Echo Chambers Part 2 – “Chambers of Doom”

Product Description

This library is available in 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96khz sample rates (you get all 4 sample rates when purchasing). Special thanks to Max for creating the skin!

An echo chamber is a reverberant real space, which is used to add reverb to any audio signal. This is done by playing the signal into the space through a speaker, and picking up the audio from that space with at least one microphone. The speaker/mic are usually arranged such that very little signal can travel directly between them, with the sound waves having to bounce off of the walls (becoming diffuse) at least once before reaching the mic(s). In other words, mostly just the reverberation of the space itself is captured. This new, reverb heavy aka “wet” signal can then be mixed back in with the original dry audio to taste.

In this release, two more echo chambers at two additional studios were sampled for use with Nebula in this library. I’m giving them unique preset names to help you differentiate between them. The first one in this release is called “Sandman’s Den” and it has a gloriously big, smooth sound to it. The chamber is about 14 x 16 feet with an 8 foot high ceiling. It has a concrete floor, with concrete block walls. It was sampled with the door into the room both closed and open, open providing slightly less density and quicker decay. This incredible chamber was captured with a stereo mic setup.

The next one is called “The Crypt”, a name inspired mostly by the chamber’s creepy look, including fake blood decorations. The chamber is a concrete basement with a vaulted ceiling of around 7ft at the highest point. It’s made of two spaces separated by a doorway, with a combined length around 22ft, and about 12ft wide. As you can see from the pictures, there are a lot of irregular and rough surfaces, which definitely contribute to the sound. Two different speakers were used separately, to get two different sounding results. Both were captured with a stereo mic setup, with the speakers in one room and the mics in the other.

As in the first release in this series, for each of the described sampled setups there are 4 additional “Bionic” versions which use a process I came up with years ago that involves playing/recording the sampling tone sweeps faster or slower. The end result is like the ‘pitch’ of the space is shifted up or down (resonances that were at one frequency are shifted higher or lower). This gives you some very nice brighter or darker variations that sound awesome and give you more choices. Altogether there are 31 unique reverbs in this library, and 2 additional ones which I made by fading 2 of them out early to produce shorter reverbs. You can quickly and easily switch between them by using buttons on the included custom skin.

You also get an “early” control that allows you to adjust the level of the captured early reflections. It goes from 0 to 200%, with 100% giving you the exact result that was sampled. Together with the feedback control, you have some ability to shape the result you get.

Here’s a video by max showing off his skin and some of the different reverbs. You can also check out the ‘audio demos’ tab to hear more audio demos by me.