Waves Abbey Road Plate Reverb Released

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Neil H

So you didn't watch my video then? (the original first post).

I watched it as well as the others but I mentioned what I did because some people might not have payed attention and missed that part.

[Andy Gone]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Yes. And if you ever come here don't get a speeding ticket...

I drive in EU from time to time, but I'm a law abiding citizen :)

Originally Posted by musicman691

In case anyone watching the various videos on this hasn't caught it this plugin is not true stereo. It really does emulate the real thing by summing the stereo input to mono, running through the plate and spitting it back out as 'stereo' (two channel).

Yes, this is how the EMT 140 units work. Still you have two pickups for left and right, so it generates stereo reverb from a summed input.

[simon.a.billington]

Well it has a crossfeed function. I kind of assumed setting that to 100 is what will get your mono behaviour.

CPU wise it seems to use about 40% of 1 core on my iMac 5k, i7 4.0Ghz system. A bit more than I would have expected but God it sounds good.

It sounds like an actual physical plate complete with non-liniarities living in a room somewhere at Abbey Road Studios. This plate is certainly not meant for live work, but tracking it's certainly worthwhile in the mix.

I can imagine it's most useful in less dense music with less arrangements, such as jazz, traditional r&b, soul, singer/songwriter material. In this situation all those subtleties and non-linearities of the plate would be able to shine through.

Whereas with more dense arrangements it will only find itself hidden towards the back of the mix and hardly worth using in that case. Particularly with such a high overhead. In this instance you can go with another nice sounding plate that isn't as lush and won't have to compete as much. Valhalla Plate would be a better choice in this instance.

[WernerF]

I totally agree with you about the CPU hit. It's pretty extreme to justify it's use in a dense mix. I spent quite a bit of time though working with Valhalla plate comparing it to the Abbey Road plugin. Valhalla ended up, when tweeked properly, sounding pretty darn good. The fact that it's CPU footprint is so much smaller makes it a definite alternative to this plugin. The difference in resource use compared to sound quality is quite disproportionate. It sounds great but so does Valhalla.

[simon.a.billington]

I did spend quite a bit of time trying to make one sound like the other using only what comes with the plugin, because it was also a test in speed of workflow.

Neither sounded bad, and you can kind of get almost in the same ballpark with the sound, but it's seems that the AR Plate is doing so much more under the hood. That would also account for the CPU hit.

It sounds as if there is a preamp emulation in there, so straight off the bat the AR Plate is working with a saturated sound. Listening to them both compared and it seems much more dense and lush compared to anything I can pull of with Valhalla, but there would come a time that such a rich plate emulation may not be as useful in a production.

Listening to it I almost think I hear some sonic similarities with H-Reverb and because of the CPU hit I wouldn't be surprised if Waves was using the FIR engine technology in this thing as well. I am, however, speculating this, since Waves seem content to keep the technology behind this reverb a secret for now. Possibly so as not to tip off other developers.

[mesaone]

I agree with you that this has got a heavy CPU hit and the sound may lend itself more to sparse arrangements than anything else.

I mix a lot of singer-songwriter stuff. So this is a great fit. I compared it to other plug-ins like Phoenix (not as "thick"), CSR Plate (narrower, more grainy), and Reverberate2 using fusion impulses of the Bricasti M7 plate (very close in terms of sound quality).

In the end I broke my promise to myself that I wouldn't buy any more plug-ins. This is a super nice verb IMO and I'm super happy with it, aside from the wasteful UI. I would not be surprised if Waves just tweaked some existing verb algorithm(s) from previous plug-ins and added some nonlin stuff and threw on their standard-issue hackneyed retro UI, but if it sounds good then it is good. I've had the same reaction to their J37, REDD, and Reel ADT plugs - forget the hype for a moment and listen, and they sound very good to me. I think I'm only a few singles short of owning the entire Abbey Road bundle.

[simon.a.billington]

They were at Abbey Roads doing the measuring, testing and modelling. Just instead of goin the usual convolution road or creating an algorithmic reverb, I have a slight impression they made another FIR reverb like H-Reverb. But I have nothing to substantiate my theory.

If you hit the Collapse button, then the UI isn't so wasteful.

I happen to like their approach with the Abbey Road UIs, it helps tie it in with the original vintage gear, and it develops a theme for the Abbey Road series in general. I wouldn't really want to see it on modern plugins though.

[WernerF]

Unfortunately, collapsing the UI really doesn't do much to lower the CPU hit. A rethink about amount of resource use by this plugin in the form of an update would would surely be welcome. The day of the super super fast CPU that would make this situation a non issue is not here yet.

[simon.a.billington]

Ah I see what you are saying.

You can bet that this would be pretty well optimised already. Waves are just using anew kind of tech being their plugins, so you can't really compare its CPU footprint with the likes of analogue or convolution type plugins, because there is something different going on here.

That's why I suspect a Finite Impulse Response maybe at play here, similar to what H-Reverb does because, as I said earlier, it would go along way to explain the CPU hit. If you look it up FIR does require a lot more in the way of computations.

Waves are no slackers, they continue to write low CPU/ low latency plugins, the EMO series is proof of that.

You can see though, that with the Abbey Road series, their priorities are different. It seems they are more than willing to try newer approaches that require more computational cycles but would have been otherwise been impossible to try 5 years ago. It would seem they are upping the ante.

This plate does not sound like any other, there is quite a drastic change in the thickness and quality of it. The downside of it is that it uses a new technique that requires more calculations.

Some people think the extra cycles are painful but worth it, while others are still on the fence and then there are the few that would simple opt for a nice, low CPU plate over the Abbey Road. Valhalla for example.

I do think 40% of 1 core is a bit extreme and do hope they could find a way to drop the usage by 10% or so, but I'm not holding my breath. There would be a really good reason why this plugin consumes extra.

[WernerF]

I hear you. Unfortunately, it still doesn't make the use of this plugin a very likely reality for every day use as computers are simply not fast enough for it yet. There are other applications that require the CPU in a big mix that would result in not enough being left over for the use of this reverb to be a doable reality. One of the beauties of the use of the digital realm is the ability to use numerous reverbs for multiple sources in one mix. The physical limitations of this plugin take us back to the old model of having only a few choices as was the case in most %100 analog studios. Better sound quality is progress, limited use because of resource use can be seen as not. I can only imagine what it's like if you use higher sample rates which, in this case, luckily I don't. It does sound amazing though.