And we’re back to talk about reverberation. Previously I introduced the Schroeder reverb design that used four comb filters in parallel that then fed two all-pass filters in series. This signal would then be mixed with the original dry audio to produce the output. This design was one of the very first in the digital domain, yet still provides the foundation for much of the algorithmic reverbs used today. James A. Moorer was one of the first to expand and improve upon Schroeder’s design in the late seventies and was able to implement some of the suggestions and theories put forth by Schroeder that would enhance digital reverb.
One of these was the use of a tapped delay line to simulate early reflections, which are of crucial importance in the perception of acoustic space, moreso than the late reflections. This tapped delay line that forms the basis of the early reflections can contain delay times and a gain structure that could be modelled on a measured acoustic space, like a concert hall for instance. In fact, Moorer did just that, and in his article “About This Reverberation Business” in the Computer Music Journal, he offers up a 19-tap delay line that was taken from a geometric simulation of the Boston Symphony Hall. Here are those values put into an array for my implementation (I omit the first tap because it has a delay time of 0 with a gain of 1, which is just the original signal):
Tap delay time and gain values along with values for the comb filters and the LP filters
Another improvement Moorer made to his design was to include a simple first-order low-pass filter in the feedback loop of the six comb filters to simulate the absorption effects of air. He goes on to talk about the intensity of sound and its relation to atmospheric conditions as it travels through it such as humidity, temperature, the frequency of the sound, and distance from the source. The values I came up with for the low-pass filters are at this point experimental, though at this stage they seem to work well. I’m not sure at this point exactly how to approximate the cutoff frequencies of these filters based on the data Moorer presented about the loss of energy that happens with sound as it travels, so more research will be needed in this area. However, I’m also fine with deriving my own values and adjusting them to fit my needs of an acceptable sound.
We may recall previously the simple algorithm that implements a comb filter, and now with a low-pass filter in the the loop, it looks like this:
Comb Filter with a first-order IIR low-pass filter in the feedback loop
A little more experimentation can be done here too in placing the low-pass filter in an optimal position in the loop. Here I am calculating the LP filter after the feedback gain is applied, though I’ve seen it being applied to the original signal prior to it entering the feedback loop as well. Placing the LP filter in a good spot could potentially open up the possibility of controlling the brightness of the late reflections of the reverb in a meaningful way.
We now have a fairly complete picture of the Moorer design, illustrated below.
The Moorer Reverb Design
The last little detail has to do with the delay line in the late reflections network. This ensures that the late reflections arrive at the output just a little after the early reflections. With a multitude of values, from delay lengths and gains, to how to mix all these elements together, it’s clear that reverb design is a combination of both science and art, and why it remains as one of the foremost challenges in DSP.
Now it follows that we do some listening, so here are some audio samples of the Moorer Reverberator. The values used are for the most part Moorer’s own, but as was discussed earlier, the frequency cutoffs of the LP filters are my own, as is the delay time of the delay line in the late reflections network. As an extension of this I have been tweaking the values proposed by Moorer as well as looking into other ways to modify this design to perhaps come up with my own reverb unit, but I’m sticking pretty close to Moorer’s design for this little show-and-tell.
Guitar strum with 1.4 second delay time at 27% wet mix
Guitar strum with 2.4 second delay time at 40% wet mix
Original guitar strum recording
The effects of the LP filter is quite noticeable in comparison to the Schroeder reverberation applied to the same audio file in that particular blog posting. The overall effect on this soundfile is fairly subtle, however this is not necessarily a bad thing as it adds just a little sense of acoustic space to the sound. The good thing about using this soundfile to test on is the long decay. It is often here that we can hear the faults in a digital reverberator because the decay is otherwise masked in the more dense and active sections of audio. We need to be careful to avoid “pumping” sounds or “puffing” in the decay tail of a reverb, and this is sometimes the fault of the all-pass filter as noted by Moorer. The benefit of using this in the late reverberation network is to diffuse the late echoes, but it’s effect on the phase of the signal can be disruptive if the values for delay time and gain are not carefully chosen. Moorer suggests a value of 6ms for delay time at a gain value of around 0.7.
Piano riff with 1.6 delay time at 24% wet mix
Piano riff with 3.6 second delay time at 50% wet mix
With a more percussive sound like the piano or drums, we have to be careful to avoid creating a discernable echo in the early reflections as this won’t sound natural. At a lower mix setting and relatively short delay time, this doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem in the above examples, but in the more extreme case of the 3.6 second delay, the reverb doesn’t hold up. The decay feels unnatural and there is coloration on the sound. There are few reverbs, however, that adhere to the one-size-fits-all model, and perhaps the Moorer design is a little more applicable to shorter reverb lengths. But there is more experimentation to be done. More tweaking. Moorer did propose that additional filters could be inserted to further help shape the reverb decay and account for high frequency absorption and distance, and in experimenting around with all the numbers in the euqation, perhaps some really interesting things will happen.
flyingSand 