Virtual Analog Simulation and Extensions of Plate Reverberation

In the 50s and 60s, steel plates were popularly used as a technique to add reverberation to sound. As a plate reverb itself is quite bulky and requires lots of maintenance, a digital implementation would be desirable. Currently, the available (digital) plugins rely solely on recorded impulse responses or simple delay networks. Virtual Analog (VA) simulations, on the other hand, rely on a model of the analog effect they are simulating, resulting in a sound and ’feel’ the of the classical analog effect. In this paper, a VA simulation of plate reverberation is presented. Not only does this approach result in a very natural sounding reverb, it also poses many interesting opportunities that go beyond what is physically possible. Existing VA solutions, however, have limited control over dynamics of physical parameters. In this paper, we present a model where parameters like the positions of the in- and outputs and the dimensions of the plate can be changed while sound goes through. This results is in a unique flanging and pitch bend effect, respectively, which has not yet be achieved by the current state of the art.