Maybe I can find a way to get MacOS to recognize these plugins as being from a verified developer, but until then, I can only agree with several other audio develops: Don’t upgrade to Catalina.
Okay, thank you! No worries on my end as I don’t ever plan to upgrade my main computer to Catalina. I only use it on a test machine where I don’t do any critical work. Based on my experience to date, Catalina is fine unless you’re doing audio work; I haven’t enountered issues with anything else I use (even DaVinci Resolve works fine under Catalina for video work), but audio is pretty much a disaster even though I don’t have any 32-bit plugins.
@Michael_Willis, I had a little time to investigate the new plate and I’m impressed! The only thing that is missing (if it is even possible to include with this algorithm) is an RT60 or “length” dial. For example, I like the sound of the “Dark Plate” preset but wish I could tweak the reverb length. This will be a great addition to the Dragonfly family!
On a related note, have you come across the zita-rev1 standalone JACK reverb? I have to say I’m impressed. It’s crying out for an LV2 plugin Dragonfly edition I know it was originally created for the Aeolus pipe organ JACK app (another LV2 candidate) but it seems particularly great for other classical/acoustic sources I threw at it.
Hey @anon60445789, I’m glad to hear that you liked it! This reverb does have RT60, it’s just called “decay”.
Dragonfly Hall is based on an algorithm called Hibiki, which itself is just a modification of Zita reverb! Using Dragonfly Hall, you can set mod, spin, and wander all to zero, high cut all the way up, low cut all the way down, and the multipliers to 1.0. At that point you more or less get the same effect as Zita, since those are the features that Hibiki added.
I’m cooking up another beta release of Dragonfly Plate (Ha! Cooking up a plate!), Hopefully I’ll have it available for you to try within a couple of days.
Silly me! Yes, so obvious now. Methinks I’ve been looking at too many different reverb plugins…
I did see zita mentioned on the freeverb3 but didn’t connect the two given the FDN abbreviation at the beginning. Even with the mod, spin and wander at zero (only mod needs to be zeroed, right?) and cuts eliminated, zita has the two separate RT60 dials for low and mid, HF damping defaulting at 6k, a low freq dial which I think I’m reading correctly at 200Hz default. So my question is, how do these line up with the controls in Dragonfly Hall?
Lovely. Can’t wait to try it. I still think that this will be the key for my virtual harpsichord realism placed just before a zita-type setting in Dragonfly Hall.
Oh, that’s right, I forgot about those settings in Zita! So Dragonfly Hall allows you to configure three different frequency bands. The High Cross and Low Cross dials set the boundaries. The “low rt60” is the result of the Decay dial multiplied by the Low Mult dial. So, for example, if your Decay is set to 3 seconds, the Low Cross is set to 200 Hz, and the Low Mult is 2x, then the rt60 for your low frequencies under 200Hz is approx 6 seconds.
I think that the High frequency damping isn’t quite how Zita implements it, but you can get close with the High Cross and High Mult dials. For example, if you set the High Cross to 6kHz, and set the High Mult to 0.5x, then the high frequencies above 6kHz will tend to decay twice as fast as your mid frequencies. In other words, it’s like setting a “high rt60” to half of the “mid rt60”.
Furthermore, you can use the High Cut and Low Cut dials to define two additional frequency bands at the extremes that mostly get cut out.
OK, this is great information. From the zira-rev1 quick guide:
At high frequencies the reverb time will decrease, this is controlled by the ‘HF damping’ control. The value set is the frequency at which the reverb time will be half the mid-frequency value.
So, I assume that this means that the damping starts before the dial value and reaches 50% decay at the value? Please let me know if I’m wrong but my understanding, then, is that frequencies at and beyond the High Cross value in Dragonfly are all reduced by the same amount whereas in zita the reduction is more of a curve? I wonder if the damping plateaus like a shelf or continues like a low-pass filter? I’m probably getting too much into the weeds
FYI, I was glad to see Dragonfly mentioned in the “favorite ‘all-round’ reverb” Reaper forums thread.
I should have been more careful with my wording; the crossover boundaries are not hard cliffs, they are curved. You can see the frequency response on the spectrogram. In fact this is the reason I implemented the spectrogram, so that I and others could better understand the last six dials that control frequency bands.
Great! I think that’s all my questions answered (for now ). Again, massive thanks not only for the 'verbs but also your time and patience answering questions. Less villain, more hero…but that may require you changing out your costumes and renaming products (Butterfly Hall?).
I was thinking Damselfly, at one point that was my code name for the Room reverb, but then I found that there are only two suborders of Odonata, and there were certainly more reverbs that could end up in the collection than just two…
@anon60445789 and anybody else interested, try out the update to Dragonfly Plate: Release 2.9.1-beta. This one allows you to pick from three plate algorithms called Simple, Nested, and Tank. The tank algorithm is based on STRev, and was used in the previous release (2.9.0-beta). The Simple and Nested algorithms are two variations of Freeverb3’s NVerb. They are called A and B in NVerb’s interface. To better hear the differences between the algorithms, crank up the decay time a bit and it will be much more obvious.
Just a heads up, there’s a rather lame bug in the 2.9.1-beta version of Dragonfly Plate. When you stop playback and start it again, the High Cut feature goes awry and behaves like you set it really low. Even though the user interface may show it set high and the spectrogram looks like you should be getting high frequencies, the reverb tail only has low frequencies. I implemented a fix and should hopefully have a new beta release available soon.
I noted this on the Reaper forums. I don’t think it was affecting the 2.9 version as far as I could tell. I hadn’t gotten around to trying 2.9.1-beta so I guess I’ll wait!
Pre-release 2.9.2-beta fixes a couple of bugs related to the High Cut and Low Cut dials: 2.9.0-beta and 2.9.1-beta would apply these two filters to the dry signal, and the plugin would often get into a state in which it would act like both the High Cut and Low Cut were turned all the way down.
You have to understand, supervillains are motivated entirely by notoriety, not money.
(That might be my way of saying that I have no idea how to monetize stuff, and I’m afraid that trying to do so would ruin the fun of tinkering around with this pet project)
I do know how that feels (villain to supervillian). Plenty of what I enjoy most in life I do without worrying about that horrible thing called money. Well, if you insist. I just don’t buy that a supervillain’s ultimate aim isn’t an equal mix of notoriety, world domination AND riches.
Now that the plate plugin has stabilized, I’m working on my other goal for v3: A stand-alone early reflections plugin. I’ve been wanting to do this ever since seeing Glenn Fricker’s showcase in which he turned the late reverb level down to zero. The new plugin uses the same the early reflections algorithm as Dragonfly Room and Hall, but doesn’t include a late reverb algorithm.
You will notice the “Reflection Type” menu, which wasn’t available in the Hall or Room plugins. While digging around in Freeverb3’s early reflections algorithm, I found that it contained several lists of numbers representing gain levels and delay times for different reflection patterns, but the Freeverb3 plugins only used one of those settings. I decided to expose some of the other ones, and indeed they result in quite different sounds. I made up names only vaguely related to how they sound, try them all! The one called “Concert Venue” is the one used in the Freeverb3 plugins as well as Dragonfly Room and Hall.
The color scheme is supposed to represent some of the pastel colors of early morning… I’m still trying to decide if I like it, but it will probably grow on me like the other plugins did.
The early reflections plugin has an updated color scheme and one additional reflection pattern that you can choose.
I also reduced the default modulation in most of the Dragonfly Hall presets.
Let me know if you experience any bugs; I’m getting close to calling this a v3 release candidate. Also let me know which color scheme you like more.
Loving the updated dragonfly/dial color for early reflections! Correct me if wrong but the color plan appears to be Room = Hoki/“Blue Boater”, Hall = Fruit Salad/“Ineffable Forest”, Plate = Alpine/Mana and now early reflections = Valencia/“Dizzy Days”? I’d definitely be interested to see how the GUI looks with lighter shade of dial color for the title colors as per the room reverb (which looks the most unified to my eye).
What matters at this point is the sound which is grrrrrreat! I’m hoping that in a week or so I can share some tests with harpsichord stuff. Truly – great work on all of this. Your efforts are much appreciated.
I know it was originally created for the Aeolus pipe organ JACK app (another LV2 candidate) but it seems particularly great for other classical/acoustic sources I threw at it.
