Ableton Forum

Ambience and Glace (sp?) are too CPU intensive.
I know that the PSP 84 and 42's are not reverbs, but they sound good by demo.
I think Live's reverb is a little too CPU intensive. (About 9-10% for First Class).
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Pentium M 1.4MHZ, 1GB RAM

i really like the reverb in TC Native Bundle 3.1
its cpu lite, and sounds as good as Waves TrueVerb, Rverb and the Ableton reverb.

Native Bundle 3.1 has been discontinued, but you can sometimes find a copy 2nd hand. a few stores might still have some remaining stock for $199 USD

Do you think with Live it is better to purchase a $150 plug-in reverb (Masterverb) that does not seem to be as tweekable and sophisticated but only eats 2% CPU or a more complicated reverb (RoomVerb2M2) that is much cooler and sound better but eats up 8-9%?
I could always just use the more complicated Reverb in Sends tracks or on the Master, or I could record the reverbed audio into another track, but that can be limiting and pain in the neck.
Thoughts?

PentiumM 1.4GHZ, 1GB RAM

feyshay - your arguement is one of sound quality vs convenience.

I would argue that getting Great Quality Reverb may sometimes be less convienient (for the reasons you state above) but at least you always have the option of having great reverb if you need it. You can always pick up one of many freeware reverbs that are light on CPU and OK sounding - but then you can still pull out the "big guns" when the project requires it and "convenience" is not an issue.

If you buy a cheaper reverb, you will still have spent money and never have access to high sound quality.

You can often use a cheap reverb as a "place holder" effect until you come to the final mixdown of your track. Then substitute the high quality verb plug-in in it's place and do any necessary printing/rendering/off-line bouncing at that stage when convenience is not the issue.

HTH

Thanks. That's the way I was leaning.

For my .02
If CPU usage is an issue get a hardware reverb (pref lexicon) and watch the meter drop, I recently bought an old Lexicon MPX-1 and can now run many more tracks and other plugs than before and it sounds better than any software plug in I can afford (except maybe Altiverb but that eats my CPU). For comparison I have TC Mega Verb, Reverb One, Waves and Lexiverb as TDM Plugs and a fistful of RTAS and VST Revs but I haven't used one since I got the MPX-1.

...that then assumes at least a hardware mixer (if you're not going effect the whole signal), plus, depending on how you work these days, an interrupted work flow. no argument on the effectiveness of a good hardware effect tho.

however if we're going to to there, why not also talk about DSP stuff like Powercore or UAD. ..plug-in compensation, i know.

I hook the MPX up digital direct to my 882, no mixer required, any 4 in 4 out audio interface would give you enough i/o to run a setup like this, I route my return track to my digital outs and then return to a monitor enabled audio track. Admit its a pain if you're touring, but I always record my rev returns to audio tracks before I mix anyways. For me on my old G4 it's a straight CPU usage issue, even the Ableton reverb on economy uses about 18-25% CPU on my system, no $$$ for an upgrade right now + mixing in TDM rules (no cpu load at all)

drush wrote: however if we're going to to there, why not also talk about DSP stuff like Powercore or UAD. ..plug-in compensation, i know.

true, but if there's any effect that i personally don't mind another 4 to 10ms latency on... its Reverb. There's natural delay in a reverberated effect itself, so A) you won't notice it and B) if you do, you can usually reduce the pre-delay enough to get your 'verb where you want it to be.

Powercore is pricey, a cheap 2nd shuttle pc and/or mac mini via apulsoft's wormhole would be a more effective dsp option. You can network via firewire and latency aint that bad.

personally i cant say enough good things about Wavearts plugins:

Wavearts Masterverb gives me best CPU / sound quality ratio than any other ones I've tried. Simple to use, great presets too

also, i use thier Trackplug for EQ and compression most of the time, same thing there, really good quality, low cpu, really user friendly

for that matter you cant go wrong getting thier whole package - includes both of these plugs plus a great psuedo surround for leads and pads, a mastering suite ...

same story for all of them ... great stuff ... i think i demoed just about every softplug made before i settled on these too ...

.

AdamJay wrote:i really like the reverb in TC Native Bundle 3.1
its cpu lite, and sounds as good as Waves TrueVerb, Rverb and the Ableton reverb.

Native Bundle 3.1 has been discontinued, but you can sometimes find a copy 2nd hand. a few stores might still have some remaining stock for $199 USD

My personal fave as well

AdamJay wrote:..a cheap 2nd shuttle pc and/or mac mini via apulsoft's wormhole would be a more effective dsp option. You can network via firewire and latency aint that bad.

anyone ever used this? trying to imagine how the routing would work real time. wormhole functions as a typical send/return or audio goes over/you effect it/you bring it back to another track?

drush wrote:

AdamJay wrote:..a cheap 2nd shuttle pc and/or mac mini via apulsoft's wormhole would be a more effective dsp option. You can network via firewire and latency aint that bad.

anyone ever used this? trying to imagine how the routing would work real time. wormhole functions as a typical send/return or audio goes over/you effect it/you bring it back to another track?

machinesworking turned me onto it.
i've kinda been toying with it and benchmarking. One thing i've found (much to my surprise) is that just as an FX host, Live 4 is very capable.
on OSX its breaking point is much higher than DP4.5, Rax, DSP Quattro, and Plogue Bidule. Only Logic (pro and express) can host more effects.
so using live on the 2nd machine as your wormhole host is a viable option.

wormhole functions as a plugin to receive audio, and send it back.
as i understand it, open an audio track, insert a wormhole to receive from ip xxx.xxx.xx then put your FX after that wormhole, then insert another to send back that audio to ip xxx.xxx.xx


maybe machinesworking can chime in with realtime latency findings, and/or if i understand that correctly...

Anybody try this. It has been recently upgraded. Very cool. High CPU though.
On a compression note, anybody try NeoDynium from Elemental Audio or MultiDynamics from Wave Arts?

AdamJay wrote: wormhole functions as a plugin to receive audio, and send it back.
as i understand it, open an audio track, insert a wormhole to receive from ip xxx.xxx.xx then put your FX after that wormhole, then insert another to send back that audio to ip xxx.xxx.xx

huh. interesting. can you wormhole more than 1 channel/stereo signal on a single network connection? seems like that would be the solution for real efx work, unless you only deal with the master sends. unless maybe you could bus it somehow. ok, now my head hurts.
but this conversation has got me thinking about better ways to move the efx heavy lifting elsewhere.