As a few people keep asking me about this and reverbs are the FoTM I thought I ought to give bit of an update and also get some thoughts before we plough ahead. Firstly, apologies for letting this one run without any clarification but I didn't want to give too much away in the last few months because I didn't want to get folk's hopes up and then disappoint. We have had some challenges.
Anyway for those who are unaware Michael of CDsoundmaster and I have been permitted to sample this crazy good Reverb by the kind people at Bricasti. I will be sampling and Michael will be editing. If you don't know how good it is you ought to know that some have called it one of the best reverberators out there. I invested in serial number 44 a few years ago and it has been updated to version 2 of the software so all is up to date. Casey has kindly offered his expertise and know-how and between myself and Michael we have had much head scratching as we attempt to bring this library to the Nebula world. Many, many months of failed attempts and many hurdles to overcome but all seems promising now.
In case you are unaware it will be provided for free. Yes for free - Michael and I cannot or anyone else for that matter cannot sell it. The goal is of hopefully allowing for the world of Nebula to expand and have a wider user base through the accessibility of folk to sounds as incredible as the Bricasti.
I will be honest, it has been the single most frustrating project that I have attempted to date and many times I have wondered if it were even do-able to sample this beast to a satisfactory standard. It will never be 'exactly' the same but today saw a breakthrough that gets us very, very close and instead of answering questions posed in another thread, I thought that I would start a new post as there are few things to share going forward and hopefully this can be the anchor thread from here on in.
So - good news
- I have managed to find a very involved workflow that gets us almost there with the Bricasti M7. I would say 70 % to 90 % of the hardware is retained. It's just the last few percentage points that the most extremely fussy of users would complain about and if you didn't have the hardware with you in the room to compare it to it probably wouldn't bother you. Modulation had to be turned off so sorry - no lush chorusy tails. The stereo image is not as accurate as I would hope but I may have a solution for that.The hardware envelopes the sound more and smothers the audio in a more realistic way. But that is just me picking differences. A tweak here and there and we may be in business with total authenticity. Having said that we hope this will add immense value to the world of Nebula even with all it's tiny issues. I will now begin final sampling in the coming weeks as I get breaks in my schedule and will be passing the files on to Michael for processing and packaging and I believe that the reasoning is that it will then be incorporated into the Acustica Audio library - I think.
. I could be corrected on that front.Please note that the Bricasti is intended to be used fully wet in your effects bin as a send effect. That is the advice for the hardware so I would imagine that the same goes for the Nebula version when things start to roll. Assuming all seems in order and there are not too many resamplings required then it will be up to the 'bosses' to decide on a release schedule after Michael has edited but I will begin passing items across the pond from now on through to the end of the year.
So how can you help - well give us feedback here - mainly for Michael as he is editing. At this point in time I have already gathered that some folks would like to have it work with all versions of Nebula including free. Is that agreed - some felt that it would help the community for new customers to have an incentive to invest in the platform - others felt free is good to get as wide a user base as possible - please discuss - suggestions.
Nebula server comes into its own with this coming package as it would really be desirable to run the Bricasti on anothr machine. My advice - get started setting up and practicing with Nebula server if you haven't got it. You will be much less frustrated as this is such a nice reverb you may wish to use it all over the place with little cpu penalty.
Now from a sampling point of view - I need some suggestions.
Sample rates - 96 khz is what we are sampling it at and we are doing it all digital. 44.1 khz means more work but we appreciate many work at this sample rate.I will not be sampling at 44.1 khz so if folk want 44.1 khz then it will have to be provided in post production. In my experience Michael's libraries work just fine even though many are only 96 khz. Put it this way - 96 khz only is simpler with over 100 presets to sample.
Ummmmmm - the most important - distribution. The library will be huge when done. A 3 second plate is 280 MB. That is 30 dynamic layers. We can lower the layers for efficency. Would people want smaller file sizes or quality? What we would need is a fast reliable always up online service that doesn't cap users if this gets the kind of traffic we imagine it might. Suggestions.
Are there any talented skins producers who can make a Bricasti themed skin?
Length of tails? There are the default tail lengths. Obviously the machine can go from short tails to a ridiculous 30 seconds. What lengths would folk desire to have as standard for most presets - the defaults or perhaps one on either side of the defaults? One longer and one shorter? This is especially important for example for the halls and plates as they have the most spread.
Lastly - and I hope that this is obvious without me having to say this and that you can have grace to understand - this won't happen soon if we aren't supported in what we do in our own projects that does make this viable. As we cannot charge for our time it is up to the community to help us bring this to fruition.
I have a couple of choice beta testers to help along the way with getting feedback. If there are any other experienced beta testers who would like to be able to help along the journey do get in touch with Michael or myself soon.
Apart from that - have a great year and hopefully stuff will begin to roll in weeks rather than months.
Take care
H
