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Dragonfly Reverb - Very Nice Free Reverb

I've been playing with this...
Hey Rob! Thanks for the shout-out. I'm the primary developer of Dragonfly Reverb, along with Rob van den Berg who did a lot of the work on its user interface. My main uses for it are acoustic solos and virtual orchestration. I've been pleasantly surprised at the positive feedback I've gotten from people who are doing very different styles, like guitar bands or electronica.

Just curious, what OS and DAW are you using? As the developer it's good to know where it is working well, since I can only test it on a small subset of possible environments.
 
Hey Rob! Thanks for the shout-out. I'm the primary developer of Dragonfly Reverb, along with Rob van den Berg who did a lot of the work on its user interface. My main uses for it are acoustic solos and virtual orchestration. I've been pleasantly surprised at the positive feedback I've gotten from people who are doing very different styles, like guitar bands or electronica.

Just curious, what OS and DAW are you using? As the developer it's good to know where it is working well, since I can only test it on a small subset of possible environments.
I use Reaper on OSX Yosemite. I should probably update my operating system, but it works and I don't really want to mess with that.
 
Well doesn't that sound nice! My test of reverb greatness is how it sounds at the quieter end of the scale, and this one gets an A+. Very well done, good graphics too. Totally professional grade. The room presets are perfect for orchestral right out of the box. Reminds of a little of Valhalla and certainly sounds at least as good. I like this better than any of the verbs packaged with NI 11.

FWIW, running Cubase 10 on Win10, on the first detection (only) Cubase puts the files DragonflyReverb_dsp.dll and DragonflyReverb_ui.dll on the Blacklist and throws an error message. Nobody should worry about this, there are no error messages ever after that first one. I assume those 2 files are for other OSs or 32 bit and can be deleted for Win10. The usable Dragonfly reverb is in the "Other" folder in the inserts list.

I'm an old programmer, thanks for sharing your code, looks clean as a whistle.
 
I'm an old programmer, thanks for sharing your code, looks clean as a whistle.
Nice! Thanks for taking it for a spin and looking under the hood. This is my first try at an audio plugin, and before this project I hadn't done anything in C++ since college, nearly 15 years ago.

Most of the user interface was done by a Dutch gentleman named Rob van den Berg. He drew up the graphics and wrote the initial UI code. I implemented the spectrogram and then rearranged things a bit to accommodate a few more dials at the request of some early testers.

The blacklisted DLLs are actually an open source plugin format called LV2, that whole folder can be removed if you are only going to use the VST.
 
...Just curious, what OS and DAW are you using? As the developer it's good to know where it is working well, since I can only test it on a small subset of possible environments.

I found this some while ago and it's a really cool reverb, not just because it was free, but because it's good. You can do subtle low settings and really set a sound in a space before it sounds obvious and over-the-top. Thanks much. I agree that it at least holds its own with Valhalla Vintage Verb and similar.

FWIW, Daw: Reaper; OS: Windows 7, works great. The CPU hit is negligible enough to be a non issue, certainly if used on a buss as a send. It can also be used on individual virtual instrument tracks and played without any extra discernible latency, which is a huge positive IMHO. Great VST.
 
It's running well in Reaper/Win8.1 on an 8-year-old Samsung laptop (i3 M380 cpu, 8Gb RAM). If it's any help, my Intel integrated HD gpu doesn't fully meet OpenGL 3.0 specs - it's about 73% compliant, according to OpenGL Viewer - but in standard use, the graphics all seem to work OK. The spectrogram display stops working once I start modulating some parameters (I mostly mess around in ambient/electronica-y sort of stuff), but that's no biggie. Thanks for a really nice reverb, and thanks to robgb for pointing it out.
 
The spectrogram display stops working once I start modulating some parameters
Oh right... I haven't tested modulating the parameters much at all. I do know that changing Spin or Wander during performance has given me a nasty snap crackle pop effect, but the rest of the dials may be ok. I'm curious to hear what you're working on, please share if you are inclined to do so!
 
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I haven't tested modulating the parameters much at all
Well, I only started modulating reverb parameters after I started exploring ambient music, so I guess it probably isn't usual practice (but I could be wrong).

I'm curious to hear what you're working on
I've had a quick look at the track I had Dragonfly automated on - all I had going was a slow LFO bringing the Late parameter in and out. Tbh, there's so much other processing on the track I'm not sure how discernable the effect is, but I'll have a closer listen and post up a snippet if I think it won't be too tedious... :)
 
New beta release v1.9.3 available for testing:

https://github.com/michaelwillis/dragonfly-reverb/releases/tag/1.9.3-beta

This packages both the new Dragonfly Room Reverb (based on Freeverb3 ProG) and the renamed Dragonfly Hall Reverb. The latter should be able to replace the old Dragonfly Reverb, as it is essentially the same plugin and identifies itself as such; please delete the old Dragonfly Reverb LV2 and/or VST before using the new one, existing projects should automatically use it without any ill effects.

There are still several things that aren’t done yet. Dragonfly Room Reverb still needs a change in looks to more easily distinguish it.

I made a first attempt at some presets for Dragonfly Room. I’m still not sure how much I like them, please experiment with them and let me know which (if any) are useful and sound as described.

Edit: Updated 1.9.0 to 1.9.3
 
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Beta release 1.9.5 is hot off the press. Dragonfly Room's Output LPF previously only applied to the late output, now it applies to both early and late.

Also, the following parameters have been exposed to the DAW (They aren't visible in the GUI, as they are considered more advanced features, and I don't think the GUI needs any more complication):
  • Early Send (Dragonfly Hall and Dragonfly Room)
  • Spin Factor (Dragonfly Hall)
  • LFO Factor (Dragonfly Hall)
The latter two will hopefully be useful to increase or decrease the "tape flutter" effect that some people have noticed in Dragonfly Hall.
 
tested this today and gotta say it sounds really nice.

there is no "AU" version of this for logic?
 
The framework I'm using does not support AU
Hi Michael, thanks for developing such a nice and useful tool. I am following Dragonfly since release. This week i could implemented it on Logic Pro X via Vienna Ensemble Pro, it sounds nice with orchestral percussion!

There is a try here to port VSTs to AU. Take a watch:
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=523811
https://github.com/tibsys/AuVstBridge

it's still not working well, but at least shows up in Logic..
 
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