kCathedral2
TL;DW: kCathedral2 is a giant reverby space modeled after the Bricasti Cathedral.
Here we go: this should do nicely.
This is still a 5×5 Householder matrix like the last time, but that’s about the only similarity, and it’s not at all the same matrix as last time. I am keeping that as kCathedral because I know full well that people find uses for things, but you can hear pretty plainly in my video on kCathedral2 that this is in another league (as they will all be, going forward).
How was that done? A lot of it was time spent generating possible reverb matrices. There’s a wide array of ways to evaluate how those become reverbs, none of which existed when I made the original kCathedral. I knew what I wanted but I had no way to measure it… and no way to generate thousands, millions, billions of possible options and automate the process of throwing out the metallic or lame ones. And that changed, over months of work on the tools.
There’s also new things that didn’t exist in the more purist, uncompromising kCathedral. The new one uses one of my reverb delays differently, by turning it into a single solitary allpass (well, two, one per channel) and also adding the very subtlest of modulation to just that one allpass (not inside it, as a separate effect). None of this was present in the original, but even though it’s only the tiniest amount, it’s felt.
But most of all, this time around it’s using a completely different approach to early reflections. The real Bricasti Cathedral uses early reflections so strong I mistook them for dry signal being let in. Original kCathedral used a 3×3 matrix, very gingerly, trying not to be obvious because I thought I was hearing dry energy off the Bricasti, therefore the early reflections had to be much quieter, right? kCathedral2 uses a 4×4 matrix… which means it’s able to literally use a patch from ClearCoat/CloudCoat, except without regeneration (the sound literally bounces away into the cathedral and doesn’t even enter the deep reverb field). That’s early reflections that can stand alone as their own reverb.
It’s subtle, but it’s also where I was able to step away from the Bricasti sound and try to establish my own. I think you’ll find that the deep room tone is about the same, and the depth of space, but I want those early reflections to be a lot more diffuse (but NOT allpassy), so I’ve scaled them up and spread them out. It should sound more like detail in the actual room rather than an obvious back wall, which I think will be more useful for how I’ll be using it. And I’ve got a lot closer to that textural butter-sound of the real Bricasti, while retaining some of my own goals for the project.
Welcome to kCathedral2. Oops, I did it again (this time more like what I intended for the first time). Thanks to my Patreon patrons, who are literally the reason I can persist at goals like this, and without whom I might have to stop halfway and not get to stuff like this. Hope you like it!
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
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
VCV Rack module
A great step forward Chris, yet again!
Thanks for you work and terrific new verbal offerings.
We moved to a new house and the studio isn’t ready yet. So I use my mobile station to make some music ITB only. When I saw your video I instantly needed to download and test it. The first sound I feeded kCathedral2 with made me fall in love with it directly! So I made a new song without trying further but it sounds absolutely great!
Thanks again Chris
Following the praise of ohter’s commrnents, I say that Chris is a genius.
He does things better than big powerhouse corporations, without shiny GUI and without the media hype.
Sadly, some big names engineers get more coverage than Chris, our beloved genius.
thank you, love you stuff
Hi Chris
I really admire what you do and love your reverbs in particular. I’m having problems with kCathedral 2 crashing Logic entirely. Extract from the crash report below. I don’t know what any of this means but I’m happy to provide the full crash report and other info if helpful.
Thread 8 Crashed:: ProcessThread1
0 kCathedral2 0x121866eda kCathedral2::ProcessBufferLists(unsigned int&, AudioBufferList const&, AudioBufferList&, unsigned int) + 4542
1 kCathedral2 0x1218699af AUEffectBase::Render(unsigned int&, AudioTimeStamp const&, unsigned int) + 509
2 kCathedral2 0x12186cd0b AUBase::DoRenderBus(unsigned int&, AudioTimeStamp const&, unsigned int, AUOutputElement*, unsigned int, AudioBufferList&) + 163
3 kCathedral2 0x12186c99c AUBase::DoRender(unsigned int&, AudioTimeStamp const&, unsigned int, unsigned int, AudioBufferList&) + 434
4 kCathedral2 0x1218648ab AUMethodRender(void*, unsigned int*, AudioTimeStamp const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, AudioBufferList*) + 45
5 MAAudioEngine 0x108f04762 MAAEAudioUnit::AU2HostAdapter::Render(unsigned int*, AudioTimeStamp const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, AudioBufferList*) + 18
6 MAAudioEngine 0x108ec9664 MAAEAudioUnit::AU2PlugIn::Process(MDPlugInputBusList const*, MDPlugOutputBusList const*, long, long, long, eProcessLevel) + 6628
7 MAAudioEngine 0x108d1a745 MDPlug::_Process(MDPlugInputBusList const*, MDPlugOutputBusList const*, long, long, long, eProcessLevel) + 1493
8 MAAudioEngine 0x108ceacf0 MD::PluginProcess(MDProcInfo*, MDPlug*, long, long, long, eProcessLevel) + 4928
9 MAAudioEngine 0x108ce7be5 MD::StreamProcessing(eProcessLevel, long, long, long, int) + 16629
10 MAAudioEngine 0x108cde4ff MD::Process(eProcessLevel) + 4303
11 MAAudioEngine 0x108cf6f1f MD::CallProcessThread(long) + 831
12 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x7ff8140ef4e1 _pthread_start + 125
13 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x7ff8140eaf6b thread_start + 15
If I’m able to fix this I will update it. It’s possible the new reverbs are just too big for some computers?
Thanks Chris. Fingers crossed!