Room360 - Spatializer

[Linos]

This is interesting. Here is a new spatialization program:

https://room360plugin.com/

It uses Raytracing to create an algorithmic reverberation. You can place your source anywhere on the stage. Choose a radiation pattern for the source. Place a mic setup anywhere in the room. And you define where the walls are. It's pretty simple to use. I am testing the demo, and the results sound very good. It does not color the sound in any way. Here is an overview about the features:




Radiation patterns currently include Omni, Voice, Brass, Woodwinds, and Strings. There are five mic types to choose from. More to follow (hopefully). In case your wondering, Room360 does sync between instances. If you place the VST3 on several tracks, you will see all the sources in every instance.

There is a free demo that is fully functional apart from not saving any changes. Full price is 99$.

I will compare it to my usual reverb setups when I have the time. First results were promising.

[Lawrence]

Any competition to SPAT?

[Markus K]

Looks cool. The choice of microphones is a bit strange imo. But certainly worth to check out.

[Linos]

Only partly, Larry. The concept is similar. However, SPAT is more advanced, has a more refined GUI and offers much greater customisation. Room360 only has a handful of parameters to control. For example, it is not possible to adjust the reverb except through some attributes of the atmosphere (temperature and humidity), and, more importantly, the surface (reflectivity and diffusitivity). You have no control over reverb density, early reflections, wet/dry ratio or RT60. All of these are indirectly influenced by the room you define. The wet/dry ratio, for instance, is affected by the size of the room, the proximity of the microphones to the source and the proximity of the walls. This is more true to reality than what SPAT does. However, it is also less directly controllable.

Fortunately, the results you get straight out of the box sound very good. Simply set the room size, place the source and microphones in the room, and you will achieve good-sounding results. As mentioned, the reverberation is very transparent. There is no colouration of the sound. Yet the result does not sound like a dry source with artificial reverb. If you position the source further back in the room, the close-mic effect vanishes. I haven't tried it with Sample Modeling Brass yet. That will be instructive.

I will also have to test whether you can automate the parameters and whether you can move a source without artefacts while playing. As far as I know, that's unique to SPAT and something that is important to Piet.

Markus, are there any particular microphones that you would like to see implemented? The developer is on VI-C and might be open to suggestions. If you want to eliminate the microphone as a variable as much as possible, you can always just use the omnidirectional microphone. I used the standard SM57 configuration in my earlier test, which sounded fine to me.

[Piet De Ridder]

Sounds very useful and there is a small void in my plug-in toolbox where something like Room360 would certainly fit, but when I tried to demo it (as an AU in Logic) I ran into all sorts of problems, so serious that restarting Logic wasn’t enough to make them go away; I had to restart my Mac. Not a good sign.

Also, neither of the plug-in formats (AU and VST3) is recognized by either Nugen’s SigMod or AudioGridder (haven’t tried Metaplug yet and I won’t because that one takes ages to scan the available plug-ins), so demoing Room360 by hosting it outside of Logic was no option either.

And going the VEPro way, was also not a success because, while the VST3-version of the plug-in seems to load and work nicely as long as VEPro is the active window, the moment you click anywhere on the Logic GUI (making it the active window), Room360, for some reason, immediately starts to crackle and stutter.

All of which makes me wonder if Room360 is perhaps more Windows- than Mac-friendly?

__

[Thomas Mavian]

Interesting, will need to try this one. Reminds me of the old Rayspace from "waybackthen"...

https://www.quikquak.com/prod_rayspace.html

[Linos]

Ryan, the developer, is working on a fix for the issues on Mac.. Hopefully it will run on both platforms soon.

Just a heads up: the price has been reduced to $20 for this weekend only. I'm buying it. Even if it isn't developed any further, I'll still find uses for it.

I was interested in Rayspace Thomas, but unfortunately I found out about it too late when the programme no longer existed. I never got the chance to try it.

I'll post some more thoughts and a short mock-up entirely spatialised with Room360 soon.

[Linos]

Ryan responded to my question about automation, among other things. It's a feature that he wants to add. Stereo sources are coming too, and hopefully mic configurations such as decca trees etc.

I haven't been this excited about a plugin's potential in a long time.

Here are the promised audio demos. I mock-upped the beginning of Josef Suk's Serenade for Strings, Opus 6 with Light and Sound Chamber Strings. The bass pizzicatos are from Berlin Strings. So these have a natural ambience in the recordings. I tried to blend the dry library with this wet pizzicati as a test.

Dry

Dry.mp3

(579 KiB) Not downloaded yet

With Room360, no other processing:

Room360.mp3

(579 KiB) Not downloaded yet

For comparison, this is what I used until now. The stage placement is done with Spat Revolution Essential, the tail is provided by Altiverb:

My setup.mp3

(579 KiB) Not downloaded yet

I went for a more ambient result with Room360 to match the bass pizzicati. For a more direct comparison to my current setup, here is a drier version done with Room360:

Room360 drier.mp3

(579 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[Thomas Mavian]

Just a heads up: the price has been reduced to $20 for this weekend only. I'm buying it. Even if it isn't developed any further, I'll still find uses for it.

Thanks for the heads up, I took the bait. Haven't had the opportunity to try it out yet.