Nonlinear Space
TL;DW: Airwindows flexible reverb plugin.
There are many reverb plugins. This one is mine. And only this plugin has the power to turn Chris from Airwindows into a tumbling tiger. Fortunately my dexterity with these claws is almost unimpaired. I can still program, and I’ll have to, because they’ve broken all my guitar strings. And I’m not even going to get into what happened to the drumheads. Please join the Patreon and help me innovate new instruments to be played by large cats. I may be the first, but the rest of you will join me once you set the nonlinearity control to -11.
Nonlinear Space is special because it’s got filter controls and acoustic space simulation in the loops: the usual allpasses and comb filters are just a little different here, designed to produce a deeper sound that’ll blend into the mix better. It’s the peak (so far) of all my efforts with reverb, it has its own sound, and it’s free Mac/Windows/Linux AU/VST!
It’s also got a nonlinearity control, which besides the easter egg polymorph duties can do two things: one, it can make louder sounds sustain longer. This is a bit tricky to set up and you’ll want to feed it with consistent loudness, but you can get that ‘sort of 80s gated’ sound if you set it just right, especially if you’re driving it from just a snare track or something sparse like that. Two, it can make louder sounds sustain less, which is the opposite. Using it that way lets you set it up as a reverb bed which doesn’t die away, but you can replace the stuff in it by overlaying more sounds. It’s the opposite of the first nonlinearity but it might come in handy for ambient purposes.
The sample rate thing really just tells it what buffer lengths to use: shorter buffers make tighter spaces. It should give a roughly consistent sound if you use the buffer corresponding to your sample rate, but then you can also be at 44.1K and set it to 96K just to have a huge stadium soundscape. Half the fun here is using it inappropriately, so I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to use Nonlinear Space: I hope it’s easy to get normal sounds with, and for everything else, just have fun.
Until I think up even wilder algorithmic reverb ideas, enjoy Nonlinear Space. (and even then… because I think it will come in handy.)
This work is supported by my Patreon, and if it stays over $900 once April has begun, I really will give you Aura (the plugin, not the Hard Vacuum control) in April. And yeah… what really happened was, the video failed. I don’t know why, but I still had the demo and the mic recording, so happy April 1st :)
Oh yeah! So it begins! Thank You! =)))
oh wow.
Fantastic, thanks Chris. The best thing about this is the way you have to LISTEN to what it’s doing, rather than trying to be guided by fader names.
I hope You have as many blueprints or prototypes of as many different reverb kinds as possible: algorithmic, convolution, plate, spring, …, et cetera… The more the better Sir Chris! :)))
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First off, Thank you for all of your hard work on these plugins.
I’m loving this reverb. For the most part, it works really well. I love how natural and milky it sounds. However I’m noticing this weird Whistling sound from it. I’m not sure what it is. I lower the treble and add a low pass filter and it doesn’t remove it. It sounds high, but seems to be below 1000hz somewhere.
The whistling sound is also accentuated when setting the Sample rate hire than what you export it as. For instance, I put it at the 48khz setting because that is what my tracks were at. But when I exported my mix at 44.1khz, it seemed to increase that whistling sound in the reverb.
I think if this were less whistly and had more of a warmth, it would be perfect. A “warmth” slider on a reverb could actually be a really cool idea.
It can get kind of weird and I love it.
I absolutely love this reverb. I haven’t used any other reverbs in ages. One of my favorite ways to mess with it is to change the sample rate to a sample rate I’m not actually using – I use 44.1kHz in my projects mostly, so if I set NLS to 96kHz it makes a longer and more verby sound, whereas if I set it to 16kHz it generates almost a metallic click. I think it would be really cool to have another version with a smooth sample rate scale to get more variety that way, but this is already a fantastic verb.