Parallel Minds let us know that they’ve introduced Reverie, a standalone desktop app, for macOS & Windows, that can transform any audio file into long-form ambient soundscapes.
In a nutshell, you can drag and drop your source audio file into Reverie, and then use it as the source for generating an audio soundscape.
Reverie features 38 audio processing modules – including spectral processing, time-stretching, filtering, modulation and spatial effects:
- Time-Stretch
- Paulstretch
- Spectral Freeze
- Standard Stretch
- Spectral
- Spectral Blur
- Spectral Morph
- Spectral Gate
- Spectral Cross-Synthesis
- Temporal Evolution
- Segment Analyzer
- Modulation
- Chorus
- Phaser
- Tremolo
- Polyrhythm Tremolo
- Harmonic Tremolo
- Ring Modulator
- Frequency Shifter
- LFO Filter
- Space
- Shimmer Reverb
- Delay
- Stereo Width
- Room Reverb
- Pitch
- Pitch Shift
- Formant Filter
- Harmonic Shift
- Chord Layer
- Pitch Drift
- Resonator
- Dynamics
- Compressor
- Tape Saturation
- Bitcrush
- Breathing
The application is designed to be easy to use, with style presets to get you started. You can control the output, though, by manually controlling the settings.
Pricing and Availability:
Reverie is available now for 19€. You can download it for free to try it out, but it has limitations until it is unlocked.
All of the module types, phasing, pitch shift, etc, don’t really mean much because there are ~20 different processing chains called “Styles”, and you cannot edit these in any way. Can’t change LFO speeds or bypass parts of the chain.
There are controls selecting time-stretching, as you can see from their website. I thought maybe there would be some menu diving, but, there isn’t.
It’s like having a fantastic multi FX unit that only as a few preset patches.
I will find a use for it I imagine, but, I expected more flexibility in editing individual effects.
A great program, but with some big limitations.
You can choose between about 20 “Styles” which are the different algorithms. They are made up of a chain of effects and processes your sample is put though.
These blocks, phaser, pitch shifter, etc are shown as blocks, but you cannot edit these things. You cannot change the LFO speed of the phaser. It’s just there as an uneditable part of the effect. You cannot bypass individual effects, either.
What it does do, however, it does quite well. But coming from a DAW background, who enjoys torturing audio, I’d like more editable modules.
I like that in a future update we might get scripts we could edit to make our own “Styles”.
Hi ! thanks for the thoughtful feedback, and glad you’re enjoying what Reverie does well!
You’re raising a very valid point. The current design was intentional, we wanted Reverie to be immediately inspiring without requiring deep menu-diving. But I completely hear the demand for more control over individual modules in the chain.
I’m actively working on a solution that will give advanced users the ability to customize effect chains at a deeper level, tweaking individual parameters, bypassing modules, and eventually building your own chains.
It’s a significant undertaking to get the UX right (keeping it intuitive while opening up that flexibility), but it’s coming.
Stay tuned and keep the feedback coming, it directly shapes where Reverie goes next.
Will / Parallel Minds
I’ve been enjoying playing around with this the last few days. Part of my use case is I have long videos of things that don’t have useful audio (electronics parts, trains) that I want to make into YT longform content. My stuff only gets a few dozen views. I have previously used Reaper’s various diverse audio stretch algorithms to make things similar to Reverie’s workflow.
I apologize if my above comment came across as overly disparaging. It’s a great program, and I’m enjoying using it a lot.
As a person with vague coding skills, even a way to edit a text file organizing blocks within custom Styles would be fun, and would leave the core GUI relatively unmarred.
Then you can go down the adding more modules route, I guess you could look to Airwindows’ stuff, but I know it’s not as easy as just “grabbing someone’s code” and jamming it in there.
This is a great concept and I hope the app grows and develops. I would love to see that 30 minute maximum output duration extended (to 60+ for real longform ambient), and have some more detailed control over the effects, but for €19 it’s hard to gripe. Looking forward to running it through its paces.
Thanks for the kind words and great suggestions! A Custom Mode is coming very soon, it will let you build your own effect chain and tweak every parameter across all 38 DSP modules.
Regarding the duration limit, I’m currently rewriting the audio engine in C++ for better performance, which will open the door to longer outputs beyond 30 minutes. An iOS version is also in the works.
Stay tuned!