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Blind Liquidsonics reverb test

Scalms

Scalms

Senior Member
Hi everyone!

Considering I'm debating adding another reverb to my arsenal, i though it would be fun to do a blind reverb test. This is obviously very hard to do, since it can be like comparing apples and oranges, since each reverb has many settings you can tweak to match the sounds.

But who cares, let's try it nevertheless!

I've got 3 Liquidsonics reverbs in the attached file. The first one is the solo cello dry melody, with the melody occurring 2x. Then come the 3 reverbs. All have medium hall preset, with mix gain dry signal -5db, 3s reverb time, master gain=0



1) Dry signal (0 to 26sec)
2) Liquidsonics reverb#1 (27s to 52s)
3) Liquidsonics reverb#2 (53s to 1:18s)
4) Liquidsonics reverb#3 (1:19s to 1:45s)


Good Luck! I will post the results on Wednesday evening. That gives you 2 days to guess which is your favorite and figure out which is which.
View attachment LS reverb test_DSY.mp3
Click to read more...
 
They are all pretty different, I only liked the first one. There's a very strong earlyish resonant bloom kind of thing on the 2nd two.

* CR
* maybe like HD Cart or Tai Chi or another more effecty one?
* 7H
 
Bit hard when they sound so different.
2 and 3 are practically swimming in reverb compared to 1.
1 clear winner anyway for me.
It sounds natural, the others doesn’t, regardless of the “extra” reverb thing.
 
After several listens, I preferred #2 - but I have old ears that aren't fussy.

My reasoning is that #1 was absolutely more defined, but didn't quite 'feel' like it was in a hall - maybe a lack of early reflections ?
#2 and #3 both sounds 'too much' on first listen, but over time, #2 settled to feel better.

#3 had an odd resonance, as blaggins alluded to. It seemed like a low-end bounce that muddied things.

Even if I had used any of them, there's no way I'd be able to assign them to specific units - I'm not that capable. Just giving my thoughts from the cheap seats.
 
My guesses:

1. CR
2. 7thH
3. Tai Chi or HD Cart

Personally, I preferred #1 by a mile.
 
Weird comparison: - reverb always works in context in a mix.

If you want to make a Cello solorecord, then #1.

If you want to make an ambient record #2 and #3 are superior.
 
Stanoli said:
Weird comparison: - reverb always works in context in a mix.

If you want to make a Cello solorecord, then #1.

If you want to make an ambient record #2 and #3 are superior.
Click to expand...
Yes, fair enough. this was only meant to be for fun, if you fired up the reverb out of the box, what does a medium hall preset sound like.

What I was initially checking for when I started this was the tails, how naturally they sounded and decayed

So hopefully people don't reject buying some of them because of this, because I actually love all 3 for various reasons
 
1. Sounds like a reverb+delay combo. The vibrato keeps going in the reverb like a feedback delay. This is the worst. People voting for this likely just wants a shorter reverb, but this does not do a good job to me.

2. This is too wet. Could also use some eq to carve the lo-mids to avoid becoming mushy.

3. Still too wet, but the best of the three. A better timbre. This could be the reverb you'd use for longer tails but at low amount.
 
**Edit (added "standard" to Cinematic Rooms)



All right, great job everyone!

Here's the answer key:

1) Cinematic Rooms (standard)
2) Seventh Heaven Pro
3) HD Cart

Here's some of my thoughts:

Reverb is highly personal and subjective, so don't feel bad if you got it wrong :)

I actually don't have CR, so I was in the middle of testing it and listening to the tails, when i thought of this fun little exercise. Even though on the same setting of 3s, the length of the tails was noticeable different between CR and the other two (which i own). CR decay felt most natural to me.

Other thoughts:

7th Heaven Pro is more engulfing. One thing over the years that I've had a hard time with in 7HPro is managing the tails when I want to push the instrument back in a larger hall. It's hard to get the sense of the room size without it becoming too much reverb swarm. CR handles this superbly, where you can clearly hear the instrument and the size of the room without it getting too muddy.

HD Cart is a great reverb too. It tends to darken everything which is good and bad depending on what you are doing, but I love the GUI and the control, it does some things that 7HPro can't

Thanks everyone for playing!
 
Last edited:
Scalms said:
All right, great job everyone!

Here's the answer key:

1) Cinematic Rooms
2) Seventh Heaven Pro
3) HD Cart

Here's some of my thoughts:

Reverb is highly personal and subjective, so don't feel bad if you got it wrong :)

I actually don't have CR, so I was in the middle of testing it and listening to the tails, when i thought of this fun little exercise. Even though on the same setting of 3s, the length of the tails was noticeable different between CR and the other two (which i own). CR decay felt most natural to me.

Other thoughts:

7th Heaven Pro is more engulfing. One thing over the years that I've had a hard time with in 7HPro is managing the tails when I want to push the instrument back in a larger hall. It's hard to get the sense of the room size without it becoming too much reverb swarm. CR handles this superbly, where you can clearly hear the instrument and the size of the room without it getting too muddy.

HD Cart is a great reverb too. It tends to darken everything which is good and bad depending on what you are doing, but I love the GUI and the control, it does some things that 7HPro can't

Thanks everyone for playing!
Click to expand...
Aha!
When you mention CR, Standard or Pro version?🤔
 
Were they added as send or insert? I thing that the "#1 is the only that didn't sound drenched" by some was clearly saying it was CR. Regarding HD Cart that it's emu of the LX480, right? I got the Relab Essentials and it was pretty dark too imo, I hated it with all my guts, as a send it was less aggressive but still, that's why I ask. Thanks!
 
Scalms said:
Standard
Click to expand...
So this test was between CR Standard & 7HV Pro version? When you mention that with CR you could place further away the sound is also with CRS? As I understand that is possible on Pro version unlike Standard with limited constraints. I want to get CRS but at same time I don’t know if the S version could be used as intended
 
Flyo said:
So this test was between CR Standard & 7HV Pro version? When you mention that with CR you could place further away the sound is also with CRS? As I understand that is possible on Pro version unlike Standard with limited constraints. I want to get CRS but at same time I don’t know if the S version could be used as intended
Click to expand...
Yes, it was between CR standard and 7HP. I haven't been able to demo the CR professional version because of ilok constraints (i think I demoed it last year a couple times so the license keys expired for me).
I'm also trying to decide between standard and Pro. My experiment with CR standard shows it can move instruments to a large hall type space and still maintain better clarity than say 7th Heaven pro. I assume Pro will be even better at this with more parameters to fiddle with.

For most of my purposes standard would be fine. But....CR Pro has the following presets which only come with Pro:

Stage:
Bright Ensemble, Choir Studio, Classical Piano, Orchestration Studio, Philharmonic Stage, Rear Stage, Studio Hall, Wooden Stage

These presets look awesome for a number of applications. Standard comes with no such preset like Scoring Stage, etc, that I can find. I guess it's to make you buy the Pro version, and it's working!
 
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