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Replacements for R4 and Nimbus reverbs post-EOL

LinusW said:
The crossgrades from any Exponential Audio reverb are now on sale. Stratus, Stratus 3D, Symphony and Symphony 3D.

VST Plugins, Synth Presets, Effects, Virtual Instruments, Music

VST Plugins, Synth Presets, Effects, Virtual Instruments, Music Plugins from Pluginboutique
www.pluginboutique.com www.pluginboutique.com

VST Plugins, Synth Presets, Effects, Virtual Instruments, Music

VST Plugins, Synth Presets, Effects, Virtual Instruments, Music Plugins from Pluginboutique
www.pluginboutique.com www.pluginboutique.com
Click to expand...
Ah nice. I might pick up stratus as a replacement for nimbus.
 
Note: if you want the 3D versions then purchase in two steps.
(The crossgrade to Stratus 3D is £155.23)
Get regular Stratus crossgrade £37.66 + Stratus to Stratus 3D crossgrade £76.24 = £113.9
 
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If you want both Symphony 3D and Stratus 3D, the full bundle without any crossgrades needed is £242 including VAT
www.thomann.de

Exponential Audio 3D Reverb Bundle

Plugin Bundle (Download) Consistsof Exponential Audio Symphony3D and Exponential Audio Stratus3D, Algorithmic high-end reverbs for surround and 3D audio applications, Support for Atmos Bed, Extended Atmos (7.1.6), Auro 9.1, 11.1, 13.1, NHK 22.2...
www.thomann.de www.thomann.de
 
cedricm said:
Neoverb may use the same algorithms but most R4 parameters are not available. So unless you're happy with the presets or the assistant, it's frustrating.
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Yeah sadly I could not use Neoverb in place of R4. I use Cinematic Rooms now.

I will say if you’re looking for an inexpensive algo, I used H-Reverb from Waves quite successfully for a long while.

h-reverb.png

My favorite preset to start with was Yoad Nevo >> Hall Of Fame.

I downloaded demos of VSS3 and others and created my own presets in H-Verb that sounded close to me, and it gave me a lot of mileage (without shelling out the cash for VSS3). Understood that a lot of folks don’t like Waves though. It’s $35 now. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
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LinusW said:
Symphony is larger than R4 just like R4 was larger than R2.
So killing off the smaller versions is just because it was harder to maintain them as 4 products with different names.
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People in this thread and/or elsewhere have already established that they don't sound the same, though. It's not just add more features onto a reverb, they're different reverbs.

(I'm writing based on what I've read, not experienced - I moved on to Liquidsonics reverbs)
 
They are not exactly the same reverbs, but there is a lot of similarity with the same kind of control and very similar sound. if you like R4, you will probably like Symphony unless you have a requirement for it to sound exactly the same.

izotope will only be supporting Symphony/Stratus rolling forward. if you like the workflow of those classic exponential audio reverbs, those are the ones to have and they will serve well as R4/Nimbus may have in the past.
 
vitocorleone123 said:
People in this thread and/or elsewhere have already established that they don't sound the same, though.
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So did they import/export a R2 preset into R4 and then into Symphony?
Or just call up the default large hall and compare?
As the algorithms has evolved, the presets has to take new calculations into account.
 
my understanding is that some people tried to load presets from R4 and while they loaded and functioned, they did not sound exactly the same. the implication is that if you have old projects with R4/Nimbus included in the mix...at some point in the future those plugins will stop working, the only option would be to replace them with some other reverb plugin. Symphony/Stratus would probably be the closest replacement but wouldn't, technically speaking, drop into the plugin slots and sound quite exactly the same, though they would function similarly and I would argue you could probably dial it in close enough pretty easily.

Symphony and Stratus have improvements and changes in the algorithms according to the developer. I don't think they were ever intended to be drop in upgrade replacements for R4/Nimbus. They are next evolution and sound different subtly or not. The main problem is that izotope has decided not to support any further development of R4/Nimbus. They continue to work on my Monterey system, but at some point in the future they will not work, and they will not ever be Apple Silicon. Windows users MIGHT get more time out of them. Really, Izotope should continue supporting them, but they have chosen not to...and to support only Stratus and Symphony with software updates in the future.

I feel Stratus and Symphony have very similar qualities as R4/Nimbus, which were quite popular for years, for a good reason. Stratus and Symphony continue to have that pedigree. But no, they are not exactly drop in replacements.
 
How does one load R4 user presets into Symphony?

The only instructions I've found were from Phoenix to Stratus: https://support.izotope.com/hc/en-u...-or-from-R2Surround-to-Symphony-including-3D-

But R4 doesn't seem to have that export option?

So far, for comparing R4 with Symphony, I've matched the parameters by hand. But I never managed to get them to sound the same. To me R4 sounded fuller and deeper than Symphony.

I've got a few of my own R4 presets that I like. For me, the Exponential Audio presets were never really that great.

In comparison, most of the Bricasti presets are brilliant and inspiring, so I created R4 and Nimbus presets by ear-matching Bricasti presets.
 
Symphony will import the .xml format R4 presets directly.

Hunting them down is the tricky bit. On Mac any user presets will be in ~/Library/Application Support/ExponentialAudio/R4/User
 
gamma-ut said:
Symphony will import the .xml format R4 presets directly.
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That worked, thanks!

Now, with the import, I managed to get Symphony to sound close enough to R4. The tail sounds near enough the same.

As the early reflections are much denser on Symphony, and the R4 patterns are not available, , I make the following adjustments.

Early Attack: approx 7% lower
Early Time: approx 50% longer
Early Slope: approx 50% higher
Early Dist: set to Left-Right (seems to default to Surround)

This is using Symphony in stereo, using the "Smooth" early pattern and on R4 the "R4 II" early pattern.

Now I'm happy enough with Symphony.
 
Dom said:
In case anybody is interested, I did a CPU comparison between Seventh Heaven Pro, Symphony and R4, running 30 instances each of the "Large Hall and Stage" preset in Seventh Heaven Pro, and 30 instances each of a very similar sounding 2s hall on both Symphony and R4. All running in stereo.

Seventh Heaven Pro 310%
Symphony 154%
R4 122%

So R4 is still the most efficient, but Symphony is not bad. All three use no CPU when receiving digital silence. Tested on a 2019 16-core Mac Pro in Logic.
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Anything using IRs is probably going to take more CPU. A better comparison would be CRP and TaiChi.

Given how much older Symphony and R4 are, I'd imagine they still use less CPU than CRP and TC (with the multiband off). There's also reasons why CRP and TC use more CPU, and it isn't for fun, but for the sound and realism.
 
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vitocorleone123 said:
Anything using IRs is probably going to take more CPU. A better comparison would be CRP and TaiChi.
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No problem, I've removed the post. I only posted this in case it's of interest to anyone. I have CRP and for most applications, it's not a replacement for R4 sound wise for my purposes, and this is what this thread is about. It just doesn't have the weight IMHO.

This is why I kept the list to those three, and CRP is not relevant for me personally.
 
vitocorleone123 said:
Anything using IRs is probably going to take more CPU. A better comparison would be CRP and TaiChi.

Given how much older Symphony and R4 are, I'd imagine they still use less CPU than CRP and TC (with the multiband off).
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Agreed fwiw Illusion and HD Cart are also algorhytmic reverbs.
 
Dom said:
Fine. I only posted this in case it's of interest to anyone. I have CRP and for most applications, it's not a replacement for R4 sound wise for my purposes, and this is what this thread is about. It just doesn't have the weight IMHO.

This is why I kept the list to those three, and CRP is not relevant for me personally.
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No problem - thanks for the comparison!

I only mentioned the others because you compared vs 7H, which of course can be compared, but also has a reason for it's higher CPU use: IRs.

For my ears, it's the other way around, with CRP preferred and with more density (R4 being the comparative lightweight).


@kgdrum HDCart is algo, but Illusion is a hybrid beast.
 
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