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Freeverb

A more recently developed Schroeder reverberator is ``Freeverb'' -- a public domain C++ program by ``Jezar at Dreampoint'' used extensively in the free-software world. It uses four Schroeder allpasses in series and eight parallel Schroeder-Moorer filtered-feedback comb-filters2.6.5) for each audio channel, and is said to be especially well tuned.

Figure: Freeverb block diagram (left stereo channel). The Schroeder-Moorer lowpass-feedback-comb-filter, denoted $ \protect\hbox{LBCF}_{N}^{\,f,\,d}$ in the figure, is defined in §3.6.2 below. The use of three summers instead of one is for drawing convenience.
\includegraphics[width=\twidth]{eps/freeverb}

Figure 3.8 shows the default signal-processing settings for the Freeverb left stereo channel. Processing for the right channel is obtained by adding an integer to each of the twelve delay-line lengths. This integer is called stereospread, and its default value is 23. (See the file tuning.h for all constants and default values used by Freeverb.) Different software distributions may include slightly different default values in tuning.h. The values in Fig.3.8 were found in the ladspa-cmt-plugins package (``Computer Music Toolkit'') which is included in the Planet CCRMA distribution, and which is based on the June 2000 version of Freeverb, as of this writing. There are at least six more instances of Freeverb in the Planet CCRMA distribution alone.4.10

Freeverb Main Loop

The C++ code for the main processing loop of Freeverb is shown in Fig.3.9. Notice that it sums the two stereo input channels to create a mono signal that is fed to the reverberator, which then computes a stereo output signal.

Figure 3.9: Freeverb processing function.

 
void revmodel::processreplace(float *inputL, float *inputR,
  float *outputL, float *outputR, long numsamples, int skip)
{
  float outL,outR,input;
  int i;

  while(numsamples-- > 0)
    {
      outL = outR = 0;
      input = (*inputL + *inputR) * gain;

      // Accumulate comb filters in parallel
      for(i=0; i<numcombs; i++) {
        outL += combL[i].process(input);
        outR += combR[i].process(input);
      }

      // Feed through allpasses in series
      for(i=0; i<numallpasses; i++) {
        outL = allpassL[i].process(outL);
        outR = allpassR[i].process(outR);
      }

      // Calculate output REPLACING anything already there
      *outputL = outL*wet1 + outR*wet2 + *inputL*dry;
      *outputR = outR*wet1 + outL*wet2 + *inputR*dry;

      // Increment sample pointers, allowing for interleave
      // (if any)
      inputL += skip; // For stereo buffers, skip = 2
      inputR += skip;
      outputL += skip;
      outputR += skip;
    }
}

From the code in Fig.3.9, we see that the left and right reverberator output channels outL and outR are combined with the left and right input channels inputL and inputR as follows:

$\displaystyle \left[\begin{array}{c} \texttt{outputL} \\ [2pt] \texttt{outputR}...
...\left[\begin{array}{c} \texttt{outL} \\ [2pt] \texttt{outR} \end{array}\right]
$

The dry parameter (initially set to 0 in tuning.h, and typically changed using a graphical user interface (GUI)), determines how much of the original (stereo) input signal is mixed to the output, and wet1 and wet2 determine how much of the reverberated signal is mixed to the output, and also how much ``stereo separation'' occurs in the reverberation. In particular, if $ \texttt{wet1}=\texttt{wet2}$, there is no stereo separation since the same reverberator output signal is sent to the left and right output channels. (Note that there is no decorrelating delay-line like we saw at the output of JCRev in Fig.3.7.) Setting $ \texttt{wet2}=0$ yields maximally different left and right reverberation signals, thus maximizing ``stereo separation'' in the reverb. The default values, determined by tuning.h and revmodel.cpp, are $ \texttt{wet1}=1$ and $ \texttt{wet2}=0$.


Lowpass-Feedback Comb Filter

Inspection of comb.h in the Freeverb source shows that Freeverb's ``comb'' filter is more specifically a lowpass-feedback-comb filter (LBCF4.11--§2.6.5). It is constructed using a delay line whose output is lowpass-filtered and summed with the delay-line's input. The particular lowpass used in Freeverb is a unity-gain one-pole lowpass having the transfer function

$\displaystyle H(z) = \frac{1-d}{1-d\,z^{-1}}.
$

When $ d=0$, the LBCF reduces to the feedback comb filter (FBCF) of §2.6.2 in which the feedback was not filtered. The overall LBCF transfer function is then

$\displaystyle \hbox{LBCF}_{N}^{\,f,\,d} \;\isdef \; \frac{1}{1 - f\frac{1-d}{1-d\,z^{-1}}\,z^{-N}}.
$

This structure was introduced for artificial reverberation by Schroeder [412] and Moorer [314].

In Freeverb's comb section (comb.h and comb.cpp), the ``damping'' $ d$ is set initially to

$\displaystyle d = \texttt{damp = initialdamp * scaledamp} = 0.5 \cdot 0.4 = 0.2\; .
$

The lowpass scale-factor $ f$ is called feedback in the source, and it is set initially to

\begin{eqnarray*}
f &=& \texttt{roomsize = initialroom * scaleroom + offsetroom}\\
&=& 0.5 \cdot 0.28 + 0.7 = 0.84\;.
\end{eqnarray*}

Increasing the roomsize parameter (typically brought out to a GUI slider) increases $ f$ and hence the reverberation time. Since $ f<1$ is required for dc stability, the roomsize must be less than 1.0714, and so the GUI slider max is typically 1 ($ f=0.98$).

The feedback variable $ f$ mainly determines reverberation time at low-frequencies at which the feedback lowpass has negligible effect. The feedback lowpass causes the reverberation time to decrease with frequency, which is natural. At very high frequencies--those for which the lowpass gain times $ f$ is much less than 0.5--the reverberation time becomes dominated by the diffusion allpass filters (which have a fixed feedback coefficient of $ g=0.5$). Thus, in Freeverb, the ``room size'' parameter can be interpreted as setting the low-frequency T60 (time to decay 60 dB), while the ``damping'' parameter controls how rapidly T60 shortens as a function of increasing frequency. A lower-limit on T60 is given by the four diffusion allpass filters.

In terms of the physical interpretation of the filtered-feedback comb-filter discussed in §2.6.5, Freeverb's roomsize parameter can be interpreted as the square-root of the low-frequency reflection-coefficient of each wall. That is, when a planewave bounces back and forth between two walls, the attenuation coefficient is roomsize after one round trip (two wall reflections). Therefore, a better name in this interpretation would be liveness or reflectivity. Since the round-trip delay is given in samples by the delay-line length, changing the roomsize requires changing the delay-line lengths in this interpretation.


Freeverb Allpass Approximation

In Eq.$ \,$(3.2) we defined the allpass notation $ \hbox{AP}_{N}^{\,g}$ by

$\displaystyle \hbox{AP}_{N}^{\,g} \isdef \frac{-g + z^{-N}}{1 - g z^{-N}}
$

A look at allpass.h reveals that Freeverb implements

$\displaystyle \hbox{AP}_{N}^{\,g} \approx \frac{-1 + (1+g)z^{-N}}{1 - g z^{-N}}.
$

As a result, each of the four Freeverb ``allpass'' sections is really a feedback comb-filter $ \hbox{FBCF}_{N}^{\,g}$ in series with a feedforward comb-filter $ \hbox{FFCF}_{N}^{\,-1,1+g}$, where (cf. §2.6)

\begin{eqnarray*}
\hbox{FBCF}_{N}^{\,g} &\isdef & \frac{1}{1 - g\,z^{-N}}\\ [5pt]
\hbox{FFCF}_{N}^{\,-1,1+g} &\isdef & -1 + (1+g)z^{-N}.
\end{eqnarray*}

A true allpass is obtained only for $ g=(\sqrt{5}-1)/2\approx 0.618$ (reciprocal of the ``golden ratio''). The default value used in Freeverb (see revmodel.cpp) is $ 0.5$. A detailed discussion of feedforward and feedback comb filters appears in §2.6, and corresponding Schroeder allpass filters are described in §2.8.


Conclusions

Since Freeverb is a Schroeder-Moorer reverberator, and such reverbs have been around since the 1970s, its relatively recent success underscores the value of careful parameter tuning (typically by ear, but automatic optimizations are possible).

The idea of synthesizing right-channel processing from left-channel processing to obtain ``stereo spreading'' by enlarging all the delay lines by a fixed amount appears to have been introduced by Freeverb.


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FDN Reverberation
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Schroeder Reverberators