FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO INSTALL THESE IMPULSES, PLEASE SEE THE DOCUMENT ENTITLED “Impulse Installation Instructions” INCLUDED WITH THE COLLECTION.
Impulse is a collection of “designed” impulse responses to expand your design palate, featuring a wide variety of metallic, wooden, glass, and icy reverbs, as well as some delays and effects. The IR included in this collection are unique “spaces” to help you take your sound design to different realms and planes of being. Why settle for just practical, real-world spaces, when you can explore the blurred lines between reality and fiction? Film, tv, and internet productions are exploring realms between conscious reality and the unknown - this library seeks to help you on those journeys.
Whether you’re looking for metallic, wooden, glassy, icy or even watery spaces – look no further. There are small, claustrophobic, metallic spaces; huge, thunderous spaces fit for a Greek god; icy castles only Superman could live in; strange delays that will have you bouncing around the room in a straight jacket; and crazy effects that will make you question your sanity.
The included track list gives short descriptions to help you find something to suite your needs. For example “Short Verb – Box Trap” is described as “Like you’re in a very reverberant, but small, bassy, wooden box.”
The Impulses Contained in this collection are 5 categories of impulse responses:
- Short Reverbs
- Medium Reverbs
- Long Reverbs
- Delays
- Effects
The reverbs aren’t necessarily categorized by actual length. They are grouped more by the perceived size of the space. So there are a few impulses in the “Short Reverb” group that have longer tails than some from the “Medium Reverb” group. One example is “Short Verb – The Armory”, which is 1.991 seconds long, while 6 of the 14 Medium Reverbs are shorter than this. I chose to do this because “The Armory” sounds a bit like you’re trapped in a metal tube that has a lingering metal ring to it. So the space itself is perceived to be smaller despite its length.
The Testing Phase
The Impulses in this collection were all tested using a variety of audio samples bussed through both Altiverb 7, and Waves IR-1. They were also tested by a third party using Space Designer in Logic. The sounds used to test the impulses included a continuous speaking voice, screams, a witch’s cackle, a drum beat, a gunshot, and thunder.
Different IRs will react with different stimuli differently. Some of them worked well with shorter sounds, while others worked better with longer sounds. For example, a normal speaking voice reading a paragraph of text didn’t work very well with a very long reverb, or some of the longer delay files (or dense delays). However, screams and punches, or other short sounds, worked beautifully with the long reverbs and long/dense delays. It is up to the user to explore these impulses for themselves and their own needs.
