ReStereo - 2 stars in the shop - Is it really that bad?

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TritoneAddiction
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08 Sep 2017

Is it just a short reverb or what does it do exactly?
Would impulse responses or early reflection settings on Tsar or Uhbik A give similar results?

Those of you who own ReStereo or have tried it, is the low rating justified?

Does anyone like it?

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Loque
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08 Sep 2017

Dunno...i am mobile atm and in the shop it shows always 5 stars. Never tried it, but i would not pay 50 for a convolution reverb,because i own RV7000 MKII.
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sdst
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08 Sep 2017

well try it now, and this is my opinion

I hardly notice the effect, it's like a bit of Convolution reverb

It took me two minutes to do something better. in a combinator

that is not worth 49

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alex
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08 Sep 2017

TritoneAddiction wrote:
08 Sep 2017
Is it just a short reverb or what does it do exactly?
Would impulse responses or early reflection settings on Tsar or Uhbik A give similar results?

Those of you who own ReStereo or have tried it, is the low rating justified?

Does anyone like it?
I don't own it so I can't speak about how it sounds. But I recall that most of the critics and the bad reviews revolved around the fact that it's basically "just" a convolution reverb player with a set of predefined impulses responses files "dressed up" like a device (so to speak).

Since the introduction of the RV7000 MkII, Reason is able to load any impulse response file and play it back through the convolution feature, (there is a lot of free ir stuff floating in the internet)
Perhaps, this makes the ReStereo device less appealing.

However the author outline that the quality of the impulse response is very high and the samples have been captured in great sounding spaces with high quality recording equipment and techniques.

AFAIK Tsar and Uhbik-A are both algorithmic reverbs, i.e. they don't use impulse response files.

Simply put an impulse response, or “IR” file is a sample taken from a space to capture its character.
It can be played back through the use of a convolution reverb while being applied to any audio material to give the same space/ambience feeling to it.

You can find more info in here:


Usually a convolution reverb with a good IR file can sound more authentic in emulating real spaces (especially room sounds in my experience) compared to algorithmic reverbs.

On the other hands, at least in my experience, an high quality algorithimc reverb can sound more lush, deep and sumptuous and is more flexible in terms of changing the character/sounds giving great variety.

I usually tends to us algorithmic reverbs in place the convolution ones, unless I need a close reproduction of a specific ambience (which happens rarely in my case).

Hope I didn't make any confusion :)
The best things happen after reading the manual. ;)
:reason: :re: :refill: :ignition:

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Ottostrom
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08 Sep 2017

I own ReStereo but I only bought it cause I didn't understand enough about sound at the time. Its main use is to turn mono sounds stereo, which it does, but as it really is just a convolution reverb it also adds a noticeable amount of room sound. In some cases that's fine but if you just want a clean stereo sound from the mono source then this is not ideal. I just tried it again and I honestly got better results by just using the Stereo Turbo knob on the Faturator RE.

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electrochoc (PRX-A)
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08 Sep 2017

There is an "historical" reason why its rating is so low... ReStereo is an early Rack Extension, released in 2012, when everyone was really overexcited with Rack Extensions (including myself!). Because every RE released at this moment received a lot of attention and was tried "compulsively" by many users who were not necessarily audiophiles, it has received a lot more votes than any of the other REs from Numerical Sound (571 vs between 11 and 59 for their other REs).

The problem with ReStereo is that it has received of lot of bad ratings for pretty superficial reasons, at least from many users of the old Propellerhead forum... ReStereo was very badly received mostly because of how ugly the user interface is (when released, it was by far the ugliest RE available) and how it was priced at the time (I think it was 69$ at first). There were not a lot of comments about its sound or quality per se, it was mostly labelled as "ugly" or "overpriced".

I couldn't tell you about its quality since I don't have it myself (I always felt Numerical Sound's REs were mostly tools for audiophiles), but you shouldn't take the rating too seriously... The best way to evaluate it is really to try it and see if it yields better results for you than the other available options. All I could say is that the ReStereo demos sound way better to my ear than some Widen option from some other REs (like RPDistort). Just for this, this is a device I'm tempted to take seriously!
This comment is provided courtesy of PRX-A!

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CaliforniaBurrito
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09 Sep 2017

I haven't tried this one but I own the RiVerb Up-Front Spaces and love it on drums.

Ostermilk
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10 Sep 2017

I remember being harshly critical of the NS convolution RE's mostly because I felt that there was so much hocus pocus spoken about in the blurb a large proportion of which seemed designed to bamboozle purchasers into paying over the odds for Impulse Responses rather than to clearly inform potential buyers of what they were getting (a set of impulse responses).

The impulses are largely of exceptionally good quality and I was never short of praise of that fact and I never failed to acknowledge the impeccable historic credentials of the developer.

My beef then was with the whole marketing hyperbole and the fact that at the time Reason users had no other way of using convolution methods except for what at the time seemed like an opportunistic cash grab, rather than any fault of the actual products.

Even after the RV7000 introduced the ability to import IR's any of the content of the NS devices could still be sold as premium content for other devices at a more reasonable price point so the best thing I can think to say about the Numerical Sounds devices is that they are dongles for the included IR content.

So, try them out you might like them, then if you did you'd have to ask yourself whether you'd pay the going price for the included content.

Don't forget now you've got the RV7000 you can easily make your own IR's from your own favourite spaces and other devices, and given that a couple of months ago I was able buy Waves IR1 for $29 which comes with a metric shit ton of fantastic quality IR'S you'll find it very difficult not finding a much better deal elsewhere TBH.

Two stars may seem a bit harsh but honestly I don't think any of these devices would have seen the light of day had the RV7000 MkII pre-dated Rack Extensions. Opportunism, is the thing that for me gave what could have been a wholesome product a nasty taste. FWIW though I didn't actually rate them at all.

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QVprod
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10 Sep 2017

Something that wouldn't have existed if impulse response loading was doable in Reason at the time. It makes more sense just to buy impulse responses now if none of your current ones accomplish the task.

I'd say the rating is judged by what it does for the price it was released for. Some people bought it and liked it though. Never saw bad reports regarding its IR quality. Just most Reason users who were knowledgeable about it or used other DAWs saw it as a joke.

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TritoneAddiction
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10 Sep 2017

Thanks for all the responses. They clear things up a bit.

I'll make sure to try out the IRs available already and try ReStereo out for myself sometime. I upgraded to R9 recently so I haven't had the time to check them out yet. If I get good or better results with ReStereo then it might be worth it. I'm thinking perhaps ReStereos IRs are focused more on creating the wideness that other IR might not. Who knows.

I don't think the Haas effect (RPDistort or Faturator effect) is what I'm looking for since that messes up the mono compatibility. So this might actually be an alternative just to widen things a little.

The RE is pretty ugly though. Not gonna lie :)

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O1B
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20 Sep 2017

You seemed to have forgotten the MAIN reason it was POORLY received:
IT BROKE REASON!!!

It was the first RE i know of that made reason go the Shiite when you, get this:
- if you plugged the Right OUT into the LEFT IN (or was it the other way...).
And, if I remember, they - NS - was none to happy about fixing the issue. It may still be there.

TSAR is overkill if you're trying to achieve - ReStereo Sound.
A DDL with Pulverizer should do it.
electrochoc (PRX-A) wrote:
08 Sep 2017
There is an "historical" reason why its rating is so low...

The problem with ReStereo is that it has received of lot of bad ratings for pretty superficial reasons, at least from many users of the old Propellerhead forum... ReStereo was very badly received mostly because of how ugly the user interface is (when released, it was by far the ugliest RE available) and how it was priced at the time (I think it was 69$ at first). There were not a lot of comments about its sound or quality per se, it was mostly labelled as "ugly" or "overpriced".

I couldn't tell you about its quality since I don't have it myself

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O1B
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Joined: 26 Jan 2015

20 Sep 2017

O1B wrote:
20 Sep 2017
You seemed to have forgotten the MAIN reason it was POORLY received:
IT BROKE REASON!!!

It was the first RE i know of that made reason go the Shiite when you, get this:
- if you plugged the Right OUT into the LEFT IN (or was it the other way...).
And, if I remember, they - NS - were none to happy about fixing the issue. It may still be there.

TSAR is overkill if you're trying to achieve - ReStereo Sound.
A DDL with Pulverizer should do it.
electrochoc (PRX-A) wrote:
08 Sep 2017
There is an "historical" reason why its rating is so low...

The problem with ReStereo is that it has received of lot of bad ratings for pretty superficial reasons, at least from many users of the old Propellerhead forum... ReStereo was very badly received mostly because of how ugly the user interface is (when released, it was by far the ugliest RE available) and how it was priced at the time (I think it was 69$ at first). There were not a lot of comments about its sound or quality per se, it was mostly labelled as "ugly" or "overpriced".

I couldn't tell you about its quality since I don't have it myself

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