Hi guys, I’m trying to set up a global reverb on a return for events, which is effected by distance from the sound source.
Currently, when I trigger a far away event, I still get the higher frequencies in the reverb, since there is no higher frequency drop based on distance.
Any ideas on how to do this?
Automate the High Cut based on distance? (Not trying to be snarky here, maybe I’m missing something…)
I guess the issue here though is that you want a global reverb setup for all sound instances and you dont want to filter the reverb for all sounds playing during that instance. The only way I can think of doing this is to Lo Pass filter your source sounds based on distance so that you dont have the higher freq’s passing through the reverb, although you dont want to have to set this up for every sound event either…
Good question though, Id like to hear what other people are doing. It might make sense to build lo pass/hi pass filters into the standard 3D distance attenuation curves as a new feature in FMOD.
If you can tell me how to add a distance parameter over a bus return, I’d gladly do it.
High frequencies dont just attenuate for reverb, unless you’re trying to simulate the reverb itself is far away (ie the reflective surface), so you should really be attenuating the dry path first (ie this is what the 3d panner does) and letting the standard send do its job as it already does.
What it sounds like you want is a different attenuator per event? The 3d panner doesnt attenuate based on frequencies but you could turn attenuation off and do it yourself with a lowpass and a distance parameter/automation?
Hi Brett,
It might help if I explain the situation I’m trying to emulate, which is based in an large outdoor setting, greater than 2 miles - real world units.
I have all of my external weapons (what the listener hears when not positioned in an object) routed into a group. The individual events use the 3d panners distance filtering, as well as having event cone angles. The events by themselves sound fine and attenuate over distance from the emitter with the expected results.
When I set up a post fader reverb send from that group, and listen from a distance, the dry signal sounds correct, and the reverb plays as expected, but there’s no way to adjust the volume, and or other parameters over distance to suit.
The only way I could do this would be to set up a reverb on every event and adjust parameters over distance. I would imagine that would become expensive when you could possibly have 20 types of events playing using individual reverb per event, correct me if I’m wrong.
I’m still new to this, so it might not be possible to do what I would like with a single reverb if multiple events are playing through it from different emitter positions in 3d space.
-Dan
Hi Dan,
If you have a reverb DSP on a group bus, then you forfeit any way to control it per event. You are processing a post mixed signal.
The point of sends is that you have a reverb on an entirely different bus that is not containing any events, and the sends control the mix to the reverb. It is already set up this way by default.
You didnt really address the lowpass side of the issue in this reply, which is again like I said in the original reply. Either the dry signal is far away and you’re trying to lowpass the dry signal that gets reverbed, or you’re trying to simulate a reflection surface that is far away, and therefore per event lowpass isnt necessary, you can just modify the reverb’s properties for the bus.
Note that actually 3D positioning a reverb is possible now with a transceiver on a reverb bus, that is received by another transceiver contained within a 3D event. To stop the reverb playing twice through the mix, the original reverb bus needs a fader to mute the output of the reverb.