Strymon BigSky MX

[Solarflares]

Two reverbs simultaneously?
Isn't that like putting a swimming pool in the middle of a lake?

Necro reply, but I don’t care, as you know already.

I work with the idea that every sound source in a mix should have it’s own localised ambience and stereo spread - if we are portraying it in a stereo image.
The Accutronics approach is interesting - used by Ken Scott when recording The Tubes “Young and Rich”. Everything recorded in stereo. I took that as an inspirational starting point.
So what I do, is to take my mono guitar track, and use a Waves Chambers plugin to give it some thickening and stereo-width, with short room-decay. Still in a narrow band, I then apply any delays I wish, and pan them outside that first image - which I tend to perceive as a ‘bubble’.
I then apply a longer stereo reverb to the overall image, delays included, but I reverse the pan, so that a delay on the right will reverb on the left etc.
Now, I can have that whole image as wide or narrow as I wish. So I have a bubble inside a larger bubble, with delays dancing around outside the smaller bubble, but inside the bigger one - the reverse reverb giving extra movement and drama.

As for ‘real’ spaces on guitar tracks - why shouldn’t I have the number 2 Abbey Road room available as a short thickener - and have the choice of an Austrian Concert Hall or whatever to encompass it? We are talking complex algorithms capable of way in excess of 14,000,000 convolutions. I wouldn’t be grabbing a pedal for any of that.
A rack unit maybe.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

 

[Orvillain]

Necro reply, but I don’t care, as you know already.

I work with the idea that every sound source in a mix should have it’s own localised ambience and stereo spread - if we are portraying it in a stereo image.
The Accutronics approach is interesting - used by Ken Scott when recording The Tubes “Young and Rich”. Everything recorded in stereo. I took that as an inspirational starting point.
So what I do, is to take my mono guitar track, and use a Waves Chambers plugin to give it some thickening and stereo-width, with short room-decay. Still in a narrow band, I then apply any delays I wish, and pan them outside that first image - which I tend to perceive as a ‘bubble’.
I then apply a longer stereo reverb to the overall image, delays included, but I reverse the pan, so that a delay on the right will reverb on the left etc.
Now, I can have that whole image as wide or narrow as I wish. So I have a bubble inside a larger bubble, with delays dancing around outside the smaller bubble, but inside the bigger one - the reverse reverb giving extra movement and drama.

He died.

 

[Solarflares]

He died.

Like most of my posts.

So, it’s a real necro reply then?
A first for me.

 

[Whizzinby]

Got about a half hour in on it this evening. Only made it through the first 15 or so presets. Some really nice stuff so far.

The Meris box I had felt very cold and clinical, and I just couldn’t connect with it. My Empress Reverb is nice, but it’s almost too clean and pristine. You kind of have to work to remove the hifi-ness. The MX just immediately feels more inviting. Strymon really tune their shit in a pleasing way.

A really promising thing is that out of the first dozen or so presets only one has shimmer on it.

I love a big monster ethereal reverb as much as the next guy, but I just can’t do the P&W verb thing.

There is a plate IR verb in one of the early presets that’s just awesome, especially hitting it with an analog delay.

A couple cool rhythmic verbs too with the nonlinear and magneto algos. Def will need to mess with those when I start rolling my own presets.

Cloud verb is always pleasing. I have a lot of time with that using the Cloudburst, but some of the early “standard” verbs sound really nice. I feel like most of these big boxes ultimately become novelty acts if you can’t get a good basic plate/hall/spring for the times you don’t want to levitate on big galactic verbs. If they nail the rest of the “natural” verbs, I trust that the fantasy verbs will slap.

So far so good.