No True Stereo Reverbs?

[MichaelStelz]

Hi,
first of all I’d like to apologize if this was already answered. I didn’t find other posts about this topic.

I was playing around with some FX and what I noticed was that the FX Return doesn’t care how the signal feeding into it is panned.
When I AFL the FX Send it reflects the correct panning positions (enabled “Follow Main Pan” of course) of the channel. However the result from the FX Return is always the same no matter if the panning is center, left or right.

Is it just me? Am I doing something completely wrong?

Thanks guys!

[Scott]

Select your stereo FX send, then press the “routing” key, and enable the “follow main pan” option in the top right corner. Without this engaged, the stereo FX has it’s own pan.

[MichaelStelz]

Thanks Scott. Like I said I enabled “follow main pan”, but for my concern it doesn’t even matter.
Even if I choose to individually pan things to a Stereo FX Send I don’t get a True Stereo Reverb out of the FX Return. So I guess dLive just makes a Mono Sum from the Send and the Reverb creates a Stereo Track from it.

It is very noticeable if you hard pan something. Of course AFL the FX Send so you know you did it correctly. The result is always the same.

Basically I just would like to have a confirmation that dLive behaves like this. Feel free to test it out yourself and let me know 🙂 I would appreciate it!

Please take a look at the Meter Levels on Send and Return in the screenshots attached.

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[Thad]

Are you expecting a signal that’s hard-panned to the left in the FX send to only reverberate on the left side of the FX return? I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

A signal that’s hard-panned to the left in the FX send should reverberate differently than the same signal that’s hard-panned to the right. Similarly to a real room where clapping your hands from the left side of the room should reverberate differently than clapping from the right side of the room. The sound will still reverberate to both sides of the room, but the reverberations from the left and right sourced won’t be identical.

If you want to test your question, looking at the metering isn’t going to do it.

I would test by sending one stereo or panned signal through two different FX sends, one stereo send and one mono send. Then flip the polarity on one of the FX returns (I don’t remember if FX returns have a polarity button built it, so you might need to feed the returns into stereo channels or mixes to be able to do this). If the returned signals from the stereo send were identical to the returned signals from the mono send, then they’ll cancel out and you’ll hear silence when you flip the polarity on one of them. My guess is that there will be differences you’ll still be able to hear.

Probably the early reflections from a left-panned signal are in a different location than the early reflections from a right-panned signal. That said, I’m on an Avantis and currently use mono FX sends due to capacity limitations, so I don’t have personal experience to back this up. I’ll probably run a test for myself next time I’m at work because I’m curious now! If you do run a test, I’d love an update on your results!

[RuneS]

Are you expecting a ‘true stereo’ reverb when selecting the EMT250 algorithm? The EMT250 only had ‘one’ input, and even the output wasn’t really stereo (or quad). The outputs where just ‘different’ from eachother.

Try the test with a standard hall algorithm instead. (I’m mixing a concert on dLive for Youtube tommorow. Perfect for doing some reverb testing again with the different algos. I’ll post if I find something interesting)

[RuneS]

Update: Seems that most if not all algos are mono summed inputs. I rarely use the halls (I use other verbs for that) but if you rely on the built in halls, then it might be an issue for some.

[MichaelStelz]

Thanks RuneS for confirming my observation!
I think I tried all algorithms with headphones AFL different paths of the signal. Maybe I missed one or two, but still it would be strange if only a few algorithms would process the left and right signal independently (true stereo) and others wouldn’t.

The screenshots were just posted for demonstration purpose, but I agree that it’s not an accurate method to test it. Depending on the chosen space one side should be more or less louder than the other side when fed a hard panned source.

I guess at this point we can confirm that the reverb doesn’t care about the panning of the send. For me it’s not a deal breaker, just something most dLive users don’t know and something you have to be aware of if you think you can create different spaces on the left and right side. Only for broadcast purposes I think it’s kind of a bummer.

[msteel]

I remember on some mixing console or another I wanted to accomplish that type of thing and set up two mono->stereo reverbs as “left” and “right” with the returns panned differently. I doubt I had an actual pan control in that case, so spatial location was probably by relative send levels. I doubt the difference was worth the effort. In any case I don’t do that anymore.

[Thad]

I tested this today on an Avantis and found the same thing as you folks. For all of the reverbs, if you patch the same signal to two inputs, flip the polarity on one, and hard-pan them L/R into a stereo FX send, then nothing comes out of the FX return. In other words, the processing that the FX engine does to the L and R send is identical. I attached a couple photos for reference.

A lot of the other FX, like stereo delays, do process the L and R sends differently.

It’s a bit disappointing that none of the reverbs handle a stereo signal differently than a mono signal, but good to know so we can avoid wasting mixes by using stereo sends for reverbs.

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[SteffenR]

If you put a signal into a room, the room responds as a whole room, not only left and right.

Vintage effects units like the EMT250, the older plate reverbs and early digital reverbs used all mono inputs or summed stereo inputs.

I wouldn’t expect a return signal on one side only, if I send a hard panned signal to a stereo reverb.

[MichaelStelz]

I think I can speak for everyone who commented on this topic that no one is expecting the reverb just coming from one side!

It’s about recreating a more natural, better separated and wider sound if the early reflections would respect the panning of the signals. Also early digital reverbs like Lexicon 224 and 480 are working in true stereo. Yes, EMT250 only has mono input, but in a digital age it’s a no longer relevant limitation. But that’s a whole other discussion.

What we can take away from this is that there is no need to waste Stereo FX Busses for reverb and honestly not really many dLive users are aware of that.

[msteel]

I would be interested to know if the new RackUltra FX card and/or firmware 2.0 changes this behavior.

[MichaelStelz]

In the dLive V2.0 Firmware Q&A livestream Jack said the new Reverbs are true stereo

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