Which ambient tone do you prefer?

[Orvillain]

Just curious really:

ambient tone.mp3

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One is just Helix. The other is Meris LVX>Timeline>BigSky.

 

[Orvillain]

More or less did a video version of this:

 

[EOengineer]

FWIW I enjoyed all of these.

 

[Orvillain]

Yeah me too. Just nitpicking for the fun of it I suppose!

 

[SymphonicDischord]

All great tones but I think I prefer the Helix and then the pedals. The Axe sounded great but I found it just to pristine. I liked the bit of grit from the other 2 and I liked that small hint of feedback on the Helix when you’d let it ring.

 

[Orvillain]

All great tones but I think I prefer the Helix and then the pedals. The Axe sounded great but I found it just to pristine. I liked the bit of grit from the other 2 and I liked that small hint of feedback on the Helix when you’d let it ring.

The only thing I'm missing from the Helix for this particular combo is the high-end frequencies from the reverb. I'm sure it is tweakable, or just throw a dedicated reverb pedal into one of the loops. The Helix really is such a killer piece of kit.

 

[laxu]

In both of these the Helix sounds a bit less "dimensional" somehow?

In the video Axe-Fx is my favorite, followed by the pedals. Which matches how I feel about Axe-Fx delay/reverb vs my Strymon Volante+Nightsky.

Fractal should do a delay+reverb in one box pedal. There's not enough contenders on that market.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Did you try to go for anything specific?

 

[Orvillain]

Did you try to go for anything specific?

This is pretty much going for my core clean tone for TNBD songs. I never use a clean clean sound; at least one delay with a very long tail, and one reverb with a lot of spaciousness to it, and a lot of high-frequency clarity. Sometimes I'll throw a reverse delay in before the both of them, to add a little bit more undulating texture to the whole thing.

This is probably a decent enough example of the two:

 

[Sascha Franck]

Ok.

Thing is, all that ambient delay/reverb stuff is sooo easy do be done with plugins, I'm actually re-considering a convertible laptop just for those gigs when I may need some more spacious sounds. With the HX Stomp I'd have an easy enough option to integrate things instantly (especially as it's only serving for my spatial FX duties anyway) and the horrible HX series latency shouldn't matter for delays/reverbs only, either. So basically all I had to do was finding a suitable space for the convertible and connect a USB cable.
With things such as Supermassive and Deelay (Sixth Sample) around, you wouldn't even have to pay for any plugins, so all you needed was an easy to deal with host and the convertible laptop (you can of course use any laptop, but I always found that to be a very annyoing issue when I tried).

 

[Iron1]

I actually paused Ahab's The Light In the Weed to listen to this and it fits that song surprisingly well.

Dig them all, but would likely choose the first one if I had to make that choice. The others have a little bit of high end feedback that doesn't seem to fit in sympathetically with the other sounds around it - at least on my system. YMMV.

 

[Orvillain]

Ok.

Thing is, all that ambient delay/reverb stuff is sooo easy do be done with plugins, I'm actually re-considering a convertible laptop just for those gigs when I may need some more spacious sounds. With the HX Stomp I'd have an easy enough option to integrate things instantly (especially as it's only serving for my spatial FX duties anyway) and the horrible HX series latency shouldn't matter for delays/reverbs only, either. So basically all I had to do was finding a suitable space for the convertible and connect a USB cable.
With things such as Supermassive and Deelay (Sixth Sample) around, you wouldn't even have to pay for any plugins, so all you needed was an easy to deal with host and the convertible laptop (you can of course use any laptop, but I always found that to be a very annyoing issue when I tried).

Bear in mind that particular track was recorded in 2011. I used this board for it:

You can barely see it because the photo was taken with a potato. But I had two delays - I've always done that nearly. The DL-4 which did the reverse component, and the DL-8 Delay by Digitech/Hardwire, which did the digital delay component. Then there was the Hardwire RV-7 Reverb that did the hall sound.

There are so many more options around these days for good delays and reverbs. There weren't as many back then, even in the plugin world.

 

[Sascha Franck]

There weren't as many back then, even in the plugin world.

Well, there's already been U-He's MFM2. Which is one of the most gorgeous delays ever (to this day).

 

[Orvillain]

Well, there's already been U-He's MFM2. Which is one of the most gorgeous delays ever (to this day).

Yeah that's a great plugin.