UNVEIL: De-Reverberation and Signal Focusing

UNVEIL is a real-time, de-mixing based plug-in that allows for the attenuation or boosting of reverb components within a mixed signal of any channel count, including mono sources, as well as modifying reverb characteristics.  It allows you to enhance your audio quality by stripping out excess reverb.

Additionally, UNVEIL allows you to bring the key features of a recording into focus, or move them to the background, by attenuating or boosting perceptionally less important signal components. Based on our proprietary, artificial intelligence based MAP (Mixed-Signal Audio Processing) technology, UNVEIL allows fixing previously unusable location audio and dialog, tightening up live music recordings, removing reverb and “mud” from musical signals, as well as creative sound design.

UNVEIL has many uses, some of which are:

•    Audio engineers can attenuate reverb in recordings
•    Film mixers and dialog editors can remove reverb from dialog and location sound
•    Music producers can turn vintage drum-loops rich in reverb into dry recordings, and vice-versa
•    Foley artists can remove ambience from sub-optimally captured sounds
•    Mix and mastering engineers can bring key mix elements into focus by attenuating components commonly referred to as “mud”

Good Bye, Reverb

Removing reverb from recordings has always been difficult to impossible. Existing de-reverberation strategies either manipulate signal dynamics, require specific channel formats, are limited to certain signal types, or all of the above. Enter UNVEIL. UNVEIL is not an expander or envelope shaper, is not a spectral thresholding processor, does not use phase cancellation techniques or inter-channel correlation analysis, and thus works with any channel count from mono to whichever surround formats your DAW supports, and without changing signal dynamics. To achieve this, it utilizes a model of the human auditory system to discern which parts of the signal are reverb, effectively “listening” to your signal much like a human would. These components are then separated from your signal for processing using our MAP technology. From there, reducing the amount of reverb in your recording is as easy as adjusting the value of one of our slick track-ball-esque sliders.

Hello, Reverb

Conversely, UNVEIL allows increasing the amount of reverb in a recording, too. You can turn a close-miked drum kit into a full-on room-heavy monster, move a sound back in the sound-stage or adapt the amount of reverb on different location recordings to match each other better. Additionally, UNVEIL gives you several parameters that allow manipulating reverb characteristics…like all of it’s features, within a mixed signal, in real-time and even using mono source material. No, that’s not magic, that’s advanced science.

UNVEIL The Detail

UNVEIL’s algorithm isn’t limited to processing reverb. Actually, it processes any signal components that the human auditory system considers as being of little significance, which includes the parts that many engineers refer to as “mud”. As a result, UNVEIL allows reducing the level of all the stuff that clouds your signal and masks the detail you work so hard to capture, bringing the key features into focus and, well, unveiling all the inherent detail. As a bonus, this also increases headroom, so you’ll even be able to increase perceived levels without having to slam the meters. And again, you can use the inverse function to add grit and a less up-front character to your recording.

One Small Step…

Except for the mathematics under the hood, everything about UNVEIL is simple and easy, results are always just one small step away. That being said, UNVEIL allows adjusting the process in a very wide range. No dumbed-down “easy-mode” in sight, just a perfectly stream-lined, no-nonsense GUI that looks as slick as UNVEIL sounds. And oooooh yes does it sound good. But don’t take our word for it, grab the demo for a test-drive!

Specifications

Format: UNVEIL is initially available as AU (AudioUnits) Plug-In for Mac OSX 10.5.8 or newer, and supports any channel count and sample rate (the maximum sample rate usable in real-time is dependent on available CPU resources). 64bit operation is fully supported. VST and AAX formats for both Mac and Windows PC are planned but without ETA so far.