Repurposing the algorithm: How digital signal processing brought on the re-use of reverb

Abstract

The earliest digital reverberation algorithms were designed to provide sound with a wider and more immersive sense of physical time-based space. These algorithms successfully replicated the perceptual attributes of realistic rooms, but there was also an interesting and perhaps unforeseen secondary outcome. The ubiquity of digital reverberation made the creative misuse of these algorithms to construct physically impossible spaces readily accessible to musicians. By providing users with access to algorithm controls, reverb grew from a tool for constructing realistic perceptions of rooms into the creation of sound design—and often, the centerpiece of composition. Rather than provide a perceptually accurate presentation of sounds in a stereo field, artists instead began to approach reverb as a smaller part of larger timbral systems. Examples span from reverse reverb to the more complex Eno-based shimmer system, and reverb’s place in production and perception will be considered and discussed.