Lexi PCM91

[Empty Planet]

Today's my birthday!  Yeah, I know, who cares, but this time it impacts y'all too!  My sister and bro-in-law are having me over for dinner and the bro has a two lovely Lexi 91s sitting in his rack.  So I'm going to take the opportunity to run some impulses.  

I have Acoustic Mirror and the 24 second sweep files and am pretty good at generating impulses, but I'm open to suggestions.  I've heard of using a single-sample spike but I'm unfamiliar with that process, and I'm not sure AM will recognize anything other than the sweep.  

I'm going to try get it patched so it's just out of Layla into the Lexi and back into Layla.  Cubase will have to be the host for the evening's festivities.  My bro also has an Eventide Harmonizer but I think it's on the fritz.  Hopefully I should return with some nice 91s for everyone sometime next week.  Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.  

Cheers, all.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Go for deconv.exe and provided test tones! http://www.voxengo.com/deconvolver/

[Empty Planet]

I was going to moan that I don't have much extra cash at the moment -- and I don't -- but as the admission price to Aleksey's Ragtime Convolving Band is only 25 bucks I went ahead and bought a ticket -- based on cAPSLOCK's recommendation as well.   You're on the line with this too, cAPS!     So Aleksey, I was going to bitch at you for spamming on the board, but now you have another customer.

Now are you really going to ship it to me as the pay site suggests, or can I d/l a key from your site?  Just want to know if I can become conversant with this baby over the course of this weekend.

Cheers.

[cAPSLOCK]

You cam make some very pretty impulses with Impulse Modeler.  I am assuming that is what you bought.

And you can play with it before you get the key which for me was via email.

It is pretty complicated and was a bit difficult for me to learn at first but I got the hang of it.

Here is a quick and dirty overview to get you started:

You need 2 things to get an impulse started (three really).

1.  Receptor(s)
2.  Emitter(s)
3.  Walls for reflection.

Aleksey gave good instruction on how to place points to form walls, and emitters and the like,  

A receptor is just a segment of wall that has been set to recieve audio in its properties (double click on it).  This is basically your microphone.

Beyond this there are settings for materials to make your walls from,  also settings for the emitters and receptors make a difference... the scale of your 'room, and many global settings that can change the character of your impulse dramatically.

Here are some tricks I do as well...

I fool the modeler into making ER separate from the room by setting up a tiny little room in the corner (fully enclosed and apart from the MAIN room) with two recieving walls and an emitter in it...  then I play with the settings to get the impulse from that room to be ER like.

See that here:



I use Aleksey's CurveEQ (and no I am not a paid endorsee haha... I bought that and IM with my hard earned money) on the impulses to add other effects that can sound cool...  Sometimes matching an EQ curve from a reverb impulse I particularly like.  You could also do this with any EQ... especially freefilter I guess.

It's pretty easy to make a gated verb out of one of the impulses after rendering if you don't want to go to the trouble of trying to design a gate.

Something I havent tried yet but seems fun conceptually is to make several rooms in the editor and set them all up independantly to see what kinds of complex reverb sounds I can make by combining their outputs.  An extension of the separate ER room I guess...

I would love to add any cool impulses you guys come up with to the collection!

cAPS

[Empty Planet]

Ack!  I went to Aleksey's site looking to get something to snatch impulses with, not roll my own!  It was the only thing which discussed convolving so I thought that must be it.  DOH!  The link he first gave me was probably a freebie!  DOH!  DOH!  DOH!  

 

Deconv.exe.  So I have to reboot and run DOS to work this thing?  Oyvey.  Will I get a menu if I type a ? like those old DOS apps?

Oy, what dope.    

Anyway, thanks very much for the involved description, cAPS, it actually does sound like fun in a geeky sort of way.

Cheers.

[cAPSLOCK]

Very geeky, yes.  And fun.

I wonder if you can cancel your order for the IM?

As to deconv.exe.  All you gotta do to run it is open a command box (Start-> Run -> command.exe (or cmd.exe in XP))

All you gotta do to make the thing work is:

deconv.exe recorded_file.wav test_tone.wav output_file.wav

Nothing to it really.  Does what its sposed to.

cAPS

[Empty Planet]

Ah, thanks, but I did figure it out.  Actually the Run thing didn't work, but I made a little bat file (haven't done that in ten years!     ) and that does the trick.

Do you know about Monster Rack?

http://monster.harmony-central.com/mason/login.html

You do a minimal sign up and they let you upload a few seconds of some sound and then it's automatically pumped through a preset in one of the big boys boxes -- KSP8, PCM 91, etc. -- and then it's returned to you processed.

So I had the bright idea of uploading an impulse file -- genius, no?  Well actually...NO.  It undoable from the start because they don't return a wav file to you, they return an MP3.  

It's just so you can get a flavor of the presets.  Well I've been having fun with the thing anyway, making crappy MP3 impulses of the fabulous KSP8.  Talk about a GEEK.  It's been fun, though.  

Now I need to put on my dancin' shoes and go into town.....      

Cheers.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

cAPS, Impulse Modeler actually creates early reflections, so there's no need in those separate small rooms like you are doing. Anyways, your approach is interesting.

BTW, if you know who Gary Garritan is, they bought two IMs. IM is usable for classical music too.

[cAPSLOCK]

I saw that IM created ER but I was wanting to do some wacky tweaking of various spaces with extra control over the early portion of the sound.

Seems to me that IM is inclined to make really nice sounding realistic spaces out of the box so to speak... but I am at least interested in some of the things it can do that are more artificial.

It really is a col tool.  And I have been able to make impulses with it that I think rival just about any piece of hardware out there.

cAPS

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Hehehe, that monster harmony central ROX!!!

I was able to make some impulses that sound 100% as original (they even LOOK similar): you can try three impulses I have made with it: http://www.voxengo.com/_harmony.rar

Deconv.exe and 6sec sine sweeps were used. Chopped leading 200 ms after deconvolving, added fades, converted to 16 bits and impulses were ready.

[cAPSLOCK]

Man Aleksey, I ran some myself.. they are not turning out half bad.  I wonder what we are losing with the mp3 conversion.

I am tempted to just impulse all the reverbs up there and archive them.  But I don;t want to lose significant quality.

Also there seems to be an emphesis on the left channel on many of these processed files.  I wonder if they have something set up wrong there at the lab?

cAPS

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I guess, what is lost with mp3 is mainly signal-to-noise ratio. But better listen to the result yourself. I guess it is not that bad (for impulses).

Also, PCM91 at least returns some DC offset, but it is not that huge.