Pro Verb Confusion

[wurliuchi]

My confusion with the stereo impulses is, basically, Pro Verb doesn't really have any. They have a "left", "right" or "center" impulse for about ninety-five percent of their rooms, halls and plates, but they don' t have a l/r stereo impulse, except in a couple of cases, and certainly not on any of their rooms or halls. To me, this means that, if you set up a stereo send, put Pro Verb on that send and select, say, a "natural room left" impulse from the factory presets, you're not getting a stereo impulse, you're getting one side of a stereo impulse. That's not stereo, is it? Considering you can't load up both the left and the right side impulses on one instance of Pro Verb, I would then assume they intend for you to set up two mono auxiliary sends, place a mono instance of Pro Verb on both sends and load up the left side impulse on one and the right side impulse on the other. Like I said above, while I understand, to a degree, why they would do this (to mimic Altiverb's built-in ability to place instruments in a stereo field by allowing you to send more to to one side or the other with your two mono Pro Verbs), it seems impractical to me to set up four mono Pro Verb sends just to get one room and one hall stereo reverb (and I assume you'd also want the center impulse for vocals, leads and snares, so that makes six total mono reverb sends!). Maybe you'd want that, but what about people who would just appreciate having a stereo impulse to put up a basic stereo hall reverb? And I notice plenty of people are inserting Pro Verb on their tracks and seem to have no complaints about the lack of stereo impulses, so I'm also admittedly confused as to how they might be handling that.

Okay, here's what I think. The Center impulse is stereo. It's both sides of the captured impulse and it uses those sides respectively. Left and right speak for themselves, they are just one side of the impulse, but when selected they will feed both channels. How much difference there is between the left and the right sides depends on the impulse and how it was captured, the room, the mic, the sound that was used to excite the room, all that stuff.

When using ProVerb on a Aux/Bus, you use the Send's pan to control stereo placement, the Width knob in ProVerb feeds the left channel into the right and vice versa. The Width knob acts the same when a stereo instance of Proverb is inserted on a stereo track.

When you use ProVerb as a mono-to-stereo insert on a mono track, a pan knob takes the Width knob's place, so you can control the stereo placement that way. If you use a mono version of ProVerb there is no Width or Pan knob.

I have noticed a problem with the Factory impulses. It's kind of hard to explain, but here goes:

Feeding Proveb on an Aux/Bus from a Mono track set to pre fader
Aux send panned to Center
Proverb dry level at 0%
Width knob is at zero
Track is muted so all I hear is Proverb 100% wet in both channels. Good.
But when the Aux send is panned hard left, I will hear clearly (and see on ProVerb's meters) that there's still quite a lot of signal in the right side. Pan the send hard right and there's still signal in the left channel.
All room and hall factory impulses act this way, but the plates do not, they work fine, as do third party impulses.
And to make it even more strange, if I quite DP and relaunch it, it will work correctly for the impulse it opens up to. But once you change that impulse it will always bleed to the other side.

Kind of weird.

[bongo_x]

Most engineers would say that presets for compressors (and eq's for the most part) seems pretty silly. What you want to do with them is entirely dependent on the source.

You lost me with the word "entirely". Don't you think presets add some convenience? For example, if you want vocals to sound like they went through an old telephone, and there is a factory telephone preset, would you start with that, or build it from scratch? Likewise, if you have a nice UAD Fairchild setting for a guitar, doesn't saving it as a preset gives you a good sarting point for other guitars recorded in other settings?

No. First, there's only a couple of knobs that you're dealing with. If you have a good Fairchild setting for some guitar, how hard is it to dial that back up? Turn the big knob. And then wouldn't you have to change it for the new guitar anyway? What exactly is the preset doing? And it takes about 3 seconds, maybe less, to get a telephone EQ sound. Turn the high and low pass until it sounds like a telephone.

I can see saving you're own settings that you use on your guitar in your studio, but that's not the same as a factory preset or someone else's setting for a different instrument recorded somewhere else.

It's not like a synth (or even a delay or modulation effect) where you spend time tweaking a sound and then want to use it again. I save EQ and compressor settings in case I need to get the same sound back on the same instruments, in the same song usually.

I'm not sure why "entirely" is confusing.

bb

[bayswater]

[
I'm not sure why "entirely" is confusing.
bb

Not confusing, just not convincing, because it overstates the case. The resulting sound is a result of the application of an effect to a source. It's not entirely the sound, or entirely the effect.

[bongo_x]

I think there's definitely two camps here, and if you're in the camp that also does its own sound engineering and has an extensive knowledge of compressors, limiters, reverb, etc., you'd rather use the device itself, rather that have somebody else set it up for you. I can definitely respect that. You magnificent bastards!

However, I'm in the other camp, who kind of fell ass-backwards into being their own sound engineer as a result of lack of money and/or the availability of someone who actually knows what they're doing, would rather get through a mix with a minimum of fuss, ulcers and hair-pulling and has a tight deadline in which to deliver a "finished-sounding" piece of music, so yes, please, somebody else set it up for me and I'll make some adjustments, if necessary.

I understand your point entirely, what I'm saying is that EQ's and compressors don't really work that way. I understand not really wanting to have to learn all the engineering part, but that's sort of like the guys on KVR who want to record but hate the bother of having to write music. "Isn't there some VST that writes music for me?"

With a synth you pull up a preset because you don't want to mess with it, and to learn what it can do. Some people won't do that, they always want to program from scratch, some people just want a cool synth sound. When you pull up that synth patch again you get the same sound. That doesn't really make sense with EQ's and compressors, for the most part. Would you have a "vocal" EQ setting? What would that be? Adding a little high end? What if the vocal was already really bright? If it needs more high end then turn it up.

No one can know what your recording is going to sound like ahead of time so there is no way for them to make a preset to help it. It's like having a guitar preset tuner that turns each tuner on your guitar exactly 3 times to get it in tune, it doesn't make sense because it depends on where the tuning started out. EQ's and compressors are like tuners, not flangers or delays. Now if someone was to invent an auto EQ, like the iPhoto thing does for pictures (or the Robo guitar), then you might have something. But not really.

bb

[EMRR]

I opened PRO VERB and had a look, having not used it.

At first glance, I would assume L/C/R to refer to the position in which you are LISTENING FROM in each of these spaces.

That's what it sounds like in a 30 second check on the laptop speakers, when reverb soloed. Up to you to pan the source appropriately to match.

[bayswater]

With a synth you pull up a preset because you don't want to mess with it, and to learn what it can do. Some people won't do that, they always want to program from scratch, some people just want a cool synth sound. When you pull up that synth patch again you get the same sound. That doesn't really make sense with EQ's and compressors, for the most part. Would you have a "vocal" EQ setting? What would that be? Adding a little high end? What if the vocal was already really bright? If it needs more high end then turn it up.

I take your point about EQ. I can't recall ever starting with a preset except specialized situations like I mentioned before. And I can't recall saving any.

[wurliuchi]

I opened PRO VERB and had a look, having not used it.

At first glance, I would assume L/C/R to refer to the position in which you are LISTENING FROM in each of these spaces.

That's what it sounds like in a 30 second check on the laptop speakers, when reverb soloed. Up to you to pan the source appropriately to match.

Ah, that makes perfect sense. Right on!!! Thanks!!!

[Armageddon]

I opened PRO VERB and had a look, having not used it.

At first glance, I would assume L/C/R to refer to the position in which you are LISTENING FROM in each of these spaces.

That's what it sounds like in a 30 second check on the laptop speakers, when reverb soloed. Up to you to pan the source appropriately to match.

That's what I would have originally assumed, as well, except that they are mono impulses (and considering there are a few l/r impulses you can load, this kind of denotes that Pro Verb has the ability to use stereo impulses and is designed to also be used as a true stereo reverb). If you load up a center impulse, it's still only a mono impulse and if you send a stereo signal to it, what's being returned is a mono reverb signal. Therefore, if you intended to set up one true stereo room to send and return a track from, you would have to set up two mono Pro Verbs on a pair of mono sends and load up the left-side impulse on one side, the right impulse on the other, and if you also wanted to utilize the center impulse for straight-down-the-middle signals, like snare or vocals (though most people would likely be happy with just sending those to both sides of a stereo room, as well), you'd have to set up a third mono Pro Verb send to load the center signal into. Sending more from one of the two instrument sends you would then use to send to these two Pro Verb mono busses would determine which side impulse is getting more signal and "move" the instrument's position in the stereo field, something Altiverb does with a control called, oddly enough "Move The Instrument In The Stereo Field". While I understand this approach, as I've said before, it seems highly impractical to me. Why not just include stereo l/r impulses for each room, hall or plate, or at least have the ability to load up both sides into one instance of Pro Verb, in case someone doesn't want the hassle of loading up two mono busses?

Doing what you describe above would then necessitate having to set up two stereo Pro Verbs on two stereo busses (one to accommodate everything panned left, one to accommodate everything panned right) and still get pretty much the same results.

[Shooshie]

I think there's definitely two camps here, and if you're in the camp that also does its own sound engineering and has an extensive knowledge of compressors, limiters, reverb, etc., you'd rather use the device itself, rather that have somebody else set it up for you. I can definitely respect that. You magnificent bastards!

However, I'm in the other camp, who kind of fell ass-backwards into being their own sound engineer as a result of lack of money and/or the availability of someone who actually knows what they're doing, would rather get through a mix with a minimum of fuss, ulcers and hair-pulling and has a tight deadline in which to deliver a "finished-sounding" piece of music, so yes, please, somebody else set it up for me and I'll make some adjustments, if necessary.

I guess I'm somewhere between, closer to the preset end. But I have to say I'm a bit skeptical that it's always easier to start from scratch, now matter how good an engineer you are. If you've work hard to achieve a sound, and need it again, you wouldn't bring it up and see if you can just tweak it a bit, or even see if it does the job as is? Especially if one of the main parameters of the plug or sound is something you would be putting on an automation curve and varying anyway. At the extreme end, if you have the Waves Q10 preset, would you program a RIAA curve, or be tempted to load the preset?

I'm not saying a preset can't be helpful, especially for certain technical starting points. But for me, I hear what I want pretty quickly, and can usually set the controls up in a matter of, say, 30 seconds. Then I might tweak it over the next few days for a total of half an hour or more. But I learned a method of hearing the pitches of the overtones of any sound, and I keep a frequency chart next to my desk on the wall. It's downloadable from the DP Tips Sheet, about page 5 or so. Once you know the pitches you're working on, and why, and then you know the corresponding frequencies, then it's simple to reach for the right controls. (a fast fourier transform --FFT -- meter can take the place of a lifetime of ear training, I suppose) Of course... that's only the beginning. Bob Katz can scare the bejeezuz out of anyone who thinks they know it all about mixing. I recommend his book "Mastering Audio" if for no other reason than to keep one's ego in check.

Shooshie

[Armageddon]

I've studied a lot of techniques over my years of attempting to do it myself, and Bob Katz, certainly, is a must-read (as is Craig Anderton), but I started out as a MIDI composer whose hobby became a paying hobby after I entered the film biz and started scoring movies on the side. I got into the sound engineering side of it more as a necessity than out of genuine desire to act as my own engineer. Unfortunately, I lack the expertise and maybe the ear to tweak a plug or a hardware unit and get a desired result from the ground floor in thirty seconds, but I definitely appreciate and admire those who can. I also learned, very early on, that it's rare that you can just select a preset on an EQ or a comp and immediately get the perfect result without some basic adjustments, though I've always appreciated having basic presets for what I assume they're there for: a jumping off point for someone who is either new to the device or who, like myself, requires a basic shortcut towards a usable setting or else spend thirteen hours agonizing over input gain and crosstalk before getting a setting that is most likely wrong, anyway.

[EMRR]

I suppose the point will be lost on me until I use Pro Verb a bit more than I have. ATM I am at a loss to feel something is missing. I know nothing about Altiverb. Does it have the ability to discretely place multiple panned aux send inputs at various places within the sound field as if they were each generating their own distinct stereo reverb return? A plug-in front end that generates reverb as if each piece of the stereo field was a discrete input into a separate reverb? Essentially an internal divider/mixer matrix?

I do things the old fashioned way: reverbs on aux sends/returns with 100% wet signal, put back together in the mixing bus with relevant panning in the mixer. The reverb that is returned is stereo (in Pro Verb too). Most sound sources are single point in origination, panning does the placement. Stereo reverb is a spacial function derived from a mono source. If you have the relevant single point source tracks at your disposal, you send all of them to the stereo reverb inputs via stereo aux sends. If I really need (rarely) single sources to sound as if recorded in discrete positions within dedicated separate spaces, then it's dedicated discrete reverbs for each source.

I'm probably still missing something about your concern.

[bayswater]

...I keep a frequency chart next to my desk on the wall. It's downloadable from the DP Tips Sheet, about page 5 or so. Once you know the pitches you're working on, and why, and then you know the corresponding frequencies, then it's simple to reach for the right controls. (a fast fourier transform --FFT -- meter can take the place of a lifetime of ear training, I suppose) Of course... that's only the beginning. Bob Katz can scare the bejeezuz out of anyone who thinks they know it all about mixing. I recommend his book "Mastering Audio" if for no other reason than to keep one's ego in check.

Shooshie

Yes, the frequency chart is on the wall, and the book is on the desk. That is a scary book. I liked Roey Izhaki's better. It at least gave some comfort that I might be able to mix well one day.

[Armageddon]

I suppose the point will be lost on me until I use Pro Verb a bit more than I have. ATM I am at a loss to feel something is missing. I know nothing about Altiverb. Does it have the ability to discretely place multiple panned aux send inputs at various places within the sound field as if they were each generating their own distinct stereo reverb return? A plug-in front end that generates reverb as if each piece of the stereo field was a discrete input into a separate reverb? Essentially an internal divider/mixer matrix?

I do things the old fashioned way: reverbs on aux sends/returns with 100% wet signal, put back together in the mixing bus with relevant panning in the mixer. The reverb that is returned is stereo (in Pro Verb too). Most sound sources are single point in origination, panning does the placement. Stereo reverb is a spacial function derived from a mono source. If you have the relevant single point source tracks at your disposal, you send all of them to the stereo reverb inputs via stereo aux sends. If I really need (rarely) single sources to sound as if recorded in discrete positions within dedicated separate spaces, then it's dedicated discrete reverbs for each source.

I'm probably still missing something about your concern.

I'm not concerned about the mono send to a stereo 'verb (and I generally prefer to do things exactly like you describe above), my concern lays in the fact that the Pro Verb impulses themselves are mono -- more specifically, they are the left side, right side or center impulses of a stereo room, not left/right together, to form an actual stereo impulse (except in a couple of cases, proving that Pro Verb is indeed capable of loading up a stereo impulse). If I set up a stereo room bus, put a stereo Pro Verb on it and selected "Natural Room left", a mono impulse is loaded. Therefore, what I send to it is indeed coming back on two stereo channels, but the reverb signal isn't stereo, it's a dual-mono reverb of one side of a natural room. In other words, it would be necessary to set up two mono Pro Verb busses, load up a Natural Room Left impulse on one and pan the bus hard left and Natural Room Right impulse on the other, panned hard right, since you do not have a Natural Room L/R stereo impulse to choose from in Pro Verb, then set up your track sends so that one is being sent to the left-side bus and one is being sent to the right-side bus, in order to get the approximation of one true stereo Natural Room reverb. Someone else suggested that the "Center" version of these impulses approximated stereo, which it does not. It's also a mono impulse. In other words, the only way to utilize the L/R/C impulses, which is about 97 percent of what Pro Verb offers on its included sampled spaces, as a traditional stereo send is to set up at least two of the three mono impulses on two mono busses and send to both. Using a regular stereo reverb, you only have to set up one stereo bus, load up one stereo instance of a reverb and have both sends from your audio track going to it to get a stereo reverb.

[EMRR]

Hmm. More research to do. I think there may still be some terminology confusion between us.

Dual mono is the same as mono if the sound sources are identical and the effect on each channel are identical. You can nuke one and it's the same, disregarding loss of level. No change in stereo effect. Using a mono soundbite in a track with stereo bussing is dual mono if and only when the pan is set dead center, no efx included. At least that's what I call it.

I don't find a setting called Natural Room; I find large and small Normal. Everything I see is labeled as left, right or center, save a few with no choice. Are we on different versions?

When I compare various Proverb L versus C versus R stereo reverb returns in 100% wet mode, I'm clearly listening from positions that mirror the impulse name, and in stereo. With a left impulse, it's as if I'm closer to the left wall and the reverb return on the left is quicker and shorter, with less pre-delay. The return on the right, the wall I'm furthest from, has greater predelay. Panning the stereo aux send moves the source within the space and changes the way the reverb reacts to it, but the listening position remains unchanged. There's a lot of variation available within the source panning in a stereo send, and the reverb itself is indeed stereo.

I don't find the factory IR's anywhere in a quick search of my system, so I have no idea what they resemble. I would assume you would need a stereo IR to generate a stereo reverb return, which is what I'm getting with all of the factory reverb IR's. Assuming the generated stereo return is indeed entirely IR based, with no other programmed generation going on.

[Armageddon]

Hmm. More research to do. I think there may still be some terminology confusion between us.

Dual mono is the same as mono if the sound sources are identical and the effect on each channel are identical. You can nuke one and it's the same, disregarding loss of level. No change in stereo effect. Using a mono soundbite in a track with stereo bussing is dual mono if and only when the pan is set dead center, no efx included. At least that's what I call it.

I don't find a setting called Natural Room; I find large and small Normal. Everything I see is labeled as left, right or center, save a few with no choice. Are we on different versions?

Right, and sending to a stereo Pro Verb with a mono impulse loaded (and before you answer, bear in mind that several impulses are also l/r stereo, so we do know that Pro Verb is capable of loading actual stereo impulses, not just a mono impulse that it is somehow inexpicably translating to stereo) returns a wet stereo room signal? By "dual mono", I am referring to the reverb's return, not the audio track's signal or panning in the stereo field, and without a left and a right impulse, it is essentially returning the same reverb signal on both sides. Both sides of a stereo send are being processed by the same mono impulse, therefore, it's not an actual representation of a stereo space. It's the same impulse on both the left and right auxiliary output, regardless of how the instrument you're sending to it is being panned, hence "dual mono".

Sorry for the confusion I may have caused with the label "Natural Room", I was just sticking an impulse title in there as an example. I'll use "Bright Hall" from now on, which I believe is an actual Pro Verb impulse title.

When I compare various Proverb L versus C versus R stereo reverb returns in 100% wet mode, I'm clearly listening from positions that mirror the impulse name, and in stereo. With a left impulse, it's as if I'm closer to the left wall and the reverb return on the left is quicker and shorter, with less pre-delay. The return on the right, the wall I'm furthest from, has greater predelay. Panning the stereo aux send moves the source within the space and changes the way the reverb reacts to it, but the listening position remains unchanged. There's a lot of variation available within the source panning in a stereo send, and the reverb itself is indeed stereo.

I don't find the factory IR's anywhere in a quick search of my system, so I have no idea what they resemble. I would assume you would need a stereo IR to generate a stereo reverb return, which is what I'm getting with all of the factory reverb IR's. Assuming the generated stereo return is indeed entirely IR based, with no other programmed generation going on.

Really, you don't see the mono impulse when you load a "Bright Hall Center" from your factory impulses, or two distinct impulses when you load up one of the few actual stereo factory impulses? If you hear an actual stereo effect, and not just the same effect on two channels when you send a mono signal to a stereo Pro Verb bus with a mono impulse loaded, regardless of your panning, either you're doing something wrong or I am, because I only hear and see a mono or a stereo send signal being processed by one impulse, not two different ones, meaning, at least to me, that it's being processed in mono, or as I keep calling it, "dual mono". The same signal on a left and a right track. If you pan your instrument in the stereo field, yes, you will hear a difference, but you're not sending a signal to a stereo room, you're sending your signal to one side of a room. I guess my problem is, I would like to send to both sides of the room on one stereo bus.

I am very aware that there is a distinct difference between the left, right and center impulses -- that was pretty much my point. In order to utilize both sides of stereo room or hall that only provides either a left, right or center impulse in one instance of Pro Verb (as I've said repeatedly above, you can't load both "Bright Hall Left" and "Bright Hall Right" into one stereo instance of Pro Verb at the same time), one would then have to set up two mono busses, pan one hard left, pan the other hard right, load up a mono instance of Pro Verb on both busses and load up the left-side impulse on the mono bus panned left and the right-side impulse on the one panned right, and send your audio track, regardless of said audio track being mono or stereo, to both. Then, you would have an actual stereo representation of a stereo hall reverb ... an effect that can be achieved, minus the convolution power, by dropping one stereo CSR Hall Reverb in one stereo bus and sending two sends from an audio track to it. If you're achieving the effect of a true convolution stereo hall reverb by just setting up one stereo Pro Verb on a stereo bus, loading up a mono impulse like, say, "Bright Hall Center" and sending a signal to it, more power to you; I'm obviously clueless as to how "stereo" works.