Bit of a oddity due to renovations – currently living in an alternate space, reviewing things that make alternate spaces. With most of my equipment wrapped up in body bags it’s all a bit virtual.
I’ve owned AudioThing’s Fog Convolver for some time. It’s essentially the same as the convolution reverb that comes with most DAWs, but tuned and equipped to a range of unusual ‘stages’. These ‘stages’ are generally environments in which an impulse signal (e.g. a balloon pop) has been sounded and the results recorded (halls, churches, cars etc.) Some vendors also send impulses through guitar amps and similar to capture their tonality. Fog Convolver also includes ‘stages’ like a glass full of old cigarette butts or a cheese sandwich. In case you need your music inside a sandwich. You might.
Since I last looked they’ve added a whole bunch of effects which, in general, seem to me to be relatives of Fog Convolver. For example Gong Amp is a quite specific and impressively weird combination of amp, chains, Chinese gong and pillow that will ready your piano for an ambient Asiatic remake of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. It’s not a made up thing – it’s a historical thing that you may now enjoy. As is Wires – an emulation of a wire recorder of a vintage long before cassettes ruined music. Wires will make anything you throw at it sound like shit – very specific historically accurate cold war shit.
Really it’s about the value of authenticity and history – you are buying souvenirs from a museum of sound – in many cases the artworks owned by the artist Hainbach
But listening to the results without any regard to the origin story you are freed from the ideas and images that impose a way of listening. One thing is a ‘phono line tester’. That’s cool, but how does that work for my music? Does it really matter where the drones in Noises come from? In my specific case, working on a project set in the 1930’s I need the convolution from an Edison cylinder – I might try the wire recorder to get the same psychological result. Not accurate but creative.
Give all of them a trial, but if you’re not ready to go souvenir shopping you’ll find Fog Convolver is still the main tool. If desperately poor have a look at the convolution reverb plugin in Reaper which can be used in other DAWs for free.