Investigating User Preference for Reverberation Plugins
Music producers claim strong allegiances to specific reverberation plugins despite these plugins being derived from similar algorithms. This preference may be due to confounding variables including interface design, control parameters provided to the user, adjectives used to describe these parameters, and preset design. This paper describes a listening experiment undertaken to determine whether user preferences exist when all parameters present within four reverberation plugins were matched as closely as possible. These parameters were matched objectively by utilizing spectral and temporal data captured in Room EQ Wizard by means of logarithmic frequency sweeps. All modulation settings were disabled in order to achieve the most transparent settings possible. The results are discussed within the context of reverberation plugin development.
Authors: Kevin Garland (Limerick Institute of Technology) and Malachy Ronan (Limerick Institute of Technology)
