Samuel Estes has posted here a great opportunity for those who have some money to buy some high quality reverb products. But what do those of us who are on a budget do if we don't want to spend money on reverb/convolution. In my case, I am trying to direct my music budget towards finally moving towards new orchestral samples and other samples on the Kontakt platform. Well, as many of you may know there are various ways to get reverb/convolution. It may be builtin to your sampler. For example, since I have been on the Gig platform for 10 years now, the last two Gigastudio samplers had builtin support for reverb/convolution (and some pretty sophisticated models which supported two dimensional placement of multiple microphones and hall sizes). But as many of you know, the final version of Gigastudio (4.0), was orphaned by Tascam (and the technology sold to Garritan but never supported) and GS 4 (and the associated USB security key) would not work on platforms newer than Windows Vista (i.e., Windows 7 & 8). And the Aria sampler, used by Garritan has built-in reverb support, but as far as I know, supports only the Garritan (and not Giga) samples. So that leads us back to the replacement sampler for Gigastudio called, GPlayer (a different vendor, soundlib.com). Now this player does not have builtin reverb, but does support VSTs. That brings us to the next possible options - like me, you may have purchased more than one music creation tool. I have both the DAW (sequencer), Sonar Producer and a music sheet creation product, Sibelius 7. Now Sibelius does not really have builtin reverb (though some may claim it does), but both products support VSTs and Sonar comes with VSTs for reverb and convolution. So if you have that environment, remember that you can use the VSTs of a software product (assuming the license agreement does not prohibit it), with your other software products that support VSTs. In my case however, I have not been keeping up with recent versions of Sonar Producer and so my version is a 32-bit version with 32-bit VSTs. But the version of Sibelius I use is a 64-bit version (which supports significantly more memory for the instrument samples) and that software will not support 32-bit VSTs. So I was in the predicament of having to find a 64-bit VST for reverb/convolution. Some time ago, I discovered, Freeverb3 (http://freeverb3vst.sourceforge.jp/) which includes a free 64-bit VST which works fine with Sibelius. There are a collection of free VSTs - the one I use is Freeverb3VST_Impulser2.dll which I put in the same directory as my other VSTs. Now what do I do for the Freeverb data - the files used to define the reverb space and set all the values of reverb? There are free ones that work with Freeverb3. Here are some I use: On the site with Freeverb are sets of sound effects that work with it to define the space - http://freeverb3vst.sourceforge.jp/samples.shtml Another company is Voxengo and it sells stuff but also has some free stuff: http://www.voxengo.com/group/free-vst-plugins (free VSTs) and http://www.voxengo.com/impulses/ (free Impulse files usable by Freeverb3 as well). How does the free reverb compare to the purchased ones - I have not done a comparison and there will be some that do not find the quality of Freeverb3 sufficient for their needs. But if you are on a budget and need to get into the deep end quickly - this may be a good place to start. For me, free is good!
Composing : Reverb/Convolution On A Budget by Joel Irwin
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Thank you Joel! Always good to keep budget in mind! Another great inexpensive verb is EOS From Audio Damage, as well as Valhalla verb (both $50) http://www.audiodamage.com/effects/product.php?pid=AD023 http://valhalladsp.com/valhallavintageverb Also if you have a convolution verb in your DAW, (or even in kontakt) I strongly recommend downloading (for free): http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep10/articles/convolutionaudio.htm Also Kontakt and Machfive (if you already own these) will read .gig files too, you may need to tweak a bit, but I have most of my giga library converted. Gplayer is a Godsend though! Best, Sam
I believe that when I was still doing 32-bit, I 'borrowed', the VST "Perfect Space" to do my reverb/convolution from Sonar to use with Sibelius 6 (before I upgraded to 7).
FWIW, I'm a big fan of BREVERB2 by Overloud (on Sonar Producer) which is not too expensive, IMO: http://www.overloud.com/products/breverb2.php It has become my "go to" reverb. Besides very good quality, it also features "Sources" which allows you to position each voice on the stage, similar to using the Positioner in Altiverb. I use it to precisely position individual voices and instruments on stage. The "Glorious Morning" audio available through my profile page demos this. For convolution, I favor the Voxengo tools, but don't have much real experience with them, yet. Haven't had to since BREVERB 2 has pretty much covered it, especially with the Sources feature.
I find that I end up relying mostly on the reverbs that came preloaded in my DAW (especially the free convolution reverb, REVerence). I have tried out other convolution reverbs but as far as I can tell convolution is more about the IR files than the interface that runs them so I tend to stick with REVerence. I will definitely check out the IRs that both of you have mentioned above though. I am interested in getting a new algorithmic reverb. I have tried out a lot of free algorithmic verbs including the one made by Voxengo. I am not really impressed with any of them. As far as price goes Aether really doesn't seem too bad considering Lexicon's bundle is over $1000 but it is still a little more than I can spend at the moment. I am definitely going to check into both Valhalla and EOS. Out of those two is there one that you would consider a better workhorse? Thank you guys for your posts!