Hi Tim, > Over-the-top reverbs have their uses, however, they do have to be pleasing > to ear. Absolutely. I've created some electronic music tunes and appreciate this use of reverb. But it's better in my experience to listen to these over-the-top reverbs (which essentially create a new instrument from an existing one) in good rooms or alternatively with a good room acoustics model. When I refer to "reverb," I'm actually talking about room acoustics, including reverb. There is also a phenomenon referred to as binaural listening, which you may have heard of. In other posts, I've referred to this as "stereo separation." Many people familiar with binaural listening, including myself, will tell you that this is the best "stereo" or "surround sound" that they've ever heard, bar none. Although in the past, binaural recordings have not been successful, I suspect this is because at the time it was tried, headphones were very heavy and rather expensive on top of (not instead of) the cost of speakers. They may be commercially viable in the future with all the inexpensive, lightweight headphones around. One of the advantages of calculated impulse response functions is that binaural images are easily obtained from any monophonic recording --- and as accurately as you want. Regards, Dave.
