5 pages page 216.
Author: Hugh Robjohns

“In terms of sound quality, this is about as good as it gets. […]. The reverb programs are quite simply stunning. The overall quality is superb, with lovely dense tails and precisely controlled early reflections. […]. I could find nothing to fault with this machine. It is stunningly simple to use, incredibly versatile, and sounds absolutely superb. […]. To say I was impressed is an understatement - reviewing a tool like this is what makes this job so enjoyable!”

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The Flaws Of Available Reverbs
Some of the main complaints about existing reverbs is that they have unrealistic imaging, sound too metallic and have a tendency to impose unwanted modulation on the signal. The knowledge of sonic conditions has simply not been great enough, and not enough attention has been brought to the characteristics of acoustic details, which has shown to be an essential part of the sonic footprint of reverb.


The Vision And The Need For A New Approach To Reverb
The objective of the VSS project has been to create a reverb technology that would mark the frontier of what is technologically and humanly possible to accomplish, and which would satisfy even the most extensive demands for true sonic realism.

The VSS project is a technology project rather than traditional product development project. Until late in the process the research and algorithm development did not take into account whether the necessary processing power was available to support the DSP software. This approach was taken to ensure that the vision would not be restricted by the limitations of available hardware.

The Objective Of VSS
The objective of VSS has been to make the best sounding and most realistic reverb ever heard. To achieve this TC Electronic could have taken one of two different approaches:

To achieve this TC Electronic could have taken one of two different approaches.

1. Either - Study existing technology and come up with something that would be slightly better than the previous TC Electronic and competitors reverbs
2. or- Define and pursue what would be ideal.

TC Electronic chose the latter.

From very early on in the process it was clear that a lot of basic research had to be performed in order to obtain the necessary level of in depth knowledge of the nature of reverb.

VSS is an ongoing project and it doesn't end with M3000. M3000 is simply the first platform to utilize this technology.

NOTE: Recently a VSS-5.1 algorithm has been developed for the SYSTEM 6000 Mainframe, and other improvements of this genuine reverb technology will inevitable be realized in the future.

The Demands To VSS
The technological demands on the research project were straight forward, though very challenging.

• The core had to be very flexible

• The core had to cover natural sounds

• Smoothness in the tail

• Real-room realism (the ability the simulate the sonics of actual rooms)

• Spaciousness (the ability to create a wide and natural sonic image and avoiding the massive "wall of reverb")

• Piano-correctness (the ability to keep the signal in 100% correct pitch, even when engaging extensive effects processing)

• Modulation free (the ability to keep the signal 100% free of sound deteriorating modulation).

• Add On Modulation (the option of adding modulation to the reverb tail in order to add life and "feel" to the sound)

• Accurate Early Reflections (the ability to simulate all relevant parameters (i.e. air-movements) of the ambiance of a real room - natural as well as super-natural)

• The ability to combine a perfect tail with detailed early reflections.

• The technology must be applicable to real the real world. The customer must be able to use it for specific purposes

The Actual, Audible Qualities Of VSS
VSS has the rare ability to keep instruments and voices clearly defined in the musical landscape no matter how complex the signal is. This benefit is the result of the VSS’ ability to avoid all unwanted modulation and keeping the signal in correct pitch.

The Technique Behind VSS
Though it has been obvious all along that a redefinition of reverb was not a matter of simply getting better converters and faster processors, the vision has only been made possible through the latest in digital processing technology. Knowing that the key point in VSS was the huge number of small details demanding a vast number of calculations per second, it has not been possible to put the software to use until now.

In the M3000 the TC Electronic proprietary DARC™-chip technology has entered into a synergistic interaction with an extremely powerful Motorola 80 Mips DSP chip which has boosted the processing powers to the needed level.

Previous reverbs has a tendency to work and sound mechanical. The realism and natural sound of VSS is achieved by going very deep into detail. The digital domain is a simulation or a model of the “analog” real life. The success of digital simulations demands an extremely high level of detail and a huge amount of information. But the number of information alone is not enough. It has to be the right information. And this is basically where VSS differs from all previous reverbs.

The C.O.R.E. technology is an application most suited for simulation small spaces and has it's main application in post-production environments.

The VSS is unique because it is a combination of 100% correct technology and a manual fine-tuning performed by the best "golden ears" in the world.

The reverb tail is the statistical part of the sound. Where early reflections is the defined part.

The M3000 is the first time the DARC chip exploits it's full resources.

No other reverb technology uses that much processing power on the early (initial) reflections. VSS utilizes close to 10 times as many directional taps as the best present reverbs.

The Use Of The Working Platform/User Interface Of The Silicon Graphics Computers
The VSS has been developed entirely on computers right until the point where it was finished. All adjustments and changes has been performed outside the actual hardware of the M3000. An advanced user interface was developed to allow changes made to algorithms to be monitored "on-line", using powerful Silicon Graphics computers. This way the process became much more precise and it allowed the R&D department to work much faster, simply because changes didn't have to be "ported" to DSP code and reviewed on the actual hardware. In the final stages of the process the result on the M3000 has been constantly A/B compared to the Silicon Graphics sound.

The customized user interface allowed our "Golden Ears" to control and adjust more than 500 parameters in the algorithms without having to worry about the actual programming.

DSP software is initially made in C++ program language, and later hand-compiled for the M3000.

The ODEON Project
The first practical steps in the development of VSS was taking when the ODEON-project was established as a scientific collaboration between TC Electronic and DTU - The Danish Technical University. The objective of this project was to map out the basics of natural sonic conditions of reverb. One of the key elements was an extensive ray-tracing program resulting in an understanding of what a wide number of parameters does to the early reflections in reverb. The result was quite clear. In order to be able to simulate the actual ambiance of a sonic room it was necessary to employ a very large number of directional taps.

The ODEON is an Auralizing program describing the parameters that constitutes the initial reflections' pattern.

ODEON was originally designed as a tool for architects who wanted to simulated the acoustics of construction projects. It has the ability to "draw" the acoustics of a room.

The data in the ODEON constituted the bulk used to define the early reflections' core.

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