Lexicon Native Reverb Versus Aether Reverb

[rick-slo]

For the compulsive personalities here is a comparison of Lexicon Native Reverb Versus Aether Reverb on an acoustic guitar. YMMV depending on what settings you use and what you are adding reverb to however I think it gives a taste of what the reverbs are like comparitively. The Lexcion is a bit denser sounding and the Aether is more detailed sounding. This is especially true with the presets the reverbs come with. You can tweak the sound from there but the basic characterist remains. I like both.

Aether just recently released an update of their reverb which has higher quality settings available.

Dry
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...SustainDry.wav

Lexicon Native Reverb
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...exiconDemo.wav

Aether (New 1.5 version, max quality settings)
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...AetherDemo.wav

Aether (lowest quality settings which is like the old version of Aether)
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...SustainDry.mp3



To see if life is all mute using mp3s (even at highest bit rate of 320)

Dry Clip
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...SustainDry.mp3

Lexicon Native Reverb
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...exiconDemo.mp3

Aether (new version 1.5
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...AetherDemo.mp3

Aether (old version)
http://dcoombsguitar.com/Guitar%20Mu...AetherDemo.mp3

[Doug Young]

Both sound nice to me, Rick, tho the verb is so light (as it should be, IMO), that it's really hard to compare. Both seem to add just the slightest sense of space compared to the dry signal. What I at first thought was reverb tails actually appears on the dry track, too, so it's just your guitar. It'd be interesting if you had the 3 tracks all exactly synced, so one could null them and hear just the effect of the reverb, (or post a reverb-only track for each).

[rick-slo]

Thanks for listening Doug. Yes, this particular guitar has a lot of natural reverb so I did not have to add much. Here I just wanted to add only as much reverb as I would normally do, not extra just to reveal it more plainly. If I can not detect it as making any real difference at my normal reverb levels then probably what reverb I use is not a big deal for my purposes in the first place. I do hear distinct differences however even at these levels but that is in part because I have listened numerous times over detailed headphones making tweaks here and there.

Both these reverbs do have very smooth late reflections. You might want to give the demos a try and see what you think.

[ronmac]

Rick, I haven't had a chance to listen to your clips yet. I have used the demo of Aether to try out its capabilities and was very impressed. As you mentioned, the tails are extremely smooth. That, along with the wide variety of effects available, put it on my "must buy soon" list.

[acoosticzoo]

Thanks for doing this! I really liked your guitar playing btw.

I preferred the sound of the LEX reverb. It's more 3D and I felt it suited the music better.

I did a blind test toggling between two takes with my eyes closed. And I could always pick the Lexicon Take everytime.


Aether in theory seems to be very promising for native reverb. However, there's something magical about the lex sample that has a "WOW" factor imho.

Regards
Josef Horhay
Mixing Engineer.
www.acoosticzoo.com

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by acoosticzoo

Thanks for doing this! I really liked your guitar playing btw.

I preferred the sound of the LEX reverb. It's more 3D and I felt it suited the music better.

I did a blind test toggling between two takes with my eyes closed. And I could always pick the Lexicon Take everytime.


Aether in theory seems to be very promising for native reverb. However, there's something magical about the lex sample that has a "WOW" factor imho.

Regards
Josef Horhay
Mixing Engineer.
www.acoosticzoo.com

Welcome to the forum Josef.

A number of the Lex presets have a bit of bass boost in them which warms things up somewhat.

Both the Lex and Aether have downloadable demos that you can test out and IMO its well worth doing so.

[acoosticzoo]

Yes thanks for that Rik, good to be here. I've been also comparing reverbs lately, hence I found this thread, been trying Aether, Lex, VSS3, RenVerb, TrueVerb, M3 (tc electronic), DVR2, ClassicVerb (powercore), MegaVerb (powercore), Altiverb Space designer even Platinum verb and silver verb from logic.

Mainly looking for a pure native solution that does require DSP Cards etc. I'm trying to mobilize my setup hence I don't like the idea of external DSP.

Yet undecided about Breverb, Redline, Acoustic Arts, CSR but I'm already leaning towards the Lex and Altiverb. If VSS3 were pure native, that would be awesome. But I have a feeling that's unlikely to happen soon.

Terms of IR reverb, I found Altiverb better and rendering the tail when compared to logic's space designer. For my test, space designer was prone to ringing in the tail. Altiverb's tail was more even and sounded quite nice.

[rick-slo]

Josef, regarding convolution reverb the impluse responses here are very good http://www.acousticas.net/