Reverberation Impulse Products - Pure Space Film

Excerpts from Sound on Sound Review by Martin Walker

The first of the third party IR libraries I'm going to look at comes from Ernest Cholakis, who will already be well known to many musicians for his creation of the DNA Groove Templates. He has been exploring reverberation impulse responses for the last ten years, and has already released sampling CDs using this extensive knowledge, including the acclaimed Drone Archeology (reviewed in SOS December 2002)...

Using his own extensive recordings of spaces such as concert halls, cathedrals monasteries, and even the ambience inside the Great Pyramid Kufu at Giza, Ernest has re-synthesised the impulse responses in the Pure Space libraries, which means the results suffer from none of the limitations of real-world recordings -- for instance, because of the way Ernest generates his responses, the 24-bit versions offer a dynamic range of more than 140db, while their frequency responses are virtually flat, so you can EQ your sources to taste before convolving them....

Each response has three further numbers associated with it , that compare its low-, mid-, and high-frequency decay times to the average for that set. When you're looking for a suitable reverberation impulse for a recording, this approach can make a lot more sense than wading through names like Large Hall or St. Luke's Church Row 42.

After all this careful preparation, the IRs themselves certainly don't disappoint, and don't run away with the impression that since they are re-synthesised they might sound unnatural or lack character. These are about the cleanest and the most silky-smooth reverbs I've ever heard, with none of the grittiness, lumpiness or metallic overtones that characterise many synthesised reverbs. There are some gorgeous tails in there with oodles of character, and they encompass a huge range of decay 'timbres'.

I tried out these libraries with close -miked solo instruments, vocals and even anechoically-recorded orchestral snippets, and without exception they sounded very natural indeed, There are no small rooms (the smallest space in the Classical series has a two-second tail) but there are chambers, halls, churches, cathedrals, and magical spaces galore.

These are extremely professional libraries containing work created over ten years ... This is still far cheaper than buying a decent hardware reverb (that still probably won't sound as good) ... the Pure Space libraries are superb resources for professionals and won't disappoint.

- Martin Walker April 2005 Sound On Sound

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