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Mike Storey and His Plate Reverb (Video)
"Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is produced," says Wikipedia. More often than not, in studio recordings reverb is added digitally; virtually every FOSS or proprietary sound-editing program has a built-in reverb utility. But what if you're the sort of purist who prefers the analog sound of vinyl records to the digital sound of MP3s or CDs? What if you're the kind of musician who records at the original Sun Studio in Memphis to get that original rock and roll sound? That may be overly picky for most musicians, but there are some who would rather sound like Johnny Cash than Flavor Flav, and they're the ones who are going to insist on real analog reverb instead of twiddling a setting in Audacity. There are many types of analog reverbs, of course. One of the purest types, preferred by many audio purists, is the adjustable plate reverb, and Jim Cunnigham's Ecoplate is considered by many to be the best plate reverb ever -- which brings us to Mike Storey, who wanted an Ecoplate-type plate reverb so badly that he spent eight months building one. He'll run your audio files through it for a (highly negotiable) fee, and maybe give you a bit of advice if you want to build your own, although his biggest piece of advice for you (at the end of the video) to think long and hard before you become a home-brew reverberator, with or without advice and components from Jim Cunningham.
I've been a recording engineer for many decades. The notion that plate reverbs are "the purest type" is laughable. Typical internet product-mojo hogwash.
Plate reverbs have a very distinct sound, as do spring reverbs. If a plate reverb sound is desired for a project, it's perfectly reasonable for a 'purist" to prefer a REAL plate to a digitally modeled plate. No issue with that.
Digital (DSP) acoustic reverb modeling has been in use since the 80's with Yamaha's and Lexicon's units paving the way. Its emulation of real acoustic environments sounded astonishing back then, and 25 years later it sounds even more astonishing. Purist should probably consider how they are using reverb, not so much how it is generated. But if you have more money than brains, fill your boots.
somewhere along the lines of history, they added the 'reverb' knob to amps - and from there, people seemed to think any form of DECAY is REVERB.
... the propagation of incorrect use (eg, hijacking) of the term REVERB continues.
it is not, although many use it as slang. but most do not appear to understand the true definition of REVERB and thus REVERBERANT SOUND-FIELD, and the volume requirements required to support such energy flows.
a reverberant sound-field is one where the energy flows are statistically equal and probable in every direction. one cannot resolve an indirect specular reflection's gain, time arrival (with respect to the direct signal), and vector (direction). the energy is "well-mixed".
and the bounded acoustical space's volume required to support such a reverberant sound-field at a given frequency is dictated by Dr. Manfred Schroeders work in this field - and also his FsubL equation.
without the existence of a statistically "random-incidence" "diffuse-field", you do not have "reverb".
people seem to imply any form of signal decay or acoustical decay of a bounded space as being "reverb". this is entirely incorrect. in small acoustical spaces that lack the volume to support a reverberant sound-field at a given frequency, we instead of focused specular reflections and modal issues - all local areas of variable pressure with respect to the ambient noise floor. what reverberation that DOES exist is above our hearing range and below the ambient noise floor. this is also why you do not have a critical-distance (Dc) of which the reverberant sound-field becomes louder in gain than the direct signal. this is also why RTxx (RT60) calculations and Sabine's equations are entirely irrelevant unless one is within a Large Acoustical Space.
and now with Plate Reverbs or any other "FX" knob that applies a form of decay to a signal
http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/home-audio-acoustics/12027-appropriate-replacement-rt60s-sas.html
They have an edit button, it's called preview. /. doesn't need an after submit post button, it needs reader who read the preview.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For free, you can send your sounds into a grain silo in Quebec for reverberation: http://www.silophone.net/ Unfortunately, this project is so old it uses RealAudio.