One of the coolest way to make some very rich pads is to load pink or white noise in the convolution reverb and run any instrument through it. Most will sound really good, then is just a matter of applying some filtering to "mold" it better afterwards.
Convolution is one of my favorite effects because you can make any sound interesting with it. Something worth mentioning and not explicitly said, but with convolution you can synthesize your own reverbs as well. With some noise and whatever effect you want you can make the craziest reverbs. For instance, one with automated bitcrush to have a sort of degrading tail.
It became my favorite effect too in only a matter of days. There's literally nothing you can slap on a convolver that wont sound interesting. I love recording random bits of videos (dialogue works particularly well) and put it over a drum loop. I gotta try your reverb trick aswell!
A nice mathematical property of convolution is that it is associative just like multiplication. I.e. a * b * c * d is the same as a * x if x=b * c * d. This means that if the convolution plugin is eating up your CPU and you don't have a need to adjust parameters of individual convolution instances while the tune is playing, you can run the first impulse response through the following convolution steps and get a combined impulse response that sounds just like all of the convolutions together.
I absolutely love every video you make! Always so informative and inspiring. Seriously. I am moving away from making “trap,” because you have convinced me to express my true passion of making ambient soundscapes and just letting out all of my creativity. Even more so, I am trying to blend the two to see what I can create. Please don’t stop making music and videos!
Actually same man. I started with trap and found a love for Jazz music theory, vintage synths, and ambient music. I'll still make trap here and there but I enjoy making ambient music a lot more and want to learn how to create video game ambient soundscapes.
@@ivansoto9723 not that you asked for it! But if you love jazz theory, like I do, I recently took a huge step in my playing and production, by getting IRealpro, and playing jazz! And stealing ideas from the progressions I liked and making tracks out of them! Once you buy the app you can get the chords for literally 1400 jazz pieces, as well as hundreds of other songs from other tracks, It’s been really freeing to experiment with chord charts and focus on how to voice them in my own way :) Instead of constantly forcing myself to come up with something harmonically original EVERYTIME I SIT DOWN! It’s been a relief and a great way to practice all that theory knowledge I’ve been building up
I want to make ambient, and sacrificed a dream of making deathstep to do so. I have one demo and numerous failed attempts. Tuning convolution reverb for me is a nightmare.
For those that felt a little lost on the definition of impulse response: I had this problem too through three different courses on control systems in college. It wasn't until years later that somebody gave me a wonderful explanation of what it is. You're basically hitting something with a hammer and describing what it does. The "impulse" being the hammer whack and the response being what this unknown thing does as a reaction.
I've been a lifelong musician and composer, but just learned how to program midi early last year. It's been such a fun ride learning all this stuff, and I've been hitting the music super hard for almost two years. This channel in particular has been a huge source of information, inspiration and humor. Thank your for your continued amazing work!
These uploads have been seriously awesome lately. Your "turning sound design into a career video" was amazing. Now we get this banger on top? This channel is so underrated.
Great video and well explained. I recently submerged three speakers [two bookshelves and one sub] in a pond, did an underwater IR, recording with two hydrophones. Now I can run stuff under water with my waves plugin. Caves, culverts, barns, suitcase, guitar and tubes I have also captured and documented on video. I love this process.
Awesome ideas. I like the idea of putting a drum loop through a chord sample. From a theory perspective any linear effect (like a delay or a filter) does a combination of delaying and attenuating (or amplifying) a frequency or set of frequencies. A convolution works by applying a delay and an attenuation/amplification to every frequency in the signal, separately. Therefore you can use a convolution to implement ANY linear effect (or set of linear effects), you just need to come up with the right IR. It can't do anything nonlinear (like saturation or compression) but otherwise it is an incredibly powerful tool.
That's not really a limitation! Anything non-linear you want to do, you can do either to the inputs or to the output! The "inputs" include both the signal and the IR, so you can pre-distort your IR, your signal both, or the convolved result, each with a different result.
@@bobdeadbeef You can definitely run one in serial with a nonlinear effect. But preprocessing the IR with a nonlinear effect will still result in a linear convolution, just a different linear convolution.
@@jamesperry1358 Right. What I'm trying to say is that convolution doesn't get in the way of anything nonlinear you'd like to do. So if you have compression C, and convolution f * g, you can do C(f) * g, f * C(g), or C(f * g). It's more of an advantage than a limitation. Nonlinear processes don't combine so nicely.
This video made clear a few things I didn't understand about using convolution appropriately. Suddenly it makes much more sense and using it is like magic. Adding tones, textures and space all in a way very friendly to experimentation. Thanks!
Your intros are consistently so entirely hilarious. Gotta watch 'em like 5 times through to take it all in, there's so much to unpack. Oh, and very educational and interesting videos, too!
When i do get big....im definitely gonna shout you out. I've only watched a handful of your videos but I knew to subscribe after the first one! I love how you give so much information in such little time! The genre of music I make is very different than yours but you are teaching me a lot!!! Much appreciated.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I bought this tonight and just went down the rabbite hole recording impulse files with my webcam...............This is the best plugin I've used in ages and ages!!!!! It's going to change my sound design life and I've been doing it for 20 years. Thanks!
Wait.. And if the CMB is white noise the same way consciousness distorts beyond discernable thoughtforms when contemplating infinity and then blanks, one becomes "Snowblind" for a moment I'm possibly sounding like a Tool fan now
Cameron! You are a family man, head of house hold, responsible and provider to others that depend of you, but most of all you’re an Artist from the heart. As an artist, it is common that you will have folks against you, for not liking your style of your art. Meaning that you will have followers, people that connect with you and cherish your passion. The subside of that is the people who don’t care for you as an artist, therefore, it funnels down to not liking you as a person. Why, the connection, who the heck knows? And you should careless!!!! What you feel, or felt, we all have felt. At a time and form or at another. Take a look at van Gough’s life, an artist consider a crazy man when alive, a geniuses when dead. That inspire others like him to continue with what they love no matter what. His life example gave us, “Starry, starry, nights”. The way, van Gough, was treated when alive, is the treatment to a thousand of other people!!!!! My advice, buddy!!! Give that situation, the attention that it deservers, no less, no more… Concentrate on things that matters, to you, amigo!!!
just to say that, at the moment for Convology XT is free and it has all these features. not to many impulse factory sets but it lets you use custom ones so that's awesome. I was watching along and playing around. great video as always. next step is learn how to make my own custom impulses, very into the glitch and synths sounds you got out of this today. you sir are on tap inspiration. hats off
@@cooperlyle8781 any that fits for a rversing reeese. Maybe the same reesse could be that impulse. Have you tried kHs Convolver Tool? Yo ucan load anything as impulse.
@@cooperlyle8781 An impulse is a sample that could be veery short, and it's used to blend sounds. For example, when you have a cabinet emulator you have there different impulses recorded from different cabinets, so when you plug a guitar in that virtual cabinet, depending on the impulse you select, the timbre of the guitar sounds according to from where that impulse was taken.
12:50 ---> You are sooo into BrianEno territory here... :-) Just brilliant ! Love this section/chapter. . This is one of the things I heard about in a podcast. You just store it as a; 'I gotta try that' ... and then you forget about it. Thanks for this reminder :-) . Thumbs up 👍.
I love experimenting with kHz Convolver. If you're looking for a "dusty" piano that sounds like it was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, but all you have is a regular piano and the checkout page for a $99 Kontakt "broken piano" library, then here's what to do. Load a 1-second sample of (loud, dense) vinyl crackles and hiss into the convolver, adjust the range handles to taste, and play your piano through it. Dust will be served in large quantities. Add a pinch of pitch wobble and you can close all the Kontakt tabs in your browser and keep your money. Caution: you *may* spend the night trying out other kinds of noise; various machine-like rattles and electric hums are also great.
One thing to bear in mind is that stretching a sample can introduce artefacts, as the algorithm tries to fill in the blanks. This is where the quality of the convolution reverb plugin may have a role to play. But you can also use other software to stretch samples - such as your DAW. Or, if you use something that can stretch in high quality and keep the note the same, you can alter the length without altering the tonal quality (brighter and higher, or dark and deeper). I've never tried PaulStretch, which is free, but that does extreme stretching. Senato Sample has an excellent algorithm for altering length and pitch separately. I've been using IRCAM's TS2 for the same purpose. Another option in creating your own impulse responses is to introduce extra processing to the sample. Distortion, delay, flange, whatever you like. Export it as a new WAV, and then you have those effects baked into the sample. If you have a morphing device (or just want to layer) you can combine multiple samples into a new one, which you then use as your impulse response. There is a lot of fun that can be had here! Though, not every result of an experiment is going to sound good, of course... There are some software options for synthesising an impulse response from scratch. Voxengo has one, Logic comes with it's own one, and there a many for creating your own guitar cabinet impulse responses. And of course, you could design your own synthesiser patches with the intention of sampling them to serve as impulse responses.
when properly done there are no zeros filled in, but you are still right that it can cause issues because it is often not in very high quality implemented into plug-ins, since we want it to happen very fast when we move the slider.
The video was a quarter over and I was still laughing at the intro 🤣 Also, that thing with the chord sounded awesome! Thanks for the super interesting and useful content.
Oh, this is right up my alley. I have this weird habit of just recording random cool-sounding stuff (well, cool to me, lol). I particularly like setting up my recorder for rain/storms. I tinkered with convolution ages ago but my computer couldn't keep up. This opens a whole realm of new possibilities today! Cheers!
My Favorites are: REVerence because it comes with Cubase^^ Audiothing Fog Convolver meldaproduction MPhatic, because it can restore the original dynamics. Voxengo Deconvolver, it is an easy and free tool to create your own response impulses with a sine-sweep or when you clap in a room, cave, wathever with a great reverb.
Hi buddy, awesome content. I really enjoy your videos! Thank you! As a physicist and hobby musician I am so happy that here is actually a nice application of what we studied years ago. The Fourier transformation! Sorry guys, but I WANT to write these lines now: A Fourier transformation transformes a function from the frequency domain into the time domain, or vice versa*. What does that mean? Look at your DAW. The spectrum analyzer. It shows you the actual frequencies but what it "reads" are time dependent signals (functions), a mixure of different instruments and their overtones etc. So the analyzer is basically a Fourier transformer. Ok, still reading this comment? So, why using a sweep when creating an impuls response (guitar cabinet? For a good, real impuls response, you need a perfect impuls, a really high, narrow spike, a delta distribution or Dirac impuls to excite you system (amp^, speakers, mics, mic preamps). I would guess it's not easy to generate and maybe it would not be so nice for your eqipment. Whatever. Just a guess. So, the whole thing is done in the frequency domain, generating a pure sine sweep and record the systems frequency response, with all it's added characteristic rattles, hums, shimmers, etc. The - for example - Voxengo deconvolver (to create an impuls response to load in the convolver(both signals in the time domain) needs to do three things (I guess): 1. Fourier transform (FT, time to frequency) the test sweep signal to find out to which frequency the system is responding to and remember the time when this frequency was "excited". 2. go to the corresponding time in the recorded signal file and FT it (time to frq) it to calculate the frequency response (so basically have a look to the spectrum analyzer). We are still in the frequency domain. Now we know all frequency responses from 0Hz-20kHz(?). And then ... 3. perform another FT with all these frequency dependent informations and go back to the time domain. And there you have your short characteristic - click or clack or gligg or ... Maybe it helps, if you know that a perfect Dirac puls in time leads an absolutely equally distributed frequency spectrum. I don't know if you ever noticed that: If there is a rather loud crackle in your audio file, or a long constant tone ends, you see the whole frequency spectrum in your analyer rising up. Since the recorded cabinet spectrum response was obviously not equally distributed, you have not just a spike but a click like sound. Last step: This information is again convolved with your time dependent guitar+amp signal in real time. Meaning that your signal from the amp is smeared out, blurred, broadend, whatever, in the exact same way like a cabinet would do. Or - like presented here, you just convolve two signals. A snare hit with a door bell, what ever. What about deconvolving a signal just for fun... so, feeding a deconvolver with a sine sweep and a song track or a synth pad or drum loop. Hmmm ... lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Convolution/CI.html I selected the "very fast exp" as h(x) and the "1 sec Puls" as f(x). The "very fast exp", let's say it's your IR and the 1 sec puls is your signal... The same procedure is used to create reverb IR in cathedrals, famous studios, famous places ... Actually, each audio system has it's IR: The room, the mics, the console, the AD, the DA, the headphone amp, the headphones ... your eardrum. *In quantum mechanics it's usefull to convert functions from the momentum to the position space. ^Actually you don't want to capture the amp characteristics, so I guess that's why the studio guys would use a "linear" responding solid state amp. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform ruclips.net/video/spUNpyF58BY/видео.html lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Convolution/CI.html
Your best video ever! Actually, the best sound design video ever! I've been meaning to play with doing convolution with non-spatial, non-filter impulse responses since forever. Well, since I learned about convolution almost 50 years ago as part of the EE side of my education. If I had realized it could be this interesting, I'd have jumped into it the first time I encountered a convolution reverb! To add to the irony, back then I was trying to design a digital synth/dedicated DAW. I was totally over my head, and it was too early for even the FM techniques I was trying (and I didn't know about Chowning's work, or I would have headed to Stanford and had a very different life!). Digital real-time convolution was FAR in the future. But in all that time, I assumed that playing with IRs this way would be weird (which can be good) but also not really controllable, in the way that FM can be hard to control, so I never put in the time. Embarrassingly wrong! So now I had the idea of using a table of convolutions and doing it wave table synthesis style, modifying the IR w/ time. Except-mathematically, you did that, when you put IR's in series! In fact, when I saw you do that, I thought, "why not pre-convolve them"-for about 200 ms, before I thought "what, and lose all that dynamic control?!!" You still might want to do that to save on CPU in some circumstances. Still, I think there's room for an actual wave-table approach, to allow for real-time modulation the way wave table synths do. So instead of just proceeding linearly through the variations from the 2nd IR, you can do things like sweep back and forth, or change the start point. The key here is that convolution is is commutative, associative, and distributive, so it doesn't matter which order we do them in, or whether we convolve each of two signals and add, or add two signals and convolve. So now you've tempted me to not just play around and make cool sounds, but maybe write my own plugin! EDIT: If anyone wants to steal the idea-by all means, go for it!
The fact that the plugin can handle convolution with such a long impulse response is impressive. Each source sample has to be multiplied with each response sample down the line, added to the output samples and then averaged in, which means that the number of operations on each output sample increases linearly with the length of the impulse response. Super cool that it can just chug through that without missing a beat.
Really interesting video, love your channel ! I bought the KHS Convolver as soon as it came out, awesome plugin ! Lot of sick impulses responses, like cabinets, glitches, filter formant.... And I love the fade in/out functions ! Cherry on the cake, really light on CPU :)
I love messing around with Kefir, which is a free 1 second convolution reverb. Feeding different material into the convolver results in some really interesting etherial sound design
This retroelectro producer loves anything that reminds me about reverb(s) and therefore I MONSTER LOVE this SUPERIOR tutorial. THANK YOU! Time to go shopping….
That’s a really cool idea for making a chain of different IR’s! I have done two at once with Reverberate since it has two slots before but never multiple plugins of it layered. Excited to get weird with it 😄
Awesome vid! I have the KHS subscription for quite some time now and the possibilities with the entire package (MultiPass, SnapHeap, PhasePlant and the many plugins) are nothing short of endless. It can get really overwhelming so these vids that give pointers to applying certain modules to inspire creativity are most welcome. Thank you! 🙏
@Venus Theory, we have been watching your channel for a while are big fans. We, as Quantum Electric Monk, just joined your Discord server. That may not be a good thing. Normally, we would not reach out like this but, we have been using convolution (mics, speakers, mic booms, room shape, dynamic spacial changes, random sharp sounds, random deep sounds, other background noises, etc) for a while and (the mathematician amongst us) has a formula for it. Collab? Maybe. No harm, no foul. Keep up the good work.
DAMN. I never really paid much attention to convolution, although I have always loved the sound, mainly from movie scores. But I am now truly inspired by the great depth of tone you get.
truly when I first heard of convolution plugs/processes back in the day, my first thought was using chunks of a song as the impulse and running my track through that to find out what the interactions would produce.
There's another great video by RUclipsr "Scruffy" on the sound effects of the Pikmin games that brings up convolution. He uses it to recreate an "alien goo" sound effect used by one of the bosses by running the sound of churning mud through a convolution reverb with an unnatural impulse response. Very interesting stuff; I'd recommend his channel, especially if you also like the analysis of sound design and adaptive audio in video games.
I owned a convolution plugin but didn't know how to use it. Thank you so much for the tutorial , it really opens up a new portal to a whole new dimension
So I put smash mouth in a convultion reverb on a stock sytrus preset, it turned into an ambient pad. Added a drum break and a 808 and It's lowkey kinda fire.
Never have I seen sa design concept so accessable and so powerful at the same time. Thank you @Venus Theory for taking the time to explain this in detail.
When I found out about convolution I was super hyped and wanted to put everything I had through it haha, definately a great sound design tool. Btw, for FL users there is the awesome fruity convolver and I believe the free melda pack also has a convolution plugin!
I personally reccomend more the free Convology XT , the fruity one it's fine but eh not that much , the Melda one it's good but I prefer the XT to be honest just because it looks great , you can do a lot of stuff with just one IR , plus you can import whatever wav file and turn it into an IR..I'm not so sure you can do that on the Melda one tho
@@TheGhostRecordsChannel it's as easy as drag and drop in Fruity convolver It has feedback, stretch, an in built eq with the spectrum of the imported file for reference. Pretty good
Thanks for explaining all this. I was wondering how the pulsating reverb was done on the track 'Surkin - Tiger Rhythm' (famously used in an iPhone commercial). Impulse Response explains it all
Thank you for this excellent video. I've been using convolution since it first appeared but you have reminded me that it really is a powerhouse for creativity 😊
I love convolutions! Thanks for showing some good use cases. Any FIR ("linear phase") filter is also a convolution kernel. Very likely, the anti-aliasing filters in your DAC/ADC are also convolvers, although with shorter IRs. However, the main drawback is that they are, well, linear :-) Also, another fun tip: Using the "noise" and "piecewise linear" operators in the Nyquist prompt in Audacity, you can generate a large variety of interesting impulse responses to convolve with. Filtering the IRs is also sometimes interesting!
Excellent explanation! Very inspirational and educational. Thanks so much for your time and devotion to help us to understand this elusive and abstract concept. 👍
When I will be passing to the other realm I wish I would hear your voice welcoming me in the outer life :) Btw, recording a new stuff for the channel and doing a laundry at the same time, masterpiece of multitasking :) Love your work! All the best!
Used to have a Kawai K1r back in the day (1990) had a hardware convolution synth, could convolve any two sounds in the sound banks, great for making trance, rave etc ;) couldn't load samples though but just the sounds it made was enough back in the day :)
Literally a minute or so into this & had to sub 😂🤚🏼 you’re hilarious! If you’re half as useful as you are funny gonna love this channel. Hope you’re well
'capturing IRs section' was some excellent ASMR material haha :D an idea that i come up with is it would be cool would be to capture IR of a guitar resonance box and then ""attach"" that resonant box to any other instrument or a vocal :0
Wow! This audio processing tool is a ((to me) slightly hidden) gem! 😃 Also, it’s cool to see His Mustachesty in action capturing some everyday-notch IR’s 🤩 Thanks, Camenus 🤗
I needed a reminder of how incredible convolution is. Wonder what some chains with it AND a vocoder could do tonally 9:42 This also inspires me to try soft textural stuff, you gotta love just messing around
Go out and get woke'd this week ✌
KHS Convolver ► bit.ly/3jgrssc
Get The IRs From This Video► venustheory.com/buckaroonie-babez
everything is music
Very cool! Picked up Convolver and I also have quite a few other convolution reverbs. One cool sound is dropping coins...
the coupon doesn work anymore?
That entire video was SIIIIck!!!
Lo it this worksawesome❤
Convology XT is free and you can add your own IR’s in WAV format in case one doesn’t have 39 buckaroos or needs another bandanna
I does crash ever so often but other than that is pretty good.
or Fruity Convolver for FL users
Need to keep these dreads back. Ty so much
Lovitabsolutely🎉😂❤
Does it have all the same features as convolver?
One of the coolest way to make some very rich pads is to load pink or white noise in the convolution reverb and run any instrument through it. Most will sound really good, then is just a matter of applying some filtering to "mold" it better afterwards.
Will def try this!
Convolution is one of my favorite effects because you can make any sound interesting with it.
Something worth mentioning and not explicitly said, but with convolution you can synthesize your own reverbs as well. With some noise and whatever effect you want you can make the craziest reverbs. For instance, one with automated bitcrush to have a sort of degrading tail.
It became my favorite effect too in only a matter of days. There's literally nothing you can slap on a convolver that wont sound interesting. I love recording random bits of videos (dialogue works particularly well) and put it over a drum loop. I gotta try your reverb trick aswell!
The quality of this channel really stands out in the RUclips music production space it's kinda crazy
A nice mathematical property of convolution is that it is associative just like multiplication. I.e. a * b * c * d is the same as a * x if x=b * c * d. This means that if the convolution plugin is eating up your CPU and you don't have a need to adjust parameters of individual convolution instances while the tune is playing, you can run the first impulse response through the following convolution steps and get a combined impulse response that sounds just like all of the convolutions together.
I absolutely love every video you make! Always so informative and inspiring. Seriously. I am moving away from making “trap,” because you have convinced me to express my true passion of making ambient soundscapes and just letting out all of my creativity. Even more so, I am trying to blend the two to see what I can create. Please don’t stop making music and videos!
Actually same man. I started with trap and found a love for Jazz music theory, vintage synths, and ambient music. I'll still make trap here and there but I enjoy making ambient music a lot more and want to learn how to create video game ambient soundscapes.
@@ivansoto9723 not that you asked for it! But if you love jazz theory, like I do, I recently took a huge step in my playing and production, by getting IRealpro, and playing jazz! And stealing ideas from the progressions I liked and making tracks out of them!
Once you buy the app you can get the chords for literally 1400 jazz pieces, as well as hundreds of other songs from other tracks,
It’s been really freeing to experiment with chord charts and focus on how to voice them in my own way :)
Instead of constantly forcing myself to come up with something harmonically original EVERYTIME I SIT DOWN!
It’s been a relief and a great way to practice all that theory knowledge I’ve been building up
I want to make ambient, and sacrificed a dream of making deathstep to do so. I have one demo and numerous failed attempts. Tuning convolution reverb for me is a nightmare.
For those that felt a little lost on the definition of impulse response: I had this problem too through three different courses on control systems in college. It wasn't until years later that somebody gave me a wonderful explanation of what it is. You're basically hitting something with a hammer and describing what it does. The "impulse" being the hammer whack and the response being what this unknown thing does as a reaction.
These intros get better each time
He's evolving.
I'm ashamed to admit how much time goes into videos these days and how much of that time is dedicated to the intro haha.
That intro was the best thing on the internet
At the very beginning i thought it was an ad, and was wondering why there was no skip button haha
I've been a lifelong musician and composer, but just learned how to program midi early last year. It's been such a fun ride learning all this stuff, and I've been hitting the music super hard for almost two years. This channel in particular has been a huge source of information, inspiration and humor. Thank your for your continued amazing work!
Wow this is one of the most inspiring episodes I have seen, thanks a lot I will put KHS Convolver to work
Glad it gave you some ideas to play around with! Happy noisemaking!
These uploads have been seriously awesome lately. Your "turning sound design into a career video" was amazing. Now we get this banger on top? This channel is so underrated.
Glad you've been enjoying the videos!
Great video and well explained. I recently submerged three speakers [two bookshelves and one sub] in a pond, did an underwater IR, recording with two hydrophones. Now I can run stuff under water with my waves plugin. Caves, culverts, barns, suitcase, guitar and tubes I have also captured and documented on video. I love this process.
Thanks, it's really inspiring!
Awesome ideas. I like the idea of putting a drum loop through a chord sample.
From a theory perspective any linear effect (like a delay or a filter) does a combination of delaying and attenuating (or amplifying) a frequency or set of frequencies. A convolution works by applying a delay and an attenuation/amplification to every frequency in the signal, separately. Therefore you can use a convolution to implement ANY linear effect (or set of linear effects), you just need to come up with the right IR. It can't do anything nonlinear (like saturation or compression) but otherwise it is an incredibly powerful tool.
That's not really a limitation! Anything non-linear you want to do, you can do either to the inputs or to the output! The "inputs" include both the signal and the IR, so you can pre-distort your IR, your signal both, or the convolved result, each with a different result.
@@bobdeadbeef You can definitely run one in serial with a nonlinear effect. But preprocessing the IR with a nonlinear effect will still result in a linear convolution, just a different linear convolution.
@@jamesperry1358 Right. What I'm trying to say is that convolution doesn't get in the way of anything nonlinear you'd like to do.
So if you have compression C, and convolution f * g, you can do C(f) * g, f * C(g), or C(f * g).
It's more of an advantage than a limitation.
Nonlinear processes don't combine so nicely.
This video made clear a few things I didn't understand about using convolution appropriately. Suddenly it makes much more sense and using it is like magic. Adding tones, textures and space all in a way very friendly to experimentation.
Thanks!
Your intros are consistently so entirely hilarious. Gotta watch 'em like 5 times through to take it all in, there's so much to unpack. Oh, and very educational and interesting videos, too!
Glad to hear it haha - good to know all the effort that goes into it doesn't go unnoticed!
Truly a great channel. With decades of experience, these videos still provide me a ton of inspiration and
And...? :P
@@mikeexits man wtf you talking bout?
When i do get big....im definitely gonna shout you out. I've only watched a handful of your videos but I knew to subscribe after the first one! I love how you give so much information in such little time! The genre of music I make is very different than yours but you are teaching me a lot!!! Much appreciated.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I bought this tonight and just went down the rabbite hole
recording impulse files with my webcam...............This is the best plugin I've used in ages and ages!!!!! It's going to change my sound design life and I've been doing it for 20 years.
Thanks!
Wow, this video is awesome! 💙 Thank you 🙏
Everything IS the reverb of the Big Bang
Somehow you just know this cat has an amazing trip journal
Wait.. And if the CMB is white noise the same way consciousness distorts beyond discernable thoughtforms when contemplating infinity and then blanks, one becomes "Snowblind" for a moment
I'm possibly sounding like a Tool fan now
Cameron! You are a family man, head of house hold, responsible and provider to others that depend of you, but most of all you’re an Artist from the heart. As an artist, it is common that you will have folks against you, for not liking your style of your art. Meaning that you will have followers, people that connect with you and cherish your passion. The subside of that is the people who don’t care for you as an artist, therefore, it funnels down to not liking you as a person. Why, the connection, who the heck knows? And you should careless!!!! What you feel, or felt, we all have felt. At a time and form or at another. Take a look at van Gough’s life, an artist consider a crazy man when alive, a geniuses when dead. That inspire others like him to continue with what they love no matter what. His life example gave us, “Starry, starry, nights”. The way, van Gough, was treated when alive, is the treatment to a thousand of other people!!!!!
My advice, buddy!!! Give that situation, the attention that it deservers, no less, no more… Concentrate on things that matters, to you, amigo!!!
just to say that, at the moment for Convology XT is free and it has all these features. not to many impulse factory sets but it lets you use custom ones so that's awesome. I was watching along and playing around. great video as always. next step is learn how to make my own custom impulses, very into the glitch and synths sounds you got out of this today. you sir are on tap inspiration. hats off
Cannot wait to use this in Phaseplant…mostly dubstep production…heavier side…and this is going to be amazing to utilize!
Dude that's what I was going to say, riddim dubstep anyone?
reversing the impulse on a reese, of a reese :)
@@Overxpossed what is impulse?
@@cooperlyle8781 any that fits for a rversing reeese. Maybe the same reesse could be that impulse. Have you tried kHs Convolver Tool? Yo ucan load anything as impulse.
@@cooperlyle8781 An impulse is a sample that could be veery short, and it's used to blend sounds. For example, when you have a cabinet emulator you have there different impulses recorded from different cabinets, so when you plug a guitar in that virtual cabinet, depending on the impulse you select, the timbre of the guitar sounds according to from where that impulse was taken.
12:50 ---> You are sooo into BrianEno territory here... :-)
Just brilliant ! Love this section/chapter.
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This is one of the things I heard about in a podcast.
You just store it as a; 'I gotta try that' ... and then you forget about it.
Thanks for this reminder :-)
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Thumbs up 👍.
I love experimenting with kHz Convolver. If you're looking for a "dusty" piano that sounds like it was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, but all you have is a regular piano and the checkout page for a $99 Kontakt "broken piano" library, then here's what to do. Load a 1-second sample of (loud, dense) vinyl crackles and hiss into the convolver, adjust the range handles to taste, and play your piano through it. Dust will be served in large quantities. Add a pinch of pitch wobble and you can close all the Kontakt tabs in your browser and keep your money.
Caution: you *may* spend the night trying out other kinds of noise; various machine-like rattles and electric hums are also great.
Always floored by this gentle soul... despite lack of actual magnetic nose ring!
One thing to bear in mind is that stretching a sample can introduce artefacts, as the algorithm tries to fill in the blanks. This is where the quality of the convolution reverb plugin may have a role to play. But you can also use other software to stretch samples - such as your DAW. Or, if you use something that can stretch in high quality and keep the note the same, you can alter the length without altering the tonal quality (brighter and higher, or dark and deeper). I've never tried PaulStretch, which is free, but that does extreme stretching. Senato Sample has an excellent algorithm for altering length and pitch separately. I've been using IRCAM's TS2 for the same purpose.
Another option in creating your own impulse responses is to introduce extra processing to the sample. Distortion, delay, flange, whatever you like. Export it as a new WAV, and then you have those effects baked into the sample. If you have a morphing device (or just want to layer) you can combine multiple samples into a new one, which you then use as your impulse response. There is a lot of fun that can be had here! Though, not every result of an experiment is going to sound good, of course...
There are some software options for synthesising an impulse response from scratch. Voxengo has one, Logic comes with it's own one, and there a many for creating your own guitar cabinet impulse responses. And of course, you could design your own synthesiser patches with the intention of sampling them to serve as impulse responses.
when properly done there are no zeros filled in, but you are still right that it can cause issues because it is often not in very high quality implemented into plug-ins, since we want it to happen very fast when we move the slider.
This is the best intro to a RUclips video there ever was and will ever be.
The video was a quarter over and I was still laughing at the intro 🤣 Also, that thing with the chord sounded awesome! Thanks for the super interesting and useful content.
Well, that's pretty convoluted topic. Nice video!
Oh, this is right up my alley. I have this weird habit of just recording random cool-sounding stuff (well, cool to me, lol). I particularly like setting up my recorder for rain/storms. I tinkered with convolution ages ago but my computer couldn't keep up. This opens a whole realm of new possibilities today! Cheers!
My Favorites are:
REVerence because it comes with Cubase^^
Audiothing Fog Convolver
meldaproduction MPhatic, because it can restore the original dynamics.
Voxengo Deconvolver, it is an easy and free tool to create your own response impulses with a sine-sweep or when you clap in a room, cave, wathever with a great reverb.
Hi buddy, awesome content. I really enjoy your videos! Thank you!
As a physicist and hobby musician I am so happy that here is actually a nice application of what we studied years ago. The Fourier transformation! Sorry guys, but I WANT to write these lines now:
A Fourier transformation transformes a function from the frequency domain into the time domain, or vice versa*. What does that mean? Look at your DAW. The spectrum analyzer. It shows you the actual frequencies but what it "reads" are time dependent signals (functions), a mixure of different instruments and their overtones etc. So the analyzer is basically a Fourier transformer.
Ok, still reading this comment?
So, why using a sweep when creating an impuls response (guitar cabinet?
For a good, real impuls response, you need a perfect impuls, a really high, narrow spike, a delta distribution or Dirac impuls to excite you system (amp^, speakers, mics, mic preamps).
I would guess it's not easy to generate and maybe it would not be so nice for your
eqipment. Whatever. Just a guess.
So, the whole thing is done in the frequency domain, generating a pure sine sweep and record the systems frequency response, with all it's added characteristic
rattles, hums, shimmers, etc.
The - for example - Voxengo deconvolver (to create an impuls response to load in the convolver(both signals in the time domain) needs to do three things (I guess):
1. Fourier transform (FT, time to frequency) the test sweep signal to find out to which frequency the system is responding to and
remember the time when this frequency was "excited".
2. go to the corresponding time in the recorded signal file and FT it (time to frq) it to calculate the frequency response (so basically have a look to the spectrum analyzer).
We are still in the frequency domain.
Now we know all frequency responses from 0Hz-20kHz(?).
And then ...
3. perform another FT with all these frequency dependent informations and go back to the time domain.
And there you have your short characteristic - click or clack or gligg or ...
Maybe it helps, if you know that a perfect Dirac puls in time leads an absolutely equally distributed frequency spectrum.
I don't know if you ever noticed that: If there is a rather loud crackle in your audio file, or a long constant tone ends, you see
the whole frequency spectrum in your analyer rising up.
Since the recorded cabinet spectrum response was obviously not equally distributed, you have not
just a spike but a click like sound.
Last step:
This information is again convolved with your time dependent guitar+amp signal in real time. Meaning that your signal from the amp is smeared out, blurred, broadend, whatever, in the exact same way like a cabinet would do.
Or - like presented here, you just convolve two signals. A snare hit with a door bell, what ever.
What about deconvolving a signal just for fun... so, feeding a deconvolver with a sine sweep and a song track or a synth pad or drum loop. Hmmm ...
lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Convolution/CI.html
I selected the "very fast exp" as h(x) and the "1 sec Puls" as f(x).
The "very fast exp", let's say it's your IR and the 1 sec puls is your signal...
The same procedure is used to create reverb IR in cathedrals, famous studios, famous places ...
Actually, each audio system has it's IR: The room, the mics, the console, the AD, the DA, the headphone amp, the headphones ... your eardrum.
*In quantum mechanics it's usefull to convert functions from the momentum to the position space.
^Actually you don't want to capture the amp characteristics, so I guess that's why the studio guys would use a "linear" responding solid state amp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform
ruclips.net/video/spUNpyF58BY/видео.html
lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Convolution/CI.html
Thanks man! Was waiting for a convultion reverb explanation, cudnt find it anything, that was clear as yours👌
This is one of the most interesting and helpful tutorials I’ve seen in a long time, thank you
Those piano and kalimba clips sounded so cool, with the convolver adding pad-like sounds and rhythmic ambience 👏
Cameron's relationship, with sound, it's convoluted.. especially when the wifey walks in and catches you messing around with the dryer.
Your best video ever! Actually, the best sound design video ever!
I've been meaning to play with doing convolution with non-spatial, non-filter impulse responses since forever. Well, since I learned about convolution almost 50 years ago as part of the EE side of my education. If I had realized it could be this interesting, I'd have jumped into it the first time I encountered a convolution reverb!
To add to the irony, back then I was trying to design a digital synth/dedicated DAW. I was totally over my head, and it was too early for even the FM techniques I was trying (and I didn't know about Chowning's work, or I would have headed to Stanford and had a very different life!). Digital real-time convolution was FAR in the future.
But in all that time, I assumed that playing with IRs this way would be weird (which can be good) but also not really controllable, in the way that FM can be hard to control, so I never put in the time. Embarrassingly wrong!
So now I had the idea of using a table of convolutions and doing it wave table synthesis style, modifying the IR w/ time. Except-mathematically, you did that, when you put IR's in series! In fact, when I saw you do that, I thought, "why not pre-convolve them"-for about 200 ms, before I thought "what, and lose all that dynamic control?!!"
You still might want to do that to save on CPU in some circumstances.
Still, I think there's room for an actual wave-table approach, to allow for real-time modulation the way wave table synths do. So instead of just proceeding linearly through the variations from the 2nd IR, you can do things like sweep back and forth, or change the start point.
The key here is that convolution is is commutative, associative, and distributive, so it doesn't matter which order we do them in, or whether we convolve each of two signals and add, or add two signals and convolve.
So now you've tempted me to not just play around and make cool sounds, but maybe write my own plugin!
EDIT: If anyone wants to steal the idea-by all means, go for it!
Convolution processing is one of my most favorite sound design techniques
You always have a creative “approach”.
Very nice.
The fact that the plugin can handle convolution with such a long impulse response is impressive. Each source sample has to be multiplied with each response sample down the line, added to the output samples and then averaged in, which means that the number of operations on each output sample increases linearly with the length of the impulse response. Super cool that it can just chug through that without missing a beat.
it's SO powerful.........Lord.
It sounds SO good as you experiment.
Thanks
Thank you Mr. Alan Watts!
Really interesting video, love your channel !
I bought the KHS Convolver as soon as it came out, awesome plugin !
Lot of sick impulses responses, like cabinets, glitches, filter formant.... And I love the fade in/out functions ! Cherry on the cake, really light on CPU :)
love ur videos man, every time i watch one it motivates me to open up ableton again. bless
I love messing around with Kefir, which is a free 1 second convolution reverb. Feeding different material into the convolver results in some really interesting etherial sound design
This retroelectro producer loves anything that reminds me about reverb(s) and therefore I MONSTER LOVE this SUPERIOR tutorial. THANK YOU! Time to go shopping….
That’s a really cool idea for making a chain of different IR’s! I have done two at once with Reverberate since it has two slots before but never multiple plugins of it layered. Excited to get weird with it 😄
Sidenote from the amazing tips in this video... your channel and all your work is just insanely incredible and super inspiring!
holy shit... all this time I had this amazing tool and never even knew! dude I cannot thank you enough!!
Awesome vid! I have the KHS subscription for quite some time now and the possibilities with the entire package (MultiPass, SnapHeap, PhasePlant and the many plugins) are nothing short of endless. It can get really overwhelming so these vids that give pointers to applying certain modules to inspire creativity are most welcome. Thank you! 🙏
That intro is the best!! Great vid thank you!!
@Venus Theory, we have been watching your channel for a while are big fans. We, as Quantum Electric Monk, just joined your Discord server. That may not be a good thing.
Normally, we would not reach out like this but, we have been using convolution (mics, speakers, mic booms, room shape, dynamic spacial changes, random sharp sounds, random deep sounds, other background noises, etc) for a while and (the mathematician amongst us) has a formula for it. Collab?
Maybe. No harm, no foul. Keep up the good work.
DAMN. I never really paid much attention to convolution, although I have always loved the sound, mainly from movie scores. But I am now truly inspired by the great depth of tone you get.
It's like a digital talkbox but you can change the shape of the talkbox or your "mouth" as much as you like. Super interesting
I have used vocals, kick drums white noise. You name it through a convolution reverb. They are great.
Very useful, and this is available in my beloved UVI Falcon so I will test run this idea. Thanks Cameron!
Don't forget the effects rack in Falcon - with that some pretty crazy things are possible!
@@VenusTheory Falcon is a new exploration each time I work with it... and I always find gold at the end of the rainbow.
truly when I first heard of convolution plugs/processes back in the day, my first thought was using chunks of a song as the impulse and running my track through that to find out what the interactions would produce.
Oh boy 😄that chord a 6:50. This is quality stuff. Thanks a lot man!
I just used space designer in logic pro x. I captured my bedroom sounds and put them on the plugin. It has improved the guitar ambiance
There's another great video by RUclipsr "Scruffy" on the sound effects of the Pikmin games that brings up convolution. He uses it to recreate an "alien goo" sound effect used by one of the bosses by running the sound of churning mud through a convolution reverb with an unnatural impulse response.
Very interesting stuff; I'd recommend his channel, especially if you also like the analysis of sound design and adaptive audio in video games.
I owned a convolution plugin but didn't know how to use it. Thank you so much for the tutorial , it really opens up a new portal to a whole new dimension
So I put smash mouth in a convultion reverb on a stock sytrus preset, it turned into an ambient pad.
Added a drum break and a 808 and It's lowkey kinda fire.
Dear friend you have a beautiful voice for voice overs. Superb bass voice
It can be quite fun to have vocal recordings in the convolver =)
Never have I seen sa design concept so accessable and so powerful at the same time. Thank you @Venus Theory for taking the time to explain this in detail.
Your videos have been real helpful!!! Keep it up
Oh Jizz, how I miss this kind of videos! Don't get me wrong Cameron, I love your new type of videos too,
When I found out about convolution I was super hyped and wanted to put everything I had through it haha, definately a great sound design tool.
Btw, for FL users there is the awesome fruity convolver and I believe the free melda pack also has a convolution plugin!
I personally reccomend more the free Convology XT , the fruity one it's fine but eh not that much , the Melda one it's good but I prefer the XT to be honest just because it looks great , you can do a lot of stuff with just one IR , plus you can import whatever wav file and turn it into an IR..I'm not so sure you can do that on the Melda one tho
@@TheGhostRecordsChannel you can import any wav file in fruity convolver btw
@@thehypnotist9750 it's the workflow the problem not the fruity convolver , that was my point
@@TheGhostRecordsChannel Oh ok. I have no issues with the workflow but to each his own for sure
@@TheGhostRecordsChannel it's as easy as drag and drop in Fruity convolver
It has feedback, stretch, an in built eq with the spectrum of the imported file for reference. Pretty good
Another wonderful lesson! Very entertaining and interesting! Thank you!
If anyone is interested in how Convolution Reverb is used in music, Colorbass producers use it to create a lot of their drop synths.
Thanks for explaining all this.
I was wondering how the pulsating reverb was done on the track 'Surkin - Tiger Rhythm' (famously used in an iPhone commercial). Impulse Response explains it all
Thank you for this excellent video. I've been using convolution since it first appeared but you have reminded me that it really is a powerhouse for creativity 😊
For all watching, if you have Studio One Pro, it comes with a convolution reverb called Open Air. It's awesome.
This is a really great video. Really appreciate that you showed the basic use case but moved onto using it in interesting/novel ways.
Clear, focused, useful, unique. This is great content. Subscribed.
That intro was hilarious. Really inspiring video and info thanks. Very tempting rabbit hole to disappear down.
Wauv - thanks for opening my mind to this concept!
I love convolutions! Thanks for showing some good use cases.
Any FIR ("linear phase") filter is also a convolution kernel. Very likely, the anti-aliasing filters in your DAC/ADC are also convolvers, although with shorter IRs. However, the main drawback is that they are, well, linear :-)
Also, another fun tip: Using the "noise" and "piecewise linear" operators in the Nyquist prompt in Audacity, you can generate a large variety of interesting impulse responses to convolve with. Filtering the IRs is also sometimes interesting!
I laughed my ass off. Then I paid close attention. Then I bough this plug-in. Fun will had. Much appreciated!!
Excellent explanation! Very inspirational and educational. Thanks so much for your time and devotion to help us to understand this elusive and abstract concept. 👍
When I will be passing to the other realm I wish I would hear your voice welcoming me in the outer life :) Btw, recording a new stuff for the channel and doing a laundry at the same time, masterpiece of multitasking :) Love your work! All the best!
I'm using Logic only because of the space designer build in to create amazing sounds! Convolution seams to be very underrated in sound design.
Used to have a Kawai K1r back in the day (1990) had a hardware convolution synth, could convolve any two sounds in the sound banks, great for making trance, rave etc ;) couldn't load samples though but just the sounds it made was enough back in the day :)
Yup - had a big impulse response catalogue back in the day to make ADR and foley match the environment.
Aaand bitwig is getting a built-in convolution module now. Great timing!
Defenitly the most useful and interesting sound design video I’ve seen in a while!
accidentally got the free phaseplant trial with the convolution trial.
Am 100% buying convolver tyvm...
Seriously considering phaseplant too.
omg it's amazing!!!
Literally a minute or so into this & had to sub 😂🤚🏼 you’re hilarious! If you’re half as useful as you are funny gonna love this channel. Hope you’re well
One with the verb!!! Love it😂🤣😂🤣🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾❕❕❕
MANNNNNN YOU JUST OPENED A WHOLE NEW CHAMBER FOR ME (huge fan subscribed as another account but still my mind is blown the same)!!!!!!!!
A little bit of fun along the way. Yes.
'capturing IRs section' was some excellent ASMR material haha :D
an idea that i come up with is it would be cool would be to capture IR of a guitar resonance box and then ""attach"" that resonant box to any other instrument or a vocal :0
Wow! This audio processing tool is a ((to me) slightly hidden) gem! 😃
Also, it’s cool to see His Mustachesty in action capturing some everyday-notch IR’s 🤩
Thanks, Camenus 🤗
Amazing sounds mate; I do love kHs Convolver because of this!
This is by far your best video yet man keep doin what you’re doin🙏
Spitfire Phobos introduced me what a power hiding behind convolution years ago. It's strange that this plugin didn't become that popular.
I needed a reminder of how incredible convolution is. Wonder what some chains with it AND a vocoder could do tonally
9:42 This also inspires me to try soft textural stuff, you gotta love just messing around