Subject:What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Posted by: shaunn

Date:8/9/2002 5:05:58 PM

Can someone explain to me how do they use acoustic mirror and wave hammer with their sound files?
I still don't have sound forge 6.0. I wonder what people are raving about those 2 plug-ins and their usefulness.

Thank you for your help.

Shaun

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: jgalt

Date:8/9/2002 6:04:26 PM

My explanation will not be technically correct but I hope you will be able to understand.

Accoustic Mirror is a series of routines that allow your audio file to be modified to fit the sound of the routine. Assume you want your file to sound like it was recorded in a large hall with lots of reverb. You would pick that particular routine and process your file.

Wave Hammer is a collection of audio compression algorhythms that allow you to compress your file in varying degrees. You can make it sound slightly louder or have it shout at you and everything in between.

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: shaunn

Date:8/10/2002 7:22:12 PM

Thanks for the answers.

I assume that you can create your own accoustic mirrors then?

But what is the differences between wave hammer and graphic dynamic? sound the same to me.

Shaun

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: earthrisers

Date:8/10/2002 11:30:44 PM

For the most part, Acoustic Mirror uses files that were recorded IN actual environments (rooms, halls, bridges, outdoors...), with the reflection-patterns. etc. of those environments captured and the results processed in such a way that they can be used to make "your" sounds sound as if they were recorded in those environments, too.
You can make your own such files, if you have the equipment and the data-crunching algorithms to do so.

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: jgalt

Date:8/11/2002 6:42:41 AM

"what is the differences between wave hammer and graphic dynamic?"

Before Wave Hammer came along I used graphic dynamics to obtain similar effects. Other then some interesting pre sets in Wave Hammer, I don't see a *great* deal of difference between the two. I don't use either one enough to know this as fact though. I tend to dislike heavily compressed music files.

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: Jessariah

Date:8/11/2002 10:21:03 AM

A compressor like WaveHammer is nice to give your sound files a "haircut" on the fly. People use "Mastering Compressors" to make their songs/music "commercially hot," but I agree that the dynamics are all but gone. I personally like to go from quiet to loud, as opposed to solid red zone all the time. (load a song from Matchbox 20's second album into Sound Forge and you'll see what I mean). But you do have those occasional spikes that will keep the overall file quieter. Setting a mastering compressor's threshold at -3dB (+/-) will compensate for that. You do want dynamics, but you also want the overall signal to be peaking out of the grass. (At least I do)

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: shaunn

Date:8/11/2002 11:53:37 AM

So basically if I understand correctly, wave hammer is a compressor that preserves the peaks too?

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: jdg

Date:8/11/2002 11:54:14 AM

i use accoustic mirror alot like a spectral convolver or vocoder. take a piano loop, use a nice crash hit as the impulse, now you have a piano that resembles the spectrum of the crash.. it doesn't allow too much control over something like this, but its quick and easy for me compaired to other processes i use to do the same thing sometimes (IE FX pluggins, Csound, supercollider.. pain in the ass processes)

for wavehammer.. i use it to do what it says. Hammer that wave. i think it is one kick ass loudness maximizer. when i'm making dance based electronic music, thats all i really need to get my mix really loud. but for more subdued music / accoustic instruments, i use some thing like izotopes Ozone as it has the control and finese i need.

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: Jessariah

Date:8/11/2002 1:01:04 PM

Shaunn

WaveHammer is basically a glorified limiter which redraws the peaks and keeps the file from clipping. You draw a line at a certain level, it pushes everything above thaline down, then raises the overall volume by bringing everything back up to the ceiling.

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: shaunn

Date:8/11/2002 3:37:58 PM

Ok I get it now. I appreciate everybody for helping me clear my doubts. Thanks

Subject:RE: What is so great about acoustic mirror/wave hammer?

Reply by: Bison_Flower

Date:8/14/2002 10:20:16 AM

I use wave hammer a lot. I edit music programs for competitive ice skating. As you can imagine, accoustics in an ice rink, as well as the music/PA (yuch) system are terrible! If you are careful tweaking wave-hammer you can both compress and preserve the dynamics as well as adding fullness using smart release. As a general rule, I compress my music after editing so that the maximum dynamic range is 16-24 dB. Now that is still a very large perceptual range of volume! However, the CD tracks I cut it from cover a huge range - last week I put together a program with an RMS range of 46 dB. Now if you listened to that at home, in the evening, when it was quiet, you could barely hear the soft parts and the loud parts would be quite painful. With wave Hammer I used medium compression with a 2.8:1 compression and it sounds great! In fact, its much better than the original IMHO.

Lyle