Altiverb vs Lexicon PCM91 ??

[fokof]

I preferred the Yamaha REV5 over the PCM90 and the REV5 is a much older unit.

Ouf !!!!!
That hurts !!!!!

[richardein]

Altiverb 5 is truly an astounding piece of software. It can be cpu intensive, but it is quite remarkable: You call up a impulse response, apply it to a sound and it sounds as more like it's in a particular space than any artificial reverb I've ever heard.

I have not noticed the metallic effect in long reverbs. Does anyone have a particular example? Is there an impulse response in which this is particularly noticeable?

I have not compared it to the 90/91 but I have a Lexicon 80 which, I believe, contains, some of the algorithms that are also in the 90. Quite frankly, comparing those to the altiverb is apples and oranges. The concert hall reverbs are very good on the 80, but in terms of realism, they pale in comparison to the altiverb. The 80 also does things that I don't think altiverb does.

[Shooshie]

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you guys. Altiverb sounds okay on short settings, but on longer ones, it sounds rather metalic and fake. Compared to a Lexicon, there is less"music" in the verb, and is sounds decidedly more collapsed than a Lexicon. Much more "mono" sounding, far less rich. Do a careful listening test, it's not subtle...

pcm, I'm still wondering how you are getting the metallic reverb tails. Any clues? Were you using the current version of Altiverb? I know it's changed quite a bit, but I never used the original version, so I have nothing to compare it to.

"Metallic" is the word I use to describe MOTU's eVerb, and Waves' TrueVerb. Even RealVerb had a little of that. All of those require a good deal of skill and patience to create a usable reverb, and none in my opinion are good enough for the A-list, even at their best. AltiVerb pretty much defines that list, IMO.

Shooshie

[mcevilley]

Just curious, I have some/limited experience with both the Lexicon and Altiverb. I understand Altiverb is very realistic and has great sounding halls etc., but how do these translate into contemporary pop music? I always like the Lexicon on pop vocals. Is Altiverb good for this or is it better suited for orchestral stuff? I'd love to check out any examples people could point me to of anything from house,rock, ballads etc. where Altiverb is used on the vocals. I'm thinking I want to get Altiverb but I'm not sure if it's what I'm looking for. I tried the demo a while ago so I can't get it again. I really didn't work much with it when I had it because I was too busy.

Thanks for any insight.

[chrispick]

Just curious, I have some/limited experience with both the Lexicon and Altiverb. I understand Altiverb is very realistic and has great sounding halls etc., but how do these translate into contemporary pop music? I always like the Lexicon on pop vocals. Is Altiverb good for this or is it better suited for orchestral stuff? I'd love to check out any examples people could point me to of anything from house,rock, ballads etc. where Altiverb is used on the vocals. I'm thinking I want to get Altiverb but I'm not sure if it's what I'm looking for. I tried the demo a while ago so I can't get it again. I really didn't work much with it when I had it because I was too busy.

Thanks for any insight.

I think Altiverb is quite useable for pop style mixes. It ships with impulses responses taken from rackmount gear, studios spaces (e.g., drum rooms) and vintage plates. It excels at replicating real-world spaces like cathedrals and stone rooms and such -- that's how it's earned it's good word-of-mouth -- but it ships with a multitude of reverb choices.

To consider: it's a plug-in so you can very easily stack it with other plugs (like chorus, delays, EQs, native reverbs, even other instances of itself), so it's also a great base for an aux buss sound.

As you can see, I highly recommend it. I've recently used it to mix a sample-based orchestral piece as well as a Tool-sounding metal piece. In both cases, it definitely helped the mix. As a guy who often does the whole deal in the box, I rely on it to add real-world ambience to otherwise sterile tracks.

[pcm]

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you guys. Altiverb sounds okay on short settings, but on longer ones, it sounds rather metalic and fake. Compared to a Lexicon, there is less"music" in the verb, and is sounds decidedly more collapsed than a Lexicon. Much more "mono" sounding, far less rich. Do a careful listening test, it's not subtle...

Ummm... just how long a tail do you need to add to an Altiverb example before you start getting this fake, metallic texture? I've heard everything up to cathedral lengths, and I have yet to hear anything but pure, clean, clear reverb. What am I missing? Subtle ears?


Shooshie

Do a careful A/B test with a Lexicon. Listening by itself won;t show it, anymore than testing a $500. vocal without holding it against a u87 at the same time. How long? More than a second is noticable to me.

[Shooshie]

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you guys. Altiverb sounds okay on short settings, but on longer ones, it sounds rather metalic and fake. Compared to a Lexicon, there is less"music" in the verb, and is sounds decidedly more collapsed than a Lexicon. Much more "mono" sounding, far less rich. Do a careful listening test, it's not subtle...

Ummm... just how long a tail do you need to add to an Altiverb example before you start getting this fake, metallic texture? I've heard everything up to cathedral lengths, and I have yet to hear anything but pure, clean, clear reverb. What am I missing? Subtle ears?


Shooshie

Do a careful A/B test with a Lexicon. Listening by itself won;t show it, anymore than testing a $500. vocal without holding it against a u87 at the same time. How long? More than a second is noticable to me.

Well, I guess that's my problem: lack-o-lexicon. I don't have one to compare with, and probably never will, since I've been moving away from hardware toward software solutions. But I'll take your word for it. Still, what I hear in Altiverb is exactly what I'm hoping to hear, so for the foreseeable future, it will be my reverb of choice until my imagination starts coming up with things Altiverb won't do.

Sorry, didn't mean to call your experience with the Lexicon into question. It's just that the "metalic reverb" is exactly what I thought I was escaping from when I bought Altiverb. After years of metalic reverbs, Altiverb delivers what to my ears is the first true spatial reconstructions of actual places--which has been my goal all along. It's like the difference between using a Kurzweil 2600 and, say, the Vienna Symphonic Library to produce a violin sound. Maybe Vienna isn't perfect, but it's about as close as you're going to come to it in software. Same with Altiverb. I'll just have to take your word for it that there's still hardware out there that can do more.

Shooshie

[Archer]

We are discussing two different things here and simply find that this type of quick comparison, which presents a lot more of variables in respect to a simple mic test, will show a flawed result. If we are to compare presets, it's not ok to take preset x on one and preset x on another, but a similar sound space/algorhythm has to be chosen.

With convolution reverbs we speak of impulse responses and find it is sensible to check the IR length as well. For IR capture HQ material has come into play, and if there is something "metallic" to the sound, I'd expect that quality to come from the environment in which the impulse was captured.

I'd also expect the PCM 91 to sport parameters setting that help the reverb sound, such as simultaneous control of Mid RT and Low RT and of dynamic spatialization. Here it's all about educated tweaks as opposed to captures.

I hope this helps. If you like, I'd also recommend to check out Waves IR. So you can build yourself a better idea with another convolution reverb.

Hope this helps.

[Shooshie]

I agree with you, Archer. It seems like the comparison here is between a single reverb device (the Lexicon) and (Altiverb) a reverb emulator which can produce the sound of basically any reverb device as well as any hall or space.

This Altiverb Demo gives one an idea of what the software is capable of. There is no hint of digital artifact such as the metallic sound so often heard in cheap reverbs such as eVerb--even in their best configurations. This of course is an example in which the user has gone out of his way to produce the spatial dimension of each instrument, but it nevertheless demonstrates a capability which I think it is safe to say that no hardware device can touch. And if a hardware device CAN do it, Altiverb can emulate it!

Shooshie

[richardein]

In fact that demo, because the reverb is so realistic, highlights the somewhat dead quality of the samples in the Vienna Sample Library (the bass drum, the sustain on the violins). It makes you want to tweak the samples up to the quality of the reverb!

An even better test is to use altiverb on your own live recording - well recorded, of course, with a great mic (about which more in a second), recorded with as little room tone as possible. The sense that the recording actually took place a space is absolutely remarkable.

In re the comparison of reverbs to comparison of mics, one doesn't need to do a direct AB of mics to hear why you pay far more for a U87 than you do for a cheap mic. It is patently obvious, across many different dimensions of sound - frequency response, presence, clarity. OTOH, I've listened pretty closely to the altiverb and I've yet to hear anything remotely like a "metallic" sound in the IR's I've chosen to use. It's possible, certainly, that some IR's exhibit problems - I haven't listened to them all - but that is more a function of the construction of specific IR's than Altiverb technology per se. At least, it is in my experience.

Yes, you have to fiddle with Altiverb. You can't simply attach any space to any recording and have it sound realistic. And you really have to work on balancing all the elements, more perhaps than with a "normal" digital reverb. But once you get everything in place, it can be very, very impressive.

[positivemu]

I loaded in the Altiverb demo to a song I am working on and it is very impressive. I did a great deal of A/B comparison with my Lexicon 91 for both long and short reverbs and I definitely could replace my Lex with the Altiverb. But...

The cpu usage of the Altiverb is huge. Songs which I could work on with lots of processor headroom suddenly have none. And that is with just 1 Altiverb. I had hoped to use at least two per song. BTW - I use the Lex via spdif so there is very little processing power used by it.

I see that there is a button w/the Altiverb to reduce processor consumption but it also introduces huge (1 second!) latency. I currently have a single processor, 1.42 G4 PowerMac running DP 4.6 with a 2408 and I have no need to replace it at this time.

Great thread - thank you!

[Shooshie]

The cpu usage of the Altiverb is huge.

Yes, indeed it is. But you should try Waves IR-1! Makes Altiverb seem positively airborn by comparison. The problem we face with older computer especially is that we have to be ingenious in our work-arounds. Altiverb, then, has to be a final touch, with periodic checks along the way to see if our mix is serving Altiverb in such a way as to allow Altiverb serve the mix. I think mixing with stems is absolutely essential. Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays tell us that's how they mixed Pat's recent big release (I guess it's not THAT recent now) The Way Up. In fact, different stems were mixed on different platforms, and brought together with Digital Performer. Until a computer is created that can handle it all without breaking a sweat, we will have to work with bounced stems, keeping our final output a focus of our imagination until the final mix, when we apply a reverb like Altiverb.

Shooshie

[dpdan]

PCM, I have used just about every Lexicon on earth, PCM70, 80, 90, 480L, and my 200 and we all have a right to our own opinion, but I don't see how you can say that Altiverb sounds metallic. Especially to say it has problems after 1 second is ludicrous. I have my old lexicon 200 that I used up till the time I bought Altiverb 5 about three months ago, and the Lex is now disconnected from my studio audio interface, and it got put back in my sound reinforcement rack. I still love my Lexicon, but I am sorry, there is no Lexicon that sounds as real as Altiverb IMO. I have done the comparison. First off there is no way to do a fair comparison because any of the concert halls, cathedrals and other spaces in Altiverb can all be altered as to RT, room size etc. There will always be a difference between the two, but to say Altiverb is less quality is just crazy. To do a real comparison with regard to the metallic sound would be for you to get Altiverb 5 and pick out your favorite PCM90 settings, sample it, then let Altiverb duplicate your Lexicon.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Lexicon more than any other reverb hardware, but when it comes to reverb, regardless of software or hardware, I will take Altiverb 5 any day of the week.

Peace.
Dan

[positivemu]

For what it's worth - I also downloaded the demo for the Waves IR-1 and IR-1 Light and they are both very impressive convolution reverbs which could easily replace my Lexicon PCM 91 hardware. And importantly....

They are both much better than the Altiverb as regards cpu consumption/demand. They sound just as good as the Altiverb and I can use 2 of them on a song with 30 tracks + 40-60 plug ins with a 1.4Ghz G4 PowerMac w/1.25 gb ram using DP 4.6 without my processor maxxing out. The IR-1 light version at $400 is an excellent buy if you don't mind giving up the additional editing ability the full IR-1 provides.

I'm seriously considering selling the Lex and getting the IR-1.

[qo]

They are both much better than the Altiverb as regards cpu consumption/demand.

Could be true since I guess your mac must not have an Altivec in it. On a G5, Altiverb is much less CPU intensive than IR-1. Ironic, though, that on the G5 one is less concerned about CPU anyway