Airwindows VerbThic: Free Mac/Windows/Linux/Pi CLAP/AU/VST3/VST2/LV2/Rack

TL;DW: VerbThic is a classic artificial reverb for being opaque and textured.

VerbThic in Airwindows Consolidated under 'Reverb' (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
VerbThic.zip (562k) standalone(AU, VST2)

Turns out VerbTiny has a sibling! And a secret… but that's for later.

VerbThic is a special case. It's exactly like VerbTiny in every respect, with one difference that may or may not be obvious (I'm hoping it is, but you never can tell). All my other reverbs, very much including VerbTiny, are meant to sound as far back as possible. The whole reason VerbTiny came out is, I stumbled across a reverb algorithm for a 4x4 Householder matrix that had unusually high peak energy relative to RMS.

This is not well understood in a world where everything is about making the RMS be louder no matter what, and where peaks are considered 'unheard' and unimportant, but I've been developing a focus on peak energy for years, and especially with my reverbs where I feel the heightened peak energy makes their spaces feel more distant, rather than 'an up front sound effect'.

So imagine my surprise when I ended up with another algorithm, much like VerbTiny, even a fairly similar room size, except it was the opposite! It produced unusually LOW peak energy. In theory, this would produce a reverb that doesn't sound far away: more like a fog that combines with sounds to thicken them up.

And so, that's VerbThic. Works the same way as VerbTiny, but meant to do the opposite job, spatially. On top of that, I found a way to re-use variables which cut down the size of the plugin considerably… and which very likely improves its memory use in your DAW, so it got more CPU (or at least memory) efficient. And, in the process of making it sound more up-front, I stumbled over a variation of the TapeHack 'altered sin() equation' concept that was all about taking a saturation effect to an extreme: applying a succession of corrections that were ALWAYS scaled through bit-shifting the exponent, even if that was not the correct amount to use. And I got an interesting-sounding saturation effect that sounds very different from TapeHack and also sounds a lot like nothing at all… I'll be exploring that one more in future. VerbThic is there to add body to sounds while seeming to come from the same depth as the sounds, rather than 'distant'. Consider it an interesting twist to try.

Oh, the secret of VerbTiny? The CPU optimization also worked for VerbTiny, running a little more efficiently while not affecting the sound (or saved mixes) the slightest amount. So, I've amended the code and re-uploaded it. Go ahead and redownload it as it's changed since last week, purely in terms of how many variables it uses to do the same thing. Have fun!

Airwindows Consolidated Download
Most recent VCV Rack module
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
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All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.