Is it possible to "Un-Verb"?

Just a question, and as I know it may be a really stupid one I feel compelled to ask.
After something has reverb applied to it (added to the sound itself) is it possible to lessen this amount or maybe deaden the reverb a little?
I ask because I have a drum soundfont I use called "drums by slavo" and it is a killer rock drum sample that (for some songs) has just a bit to much reverb on it!
I know how goofy this sounds and dont blame you for laughing but I just had to ask....
Thanks
6strings

It's hard to unring a bell as it is to deverb a track. On the other hand, you might be able to edit the sound font. I' haven't edited a sound font since back in the Vienna days but I'm sure you could find a free eidtor somewhere online. Come to think of it, VSampler might edit sound fonts. Anyway, once you find an editor you can look at the FX and turn them off or tone them down.

Inversing out a reverb as descibed above it theoretically possible, but in practice (at least so far) not so easy to do.

It is, however, possible to do lots to get rid of a fair amount of the character of reverb in a recorded track under the right circumstances.

First it helps consider what reverb actually is, and how it applies to your situation. (your particular situation can be quite difficult since you might be dealing with more than one reverb on different drum parts... but I will describe some ideas to help in general so you can see if they apply).

1. The first part of reverb is the 'early reflections' which depending on the space the track was recorded in are anywhere from a few to 100 milliseconds after the initial sound. It seems to my ears these tend to act in two ways on a recording. They emphesize certain frequencies (especially in a room or booth). And they do things to the stereo field in the most immediate sort of way. The emphasis part is easily compensated for by surgical EQ cuts. If you listen (and perhaps use a spectrum gizmo) you should be able to tell where the room is ringing. Pull these frequencies down gently. This is similar to the sort of filter you would use to eliminate hum if you have ever done that, but MUCH more gentle. The second part is almost impossible to eliminate. You can reduce the stereo field a little, but in some circumstances this can cause phase relationship problems.

2. The 'late reflections' or what is often called the 'tail' of a reverb is the second part. Seems to me this is the problem you are most concerned with. Two tools spring to mind for fixing this. You could use a gate or downward expander to minimise elements of the sound that fall below a certain theshold. Beware of pumping artifacts. If you do too much you might make something sound unnatural. The other tool is something like the SPL Transient designer ($$$$) or the digitalfishphones 'dominion' plugin ( http://digitalfishphones.com ). These tools act as a specialized expander/gate sort of thing to help emphasize the attack and minimise the decay (or vise versa) of a track. Another element to consider is cutting down the stereo portion of the track to some extent thereby emphasizing the mono portions. This can help since reverb lives, in many cases, on the outskirts of the stereo field. Using M/S techniques (kinda deep to get into here) or something like the waves S1 plugin can help with this approach. But if the reverbs are part of a mono sample and in mono, this will do no good at all.

Some combination of these two elements might get you well down the road.

For your specific situation, you may need to take into account the way the soundfont you are using was recorded. If they added giant tails to the snare drum, and not to the other instruments as much it may be beneficial to separate the individual drum parts onto different audio tracks before you even try to eliminate the reverb so you can address each drum (or group) individually. In cases where the whole kit sounds kind of verby the dominion plugin might just do the trick strapped across the whole thing.

If you get stuck, upload a little bit of the drum track by itself and I will see if I can help.

cAPS

Would it be a gross oversimplification just to get the sample in an editor eg. soundforge, and fade out the end of the sample? Just to shorten the overall reverb length (is it called RT60, or is that something different?).

Or would that just sound rubbish?!

Edit: that was a reply to anyone btw...

For the most complex (but most powerful) way to un-verb, you deconvolve. It's the inverse of convolution, which is what SIR does. Deconvolution is complicated, and an order of magnitude more intense to perform computationally than convolution, but you can do some pretty neat things with it. The technology is available right now... you can find it on the SIR site. It's used by the people who are "out there" capturing the impulses of real spaces for the rest of us. The difference is that they use deconvolution the other way, to remove the direct sound. But there's no real reason that you can't use it to remove the reverb. You just need a good sample of the reverb, with as little of the original sound as possible.

I expect that for one percusive shot, you'll probably get as good or better results with the expanding/gating techniques already recommended by the other gents. But if I had a whole load of them to do, or if I had something more sustained, like a trumpet or section for instance, I'd seriously consider the (de)convolution approach.

OK....
So there are some pretty bright people in here.....this could turn out to be very interesting....at least to me that is....click here for wav sample of what I am talking about..
this is the drum soundfont with nothing added to it...It was recorded at 48.000 @ 24bits then of course edited down the bits and ditherd in Soundforge 7.0 to make it 44.100 @ 16.
Take a stab...cant wait to see where this goes....and learn alot as well...
Thanks for all the help
6Strings

this is the drum soundfont with nothing added to it

ALMOST nothing added to it actually ... you didn't mean to add distortion..did you ? It does sound compressed and distorted on the first beats especially - listen to the bass drum when the crash cymbal also playes on those downbeats , its squashed .

i played with this font many years ago.. as far as i remember these drums ARE sampled with the reverb.. and its ALSO NOT VERY CLEAN to begin with.. if that matters.
so for the guys that were first wondering if its just the Creative reverb added ( and Vienna SF2 reverb settings .. sends less/more output to the reverb of their cards ) -
nope.. it was sampled that way .. i can go and check just to be sure .. probably tomorrow .

so - what cAPS,jsaras,RTGraham and losguy said ! great tips there..so try the simple things first - shortening that decay time.. envelope kind of control similar to
a gate/compressor with adjustable attack/release time .. any time based amplitude tweaking actually !! of course - none of these are "perfect" but they
can get you what you want..or pretty close ..

this is getting nuts.
;)

what now ?

WORK DAMMIT !!! ( i really like your "new" avatar ;)

What about the "undo" button?

Okay, not funny, I get it....

I downloaded the drumsample file and played with it, and I have some preliminary results, but I don't have a good way to provide the files for you to hear. Let me know if there's someplace I can post them.

I tried applying the transforms I detailed above, with moderate success. I can definitely remove the reverb, and the snare and hat still sound good, but the crash cymbal has a couple of tinny artifacts and the kick sounds thin and clicky. Now, it's possible that those are just the character of the kick and crash samples without reverb, but it's also possible that the noise reduction algorithm is inducing artifacts. I suspect that it has something to do with removing the entire reverb profile as it applies to all of the combined drums. I think that if I were to work with just the soundfont and remove each drum's individual reverb, it would retain more clarity. (I.E., right now the snare's reverb character is being removed from the kick, which might be taking away some of the kick's punch).

Let me know how I can let you hear the results.

Oh, that is a mess. Lots and lots of verb on it. ;)

This is clearly a job where you would want to edit the soundfont and gate off the ends of each individual sample, as opposed to try to remove the reverb from a mixed down drumtrack...

Still here are a few combinations of expanders, dominion, and a little narrowing of the stereo field.

http://nukeular.com/drumsamples.mp3

2 bar groups

All of them have a slightly narrower stero field.

1. Full wet original sample
2. Only a little expander
3. Only dominion.
4. Expander and dominion, pushed pretty hard
5. Expander and dominion with less agressive settings

I like #3 and #5 overall.

But I would rather edit the samples and not try to get rid of the verb on a mix like this.

You really ought to download dominion and play with it if you haven't already... the third

cAPS

Also.. here is a little present. This is the 'drums by slavo' soundfont with the tails cut off from the kick and snare samples... youll have to do the rest yourself, and I don't guarantee that the soundfont still works. ;) I don't generally use them, so I am not really familiar with them.

http://nukeular.com/unverb.sfArk

(These links will only be up for the duration of this threads useful life...)

cAPS

Hey all,
This sure is cool....I cant believe my "stupid question" is A: not so stupid after all and B: how kind it is of you guys to offer your time and energy for myself and anyone else reading this to learn about this procedure! Too Cool!
Anyway...cAPS I have a better solution I think to the samle sending dilema....you can download it right here...it is the last one at the bottom of the page...tell me if there is anything else you may need or want. Thanks again for your assistance.
RTGraham send it to mark at phrygian dot cnc dot net if that is not an acceptable method of transmission I will offer an ftp space. Thank you.
AL thanks for your help and everyone elses as well.
6Strings
Thanks for the "unverb.sfark" file cAPS I am downloading now...I will let you know what I think....I am certain it will be a great job however.

Bump it up again....have we reached the end of the line?
lol
6strings

well I was asked to submit a sample of the soundfont by a couple people...I did and that was the end of it....its cool though everyone was very very helpful...
Thanks Al....
Later,
6Strings