Plateau

Lush plate reverb

Plateau

Plateau is a plate reverb module based on the famous, Dattorro (1997) design, and is designed to make a dry, lifeless patch sound lush, deep and spacious. However, unlike other reverberators, Plateau attempts to go beyond, providing a wide variety of control combinations and options.

Contents

User Guide

All of the controls on Plateau have CV inputs available allowing for full automation of all parameters.

Knobs

Buttons

How it works

Plateau is based upon the popular Dattorro (1997) digital plate reverb design. The flow diagram below shows a simplified version of the algorithm.

Dattorro Reverberator

The audio is initially pre-delayed and equalised before passing through the 'Input Diffuser' which smears and diffuses the signal. In Plateau, there is the option to bypass this stage.

Next, the diffused signal is passed into the 'Reverberation Tank' which is two chains of filters arranged in parallel. The chains are fed into each other to continuously diffuse the signal and build up a dense reverberation. The reverb decays over time thanks to the equalisation and decay stages after each chain. The left and right output signals are extracted from this tank at several tap points (not shown).

Dattorro (1997) found that unpleasant ringing can build up over time. To combat this, the delay times of the all-pass filters in the tank are subtly modulated by low frequency oscillators (LFOs). This modulation changes the resonant frequency of the reverberator over-time to supress the ringing. This also slowly changes the reflection pattern so that it appears to continuously vary. With moderate modulation, this results in an audible pitch shifting.

Video Demos

Omri Cohen gives a nice introductory tutorial for Plateau.

Martin of ML_Modules composed this beautiful, ambient patch that presents the lush reverb that can be easily achieved.

Finetales demos the dreaminess that Plateau can add to a simple synth patch.

Artem from VCV Rack Ideas showcases some unusual and alternative uses of Plateau, demonstrating that it is not just another reverb.

Bibliography

Dattorro, J. (1997). Effect design part 1: Reverberator and other filters, J. Audio Eng. Soc, 45(9), 660-684.