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Product Review
Zynaptiq ADAPTIVERB – Resynthesizing Reverb Plug-in
We’ve come to expect the unexpected from Zynaptiq, and their new reverb delivers just that!
In real life, reverberation is created when sound reflects and re-reflects from hard surfaces in the environment. The traditional approach to building a synthetic reverb approximates the way these reflections behave using recirculating filters; also popular are convolution reverbs, which use impulse responses recorded in an acoustic space to recreate that space in software. However, anybody who knows Zynaptiq will know that they never pitch up with anything even vaguely normal when it comes to plug-ins! |
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No surprise, then, that their Adaptiverb incorporates an entirely new method of reverb synthesis, where the main reverb engine is described as ‘reflectionless’.
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Unnatural Adaptations
On the face of it, Adaptiverb does much of what you’d expect a reverb to do, in that it adds decaying ‘tails’ to a sound to give it a sense of space and depth. However, its main reverb section does this in a profoundly different way from everyone else’s: the reverb tail is generated using a multitude of oscillators that track the pitches of the harmonics making up the original sound. Adaptiverb does include a separate and more conventional all-pass-filter reverb stage if you need it, but the main purpose of that stage is to add diffusion to what the main reverb engine produces. Unlike most reverb plug-ins, though, it has no independent section devoted to early reflections. |
What’s the advantage in doing things this way? After all, if somebody has already invented the wheel, do you try to go one better by putting walking boots on the end of a set of spokes without good reason? The short answer is that Adaptiverb is not about emulating real rooms, but rather offering a flexible and musically creative effect. At present this comes at the cost of considerable CPU power and latency, but even that is being addressed: a revised version is imminent that is more CPU-efficient and includes a new low-CPU preview mode that sacrifices little in the way of sound quality. Adaptiverb supports Audio Units on Mac OS, plus VST and RTAS/AAX on both Mac OS and Windows, and is authorised online using an iLok account, either to a specific computer or a second-generation iLok key.
In that it doesn’t emulate specific spaces, Adaptiverb could in some ways be considered as a modern counterpart to the plate reverb — but Adaptiverb also has additional controls and features that turn it into it a hugely powerful sound-design tool. These take it way outside conventional reverb territory, and had me hooked within minutes. As the harmonic tails generated by Adaptiverb’s main reverb engine use oscillators rather than conventional feedback loops, the decay is free from any graininess, and when you put your surreal hat on to explore the sound-design possibilities, it can be coaxed into generating a wonderful array of spectral processing effects. Zynaptiq have also added something they call Harmonic Contour Filtering (HCF), which can do all manner of tricks including preventing the tail end of the reverb decay clashing if a radically pitched note or chord follows.
A Freeze button acts on the source sound to create drones, plus there’s an HCF Hold function to lock in the current filter state so pads and drones can be fasioned from virtually any input. You can also shift the pitch of the harmonics in the reverb tail or hold the harmonic content of a reverb created by one input signal and then apply that harmonic structure to the reverb for processing a totally different instrument. A Simplify function also allows the harmonic complexity of the oscillator-generated reverb tail to be reduced to create textural effects — something that can sound very other-worldly — and you can even invert the HCF spectrum to have the effect emphasise only to those parts of the spectrum that the input signal doesn’t inhabit. Oh yes, and you can apply pitch quantisation to the reverb tail selecting only the scale notes you wish it to occupy. If you think this sounds like a recipe for total creative weirdness, then you’re right, but Adaptiverb can also generate absolutely sublime ‘normal’ reverb.
In that it doesn’t emulate specific spaces, Adaptiverb could in some ways be considered as a modern counterpart to the plate reverb — but Adaptiverb also has additional controls and features that turn it into it a hugely powerful sound-design tool. These take it way outside conventional reverb territory, and had me hooked within minutes. As the harmonic tails generated by Adaptiverb’s main reverb engine use oscillators rather than conventional feedback loops, the decay is free from any graininess, and when you put your surreal hat on to explore the sound-design possibilities, it can be coaxed into generating a wonderful array of spectral processing effects. Zynaptiq have also added something they call Harmonic Contour Filtering (HCF), which can do all manner of tricks including preventing the tail end of the reverb decay clashing if a radically pitched note or chord follows.
A Freeze button acts on the source sound to create drones, plus there’s an HCF Hold function to lock in the current filter state so pads and drones can be fasioned from virtually any input. You can also shift the pitch of the harmonics in the reverb tail or hold the harmonic content of a reverb created by one input signal and then apply that harmonic structure to the reverb for processing a totally different instrument. A Simplify function also allows the harmonic complexity of the oscillator-generated reverb tail to be reduced to create textural effects — something that can sound very other-worldly — and you can even invert the HCF spectrum to have the effect emphasise only to those parts of the spectrum that the input signal doesn’t inhabit. Oh yes, and you can apply pitch quantisation to the reverb tail selecting only the scale notes you wish it to occupy. If you think this sounds like a recipe for total creative weirdness, then you’re right, but Adaptiverb can also generate absolutely sublime ‘normal’ reverb.
