FTFY
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what a waste of a shimmerverb dig against @Fin25
you would actually see his icon foaming at the mouth
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Whoops, what I meant to say was, “Some reverb is reverb, some other reverb is reverb”.
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Short answer = yes.
However, even the horrible EMX1 reverb will sound nice if you know how to use it.
All you really need to know is,
Quadraverb is amazing.
Shimmer is bollocks.
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Another thing about reverb.
Its not just the reverb, its what you put into it.
The two work together.
Example, octatracks dark reverb. On samples its ok I spose.
Run certain synths through it and its godlike. Im thinking especially about the Malevolent, its sounds fucking incredible through OTs Dark Reverb.
Or OT Dark Reverb sounds incredible with Malevolent through it.
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Reverb in music gadgets is a tricky bit of economics. It’s not just that it’s particularly rough on CPUs, but we’re not gonna tolerate any noticeable latency on a device we intend to perform with. On a synthesizer, there needs to be enough CPU headroom for the full capability of the synth engine plus whatever effects to be calculated within milliseconds following a trigger. Zero chance of failure whether it’s their sterile test room or a 110F outdoor party. If it’s a groove box, they have to have enough room leftover for reverb even when every track and function is maxed out because Baseck is performing.
If I were a manufacturer, I’d know that 95% of the time having a great reverb really matters, it will be on a stage or in a studio that has dedicated boxes and plugins with orders of magnitude more processing power than I can use. Thus in a lot of cases, you end up with ‘better than nothing’ reverb or just a feature rich delay, no reverb. Why cannibalize the main features of the product you’re really buying when you can add exactly the reverb you want in a pedal for a few hundo. But some brands do pull out all the stops, even if it pushes up the price. I didn’t click with the Digitakt right away but the reverb told me a lot about the people behind the brand.
The Deluge is the interesting exception as always. No artificial limits and no safety net. You can keep adding things until it crashes.
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I’m particularly disappointed with the TR-8S Reverbs. And I’m also disappointed that they didn’t leverage the many external audio outputs to implement an external FX send/return path. I really wish I could connect an FX unit of my choice to the separate outs, send to it per-channel instead of the internal FX and then return it back to the external inputs.
Looking at the signal flow diagram it doesn’t look possible to even add this in a firmware update. Such a shame since the rest of the device is nearly perfect for me. Rant over.
Edit: to contextualise to this thread, I guess the reason is to save processing power which does make sense!
…taste and time…
…while all room always makes half of all subjective impressions on everything u hear…
don’t have to wonder big time, why oh why, tiny doses of small rooms and a little bit of medium sized plates, all from classic lexicon algos still do most of my “natural” glue…even on tracks where nothing’s left u would call natural by any means…
Reverbs are a quite complex thing to design in DSP when you dig in to the finer details. Folks like Sean Costello (Valhalla guy, IIRC he used to work for Universal Audio, Eventide, or both?) have been at it for decades and still learns new things about making them.
But here’s the thing - what constitutes as a good reverb and a crap reverb? Its all subjective! Some crap reverbs have cult followings. I dont think people in general all agree on what is the best reverb for em. I got plenty, and its never a clear cut case which one will be the most fitting for a specific project/song.
For something like Jazz / Classical music, qualifying a reverb is perhaps an easier task, because there the end goal is mimicking the way things sound in a natural acoustic space. But in electronic music, where there is no such thing as “natural”? The most realistic sounding reverb might not be the best choice anymore, in fact it might be just the opposite… and this isnt even getting into the specific use case for said reverb…
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What’s up with all the shimmer hate! Love me some of that Angel Choir.
I use elektron reverb while producing and then record dry to add effects in DAW, as it offers more control. What I use is Fabfilter Pro-R or Valhalla Vintageverb. I used to have a library of IRs but they are lost now. Maybe I can find them somewhere, I remember they were free and plenty.
I want to try some of that reverb automation mentioned earlier! Gamechanger. Moving from closed to open headphones helped a lot too.
Valhalla Room does not sound that great to my ears, and I agree that it is all very subjective with algo reverbs. There’s also insert vs. send dilemma, I use sends if I wish to add some sounds to a space, and insert to make it part of the sound, or something like that. Compressor after reverb is cool too.
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Shit, now I’m doing it too…
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So it isn’t me…a lot of times when I check reviews and after the praise they start with the basics waves I’m like ‘But…that sounds the same as the other synths to me’…
Could also be the untrained ear 
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You would think, but in reality….
A “good” reverb is as subjective in classical music as elsewhere. And that is before you get into the rabbit hole of positioning reverbs, where you use reverb to place an instrument or a group of instruments in a specific position in the auditory field. In the extreme you can have each of an orchestras 100+ instruments with the same reverb algorithm, but with slightly different params for each.
The discussions about which reverb is best are also lengthy, passionate and endless on the classical/orchestral/soundtrack side.
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I use 5 reverb sends, a short, a mid , a long hall, a 7 seconds reverb, a drum reverb
I mix the 5 reverbs in various amounts, the shorter the reverb, the more center the instrument is. The 7 seconds reverb is just for fx shot´s, the others to place the instruments, or to sound design the drums.
I automate the reverb for shots, some are static, and mixing them gives a different room perspective. I aim for a certain position front /back with the send amount to the reverbs.
Fog Convolver has OTO BAM Impulse responses, Convology XT has lots of IR from different Lexicon, Quadathrough. Fabfilter R2 is also sufficient -if you set it up with different length and algos. It can generate EQ curves when you feed it impulse responses.
I video might explain it more in detail, i havent double checked it, but i think i remember he explains the concept.
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Mostly it comes down to talented or efficient coding.
It’s because it’s shit.
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OT has at the same time Good and Bad reverbs. Covering all bases for all personal tastes.
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Yeah, then you probably got it right.
Simple waves usually sound very similar. There might be differences you can observe on an oscilloscope, but when they are level-matched, they will probably sound extremely similar. I mean, I don’t know what you’ve listened to, but afaik this test where people listen to the same sound and are told one is from an expensive piano, violine, synth or whatever and there’s a strong bias for the expensive instrument has been done several times, so if you can get around the bias presented by the reviewer, that’s a good thing.
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Well, what have I started. Turns out reverb is quite complicated and varied. Thanks for the info, everyone.
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