Is there a detailed description for the new reverbs somewhere?

[revolver1010]

So the new Helix reverbs: Glitz, Ganymede, Searchlights, Plateaux... is there some information sheet out there somewhere that lists details or differences between them? I mean, anyone can discern the difference between room, hall, plate, etc but how do we know with those names? And yes I can hear the difference but it would be nice to have some information on the verbs. Looked online but couldn't really find anything.

 

Rev.

[loopinit]

Glitz=Big Sky Bloom
Ganymede=RV6 Modulated 
Searchlights=Big Sky Cloud

Double Tank=Big Sky Plate Mod

Plateaux=Big Sky Shimmer

[surfsup1955]

Thanks for answering a great question..

[kylotan]

And for those of us who don't own a Big Sky (or an RV6) - can anyone describe the differences?

 

(To be honest, I'd appreciate much more information about the models and effects in general. There are so many parameters to play with that it takes too long to learn the whole unit by experimentation.)

[revans]

Glitz = Strymon Big Sky Bloom

In the ‘90s, more diffusion blocks were added to reverbs to ‘smooth out’ the sound. A side effect of this was the tendency of the reverbs to have a slowly building envelope that ‘bloomed’, resulting in big ambient reverbs that sit nicely with the dry signal even at high Mix levels. The Bloom reverb features a ‘bloom generating’ section that feeds into a traditional reverb ‘tank’, and adds a unique Feedback parameter that expands the possibilities exponentially.

Ganymede = BOSS RV6 Modulate

This reverb adds modulation to hall reverb, producing extremely good-feeling reverberation.

Searchlights = Strymon Big Sky Cloud

A gorgeously big, ambient reverb that draws from techniques developed in the late ’70s. Using processing power not dreamed of in those days, the Cloud reverb machine obscures the distinction between reality and fantasy.

 

Double Tank = Strymon Big Sky Plate

The Plate machine is a rich, fast-building reverb that creates depth without early reflection cues to a specific environment. The Tone knob and Low End parameter are simple but powerful frequency shaping tools.

 

Plateaux = Strymon Big Sky Shimmer

Two tunable voices add pitch-shifted tones to the reverberated signal, for resplendent, unearthly ambience. The voices are carefully created from the reverberated signal itself to generate maximum radiance and beauty. The Amount and Mode parameters allow for a range of shimmer effects from laid-back and subtle to full-blown majestic splendor.

[cruisinon2]

Wow...BS overload, I nearly passed out. ;) 

 

Descriptions are lovely and all, but beyond providing reading material while I'm sitting on the can, what am I supposed to glean from any of that nonsense? At the end of the day, " resplendent, unearthly ambience" and "majestic splendor" that "obscures the distinction between reality and fantasy" conveys what, exactly? Flowery vocabulary contributes nothing to any genuine understanding of what a given reverb (or anything else, for that matter) will actually sound like, to say nothing of whether or not it will be pleasing to the ear, or useful for one's needs...only LISTENING to it will determine that. 

 

Using that many words to say nothing is worthy of a wine enthusiast blog...I can read about the "woody, complex, rounded, and velvety nose" of Chateaux Rain Gutter all day long...but if I want to know what it tastes like,  I'll  actually have to buy a bottle and take a swig.

[silverhead]

... or buy a boxed wine, which makes it a cardboardeaux, and that must be good.

[duncann]

Instead of using flowery vocabulary, one could explicitly state the mathematical algorithms used, or convert the algorithms into a technical word salad. But that would likely be more meaningless than flowery vocabulary, for most everybody. So other than listening, flowery vocabulary would be the next best thing, as imperfect as that may be. But if one were to read the flowery vocabulary first, and then listen, that vocabulary might at least make some sense. Or listen first, then read the elaborate description. It seems like trying to describe exotic reverbs is along the same lines as trying to describe an emotion, or trying to describe a song, or what a particular food might taste like. Describing things like this might give one a subtle, subjective taste of the substance, but until one tries it, it would remain just that.

 

[cruisinon2]

3 minutes ago, duncann said:

It seems like trying to describe exotic reverbs is along the same lines as trying to describe an emotion, or trying to describe a song, or what a particular food might taste like. Describing things like this might give one a subtle, subjective taste of the substance, but until one tries it, it would remain just that.

 

 

Precisely... in other words, it's pointless. 

[jbuhajla]

Tastes like chicken...

[BBD_123]

1 hour ago, silverhead said:

... or buy a boxed wine, which makes it a cardboardeaux, and that must be good.

 

Arf, arf.

 

Yes, of course writing about reverbs is like dancing about architecture. But I think revans was only quoting the florid vapidities from the Strymon website.

[cruisinon2]

6 minutes ago, line6bbd said:

... the florid vapidities from the Strymon website.

 

Oh, I'm writing that one down... lmao. ;)

[kylotan]

It's not impossible to describe reverbs in a useful way. Valhalla are perfectly capable of doing it: https://valhalladsp.com/shop/reverb/valhalla-room/

 

[brue58ski]

3 hours ago, cruisinon2 said:

Wow...BS overload, I nearly passed out. ;) 

 

Descriptions are lovely and all, but beyond providing reading material while I'm sitting on the can, what am I supposed to glean from any of that nonsense? At the end of the day, " resplendent, unearthly ambience" and "majestic splendor" that "obscures the distinction between reality and fantasy" conveys what, exactly? Flowery vocabulary contributes nothing to any genuine understanding of what a given reverb (or anything else, for that matter) will actually sound like, to say nothing of whether or not it will be pleasing to the ear, or useful for one's needs...only LISTENING to it will determine that. 

 

Using that many words to say nothing is worthy of a wine enthusiast blog...I can read about the "woody, complex, rounded, velvety nose" of Chateaux Rain Gutter all day long...but if I want to know what it tastes like,  I'll  actually have to buy a bottle and take a swig.

 

4 hours ago, revans said:

Glitz = Strymon Big Sky Bloom

In the ‘90s, more diffusion blocks were added to reverbs to ‘smooth out’ the sound. A side effect of this was the tendency of the reverbs to have a slowly building envelope that ‘bloomed’, resulting in big ambient reverbs that sit nicely with the dry signal even at high Mix levels. The Bloom reverb features a ‘bloom generating’ section that feeds into a traditional reverb ‘tank’, and adds a unique Feedback parameter that expands the possibilities exponentially.

Ganymede = BOSS RV6 Modulate

This reverb adds modulation to hall reverb, producing extremely good-feeling reverberation.

Searchlights = Strymon Big Sky Cloud

A gorgeously big, ambient reverb that draws from techniques developed in the late ’70s. Using processing power not dreamed of in those days, the Cloud reverb machine obscures the distinction between reality and fantasy.

 

Double Tank = Strymon Big Sky Plate

The Plate machine is a rich, fast-building reverb that creates depth without early reflection cues to a specific environment. The Tone knob and Low End parameter are simple but powerful frequency shaping tools.

 

Plateaux = Strymon Big Sky Shimmer

Two tunable voices add pitch-shifted tones to the reverberated signal, for resplendent, unearthly ambience. The voices are carefully created from the reverberated signal itself to generate maximum radiance and beauty. The Amount and Mode parameters allow for a range of shimmer effects from laid-back and subtle to full-blown majestic splendor.

 

I have to mostly disagree with you on that one.

 

Glitz - describing the bloom etc. made technical sense to me.

 

Ganymede - It adds modulation to the reverb. OK, that makes sense to me with "producing extremely good-feeling reverberation." being what you described.

 

Double tank - It's a plate reverb with no early reflections.

 

Plateau - Adds tones to the signal and describes what some of the knobs do. The "maximum radiance and beauty" was a bit much. But "laid-back and subtle to full-blown majestic splendor." was admittedly a bit over the top but it made sense to me.

 

Searchlights - Well ya got me there. I could glean not one technical thought from that one.

 

Overall, I found the descriptions very...well...descriptive, for lack of a better term, with one exception. The adjectives were a bit over the top but overall, they helped me.

[cruisinon2]

52 minutes ago, brue58ski said:

 

 

I have to mostly disagree with you on that one.

 

Glitz - describing the bloom etc. made technical sense to me.

 

Ganymede - It adds modulation to the reverb. OK, that makes sense to me with "producing extremely good-feeling reverberation." being what you described.

 

Double tank - It's a plate reverb with no early reflections.

 

Plateau - Adds tones to the signal and describes what some of the knobs do. The "maximum radiance and beauty" was a bit much. But "laid-back and subtle to full-blown majestic splendor." was admittedly a bit over the top but it made sense to me.

 

Searchlights - Well ya got me there. I could glean not one technical thought from that one.

 

Overall, I found the descriptions very...well...descriptive, for lack of a better term, with one exception. The adjectives were a bit over the top but overall, they helped me.

 

Fair enough...to each, their own. We're all entitled to our opinions. 

 

I do have one question though: If reverb+modulation= "good feeling reverberation", what's the recipe for a "$h*tty, repressive, weight of the world on my shoulders" reverb? It would be perfect for covering "Dust In The Wind" ;)

[revolver1010]

Thanks Revans for the descriptions! Definitely helps. And thanks to everyone else for the hilarious followup posts :D Definitely gave me a good laugh! 

 

Rev. 

[brue58ski]

3 hours ago, cruisinon2 said:

 

Fair enough...to each, their own. We're all entitled to our opinions. 

 

I do have one question though: If reverb+modulation= "good feeling reverberation", what's the recipe for a "$h*tty, repressive, weight of the world on my shoulders" reverb? It would be perfect for covering "Dust In The Wind" ;)

 

I would say a vintage slinky and two wires would fit that bill. :D

[revans]

Sorry, I should have included a bibliography. I got the descriptions from the Strymon and BOSS web sites:

 

https://www.strymon.net/bigsky/

 

https://www.boss.info/us/products/rv-6/

[Meiannatee]

I think people just want to know what each parameter does. And how to make usable the very weird modulation in some of the new reverbs.

 

I've also yet to try putting it in a parallel chain 100% wet with an EQ block after. Anyone tried?

[hideout]

On 4/11/2018 at 9:17 AM, cruisinon2 said:

 

Fair enough...to each, their own. We're all entitled to our opinions. 

 

I do have one question though: If reverb+modulation= "good feeling reverberation", what's the recipe for a "$h*tty, repressive, weight of the world on my shoulders" reverb? It would be perfect for covering "Dust In The Wind" ;)

A claustrophobic room sound?

[tommasoferrarese]

On the meldaproduction site (the plugin makers) there’s an interesting video series about reverb algorithms and how to build different types with their amazing Turbo Reverb plugin (no, I don’t work for them)

it can get quite overwhelming when you dig too deep into technicalities, but it’s very instructive.. 

Anyway.. owning a BigSky I’d say that the HX reverbs are quite different from the Strymon ones, not necessarily in a bad way, so I think those descriptions fit only roughly..

btw, I’d love to see a manual of all the Hx blocks, with accurate parameter description, similar to the Eventide or Boss ones..

 

[HonestOpinion]

On 4/10/2018 at 6:52 PM, revolver1010 said:

So the new Helix reverbs: Glitz, Ganymede, Searchlights, Plateaux... is there some information sheet out there somewhere that lists details or differences between them? I mean, anyone can discern the difference between room, hall, plate, etc but how do we know with those names? And yes I can hear the difference but it would be nice to have some information on the verbs. Looked online but couldn't really find anything.

 

Rev.

 

It would be great if Line6 provided brief descriptions of new effects/amps and their parameters in the same release notes that they announce the new effects in. Hopefully those release notes all get compiled at some point in an updated manual revision but at least they would be out there in the wild.

[Dimaension_X]

On 4/11/2018 at 7:05 AM, revans said:

Glitz = Strymon Big Sky Bloom

In the ‘90s, more diffusion blocks were added to reverbs to ‘smooth out’ the sound. A side effect of this was the tendency of the reverbs to have a slowly building envelope that ‘bloomed’, resulting in big ambient reverbs that sit nicely with the dry signal even at high Mix levels. The Bloom reverb features a ‘bloom generating’ section that feeds into a traditional reverb ‘tank’, and adds a unique Feedback parameter that expands the possibilities exponentially.

Ganymede = BOSS RV6 Modulate

This reverb adds modulation to hall reverb, producing extremely good-feeling reverberation.

Searchlights = Strymon Big Sky Cloud

A gorgeously big, ambient reverb that draws from techniques developed in the late ’70s. Using processing power not dreamed of in those days, the Cloud reverb machine obscures the distinction between reality and fantasy.

 

Double Tank = Strymon Big Sky Plate

The Plate machine is a rich, fast-building reverb that creates depth without early reflection cues to a specific environment. The Tone knob and Low End parameter are simple but powerful frequency shaping tools.

 

Plateaux = Strymon Big Sky Shimmer

Two tunable voices add pitch-shifted tones to the reverberated signal, for resplendent, unearthly ambience. The voices are carefully created from the reverberated signal itself to generate maximum radiance and beauty. The Amount and Mode parameters allow for a range of shimmer effects from laid-back and subtle to full-blown majestic splendor.

Not Revans fault for the "flowery" descriptions - these are direct quotes from the Fluid Solo website, which has descriptions of each of the Helix/POD Go FX.

[datacommando]

51 minutes ago, Dimaension_X said:

Not Revans fault for the "flowery" descriptions - these are direct quotes from the Fluid Solo website, which has descriptions of each of the Helix/POD Go FX.

 

For a moment there, I actually thought this might have been an important news leak about any impending additions of reverbs to the next firmware update. Sadly it’s just yet another Zombie.

 

You’ve opened up a thread that has been dead for over 2 years and if you check 5 posted above yours “revans” links to where he got those florid descriptions. Wonder where Fluid got their info?

 

 

[Dimaension_X]

OK - so I've been pwned.  I raise the white flag and surrender.

[PaulTBaker]

Actually I liked the flowers... meant something to me, so thank you!

 

a list of what the parameters do would be nice as well.... and yes, I use my ears! but now I have flowery descriptions to put with what my ears are hearing :)

[MartinDorr]

While clearly subjective, there are a few recording and teaching artists claiming that associating detailed mental imagery with songs or improvisations improves the ability of artists to express themselves during performance. Some good mental imagery may help to get the knobs right while fine-‘tuning’ your sound/instrument for the target song.

[datacommando]

On 1/26/2021 at 10:06 PM, PaulTBaker said:

and yes, I use my ears! but now I have flowery descriptions to put with what my ears are hearing :)

Well, may be you would be interested in listening to what Jason does with this reverb. 
 

I’ve been side processing reverb through other FX for a long time, but if you’ve never tried it watch this.

 

The bit that amused me was near the end of the video he says “the sky’s the limit”. Hmm... Big Sky, Blue Sky.

 

 

[cruisinon2]

14 hours ago, MartinDorr said:

While clearly subjective, there are a few recording and teaching artists claiming that associating detailed mental imagery with songs or improvisations improves the ability of artists to express themselves during performance.

 

There are also folks who claim they've seen Sasquatch...;)

[joel_silber]

Wow, so glad I found this thread; I was about to query the lack of reverb stomp box modelling.  So the manual is simply incorrect then?  All of the non-Legacy reverb models (Helix Rack 3.0 manual, rev. E) are apparently "Based On: Line 6 Original". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[phil_m]

2 hours ago, joel_silber said:

Wow, so glad I found this thread; I was about to query the lack of reverb stomp box modelling.  So the manual is simply incorrect then?  All of the non-Legacy reverb models (Helix Rack 3.0 manual, rev. E) are apparently "Based On: Line 6 Original". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

All of the HX reverbs are Line 6 originals. They’re not based on other existing pedals. Some of them are reminiscent of other reverb algorithms, but none of the are meant to be a model of anything in particular.

[joel_silber]

Thanks Phil.  Info in the manual would be useful though, even if it's a "similar to...".

[cruisinon2]

8 hours ago, joel_silber said:

Thanks Phil.  Info in the manual would be useful though, even if it's a "similar to...".

 

Here ya go: They're all "similar" to any mediocre reverb you've ever heard...;)

[Cheub]

Thanks REVANS !

[brue58ski]

On 4/16/2018 at 8:26 PM, HonestOpinion said:

 

It would be great if Line6 provided brief descriptions of new effects/amps and their parameters in the same release notes that they announce the new effects in. Hopefully those release notes all get compiled at some point in an updated manual revision but at least they would be out there in the wild.

 

They used to. They do not anymore. Check out the POD XT manual. It has many of the amps and effects Helix has and has a bunch of descriptions of what they are. Otherwise you could go to Helix Help. That's the best place i'm aware of for descriptions of things. This is a website separate from Line 6 so Google Helix Help

[HonestOpinion]

On 6/1/2023 at 9:23 AM, brue58ski said:

 

They used to. They do not anymore. Check out the POD XT manual. It has many of the amps and effects Helix has and has a bunch of descriptions of what they are. Otherwise you could go to Helix Help. That's the best place i'm aware of for descriptions of things. This is a website separate from Line 6 so Google Helix Help

 

LOL, good to know that I can still receive a useful follow-up to a comment I made five years ago. Thanks! :-)