How Much Ambience

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

Now that we have worked out how to create ambience with styles by utilising the Early Reflections as a master effects.

The next question being how much to use on the other tracks in your styles and indeed the sounds you play with your lower / upper sounds.

And how does adjusting the different parameters actually change the ambience?

[♔Chello]

How much ?
Always a little less than you think.

The effect will work very differently on tracks other than drums and perc.
Each instrument has a different presence range, which requires a change in LEQ/HEQ, and the ER Time/Pre Delay is different for e.g. a guitar than drums; it is closer to the listener.

My setup makes the effect theoretically unsuitable for other sounds, because I have set ER Time/Pre Delay to minimum, while other sounds should actually have even lower values, because these are closer to the listener than the drums.

The effect has much less impact on sounds other than drums/perc, especially if these have been given increased ambience with the Drum Editor.

There is no way to change the ambience for other sounds (that I know of), but EQ will always have a decisive impact on the effect.

The effect is very effective for drums/perc, because the ambience here is genuine.

Different instruments have different amounts of genuine ambience added, and those with a lot will work better than those with little.

I isolate each track and increase the volume in the MFX Send while trying to find the best value, always choosing one slightly lower than the one I want, because all the tracks together give a higher value.


Working with effects is much like calculating crossovers for speakers:
The filter's component values depend on the impedance of each unit; halving the impedance is equivalent to doubling the component values.

So EQ settings for effects are a bit like the impedance of the units.

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

   

These are my observations 

let’s have a look at the parameters firstly 

ER Time : 

This parameter defines the size of the space the higher the value the larger the space.

Pre Delay : 

The pushes the early reflections backwards or forwards in the space making the early reflections sound longer or shorter. But this value works kind of opposite to the ER Time.

The higher value here the shorter the reflections are, the lower the value the longer the reflections are and thus creating the impression of a more empty space.

The Pre HEQ value also affects the ambience of the space, the high the gain value ie +15 db the brighter the space sounds go for something completely opposite and ie -15 db and you get a darker sounding space.

[♔Chello]

These are my observations 

let’s have a look at the parameters firstly 

ER Time : 

This parameter defines the size of the space the higher the value the larger the space.

Pre Delay : 

The pushes the early reflections backwards or forwards in the space making the early reflections sound longer or shorter. But this value works kind of opposite to the ER Time.

The higher value here the shorter the reflections are, the lower the value the longer the reflections are and thus creating the impression of a more empty space.

The Pre HEQ value also affects the ambience of the space, the high the gain value ie +15 db the brighter the space sounds go for something completely opposite and ie -15 db and you get a darker sounding space.

[⚖musicalmemoriesuk]

   

Next for the how much of the ambience you wish add to the sound.

The lower the send the less ambience added to the sound and thus sounding closer.

The higher the send the more ambience added to the sound giving the impression the sound is further away which would also more of the room / spaces ambience added.

[♔Chello]

I have now used the same setup for my latest converted styles, and used the effect with the same parameters for all tracks.

It works reasonably well, but internal styles are much better with this effect.

Internal styles usually have Reverb Room as the effect in FX3, and I keep the values in FX3 from this, and only change the effect to Early Reflections.