Free Spatial Enhancer

I was reading in the latest issue of SOS in the PC section about a great free spatial enhancer.

http://dallashodgson.info...s/OpenAmbienceProject/

Apparently it is as good as the Bob Katz K Stereo enhancer that costs $990. (Bob will be pleased!)

Anyway I have done some testing and so far all good. It is good on individual stereo tracks, supposed to be good on mono tracks and also on full stereo mixes. There does not seem to be a lot of info about how to use it but one can just fiddle around with the interface to work it all out.

Yes Jeff I've been using it now for quite some time, it's quite useful in certain circumstances and when you drop it on material it will work well with you can tell straight away.

I often use a little Haas delay in preference to a more deliberate chorus effect to add a bit of substance to a sub-mix now and then also sometimes combined some mid-side encoding/decoding, channel flipping and phase reversing etc. via routing trickery but having this in one box makes that kind of fooling around a lot simpler.

I don't know how it compares with Bob Katz's plug but I imagine it's pretty close being as it is just a combination of those particular and long known routing techniques.

The controls are very clumsy and crude and it doesn't work too well on everything (just like any other effect) so it's not a magic bullet but a very useful 'discombobulater' to add to your arsenal and at $1000 cheaper than the original it has to be a bargain.

Jeff

The only reason you'd turn the Dry Mix switch off is if you were using it on an Aux Send where you'd control the mix between dry and affected signal yourself. (Handy hint: try it to isolate an aura around the room mics (especially useful if you only have a mono room mic) on a drum kit mix and then add the generated stem from this as an extra weapon to add silly amounts of compression, reverb or eq emphasis to.)  As an insert on a bus this switch would normally be on.

The Ambience Generator turned off gives you a straight mid-side decoding and you can dial in the amount of mid or side you want via the mid/side knob, watch the knob though as the numeric indication is backwards, central is the entire mix as per original, fully anti-clockwise gives you just the mid component and fully clockwise isolates the side component. Deep and wide have no effect if this is off.

For the other effects which are self-explanatory the Ambience generator needs to be turned on. Deep and/or Wide amount are affected by the slider and the relationship between the two is controlled by the mid/side knob Deep being the affected Mid component and Wide the affected Side component.

The eq section as I understand it works like it would on a reverb unit so only the frequency spectrum between high and low bands are affected when the eq section is on (I'd have to check this aspect to be sure though as I haven't used the eq section yet in a practical situation), all 3 bands can be boosted or cut. 

It is very useful on an entire mix where you want to glue everything together to sound authentically in the same space yet don't want the tails introduced by a reverb unit but I tend to find it most effective it on sub-mixes like say a horn or string section and getting the spatial relationships sounding more convincing.

Like I said before there is nothing that it achieves that can't be done with a 15-30ms (haas) delay some mid/side decoding with some creative bus routing and channel flipping/phase reversal but having it in the one package makes it pretty flexible and usable.  I'd imagine it does run close to the Katz plug too because it is just a combination of these long used studio techniques which apply zero degradation to the original signal (unlike reverb) all wrapped up nicely in a single plug.

All in all it's a good plug that can give you a bit of individual edge, here and there, and it's definitely worth the money... 

HTH

You've got the idea Jeff, it tends to work much better when there is some ambience in the material already.

Reverberate I will try, but just now I'm in the middle of a couple of projects and when I try out new gear in those circumstances I tend to be blown away with it so much that I end up including it just for the sake of it.

So for me it's usually best to wait until I've finished what I'm currently doing before I get to grips with some new kit...   I'm sure you know how it goes, getting distracted by new toys mid-project...

Janet I understand how you feel. What we are talking about is a plugin that is free and it is designed to manipulate the natural reverb or ambience that exists in either a track or a mix.
It can basically bring the natural ambience either up or down and that would be a simpler way to describe it. It can do this even after the amount of reverb or ambience is fixed and already there. eg you may have a piano recording that was recorded from a distance and sounds a bit roomy. A plugin like this can bring you a bit closer and lower the amount of room. Likewise if you have a recording that is a bit dry and close with only a tiny amount of room you can pull the dry bit down and pull the room bit up. Sounds a bit like something Merlin would do. (I love Merlin BTW)

Jonbouy I understand you being careful not wanting to try things out like this while in the middle of things. But this is one plugin that you can easily do that with. Firstly it installs fine, wont harm your setup in anyway and it will work for 30 days without paying. The ambiences are really great and you may just find some of them perfect for what you are doing. See whay you think.

Hi Janet If you have got a very dry recording either very close up or a DI signal and there is very little or no ambience, it might be hard to extract a lot of ambience from that. (Using that plugin for example) And also even if you do bring up any ambience it may not be necessarily nice.

I would like to try and see if there is some way you can get a good reverb on your guitar track you mentioned. I see you have got Perfect Space reverb plugin. I would try that over other reverbs. Set up Perfect Space into an FX Buss. Call it Gtr Rev. Load up a room from Real Spaces/Noisevault Studio/Live Room -Omni. Turn off dry signal. Create a send on the gtr track and set it to 0db. This will feed a decent signal level into Perfect Space. This adds a nice ambience to an acoustic instrument. I usually follow Perfect Space with an EQ to trim up the reverb return sound a bit. Make sure the buss fader level is down low so you are only hinting at some nice ambience back there. For larger spaces try loading up some of the bigger rooms. Like stage and concert hall etc. Anyway just a few thoughts.

If it's a midi track then it is more about connecting the right sound to the midi data. I would try to get a hold of the actual midi data itself, import it and route it to something like Dimension Pro setup for either an acoustic guitar sound or electric etc.. Then you will have greater control of the sound itself. That will also effect the quality of the reverb that comes after it.

If its an audio file then drier would be better as you could apply Perfect Space to it and have greter control over the guitar ambience.

You are lucky then. You have a guitar track that would sound more naturally like a guitar. It is good to know what guitar sound they were hearing at the time they recorded the midi data. I would start with a similar sound on playback at your end.

It is just that I have been playing around with convolution reverbs a bit lately and they can sound very nice. For some reason I think they can work well with guitars. The convolution guitar reverb sounds smoother and less twangy for some reason. I have got some high end hardware reverbs in my rack and they are cool too but sometiomes they struggle to sound as good as the convolution reverb does. Other times they seem to work better. It depends on what sounds they applied to.

I bet many people don't use them in their productions but Perfect Space is there to be used and can sound very good. There are also many IR's (impulse responses and free ones at that) available on the net and they can extend the range of ambiences a lot.  Many of the IR's are of very high end reverbs too and sound great!

And there is also the option of spending $50 US on a second convolution reverb like 'Reverberate' from Liquidsonics and have a complete new one at your diosposal and believe me that one also sounds great! BTW convolution reverbs sound great on pianos too and your piano tracks will also benefit bigtime. Try turning off the reverb in your piano plugin and use Perefct Space instead. You will be surprised.

I grabbed it. For the price...can't beat it. I swore off of free plugs but this one got my curiosity up a bit..... anything that compares favorably with a $900 plug.....

The best I can tell with a few tests... it appears to be a light CPU user.... it only increased the CPU number about 3% in an unscientific insertion into a project.....

Now.... to use it on a new project.....