Ambience High Quality Reverb Author : Magnus Jonsson E-mail : magnus@smartelectronix.com Web : http://www.smartelectronix.com/~magnus/ Ambience is donationware. This means that you are kindly asked to send some money to me if you like it or make any profit using it. Send as much as you think it is worth and you can afford. There is -lots- of work behind Ambience, and much of that work has not been fun at all, so this would really be very appreciated. Even a small donation would mean a lot. You can donate money on the home page via paypal. You can also contact me via email if you cannot use paypal for some reason. The demo version of Ambience will show a nag screen every time you open the editor, but is fully functional otherwise. After I have received your donation, I will send back a version that is without nag screen. And a big thank you of course :-) --------------------------------------- INSTALLATION Move Ambience.dll to your VST plugins folder. --------------------------------------- MINI TUTORIAL First check out the presets! See QUALITY below if it takes too much CPU on your machine. The main knobs and sliders you need to know are: - DRY Gain of direct (unprocessed) sound. To use Ambience as a send effect, set this to -inf. - WET Gain of processed sound. - TIME The time it takes for the reverb echoes to die out. - SIZE The size of the room. Note that long reverb time and small room size don't mix well. For natural sounds, a small room size should be acoompanied by a short reverb time, and vice verse. - PREDELAY Amount of delay between the direct sound and the onset of the first echoes. - WIDTH All the way from mono (0%) to wide stereo (100%). Probably you will want this one at 100% all the time. - QUALITY This knob allows you to trade off reverb quality for CPU usage. High quality <=> high cpu usage. You can make fun effects if you set it very low (try it!). - VARIATION This button creates a new variant of the same room. If there's some annoying echo/ringing in the reverb that bugs you, hit this button a few times until you find a variation that you like. If it still sounds bad to you, try raising the QUALITY too. More advanced controls: The best way to learn these is probably by trying them out and experimenting yourself, but i will give some hints. - The DAMPING section This affects how the reverb's character develops over time as it decays. Use it to control the decay time of bass and treble. In normal rooms, bass and especially treble decay quicker than the mid range. - The EQ section This is like putting a big equalizer on the reverb. And in fact it is :) It's mostly useful for cutting away bass that can otherwise make the reverb sound muddy. - The GATING section If you want natural reverb, abandon this section at once! Otherwise if you are in an experimental mood, you may use this one to make the reverb follow the dynamics of the audio input. Can be useful if you want to preserve rhythm while still having a very wet reverb. - HOLD When you press this, the reverb will freeze at it's current sound, holding it indefinitely until you press it again. Great if you want to create a lush pad from a plucked string or a hihat or whatever you can imagine. Try combining with the gater. - DIFFUSION This knob has a very subtle effect on the sound. It is especially noticable with small room sizes. --------------------------------------- THANKS TO - these people for helping me make Ambience, Gfx dsgn: Sean Evans - http://www.littlekittenspacegirl.com/ Gfx code: Bram de Jong - http://www.smartelectronix.com/~bram/ Mac port: Marc Poirier - http://www.smartelectronix.com/~destroyfx/ - all beta testers, - everyone who has sent presets and donations, - and my wonderful girlfriend :-) --------------------------------------- I hope you will like Ambience! If you find a bug, please let me know, and I'll try to fix it asap. Best wishes - Magnus Legal: Ambience demo is free for inclusion in any packages that are not distributed for profit. In all other cases, for example if you want to include Ambience on a cover CD, contact me.
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