Galactic2
TL;DW: Galactic2 is a super-reverb REdesigned specially for pads and space ambient.
Galactic has been a huge success, no pun intended. It might be the most popular of my first batch of feedforward reverbs, and it’s still available, from its banks of 4-wide householder matrix delay lines, to its pitch shift stereo widening.
So, why revisit Galactic? What is there to even improve? Well, it’s a matter of taste. My newer big reverbs and realistic reverbs go for a bigger reverb matrix with a distinct, more organic texture to it. And I wasn’t really satisfied with how you worked with Galactic: I’d imagined a thing where you’d have reverb space going, and then you’d ‘paint’ in other sound, perhaps with a slider, or just by overloading the existing space with other stuff.
And so, here we are. Galactic2. Drive, Sustain, Darken and Wetness. And a tone that owes more to the K series plate reverbs, than Infinity or Verbity. Sustain starts to feed back forever a little ways past two-thirds up, with halfway being long decays, and very short sustain being your kill switch. It’ll creep up in gain at full crank, so be careful with that. Drive is how you feed in new audio while it’s going, Wetness is probably going to be full crank for most use cases, and Darken goes from totally, scintillatingly bright to mellow and distant-sounding, both as part of the total output of the reverb, and as part of the feedback loop (so if you have bright stuff going, and you Darken, your sustain will start to get darker as it continues, which can add realism).
I keep saying it’s like the kPlate reverbs, but I checked the code and it’s still 4-wide Householder matrixes, like the original. So what makes this so different? Its handling of stereo, is what. Either you’ll love or hate it. This is why you should love it. Unlike the original Galactic, this isn’t a pair of matched reverbs using pitch bends to stereo-ize them for mono things. Galactic2 is a SINGLE giant stereo reverb that uses all the same delay values, but uses them crossways: one channel accesses the matrix vertically, the other accesses the matrix horizontally. It’s ‘the same’, but all the echoes are arranged differently. These are way harder to come up with but it’s what was used on the kPlate reverbs, except those are 5×5 matrixes and this is still a 4×4. There’s just a teeny bit of crossmodulation to round it out.
What this means is, if you put stuff in the left, it makes a sort of cloud of reverb sound that’s also mostly on the left. If you put stuff in on the right, likewise: you’ll get ‘space’ happening mix right.
And if you put stuff in mono… you get WIDE center content. The whole texture is wider than what original Galactic can do, without use of chorusing or pitch shifting to widen it. That gives it a completely different character, which is why you’ve still got original Galactic to use if you want. This is a second bite of the apple. It’s about trying to get even deeper into space, and I hope you enjoy it :)
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
VCV Rack module
Yet another cracker, Chirs!
Great creative work with this development on your other super-verb…
Thanks!
Yes Galactic galactic. Thank you :) long time favourite of mine. Let’s hear what the new can do. Slightly more focused than Galactic1 hopefully and then it is a huge win. Or maybe “just” a different tone, which is cool too.
Ttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnkkkkkkkkk you.
So Galactic 2 is amazing. Wetness (on vst 64 bit in reaper) is Dry/Wet and not (up to 50%) Dry+Wet Signal / Wetness like some of your other Reverbs. Tried it on a cheesy overprocessed snare on a second track full wet and moved the reverb track slightly earlier (left in in the arrangement window) for better envelope shape. Fantastic. It revealed unpleasant ring at two midrange frequencies; occuring in the original snare sound, some EQing helped with that. And the tone is amazing; nice lows and low mids. My new favourite! Sustain and Darken are a win!
amigo lo hiciste de nuevo que gran trabajo. solo merece elogios cada plugin es unico y tu amigo tambien. gracias sigue asi.
I love your reverbs! Thank you!!!! :)
Great reverb Chris, thank you!
Still looking out for your vintage sampler emulation.
Any idea when you will have a look at it?
Thanks again!
Thanks, Galactic 2 is fantastic, keep up the good work!!!
Hey Chris! I’m loving the sound of this reverb, but I’m encountering some funky bugs (M1, Reaper, mostly VST but I believe also AU): often when instantiating the plug-in while running audio, it refuses to pass any sound at all — effectively muting the track. This also sometimes occurs on project load, so it’s a real bummer.
I hope it’s an easy fix! I’m happy to help test.
This is seriously interesting
Genius!