REVERB

[Echo Ranch]

Hey everyone, reverb junkies.

Just wanted to post some of my thoughts about reverb here. The RRR is my favorite out there. So i felt like it might be an appropriate place to discuss a certain aspect of it's future and the future of stompbox reverb.

being such a reverb fan as i am, i am continually amazed at the lack of options in reverb SOUNDS in stompboxes. there hasn't really seemed to be much forward movement in the types and flavors of reverb available in stompboxes. some companies try to do some cool stuff but mostly it always kinda sounds silly to me. FLERB? ha.

with as much information as we have now and with the technology where it is, i am just amazed that the guy who is designing these chips doesn't think that there are some serious reverb sounds out there that could change the reverb stompbox world.

how old is the technology of the spx90? all the old cool shoegazy reverbs? OLD! a chip that has some of those cool ass and highly desireable (from a reverb junky) sounds and others pre programmed into a useable, known quick patch with minimal need for tweaking seems obvious if not ground breaking.

Everytime a new reverb comes out i think, oh this is gonna be the one. Like the EHX Cathedral. Nope. the reverse reverb sounds silly

And it dawned on me after Ryan mentioned that he had no control over the actual sounds of the reveb itself since it's a chip made by someone else, that this is the bottle neck. I mean if i had that guys job i would be kicking some major ass! Right? Who's with me?

There are sites dedicated to finding out the exact settings of some of the most famous and great sounding guitar players and people like Line 6 are taking advantage of this knowledge in their software for recording. And the idea of modeling is great for some things. Like REVERB. It's all digital anyways. Modeling digital stuff seems like the easiest thing to do because it's not really modeling

If you had a pedal like the RRR that could do 7 crazy reverb sounds with some limited abilities to tweak via knobs i know i would pay a lot for that.

so i guess this really has nothing to do directly with the RRR but it impacts it and is the biggest bottle neck to it moving forward i think. i see a lot of artists still using lots of rack mounted gear. if i was a reverb chip developer i would start busting some of these FLAVORS into the stompbox chips. i would go crazy for them! anyone else?

sorry, just had to get this off my chest (lifts heavy rackmounted reverbs) is it's the wrong place i do sincerely apologize.

Ryan, being a stompbox developer you must have some insight into why there seems to be such a bottle neck in development of different flavors of reverb? I'm sure it must drive you crazy too....

I guess my point is simple. Old technology that is AWESOME but bulky into small modern easy to use format. Seems logical and easy.

[Scruffie]

Well... my view is (incorrect as it may be) is that alot of the work and programming into the DSP chips goes into immitating real life reverb sounds of times of yore, where as echo can sound different in many ways, if Reverb doesn't sound natural, then it's just gunna sound like bad, short, slap back echo or just weird reverb.

The Chip Ryan uses I beleive someone disscected it and it uses 3 delay chips set very short at its heart, how true this is i'm not sure though... it just happens to be a very nice sounding programmed chip though (hopefully getting my RRR this week too )

So once you've spent ages programming your sound, where do you go? You program it to sound like a real life room situation, that's what reverb's all about, what can you add to it that a seperate pedal couldn't? You got your Room & Hall sounds... that sound like Rooms & Halls... then Springs and Plates, like Spring & Plate produced reverb then your decay sets how big that room or hall may be and your mix sets how much reverb that room is producing from your sound.

It would be nice for new idea but what new things can you do with it? Reverb is immitating a life sound so the next step I can only see would be stadium and once you get to that, it may aswell be echo with reverb.

You can only pack so much in a little pedal... even with digital programming, pedal giants are no where near as big as computer & electronic giants too company wise even if they are big so development isn't going to be as big as say a mobile phone company and people want to hear reverb sounds from a reverb pedal so they work on just getting that out of it.

If you fancy taking it further though, speaking of Line 6, they have a DSP development pedal where you can easily program your own effects with a bit of code learning... it'd be fun to see what you came up with, i've always wanted one.

[Echo Ranch]

Cool, yeah i guess in my mind, as wrong as this may be, reverb is not just a room sound emulation. i kinda grew up on the crazy rack reverbs that sound like aliens and beautiful weird things happened. Obviously that has a lot of other elements involved in the sound. flange, delay, etc etc.

i'm just amazed that no one has figured out a way to '"pre-package" some of the great tried and true sounds of these boxes into a small stompbox format.

for example the reverse reverb setting that kevin sheilds is famous for using in the spx90.

i guess that's where the next step would be. digital programming some of these things as modelers and putting into a stompbox format. i hate to bring up line 6 again but kinda like the DL4. it's merits and downfalls can be debated but it kinda changed the pedal/delay market when it came out and the same thing is still for sale many years later.

whatever ryan is doing with the RRR, i love. it's great. i' guess i'm thinking of a whole new idea in reverb pedal that instead of trying to emmulate straight reverb sounds alone, it emmulates the old boxes and the crazy sounds they made.

it's like if you took some of the cool sounds out of the digitech mutli-effects units and actually made them sound good and useable and audiofile quality, as the RRR does for reverb.

i know i'm out of my mind. everyone probably thinks i should just get one of those, but they sound terrible and tiny and bad. it because they short cut the actual audio parts. the programmed stuff (digital part) isn't bad. it's the shite they put around it that fucks up everything.

like if someone could mod a digitech to be audiophile quality and sturdy for touring. haha or even a "dumbed down" version that was easier to use and was designed more by a guitarist than a lab coat.....

[Scruffie]

Well untill the RV-7 I had broke, it was a really great reverb and is by digitech (although the reverb section is by Lexicon) have you looked into them? It is what i'd call a rack in a box and gig worthy to hell, I don't know what went wrong with mine, I suspect the relay as the switching became unreliable and wouldn't turn on and off properly but I think I got a bad one (although I haven't read of any others going bad) from all reports, they're great boxes and solid as rocks.

Pre package deals are relatively new, they started with the BBD MN3011 back in the 80s which can immitate reverb with several short delay lines although I hear it has a unique 'cloudy' quality to it but it wasn't untill 2003ish that these reverb bricks came about to the general public and pedal designer and there's only about 3 or 4 to choose from in the general Stompbox world as far as I know, it's what you do around them mainly what counts but you're limited to what they let you do unless you order specific blocks with alot of cash.

When you say about racks I think the idea was there to fit as many sounds in as possible in a mini computer style way, where as with pedals, the idea is to fit in a really good reverb sound with lots of reverb options but no further because then it becomes a digital multi Fx box which alot of people look down at and are usually a cheaper market, lots of bang for your buck (and as you say they sound bad)

Modding those pedals is nye impossible though as they use really tiny surface mount parts (probably smaller than your standard surface mounts, although I haven't checked inside) which is where Ryan comes in, he uses the main reverb 'engine' and can put a beautiful design around it, with those more main stream pedals, it's no dice

In time, as the pedal market advances though (give it 5 years) I imagine something you are after will come about, advances are happening faster and faster (the pog, it's hard to beleive the Pog II is already here, that was a design of genius, i'm still waiting for a nano pog to come out!) EHX delivers cheap, well built, effects that suit alot of needs and have a great design team behind them, the cathedral, I haven't tried but I assume it was a case of taking the holy grail series further and putting it in a fresh line, Digitech went from cheap crap to the Hardwire line, Line 6.... well okay they haven't changed much but the general thing is, electronics become cheaper as time progresses and companies realise people want new sounds and new levels of reliablity, i'm sure you'll see what you're after soon, even though it might not exist yet.

An intersting idea and thought none the less...

On a side note, I think those weird sounds you used to hear on old rack units was imperfected (if you want to call it that) technology, it was just part of the package as the technology was new would be my assumption, but perhaps it's time they realise that imperfection for one man can be perfection for another.

[Echo Ranch]

oh man, i just realized, coming home from the bar at 2 am, drunk, that my avatar says "uncommitted" underneath. man, has my girlfriend been talking or what? zing!

i just want to be distorted in a hall full of unitelligible reverb forever. oh boy.

just having some fun guys

[Jenesis]

DOnm't badmouth the Cathedral, or I will hunt ypou down.

And shit.

[Echo Ranch]

[Jenesis]

[Ryan]

Cool thread, ER, and I'd say reverb is probably my favourite effect too!

There's never a ton of choices for designers that want to make time based effects, there's a few delay chips we all use, there's a few reverb components we all use, there's a couple bucket brigade delay chips we all use... you're very right in saying there isn't a very wide variety of products available to work with.

I use the Wavefront Semiconductor chips consisting of an ADC, the reverb engine, and a DAC. These chips are nearly 10 years old now and probably took a team of engineers more than a year to create, they're great sounding, accurate and natural. Pete, what you're thinking of is the Belton brick spring reverb simulator, I don't use that in the RRR. Those bricks are used in a few pedals like the Spring Chicken, the Mr. Springy, the Hermida Reverb and I think they sound very cool too.

Ultimately, if I had the time and the training, I'd make custom reverb effects using a current and powerful micro system, just like how the Empress guys made the Super Delay or how Strymon does their line of pedals with the SHARC processor. I don't have a full electronics engineering degree though, I have a 2 year diploma in EET, and my code skills are rudimentary compared to the knowledge you need to write realistic reverb environments. My code skills are more suited to making an LED turn off and on, that kinda thing. *smile*

The big companies like Digitech or Line 6 or EHX or BOSS are able to have a team of software engineers that design their pedals but an outfit like Dr. Scientist just doesn't have that kind of capital to employ guys like that. We also don't have the capital to license reverb algorithms from companies like Lexicon, another great way to get reverb.

(There actually is a pretty neat product available to people who want to learn code in a way that's suited to effects and that's the Spin FV-1 board, you can get the development board for less than 200 bucks and start working on your own custom digital effects.)

So at our scale and with my capabilities, I have to use something already available if I want to make a reverb pedal, which I think is a-ok. There's not a ton of choices but luckily there's not a ton of small builders that want to make a digital reverb pedal. *knocks on wood* The chips that I use have been cloned by a company called Cool Audio, you can get their system which works very similarly to my Wavefront system but has different patches. Josh with Malekko and I have chatted about this chip and last I knew he was planning on making a pedal with it.

I think entry level digital design is just sort of a small niche market... a digital designer would generally have the training to write his own reverb effects or be part of a larger organization that is able to take on a project like that, not be a small one or two person operation, and that's why you don't see a lot of pre-packaged reverb solutions. It's not a big profitable market, it's a small specialty niche. Even with Wavefront, they haven't made a new product in years.. their website hasn't changed in years... they've been saying they're even discontinuing the converters I use for 2 years now. They're the inventor and leader of the pre-packaged reverb system industry and they don't even care about it!

It's a similar situation with delays... probably 75% of the currently available 'analog-sounding' delay pedals are built around the PT2399... there just isn't very many other options. The cool thing is, like Pete mentioned, a designer has a lot of control over how these chips are used, what goes into them and what's done with what comes out of them, and that's why a customer can try half a dozen different delay pedals all using the PT2399 and they'll all have their own character. Same with the Belton bricks, there's a lot of room for a designer to put his/her stamp on the circuit and make the circuit their own.

Interesting topic for sure though. I love the Wavefront chips I use and have always enjoyed working with them and listening to them but on the other hand it's sort of always felt like the Reverberator is very out of our control... they can stop making the chips any time, stop selling them direct to small customers like me at any time, stop making the supporting components like the converters at any time... those issues are always causing me a bit of worry.

[Echo Ranch]

Very interesting read Ryan. Explains a lot about the current state of reverb stompboxes. Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.

It's must be a pretty niche market if were still using 10 yr old technolgy but like i said before, some of the best sounding stuff is still old. i love me some yamaha spx90 and alesis quadraverb.

maybe one day that stuff will be available in a small stompbox type pedal that doesn't feel and sound like i bought it at the .99 cent store. haha.

for the time being i'm gonna be burying a rack mount spx under my pedals just for some reverse reverb action. what a hassle