Innominandum wrote on Mon, 26 April 2004 17:51 |
I was wondering if anybody has checked out this K-Stereo "Ambience Recovery Processor." It doesn't explain what it does. Is it voodoo, or is it a Pentium 2 and Wave's S1 under the hood. With no explanations I am sceptical.
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That's Bob Katz's box. It's not voodoo. It's an arcane series of very short slapback delays to take advantage of what's called Haas effect (IIRC). That means, with slapback short enough you hear the nonperiodic information (like verb and ambience) but periodic information like musical notes blends with the initial signal. Think of it like singing in the shower, only not
If you want a cheap-date version try putting a really really short slapback (like 30 ms or so) on the mix. Or, one I like is going mid/side and putting a really short slapback on the side channel. Unless it's faint it will be unpleasantly obvious, but it does jazz up the ambience a bit. If you put it out-of-phase it'll also act a bit like an elliptical EQ reducing side-channel bass. And of course if you do that, everything will clean right up when you sum to mono, so it's clock-radio friendly...
But anyway, no, Bob's "Ambience Recovery Processor" isn't voodoo, it's a complicated series of delay lines. I believe the point (and the patented bit) is the exact amounts and timings of the delays...
Chris Johnson