Overloud BREVERB - User Manual – US
reverberation plugin
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Overloud BREVERB - User Manual – US
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Schematics 4
3. Behind the Curtain 5
4. BREVERB Graphic Interface 7
4.1.The Sound Chain.................................................................................................................... 8
4.2.The Knob Section................................................................................................................... 9
4.3.The Advanced Fader Panel.................................................................................................. 10
4.4.The Central Menu and its Commands.................................................................................. 11
5. Parameters 15
5.1.Master................................................................................................................................... 15
5.2.Master EQ............................................................................................................................. 16
5.3.Gate...................................................................................................................................... 17
5.4.Hall Reverb........................................................................................................................... 18
5.5.Room Reverb........................................................................................................................ 20
5.6.Plate Reverb......................................................................................................................... 21
5.7.Inverse Reverb..................................................................................................................... 23
5.8.MIDI Implementation............................................................................................................. 24
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Overloud BREVERB - User Manual – US
1. Introduction
BREVERB, the newborn in Overloud’s family, is one of the most complete high-end-studio-quality
reverbs ever seen. It offers a suite of 4 high-quality reverb algorithms:
Hall
Room
Plate
Inverse
All are specifically designed to give the sound of an acclaimed high-quality outboard reverb unit.
BREVERB offers high-quality musical reverb processing with a flexibility previously available only
in extremely expensive hardware reverbs. BREVERB is also engineered to achieve the highest
levels of musicality helping you to place it perfectly in any mix.
Unlike convolution reverbs (a reverb that reproduces the real impulse response of a real hall)
which recently have gained a lot of popularity, BREVERB allows you to vary the nature of
reverberation through several parameters, giving you the flexibility and real-time feedback that has
always been a prerogative of the most famous studio digital reverbs.
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Overloud BREVERB - User Manual – US
2. Schematics
The scheme above depicts BREVERB's signal chain.
the Input signal is split in two: the Dry portion which is the Input sound without any change
whatsoever, and the Wet portion which will carry the Input sound processed by the Reverb module,
followed by the EQ and Gate sections. At the far right, at the end of the processing, the Output
section (the '+' in the scheme) will mix the Dry and the Wet channels in order to perfectly set the
sound levels.
If we look at the lower part of the scheme and follow the signal chain we'll meet these modules:
Reverberation Unit: this is the core of BREVERB; it provides the main processing for the entire
unit. You can choose between four different reverberation algorithms which heavily modify the
internal structure of this module as you can see from the different set of parameters at your
disposal for each algorithm. For an in-depth description of the concepts behind reverberation
algorithms and their functionality please head to the next chapter.
EQ: this EQ Unit is a two-band fully parametric equalizer. Each band is allowed to span the entire
audio spectrum and can be operated with the usual set of three parameters: Gain (dB),
Frequency (Hz) and Q factor (%). While the first and the second parameters will set the
amount and frequency of the process, the Q factor is a little more complex: in a common
situation it will set the width of the EQ's bell-shaped curve, but at the extreme settings it will
turn the EQ into a second order Shelf EQ (high for band 1 or low for band 2) or a filter (a
high-pass for band 1 and a low-pass filter for band 2)!
Gate: the Gate is a sophisticated switch that lets you mute the wet sound in different fashions,
according to its parameters. As with any dynamic processing process it has gain-detection
mechanism which analyses the dry sound level. The Gate can be very effective in getting
special effects or to clean up the sound a bit in situations where the tail of the reverb tends to
muddy-up the mix. There are several parameters to control its action: Threshold (dB), Attack
(Sec), Release (Sec), Hold (Sec), Shape (Linear or Sigma) and Slope (%). The Threshold
parameter sets the limit (expressed in dB) under which the gate will close. There is an
automatic “re-open” threshold that is set by BREVERB's engine after analysing the signal
characteristics. The Attack sets the time needed by the gate to switch from closed to open,
while the Release parameter sets the amount of time it takes for the Gate to close. The Hold
parameter adds an amount of time in which Gate remains open even if the signal level drops
below the Threshold. The Shape parameter controls the shape of the attenuation curve: you
can choose between Linear and Sigma shapes. If the Shape parameter is set to Sigma, the
Slope parameter will control the exact shape of the 'S': higher values mean a steeper curve.
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Overloud BREVERB - User Manual – US
3. Behind the Curtain
Before we jump to the detailed description of the programs and parameters, let’s take a look at the
philosophy laying behind BREVERB's reverberation algorithms.
BREVERB is the result of a great deal of research into acoustics and reverberation. It will produce
sound of two types: ambience and effect sounds.
Ambience is the use of reverberation or reflected sound energy to give recorded music a sense of
depth equivalent to the one naturally present when recording a performance in a real acoustic
location. Ideally, ambience imparts warmth, spaciousness and depth to a performance without
colouring the direct sound at all.
Recent research has shown that this phenomenon depends most critically on the shape of the
initial reverberation build-up and decay. Ambience is perceived and has a benefit while the music
is running, but once the reverberation has decayed about 15 dB from it's start level it is no longer
audible in the presence of the direct sound. So the time it takes for the sound to build-up and
decay 15 dB determines the perceived reverb time, regardless of what the decay time to -60 dB
(commonly referred to as RT60, a way to measure reverb time of real and virtual acoustic spaces)
is. Some very good halls for recording have a rather uneven initial build-up and decay that gives a
much longer effective reverb time than their RT60 reverb time might suggest.
It has become common practice to use predelay in an attempt to emulate the sound of these halls,
but the result always sounds unnatural. In fact if we look carefully into echograms of real halls we
can see that the sound builds-up gradually, while the use of predelay imparts a sharp attack to the
reverb making it sound completely different.
BREVERB can manipulate the build-up and decay of the initial part of the reverberation envelope
in order to obtain a sound which is very natural but at the same time very adjustable. The primary
controls allowing you to modify this initial part of the envelope are SHAPE, SPREAD and SIZE.
While SHAPE controls the shape of the reverberation envelope, SPREAD and SIZE set the time
over which this shape is active. In other words, SIZE acts as a master controls for the apparent
size of the space being created by BREVERB: once it is set, SPREAD and SHAPE are used to
adjust the duration and shape of the initial reverb envelope, which together provide the main sonic
impression of a room's size.
When SHAPE is at minimum, the initial part of the reverberation envelope builds-up very quickly to
a maximum amplitude and then dies away quickly at a smooth rate: this envelope is characteristic
of small reverberation chambers and plates and the sound created is ineffective in order to create
ambience. Reducing the initial sharp attack by raising the SHAPE control causes the reverb to
build more slowly and to sustain briefly before it dies away. The more the initial attack is reduced,
the slower the envelope builds-up and the longer the sound sustains. When the SHAPE control is
raised at more or less a quarter of its maximum value, SPREAD has very little or no effect at all.
Once that limit is surpassed SPREAD can affect the length of both the buildup and the sustain. By
raising the SHAPE value even further the buildup and the sustain remain similar while a secondary
sustain shows up at a lower level than the first one: this simulates a very diffused reflection of the
back wall of a hall, and it is very effective in creating a sense of size and space. This reflection
mode reaches an optimal loudness at SHAPE values higher than half way though. It is important to
note that none of these shape effects are clearly audible unless TIME is set short enough.
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