ll have to have another look at the EQ’ing of that source. Really quite a useful trick, you know.

For example, if you send, say, an untreated sampled piano through the Verb3 — even one of the better ones —, the results don’t sound all that good at first: you’ll get a sort of clangy, obnoxious reverberation and you’d be well forgiven for thinking: “Jeez, what a crap reverb plugin is this.” But if you then make the effort to look at the problem a bit closer — not the perceived problem, but the _actual_ problem —, you’ll find that certain samples of the piano have rather peculiar frequency characteristics or pronounced resonances — all sampled pianos have this — and while often not particularly troublesome on their own, those are the reason why the Verb3 responds the way it does. (A good example of an apparent reverb problem not being a reverb problem at all.)

The second reason is that, unless my antennae weren’t functioning very well at the time, I noticed more than once that the Verb3 (and SPAT itself) was met with a sort of dismissive haughtyness from alledged reverb ‘experts’ who said it sounded cold, unrealistic, sterile and not 3D enough. I’m not of that opinion (and I also tend to become my most unpleasant self whenever mock-up musicians dismiss a reverb with the argument that it doesn’t sound ‘realistic’ enough; though that’s different topic entirely), but you’ll certainly come across it if you ask around long enough.

Like I said at the start: Flux software is all about facing the naked reality of the sound(s) you’re working with, as pleasant or disheartening as that may be. (In my case, often the latter.) With Flux it’s never about “we can make your music sound as if it was performed in … or as if recorded with … or as if you used legendary-this-or-legendary-that …”. That’s not Flux _at all_. (In that respect, it is the very opposite of much of PluginAlliance’s catalog.) Flux is analytical, surgical and, for a French emporium, remarkably but decidedly and wonderfully unsexy.



mikeh-375 said:


> I'm also awaiting a response from Flux on that, but in the meantime, does anybody know if it works ok on a pre-intel system?



I have an Early 2009 MacPro 2x2.93Ghz Quad-core Intel Xeon, by the way. _Early 2009._ I don’t know if that helps to put your mind at ease? And if still in doubt, why not demo some other Flux plugin, say, Alchemist or Syrah or maybe even Verb Session v3? If those run on your machine, you can be sure Verb3 will too.

_


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## homie (Sep 25, 2021)

Thanks for your explanations @re-peat

Can IRCAM Verb be used for positioning center recorded libraries in a concert hall? I'm trying to understand the differences and typical use cases between Verb and Spat. I know that Spat lets you freely position a source in a room. I wonder if i Verb can a least do left/right and front/back positioning.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

I'm indebted again @re-peat, another great response that as informative as it is, has sounded a few albeit faint, alarm bells, but maybe not enough to put me off.
I had the thought that I could use Verb3 as a general, unifying or glueing reverb, using an instance for each section of the orchestra as I'm not that keen on Breeze and some others I own.

Your post does bring up the possibility of some intriguing dilemmas. For example, I will always know when my scoring is fine so for me, any nastiness will come from unfortunate choices in the samples and their environments I guess. So, 2 questions one for you and one for me...
Do you think it's a good verb to use as an orchestral glue? (not so much a positioning tool as I can do that with other software).
For me...are my ears up to it ???...(but at that price I'm tempted regardles

EDIT...those nice people at Flux have given me a new trial code so I can get to try this for myself within my template.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

ooohhhhhh....I like it, a lot.
@Living Fossil I found the manual inside the plug in itself, did you find it? If not look under the Flux logo bottom right and click on the settings wheels, you'll find it there.


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## RedDot (Sep 25, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> Hi guys,
> I see IRCAM Verb is on offer briefly for $99. I always regretted not getting SPAT3 before it morphed into Revolutions. 'Verb' is being touted as a halfway between reverb and spatialisation, anybody got any thoughts and experiences to share, is it a good buy for our faux orchestras?
> 
> https://www.flux.audio/ircam-by-flux-state-of-the-art-algorithmic-reverb/


With an IRCAM premium subscription (200€ per year), you can have IRCAM's Spat for Max/MSP for free (which is more advanced than Flux's Spat Revolution) and IRCAM Verb for ~129€.

As a side note, if you don't renew the subscription (after one year) you can keep all the software you've already activated on your machine. They're cool cats.


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## Living Fossil (Sep 25, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> ooohhhhhh....I like it, a lot.
> @Living Fossil I found the manual inside the plug in itself, did you find it? If not look under the Flux logo bottom right and click on the settings wheels, you'll find it there.


Hi Mike, yes i found the manual, however it's not very informative with regards to positioning...

So far, i've done some experimenting and i guess the available controls about ER/Cluster times, ER shape and ER/Cluster/Reverb balance are quite powerful for achieving a good spatial representation.

Funny thing is, as @re-peat wrote, it's indeed a reverb that brings out the shortcomings of the involved samples...
In comparison to Precedence/Breeze my impression is that it also requires some re-editing of volume/dynamic aspects, i.e. it doesn't translate 1:1.

But i'm quite sure i will get it...


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

^^literally as I was reading you above, I was messing with a Berlin Strings patch and heard a nasty frequency rub. I muted Verb3 and sure enough it was in the sample but less pronounced.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

RedDot said:


> With an IRCAM premium subscription (200€ per year), you can have IRCAM's Spat for Max/MSP for free (which is more advanced than Flux's Spat Revolution) and IRCAM Verb for ~129€.
> 
> As a side note, if you don't renew the subscription (after one year) you can keep all the software you've already activated on your machine. They're cool cats.


now there's food for thought...thnx @RedDot


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## Living Fossil (Sep 25, 2021)

P.S. these are the moments when i'm happy i have Metric AB...
I've picked the 1. movement of Mendelssohns 4th symphony as reference and i guess over the next couple of days i will spend some quality time in adjusting the parameters...


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 25, 2021)

Living Fossil said:


> P.S. these are the moments when i'm happy i have Metric AB...
> I've picked the 1. movement of Mendelssohns 4th symphony as reference and i guess over the next couple of days i will spend some quality time in adjusting the parameters...


I had to look up Metric AB.. I intend to push all parameters too over the next few days. The sale ends at the end of this month I believe.
Amo la quarta sinfonia di Mendelsohn!......(ok I had to translate that on google too.)


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## re-peat (Sep 25, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> Do you think it's a good verb to use as an orchestral glue?



Absolutely, Mike. What I described above is how Verb3 responds in its default state, but with its four EQ’s in place to adjust whatever your ears, and/or the music, tell you needs adjusting (in either the early reflections, the cluster reflections, the tail or the ‘room’ itself, or all of those), you can make Verb3’s presence as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as you like.

By the way, I forgot to mention something that some might find interesting, and that is that you can mute any of the three reflective stages of the reverb: (1) the early reflections, (2) the cluster reflections and (3) the tail. Each of these can be completely silenced, or solo-ed, which effectively means that you can use the Verb3 as an early reflections engine and then add a tail with some other software that you happen to like in that capacity. Or the other way round: provide the early reflections with, say, a convolution-based device (for some reason, never quite clear to me, people tend to like to do this) and only use Verb3 for its tail.

Whatever your preferred way of working, Verb3 should fit somewhere in there entirely satisfyingly, I believe.

That being all said, and before people start thinking I’m in alliance with Flux (I’m not), if spatial glue is primarily what you’re after, I don’t think Verb3 ought to receive all your attention exclusively. There are outstanding alternatives such as, for example, the ReLab Sonsig Rev-A (which happens to sell at the exact same reduced price at the moment). The Sonsig has three different reverb algorithms, a nice set of parameters and has the added attraction that it can do subtle (or not so subtle) reverb modulation which is a function that Verb3 doesn’t have and that does increase its appeal as a glue reverb. (Although its way more powerful than just that.)

Or take the EA Phoenix (coincidentally also priced exactly the same as the Sonsig and the Verb3). People tend to ignore this reverb, or think of it as a has-been in the reverb world because it’s quite old and because on some days of the year, Izotope sells it for as low as $11, but the fact is: the Phoenix is a terrific sounding reverb. Always was, always will be. Can still hold its own among the best of the best, in my opinion.

So, before deciding, I’d look around a bit and consider the other options as well. Furthermore, at the end of the day, there is the matter of personal preference to consider as well of course. So always demo as thoroughly as you can. That’s very important. I can say what I want, but if you don’t click with the software or if the sound just doesn’t do it for you (which is perfectly possible), then it would be very unwise I believe to bestow any authority on my opinion.




homie said:


> I wonder if i Verb can a least do left/right and front/back positioning.



Homie,

I’ve typed so much already — my innate garrulity appears to have run away with me again in this thread — that I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with a much shorter answer: yes, the Verb3 can do left/right panning of the source independent of its reverberation (that is in fact one of the software great aces up its sleeve) and yes, it’s also very capable in the front/back positioning department (but no more so than any other good reverb). Beware though that it is not a reverb that will let you do all that to your full satisfaction within a few hours of installing it. There’s quite a bit to learn, and practice with, in the Verb3.

_


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## Living Fossil (Sep 25, 2021)

RedDot said:


> Seen that this is about IRCAM Verb, I had deleted the comment. Anyway, if you're emulating a recording of Mendelssohn, you'll more easily get there with the "Bricasti sound" of Seventh Heaven...


I'm not emulating a recording of Mendelssohn. I took that piece because its transparent instrumentation gives you a very good sense of the positioning of the different sections. 
But once more: No. The Bricasti sound (with which i'm quite familiar for many years) is absolutely not the kind of reverb i'd choose for that or any similar kind of music.


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## RedDot (Sep 25, 2021)

Living Fossil said:


> I'm not emulating a recording of Mendelssohn. I took that piece because its transparent instrumentation gives you a very good sense of the positioning of the different sections.
> But once more: No. The Bricasti sound (with which i'm quite familiar for many years) is absolutely not the kind of reverb i'd choose for that or any similar kind of music.


By using it as a reference track, you're seeking to emulate its sound (if only partially)... Anyway, your self-ascribed familiarity with the "Bricasti sound" leaves us at an impass. The "Bricasti sound" of Seventh Heaven preserves the sound stage as much as one wishes, it's as lush or lean and as short- or long-tailed as one wishes.


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## Living Fossil (Sep 25, 2021)

RedDot said:


> By using it as a reference track, you're seeking to emulate its sound (if only partially)..


As written: the relevant part in this case is the spatial positioning of the instrument groups in a particular record. Not the specific sound of that recording nor the instrumentation of that wonderful piece. Ok?
And yes, we can agree to disagree in the case of the Bricasti. 
Please, let's stop it here.


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## RedDot (Sep 25, 2021)

Living Fossil said:


> As written: the relevant part in this case is the spatial positioning of the instrument groups in a particular record. Not the specific sound of that recording nor the instrumentation of that wonderful piece. Ok?
> And yes, we can agree to disagree in the case of the Bricasti.
> Please, let's stop it here.


That's a part of the sound of the recording, as it should be evident to anyone.


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## Zanshin (Sep 25, 2021)

Thank you for posting about this, it was not on my radar. I'm demo-ing now, really digging it so far - feels like a steal for $99.


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## RedDot (Sep 25, 2021)

Zanshin said:


> Thank you for posting about this, it was not on my radar. I'm demo-ing now, really digging it so far - feels like a steal for $99.


Yeah, it's usually more than four times that price. Top-notch algorithmic reverb, it's a no-brainer.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 26, 2021)

I'm sitting here A/B'ing and testing Flux and Sonsig (thnx to @re-peat). ATM I'm preferring what my ears perceive as a more refined, clean and adaptable sound in the Flux Verb. I was initially peeved that there aren't many hall presets but what there is, is very nice. Even the 10" cathedral is beautifully transparent.
The Sonsig scores much better on the amount of hall/concert venue presets for sure and it also sounds very, very good. My choice may go to the wire but atm the refinement of Flux has the upper hand for me.
I think you're right @Living Fossil, some levelling up is required with Verb3.


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## CT (Sep 26, 2021)

I think I need to finally get it as well. My impression when trying it last year was that it might have the most potential of any of the reverb plugins or units I've used, though not without a good deal of effort and understanding. Hard for me not to be enthusiastic about anything from Flux/IRCAM.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 26, 2021)

^^I'm just gradually inserting Verb3 onto the auxes in a project I'm working on and am getting quite excited about it. It's definitely a learning curve Michael (it seems odd typing that in full), but I'm beginning to think it'll be worth it, besides most of us will be familiar with the basics anyway. I've no idea why I'm hesitating now 'cause deep down, I think I've made my decision.


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## CT (Sep 26, 2021)

The biggest impression I remember from the demo, against others, was that it was the only one that felt like it actually pushed things back physically. The others in comparison just felt filtered and smeared.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 26, 2021)

Michaelt said:


> The biggest impression I remember from the demo, against others, was that it was the only one that felt like it actually pushed things back physically. The others in comparison just felt filtered and smeared.


yes, that's probably the main attraction for me to, it sounds so natural and uncomplicated.


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## homie (Sep 26, 2021)

I unfortunately can't test it myself currently.

How good is Verb with placing mono/center recorded sources to left and right? I wonder whether it does a better job than other well known algo reverbs. Do the the early reflections sound more realistic with Verb againts the rest? Is the cluster stage the main differentiator? What does cluster bring to the table for spatialization? Does it sound like any other algo reverb when you disable the cluster stage? I fear most of us actually want/need Spat instead of Verb but could be wrong.

Since they sold Spat and Verb as bundle. In what situation would you choose Verb over Spat?

edit: i find tweaking reverbs with too many parameters generally hard. My impression is you would need to be an acoustic expert to make meaningful decisions. Verb could be simply too overwhelming to me in that regard.


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## Zanshin (Sep 26, 2021)

I'm afraid to demo SPAT lol.

I spent 2-3 hours with Verb3, last night. It is very good, but when I pulled out Cinematic Rooms Pro to compare, I had a very hard time finding a situation where I preferred Verb3 over CR. Both are what I would describe as transparent (as opposed to character reverbs like say the aforementioned Bricasti). Verb3 feels really source material dependent, like shit in, shit out for real. Whereas CR is basically a giant sweet spot (comparatively).

I agree more presets would be nice, but what's there is good.

The morph is awesome! I am not not sure when or how much I would use that though.

So - undecided at the moment. I don't want to buy something, even at his great price, just because it is new and shiny.


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## homie (Sep 26, 2021)

Is the panning parameter useful for placement in stereo projects? I'm not sure what it is doing.

After listening to some audio demos i think it is a good reverb, albeit not better than the usual suspects at least in the glue verb department. If it can't do realistic stage positioning better than others i don't see why i should get it.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 26, 2021)

homie said:


> Is the panning parameter useful for placement in stereo projects? I'm not sure what it is doing.
> 
> After listening to some audio demos i think it is a good reverb, albeit not better than the usual suspects at least in the glue verb department. If it can't do realistic stage positioning better than others i don't see why i should get it.


I can't help you there homie. The stuff I'm putting through it is already positioned therefore spatialisation isn't my priority. @re-peat talks a bit about it in post2. Let's hope our higher authority responds to your query.
@Zanshin, I haven't looked at the morph thing yet but even so, I probably wouldn't have a cause to use it much neither. I better go and check out Cinema Rooms pro though....


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## Zanshin (Sep 26, 2021)

No Verb3 expert here but I think you would want to pan your source material before it enters Verb3 and then use the pan inside Verb3 to tweak how the verb itself sounds. Otherwise your dry material will remain un-panned.

I don’t think Verb3 is made to be like Mir - to take dry close mic’d material into a space. In the demo videos they show using the stock protools panner/placement tool.


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## Living Fossil (Sep 26, 2021)

Yesterday evening i stopped the demo phase and bought it. 
I really like the results i get with positioning sources, like @Michaelt mentioned. 
The workflow for positioning is a bit similar to the Exponential Audio reverbs, with the difference of the Cluster unit. I like the offered controls over timing and the gain of the 3 components, and how they translate. (So far i'm using 4 instances of it as inserts on the respective group busses of strings, woods, brass & perc; all settings derived from the Vienna Hall preset [in high density mode].
All four busses are routed in an other one which has an instance of Cinematic Rooms Pro with a very low wet level.

P.S. It's interesting that re-peat mentioned the Sonsig. I like that one really a lot, but so far don't use it on orchestral sources. I think it can make high frequency content really shine and the workflow is very intuitive.


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## homie (Sep 26, 2021)

@all 
Thanks for your comments/help

@Living Fossil 
I'd like to know why you think Verb was worth it while already having a great reverb (according to what i read about it) like Cinematic Rooms Pro. Does Verb sound more realistic or generally better for orchestral work than Cinematic Rooms to you? Does it create more width/depth?


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## Living Fossil (Sep 26, 2021)

homie said:


> @Living Fossil
> I'd like to know why you think Verb was worth it while already having a great reverb (according to what i read about it) like Cinematic Rooms Pro. Does Verb sound more realistic or generally better for orchestral work than Cinematic Rooms to you? Does it create more width/depth?


Besides the fact that i like having lots of options (specially when it comes to reverbs) for me the crucial point was the aspect of positioning and how well it translates (while remaining transparent). I've used Precedence (with Breeze and others) a lot in the last years, however, i always found there is place for improvement.
In comparison to Cinematic Rooms Pro (used on stereo tracks) i like IRCAM verb better when putting sources in the back, even if it involves more editing (CPR has position controls). But i'm still keeping CRP on the orchestral bus, as mentioned.


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## re-peat (Sep 26, 2021)

Working with the panner as a stereo positioning tool requires a bit of fiddling with several parameters, *Homie*, because, for starters, if you don’t have the Dry/Wet slider set to all wet, you will of course always hear some of the dry, unprocessed and unpositioned signal coming through as well. And since that dry signal isn’t affected by the panner, its presence in Verb3’s output will only compromise/weaken/ruin, or conflict with, what Verb3's panner is doing.

That’s the first thing you have to understand about positioning: unlike reverb, _it is not something you add to a source sound_. Positioning means that you place the source inside a space and what you hear — the result of the positioning — is always the 100% wet combination of the interaction between the source and the enveloping space (which will be different depening on where the source is positioned).

The easiest way to understand it, I believe, is if you think for a moment about the fact that there’s no Dry/Wet-slider in a real room either. When, in real life, you hear a sound in a room, you always hear the 100% ‘wet’ version of that phenomenon. Can’t be any other way. Nature — or the physical world, if you like — doesn’t come with Dry/Wet sliders. No matter how much the listening position (or the microphone) favours the direct signal of the source in the equation, what you’re hearing is, inevitably, always 100% wet positioned sound.

It’s for that reason that positioning only really works when Verb3 or SPAT — or any other spatializer — is used as an insert, not as a send. And an insert set to 100% wet.

The trouble with that however, is that you rarely want 100% reverbed signal in your mixes. With SPAT this is easily addressed because not only can you place the source anywhere you like, but you have also full control over the presence and behaviour of the room’s response, AND the Verb3-component in SPAT is also completely independently controllable as well. The result being that you can perfectly simulate the 100% wet phenomenon of spatialization — just like it happens in real life — with the reverberation being set at whatever level you deem musically most satisfying.

With just Verb3 to work with however, things are a little bit more difficult. Because: use it as an insert, turn the thing to 100% wet, and you obviously get a sound where the source is positively drowning in reverb. Not what you want in most cases.

But there are two solutions: lower the Global Gain settings of the four ‘ingredients’ that make up the total of the reverberation: (1) Room, (2) Early Reflections, (3) Cluster Reflections and (4) Reverb. Sounds simple, but this takes quite a bit of careful testing and listening because the balance of this foursome is quite a delicate thing and if you set the Global Gain of one of them at a level that falls outside the range of where the laws of reverberation expect it to be set, you can get strange-sounding results. If you persevere though, it is possible to get good results this way. It just takes practice and a fairly good understanding of how Verb3 does its thing.

A much easier and faster solution however, and with equally good results, is to simply pan the source before it enters Verb3 (just like Zanshin and Mike already suggested). When you work that way, most of what I said before no longer applies: if you feed Verb3 a pre-panned signal, you don’t need to set it to 100% wet anymore (because the panning of the dry and the reverbed source will obviously be exactly the same, and the dry signal’s position won’t conflict with that of the processed one). All that you have to worry about now, is the balance between the source and its reverberation.

_


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## homie (Sep 26, 2021)

Living Fossil said:


> Besides the fact that i like having lots of options (specially when it comes to reverbs) for me the crucial point was the aspect of positioning and how well it translates (while remaining transparent). I've used Precedence (with Breeze and others) a lot in the last years, however, i always found there is place for improvement.
> In comparison to Cinematic Rooms Pro (used on stereo tracks) i like IRCAM verb better when putting sources in the back, even if it involves more editing (CPR has position controls). But i'm still keeping CRP on the orchestral bus, as mentioned.


Thank you very much. I also had an eye on Precedence but came to the preliminary conclusion it's just a slightly better VSS2 but no real solution. How much cpu utilizes Verb in comparison to Sonsig?


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## Living Fossil (Sep 26, 2021)

homie said:


> How much cpu utilizes Verb in comparison to Sonsig?


Sonsig uses a bit more than IRCAM verb in high density mode. But both are quite moderate...


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## homie (Sep 26, 2021)

@re-peat 
Much appreciated!

Since the second method (panning before reverb) would probably easier and more practicable to me. How much can Verb excel in that scenario compared to your first method (panning/levelling inside Verb) against other generally great sounding reverbs? Will the first method using Verb lead to better results versus any other solution (besides Spat/Mir)?


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 26, 2021)

I've got to 6 instances no prob on my trashcan and that's with a reduced bus speed due to me choking the bugger with 128gig of ram...not high quality though.


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## Minko (Sep 26, 2021)

Hi,
fellow #reverbaddict here. I have Verb Session. And it is all over my template. It is very efficient compared to other stuff I tried and I get results with it quickly. 

There was a problem with it in Studio One on a chain with Spitfire Labs in it. That had to do also with VST3. Presonus was pointing at Spitfire and Flux::, Flux:: was pointing at Spitfire and Presonus, etc. you get the idea. 

If you can test it, just test it for yourself in your workflow. If you already did a demo, send them a message and see if they can reset it for you. 

Hope this helps somehow. Did not have the time to read through this whole interesting thread. I will come back to it.


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## homie (Sep 27, 2021)

Any known issues with Verb on Windows 10 and/or Cubase? 

@Minko 
It looks like VST2 only, no VST3


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## Minko (Sep 27, 2021)

homie said:


> Any known issues with Verb on Windows 10 and/or Cubase?
> 
> @Minko
> It looks like VST2 only, no VST3


Sorry should have been clearer, Presonus said it might be a problem it is only VST2 (at least at that time). I know fixed it by using a different type of channel. Can't help you with your Cubase question.


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## c_voltage (Sep 27, 2021)

One of my fav reverbs long time (together with B2, and couple other). But this is a special case. Frankly to say, I love it so much that I almost never open it, for not to find a reason to be disappointed accidentally. Can say, that load it out only on special occasions, to look and enjoy. The first acquaintance before buying was enough for me to understand that it is true piece of art of reverberation.
With pain I envy those who grabbed him for 99 lol.
I'll wait for release of another fantastic reverb to make sure that you've forgotten the Ircam Verb.


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## homie (Sep 28, 2021)

Still undecided.

Since it competes in the clean/natural reverb realm how much better is it than something like EA Phoenix/Nimbus which can be had for very little money. How does it fare against more expensive reverbs like TC 6000/VSS4? According to Living Fossil it seems to be worth having besides CRP.

The point is i'll not be able to test this reverb myself in such a short amount of time. I'd probaly need ages to setup test scenarios and understand the impact and correlation of all the parameters fully.

Maybe somebody can post a some demos or even comparisons.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 28, 2021)

I trialled it as soon as I saw the sale, and I even downloaded the demo for Cinematic Rooms while I was at it. Both of these reverbs I've been curious to hear for awhile given their clout, and try alongside Nimbus.

I wasn't sure what to expect between these and Nimbus, and MTurboReverb, but thus far after about an hour of testing, I find Nimbus the easiest for creating a space with depth and positioning sources front-to-back (probably due to experience with it), and the results are different, but to my ear about as good, as those from CRP and Verb 3. Between CRP and Verb 3, and Nimbus, for how deep you can go to perfecting the sound, I don't think any of them go past MTurboReverb, which may not come as a surprise...

The cluster section feels sort of similar to the Reverb Attack envelope control section in Nimbus, or like another reflections module between ERs and LRs, and... there are 4/6 of each respectively in MTurboReverb with almost-bottomless depth, so plenty to go around for a "cluster" module and plenty of parameters to achieve similar or greater levels of control over those reflections. Nimbus is of course comparatively simpler, and I find that perhaps because there are only 16-24 or so early reflections it can be less smooth than these other 3 sometimes (which can manage hundreds of early/cluster reflections), but it is very effective nonetheless for that depth and tail. Time is limited and I've already spent enough time typing this, but this is exactly the part of each of them that could probably be talked most about; it's interesting to see and hear the different approaches to early-to-late transitions in reflections, and I find myself liking most of the things I've tried, so I make efforts to be discretionary with my money... 

I also demo'd Seventh Heaven and while I found it to be very enjoyable, I feel like MTurboReverb can do well in that domain also. 7H is more convenient, to be sure, and that alone may put it in my hands at some point, but MTurboReverb keeps showing me that whatever it is, it can do it excellently.

I'll still spend some more time with Verb 3 and CRP, as I can tell they're both some you've got to spend time with, but between all of the other reverbs I either have or want, I am somewhat surprised to find neither is one that is going to change the game for me at this moment, despite a really great sale price on Verb 3 and the huge hype surrounding CRP.


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## doctoremmet (Sep 28, 2021)

Thanks for your really well worded and elaborate analysis Russell. Much like yourself I find myself increasingly just using MTurboReverb. The Warm Hall reverb works perfectly on a lot of orchestral material, even without much tweaking. But I like that one CAN dive in and make really surgical changes if the need arises.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 29, 2021)

yes, thnx @Russell Anderson. Yet one more verb to try (MTurbo) and there's only a day or so left to take advantage of the Flux offer....oh the pressure...


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 29, 2021)

I could have made that previous comment in 4 sentences if I wasn't such a rambler! Yeah, I've been increasingly using it for actual reverb, for a little while I was just using it for sound design (amazing) and gradually had started going through enough of the presets to hear a few things I like so far, like Regina from Princess Chamber, a few of the plates, Undead Factory, Infinite Cavity... The shimmer reverb needs to have the pitch shift put into a feedback loop though. 

I'm a few weekends away from making a return to those late reflections designer tutorials with a paper and pencil... I don't need to get dirty in algorithms to have a good front-to-back reverb, learning to do it is mostly for sound design, but... I can't deny I'm probably going to end up taking a crack at some home-cooked algorithms at some point


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## doctoremmet (Sep 29, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> I can't deny I'm probably going to end up taking a crack at some home-cooked algorithms at some point


They ARE a lot of fun and I have learned quite a lot from just playing with them, following some of the tutorials and reading the Vojtek comments in the KVR MTurboReverb thread.


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## doctoremmet (Sep 29, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> for a little while I was just using it for sound design (amazing)


The Simon Stockhausen videos really are good showcases for this aspect @mikeh-375


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 29, 2021)

..cheers Doc...although you might have meant Russell...cheers anyway..


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 29, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> yes, thnx @Russell Anderson. Yet one more verb to try (MTurbo) and there's only a day or so left to take advantage of the Flux offer....oh the pressure...


What else are you trying it alongside?


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 29, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> What else are you trying it alongside?


....so far the Flux obviously, the Sonsig and Breeze/Precedence (which I have, but am not entirely happy with). I've just installed a trial MTurbo and will play with it later. I'm also going to look at CinemaPro and Seventh Heaven. I've had my fill of MirPro and Miracle.
With the Flux Verb, I'm enjoying the challenge of it and might get it + another anyway.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 29, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> ....so far the Flux obviously, the Sonsig and Breeze/Precedence (which I have, but am not entirely happy with). I've just installed a trial MTurbo and will play with it later. I'm also going to look at CinemaPro and Seventh Heaven. I've had my fill of MirPro and Miracle.
> With the Flux Verb, I'm enjoying the challenge of it and might get it + another anyway.


You know, I've since switched stances on the Flux verb tonight, as far as Nimbus goes. Also, setting up frequency independent decay times from Verb 3, alongside the dampening controls, that'd take a lot more work setting up in MTurboReverb but it's a once you have it, you'd have it sort of thing. The Modal Density knob as well, that's a really fine thing right there. And, these aren't phase-correlated reflections or whatever, are they? I'm doing a lot less tuning of comb filters in Verb 3 than I do the other two reverbs (at least as far as specific ER modules in MTR, everything in Nimbus). Closing my eyes I can just focus on the space, not so much the resonances of the reflection pattern... Which is really quite good...

Hmmmmm... _hmmmm....._

powerful little box, here...


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 29, 2021)

...yes, the modal density has a big impact. Verb3 is a beautiful pure thing imv. I do wish there where more presets for halls but it's not a deal breaker for me because the absence of presets is encouraging me to delve deeper and deeper with it. It feels like a piece of kit for connoisseurs.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 29, 2021)

I will also say, MTurboReverb, even the LE version for preset-devices+easy screens only, is not going to please unless you're willing to spend some time with it, or unless you're really into sound design. I'm pretty much down to shill for Melda, but it took even me months to start warming up to using it for things outside of experimentation. There are a lot of inconsistencies in the easy screens - not too many, but you will find sometimes that the Length parameter doesn't do what you want, or "diffusion" won't be linked to anything. The magic is on the back side where you can go to parallel uninverses made of comb filters and delays, but if you're a full-time composer who just needs a reverb, man, I'd keep that one for a rainy day. There is great stuff in there, but there are almost 90 preset devices with their own preset models and presets. There is no way around it taking time.

@Zanshin the Morph setting looks to be useful for something similar to A/B, but then with the ability to find something in the middle that may be even better.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 29, 2021)

...I'm out of the game now (fortunate enough to retire early). I'm just into doing my own serious orchestral stuff now so thnx Russell for the heads up. I'll probably not bother with it on your recommendation, besides I thought I'd installed it but it's gone awol. I'll call of the search party.

re Flux Verb, I'm finding the EQ sections for the differing stages incredibly flexible and powerful.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 29, 2021)

I lapsed, MTurboReverb has frequency-dependent decay, it's just as dampening + EQ instead of decay + EQ. It can do it, and you can keep the demo around as it doesn't ever expire (although noise is introduced after 2 weeks expire), if on a rainy day you want to explore some of those preset devices. Some are great. Learning the back end, though, that is not something I'd say everyone needs to try unless you want to. It's a doozy. The easier modules are the early reflections only modules (LR can be ERs when you start "getting good"), but they like to cause comb filtering.

I wonder if that "modal density" in Verb 3 is controlling a tuned comb filter that phase cancels the comb filtering from the reflections or something? For me, Verb 3 seems amazing... I don't think I need it now, and that's too bad since this is far and away the cheapest I have ever heard of it being, but I think my $99 is needed elsewhere. Every amazing deal that comes by at $99 is $99 I'm not spending on an amazing computer that can handle it in the first place. We'll see if the sound and workflow blow me away tomorrow morning, but that's all the attention I think I can afford to give it at the current moment.


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## Zanshin (Sep 29, 2021)

I'm passing on Verb 3 as well. I do think it's great but I don't foresee a use case where I'd reach for it over CRP. 

Sonsig on the other hand, wtf. This thing should be illegal, it's going to cause all sorts of rotten teeth and obesity. I will end up getting this, not for use as bus reverb but for character. Very beautiful reverb!

I'll have to demo MTurboReverb, but I'll have to make sure I have time because it looks DEEP haha.


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## homie (Sep 29, 2021)

Zanshin said:


> .. I do think it's great but I don't foresee a use case where I'd reach for it over CRP. ..


May i ask why you favor CRP over Verb? What would you do if you hadn't CRP already? 

CRP and Relab/TC offerings are much more expensive versus Exponential Audio which can be had for very little when on sale. Verb is currently priced somewhere in between and i don't really see myself spending hundreds of bucks on one of the flagship reverbs as nice as they may be.


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## Living Fossil (Sep 29, 2021)

re-peat said:


> The easiest way to understand it, I believe, is if you think for a moment about the fact that there’s no Dry/Wet-slider in a real room either. When, in real life, you hear a sound in a room, you always hear the 100% ‘wet’ version of that phenomenon. Can’t be any other way. Nature — or the physical world, if you like — doesn’t come with Dry/Wet sliders. No matter how much the listening position (or the microphone) favours the direct signal of the source in the equation, what you’re hearing is, inevitably, always 100% wet positioned sound.
> 
> It’s for that reason that positioning only really works when Verb3 or SPAT — or any other spatializer — is used as an insert, not as a send. And an insert set to 100% wet.


@re-peat : I'm not sure i completely understand what you mean here.
In a real room you will still hear the direct signal.
Of course the direct signal will not sound as if recorded with a close mic; but there is still a signal that derives from the instrument and directly reaches your ear _before_ the reflected sound.
Now, in IRCAM verb this part is not represented in the reverb. If you turn ERs, Cluster & reverb off, there is nothing left. No direct signal that reaches your ear before its interaction with the room. Or do i miss something?


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## Zanshin (Sep 29, 2021)

homie said:


> May i ask why you favor CRP over Verb? What would you do if you hadn't CRP already?
> 
> CRP and Relab/TC offerings are much more expensive versus Exponential Audio which can be had for very little when on sale. Verb is currently priced somewhere in between and i don't really see myself spending hundreds of bucks on one of the flagship reverbs as nice as they may be.


I find CRP to have a lot of clarity with orchestral material, it sounds like a real space to me, organic not metallic, and it handles different material well (i.e. strings, brass, percussion etc.). If CRP didn't exist? I probably would have bought Verb3. 

I assume Liquidsonics will have BF sales. You could start with the non-pro version. Have you demo'd it yet? You might hate it anyway haha.


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## re-peat (Sep 29, 2021)

Living Fossil said:


> Or do i miss something?



No, you’re completely right, LF. Verb3 does work as a spatializer but then you and your music have to be happy with a sound that consists entirely of how the source is ‘read and reflected’ by the room. That’s when you can pan within Verb3, decide on the colour of the reflected source, or adjust the balance among the early reflections, the clusters and the tail for a less or more wet sound. But it’s always 100% from within the room, with a 'reflected version of the source' being a part of that.

And if you want actual dry and direct source material in the mix, either use the Dry/Wet balance (and pan the source before entering Verb3), or use Verb3 as a send.

(What I said earlier about the actual ‘Room’ parameter was a bit confusing, I admit. The ‘Room’ parameter is best looked at a sort of ‘pre-tail summer’. Turn it down and then nothing gets sent to the reverberation component of Verb3, and you’ll indeed hear nothing.)

This ‘100% room’ situation may not always be what you want, but in some mixing situations, I find it exactly what the production calls for. Also, to my ears — and this harks back to what I said earlier about Verb3 being unusually precise with the sound it ‘reflects’ — the sum of the (unfiltered) early reflections and the cluster reflections, produces a fairly accurate image of the source. Accurate and complete enough, I find, to pass for how a dry, direct source would sound … in a room.

The best way to start, for me anyway, is to disable the tail, change the balance between the ER’s and the clusters a bit in favour of the former and that gives you your ‘reflected’ sound, which is quite dry and can be panned wherever you like. The more the gain of the clusters is raised, the less ‘effective’ the panner appears to be, but that’s only because the cluster reflections are not localized. The panner is just as effective as before, but the clusters, being all over the place, somehow neutralize its effect a bit. For extreme (but less natural) panning, it’s really necessary to favour the ER’s.

And to explore the other dimension — depth — it’s the ER’s that need to be lowered (I do this with other reverbs as well, if a want a ‘deeper’ sound) and then find a nice balance between the clusters and the tail. As in real life: the further back, the less the stereo position of a source is defined. Works exactly the same way in Verb3.

I don’t think I would ever do it voluntarily, cause it would involve a lot of fairly tedious work and meticulous parameter adjusting, but I’m pretty confident I could spatialize an entire mix with just Verb3. And be not entirely dissatisfied with the result.

Here’s *a quick video* of what I described above. (Very quickly made, no annotation and no editing, sorry about that.) Using the old VSL Bassoons Ensemble and Verb3's default preset. I also do apologize for the tedium of the recurring tune. And I only work with the parameters discussed above. For a better result, I would obviously look at some of the other settings as well. But even so, I think this rough demonstration does give a reasonably good idea of what can be done with Verb3, set to 100% wet, for spatializing tasks.

_


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## Living Fossil (Sep 29, 2021)

@re-peat : Thanks a lot for your comprehensive answer and this great video!
It's extremely instructive to see how you set the parameters.
(of course it would be great if flux would implement a function that transfers the spatial position in the to the values of the parameters).

Over the past days i'm constantly spending some time with fresh ears (usually when i starting to work) on adjusting the parameters, however, it will still take some time. Your video is a great help!


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 29, 2021)

aaawww @re-peat how the hell am I supposed to sleep after 5mins of your bassoon? I should've waited and watched your vid in the morning............


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## XComposer (Sep 30, 2021)

I am very seriously planning to buy Cinematic Rooms (which I have already tested on the demo) on the Black Friday: since I already own three Liquidsonics products, it will then have an affordable price for me. Now, considering this and the fact that I have MTurboReverb, Eareverb, Aether, B2, Precedence + Breeze, Dear VR, Reverberate and some other gems (like Acon Verberate and HD Cart), I wonder if it's worth buying this Ircam Verb, though the sale is really tempting…). Would it add anything decisive to my toolbox? I'm very doubtful…


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## Zanshin (Sep 30, 2021)

XComposer said:


> I am very seriously planning to buy Cinematic Rooms (which I have already tested on the demo) on the Black Friday: since I already own three Liquidsonics products, it will then have an affordable price for me. Now, considering this and the fact that I have MTurboReverb, Eareverb, Aether, B2, Precedence + Breeze, Dear VR, Reverberate and some other gems (like Acon Verberate and HD Cart), I wonder if it's worth buying this Ircam Verb, though the sale is really tempting…). Would it add anything decisive to my toolbox? I'm very doubtful…


You can demo it, take it for a spin. It's worth demoing


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 30, 2021)

I've just bought Verb3 after a few days of back and forth between it and Cinematic Rooms and Seventh Heaven. I found myself returning to Verb3 more than the others and with more familiarity, I've got some decent results with it...love it a lot.
I'd just like to say many thanks to all who contributed with suggestions and a big thanks to @re-peat for services beyond the call which helped enormously.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 30, 2021)

There are a few things I wish I’d noticed earlier, like how Modal Density is basically timbrally a size controller without changing the sense of space (or very much, it’s been 16 hours since I listened to it), the reflections _do _cause comb filtering, and it sounds more sterile than Nimbus but still good (after you get out of the Uncanny Valley...) which is impressive. The ability to easily reduce the decay time of the mid band is an odd and rare ability, and overall the sound can be really nice... weirdly “charged” sounding, yeah. I really think MTurboReverb is overflowing with ability to do this stuff besides the Modal Density knob (I think) and the easy mid-band decay time (you can set it up a few different ways, but it’ll take you time at least once)

Workflow wise I think Cinematic Rooms is perfectly approachable to use, honestly more tweakable but just as easy as Sonsig and sounds really great. In terms of realism, I think Cinematic Rooms has Nimbus beat in small rooms, IRCAM might have Cinematic Rooms beat though it’s going to take awhile to get there... and that’s sort of the point of MTurboReverb, is to be able to really just do anything if you spend the requisite time in the edit screen, so IRCAM finds itself for me in this strange middle ground between realer-than-Nimbus, as annoying or far more to set up in some ways (and not others) as Nimbus and MTurboReverb, and in terms of sonic pleasure... again, bit of an impass here for me. So that‘s basically the only thing left to test. And also how much I like CRP. That one is also worth spending some time to get acquainted with during the demo.

Also, I don’t mean to pitch MTurboReverb as some unfathomable pit of possibility, it’s really pretty approachable so long as you 1) like the way it sounds with the preset devices and/or 2) are willing to absorb the couple of tutorial videos and wade in to the EDIT screen, which is where you actually can do basically anything, if that’s something you like to be able to reach into from time time. You’re given something like 42 “modules” like comb filters and feedback delay networks and all-pass diffusers, pitch shifters, stereo swappers... all represented on a single line by characters like “c” or “cn” (#cc[c;cn[a];a;pitch shift(2048,12)] is something you will learn how to write and recognize as basic after the first 20 minutes of tutorial), with 6 LR modules to build this stuff in, with routing between each modules if you eant... And 4 super-capable ER modules which honestly serve mostly as sound design or “easy” modules since the LRs are so good at ERs once you kind of know what you’re doing. So IRCAM Verb is like simplified-that, but still annoying to set up compared to CRP and even Nimbus. But it seems to sound great and is definitely powerful!

I can’t shake the feeling that Verb 3 is pretty cool, it’s worth $99 to anyone who likes it, and that I’m eventually going to get most of what I really want from a super-real-spatialization reverb from MTurboReverb, when I take a weekend in the EDIT screen to make my own combination of early reflections, late reflections, and any topology of the in-between that I deem to sound the best


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 30, 2021)

^^thanks to you too Russell as you also gave out some valuable food for thought...


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## XComposer (Sep 30, 2021)

Zanshin said:


> You can demo it, take it for a spin. It's worth demoing


True, I'll do it.


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## mikeh-375 (Sep 30, 2021)

Hurry @XComposer sale ends today so I was told by Flux.


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## XComposer (Sep 30, 2021)

mikeh-375 said:


> Hurry @XComposer sale ends today so I was told by Flux.


Thanks… I am out of home till Monday and will not be able to demo it today, so… don't really know what to do.


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## Russell Anderson (Sep 30, 2021)

Man, sorry for the verbosity, again. At least I think I talked myself out of it. Thank you, me, for the $99!



XComposer said:


> Thanks… I am out of home till Monday and will not be able to demo it today, so… don't really know what to do.



If you have $99 to throw at it willy-nilly, the license is resellable from what I understand after 90 days, and it’s also a great plugin. MTurboReverb and Cinematic Rooms will sandwich it however on the insane depth vs. easy to use+sounds great spectrum.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 30, 2021)

Side note: SonsigA has been on sale before for, I think, around $70.

Don't sleep on HDCart (it's on a long-term sale as something new is coming next year), either, especially if you plan to one day get CR, since you get a discount on Liquidsonics as it's all by the same person - and those discounts stack and can be used on top of other sales. HDCart is not for realism, though, but I tend to like it better than SonsigA, myself.


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## XComposer (Sep 30, 2021)

vitocorleone123 said:


> Side note: SonsigA has been on sale before for, I think, around $70.
> 
> Don't sleep on HDCart (it's on a long-term sale as something new is coming next year), either, especially if you plan to one day get CR, since you get a discount on Liquidsonics as it's all by the same person - and those discounts stack and can be used on top of other sales. HDCart is not for realism, though, but I tend to like it better than SonsigA, myself.


I really, really love HD Cart. Wonderful sound, especially on the piano. My favorite piano reverb, for sure. Doesn't smear the transients at all and keeps clean and transparent, no matter how much you dial it in. Nice to know that something new will come on that path. And yes, its discount coupon can be stuck on the Liquidsonics ones to buy Cinematic Rooms, exactly.


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## XComposer (Sep 30, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> Man, sorry for the verbosity, again. At least I think I talked myself out of it. Thank you, me, for the $99!
> 
> 
> 
> If you have $99 to throw at it willy-nilly, the license is resellable from what I understand after 90 days, and it’s also a great plugin. MTurboReverb and Cinematic Rooms will sandwich it however on the insane depth vs. easy to use+sounds great spectrum.


I see… but I have MTurboReverb and will soon have Cinematic Rooms, and I believe that Ircam verb overlaps in part also with Eareverb, which is also partly similar. Still thinking…


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## Russell Anderson (Oct 17, 2021)

So, anybody have any thoughts on this plugin now that we've had a few weeks to settle with it? I did end up buying it, the more I used the demo the more I found it was surprisingly good at what it was doing despite the convoluted workflow.

When I'm auditioning reverbs for a space, sometimes Verb V3 ends up being the best or best-matching spatial presentation. It may be the best reverb for putting one sound in the space of another sound. The fact that it is has been my favorite in a few blind tests for "believably fitting the overall space of the mix" is pretty surprising given how difficult it can be to dial in, but I think you get the hang of how far apart to space the modules and how to adjust their distributions and diffusions. The additional color offered by the Modal Density (late size) and band decays lets you get extremely accurate.


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## mikeh-375 (Oct 17, 2021)

I'm loving it. Once familiar with the parameters I found it became surprisingly easy to use and manipulate. I've just used it on a concerto mix and am very pleased with it.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 17, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> So, anybody have any thoughts on this plugin now that we've had a few weeks to settle with it?


Personally, I'm totally glad i've bought it.
I've spent some time in refining different instances for the orchestral groups (and since i use it every day, i'm still making little adjustments from time to time) and now it's the back bone of the spatialisation of orchestral samples.
The base was the Vienna Hall, set to high density.
So it replaced Precedence/Breeze completely in most of all cases.
Since i have 6 different string libraries loaded usually i've still kept Precedence on some of them to get a better match.
Also i kept an instance of Nimbus (setting: modified rear chamber) on a send which is incredibly effective for getting even more depth (for instruments that are more in the rear).
Also, i've kept the routing of all instruments into Cinematic Rooms Pro, allthough with a lower wet percentage and a lowever reverb time.
Personally, i think it's a huge improvement that also translates incredibly well when played on not-so-great speakers.

All in all, IRCAM verb was a fantastic no-brainer for me.


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## mikeh-375 (Oct 17, 2021)

LivingF, I've just done similar in that I replaced Breeze/Precedence with Verb3 where prudent. I too used the Vienna Hall as a starting point and funnily enough also have about 5-6 different string libraries to cram into one believable space. I agree, a no brainer.


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## Russell Anderson (Oct 17, 2021)

Living Fossil said:


> Personally, I'm totally glad i've bought it.
> I've spent some time in refining different instances for the orchestral groups (and since i use it every day, i'm still making little adjustments from time to time) and now it's the back bone of the spatialisation of orchestral samples.
> The base was the Vienna Hall, set to high density.
> So it replaced Precedence/Breeze completely in most of all cases.
> ...


Cool to hear that we're having similar results, and I agree @mikeh-375 that it does get easier. Interesting to hear about the translation to less-capable speakers, I wonder why that is.

Also, you're keeping Nimbus on a send, is that in parallel or serially out of V3? (Alone I've personally found the V3 to be most capable of pushing sounds suuuper far back, but I'm still learning a lot)

I love the "reverb attack" parameter for depth on Nimbus/R4, I find myself hoping that the "Bloom" parameter and the decay/rear reflections in Cinematic Rooms offer a similar level of depth control to the degree that I can comfortably turn my brain off and open Cinematic Rooms every time instead of auditioning between those reverbs as much as I did during the CRP demo / still do. Is it that parameter you're referring to, or just the general sound of the tail? (or are you using ERs as well?) I also wonder whether the "attack" parameter is actually clusters instead of what I imagined it to be, i.e. parallel reverb attacks at varying levels of difffuseness and pre-delay.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 17, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> Also, you're keeping Nimbus on a send, is that in parallel or serially out of V3? (Alone I've personally found the V3 to be most capable of pushing sounds suuuper far back, but I'm still learning a lot)
> 
> Is it that parameter you're referring to, or just the general sound of the tail? (or are you using ERs as well?) I also wonder whether the "attack" parameter is actually clusters instead of what I imagined it to be, i.e. parallel reverb attacks at varying levels of difffuseness and pre-delay.


The send to Nimbus goes from the panned instruments.
Those panned instruments then go to their respective bus with their IRCAM, which is then routed to a bus called "orchestra" (which contains CRP). The Nimbus goes straight to the "Effects" bus.
So, Nimbus neither meets Ircam nor CRP.
Initially, i started using that Nimbus rear Chamber since i use a dry library for most of my percussions and it sound gorgeous on Timpani and GC.
However, since my Woodwinds are also dry, it helps to get them behind the strings (which in most cases aren't dry libraries)

In CRP i referred to the parameter that controls the overall length of the (whole) reverb.
CRP has some very well layouted parameters, like "position", and "width" (which you can also lock when diving through different programs) that are really great when using CRP as a unifying "glue" reverb.


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## CT (Oct 17, 2021)

In the process of crafting presets for it. Biggest strength certainly seems to be relatively shorter, denser, darker environments, that is, typical natural sounding studios or halls. Longer tails are a little more audibly echoey than I'd like but it might be fixable.


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## Russell Anderson (Oct 17, 2021)

I find similarly especially given the shorter cap on predelay of the ERs. However, I find that turning ERs off and adjusting dispersion of the clusters/reverb to be neutral or >50%, modal density set anywhere from 10 o’clock to max, + max diffusion and a 60+ ms attack time on LRs with a shorter tail, cluster attack time/length wherever they sound right, tends to give really excellent deeep spaces that don’t sound reverby.

I’m pretty sure I’ve been happy with the LRs at 120-150ms of predelay for this.


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## Russell Anderson (Oct 17, 2021)

The levels play an important role, too. Longer tails pretty much always need lower volume to not sound like a parking garage or something, I find, in most reverbs. It is easier to overlook this in V3 since other reverbs tend to do that for you with “distance”/“balance” knobs. I think a dark tilt re: decay times probably also helps to “naturalize” longer tails. Longer low end, shorter high end. 

Personally I mostly leave the EQs untouched thus far except to remove a bit of mud. Attenuating highs somehow always sounds unnatural except when done extremely gently.


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## CT (Oct 17, 2021)

Hmm. I feel like pretty much every reverb I've ever used except Seventh Heaven needs significant taming of the high end to not sound artificial. Verb so far is no different when comparing to real reference spaces. It isn't only about getting the correct RT multiples for the high and low ranges either, you've just got to kill as much of that shrill metallic ring as possible throughout the chain.

However, none of that is what's causing the over abundance of audible echoes for my taste. Suspect it is to do with the ERs.


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## Russell Anderson (Oct 17, 2021)

I think it’s the ERs, too, I notice the most comb filtering with them. It’s much more a problem with these than with similar reverbs like Nimbus.

I agree about the highs attenuation, I think I was wrong and that it’s mostly about that ringing, where I find the EQ just makes it sound like EQ’d ringing. On something already more believable, it’s okay for a shallow shelf or deeper beyond like 7k+. But when it’s sounding particularly metallic and my first instinct was up Modal Density and lower the highs, just didn’t always work, that’s where I think I made the most nasty faces with the EQ.


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