User Manual

Version 0.8.1 (Beta Release)

Spatial Convolutional Reverb

2026-05-06

build 264f5b8*

2 Introduction

Hartley DSP created THeVerb to allow musicians and producers to make digital instruments and recordings sound alive, with the warmth and character that comes from human performance in a real space. With today’s technology recording live isn’t always an option and, even when it is, it can be difficult, expensive or creatively limiting. THeVerb lets you bring digital sources into realistic acoustic environments, so that you can have the best of both worlds.

2.1 What Is THeVerb?

THeVerb is a unique spatial convolutional reverb plug-in. It allows you to place and move sound sources within a space, simulating the way sounds are affected by the distance and direction of the source from the listener, and the reverberation that occurs as sound waves reflect off the walls, ceiling and floor. Our brains are exquisitely sensitive to these spatial cues. The tiny differences they create in the sounds reaching our left and right ears create a vivid sense of space even when we are not consciously aware of them. By combining different instances of THeVerb, you can recreate the interaction of sounds from different musicians playing together at the same time, in the same room, even if they were recorded separately.

3 Installation and Activation

This section walks you through the process of installing and activating your THeVerb plugin. Activation is required to unlock the full functionality of the plugin, but you can also use it in Trial mode to evaluate it before purchasing.

3.1 Installing the Plug-in

Visit hartleydsp.com/products to download the latest installer. Run the installer and follow the prompts to install THeVerb on your system. The installer includes the plugin itself, as well as the factory IR library (a set of different acoustic spaces you can use with your plugin), and this user manual.

The installer will place the factory IR library in a folder within your Windows user account: %appdata%\Hartley DSP\THeVerb\IRLibrary (this typically corresponds to a location like C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\HartleyDSP\THeVerb\IRLibrary). In the HartleyDSP folder we also store other information your plugin needs, such as your settings and presets.

3.2 Activating Your License

When you first open THeVerb (typically adding it as an insert in your DAW) it will run in Trial/Activation mode. This mode allows you to use the plugin with some limitations to evaluate it before purchasing, to activate your license when you buy a license (removing the limitations), and to reactivate if your system changes or the license information is lost. When in Trial/Activation mode the plugin displays an orange indicator and “Trial/Activation Mode” text at the bottom of the interface.

To activate click on the orange “Activate” button (marked X, below) at the top of the interface, just to the right of the THeVerb logo. This will open the activation dialog, where you will enter your email address and license key. You can find your license key in the confirmation email you received when you purchased, or in your account on our website. After entering your information, click “Activate” to complete the process. If the activation is successful, you will see a confirmation message and the plugin will be fully functional.

3.2.1 Activating Beta Versions

4 Quick Start for Experienced Users

First install and activate your plugin (see Installation and Activation as described above).

Quick workflow:

1. Choose a factory room (or load a User IR).
2. Set source position in the XY pad (use headphones to hear the spatial effects clearly).
3. Adjust Direct/Room Mix and Room Tone to fit the track.
4. If you are working with several related tracks, enable Sync so room or preset changes propagate across synced instances.
5. Set gain match and distance options as desired. With attenuation on, the plugin will make your sound quieter, so you may want to turn off attenuation or use one of the gain match options to compensate. Binaural delays provide a strong spatial effect, especially when mixing for headphones, but overall distance delay is barely perceptible and can cause phase issues, so it can be turned off unless realism is a priority.
6. Trim reverb time and adjust tail shape to taste.

5 Overview

When you open up the plugin in your DAW, you will see the main interface which is designed to be compact and intuitive. All the controls you need are on a single screen, a few sections expand when clicked to provide options. The main panels are labelled A-F in the figure below; individual controls are numbered within each panel. The Header panel (A) provides product information, settings and help. Just below that the Visualizer panel (B) shows how the plugin is working. Beneath that the central area, panels C,D and E provide the main controls used to configure the plugin, in panel E, Direct/Room Mix acts very like a wet/dry, mix blending the direct signal with reverberation (the direct signal is not strictly dry because it normally includes microdelays and attenuation). At the very bottom of the interface is the Footer panel (F) which provides information about the plugin’s operations, modes and version.

5.1 Header Panel (A)

• UI Scale control. Select a scale that works for your screen and preferences. On a laptop with limited space, you may need to use a reduced scale such as 85%, on a large desktop monitor with high resolution, you may prefer to use a larger scale such as 150% or 200%.
• You can also access Help () and Settings () from the header.

5.2 Visualizer Panel (B)

• Direct Signal Visualizer on the left (1)
• Room Signal Visualizer on the right (2).

These show the effect of your spatial settings and convolution in real time, so you can adjust them to get the sound you want.

5.3 Control Panel (C)

In the Control Panel you can adjust various parameters affecting the direct and room signals:

• Presets (3) allow you to save the current settings, or recall settings you have used previously.
• Input Mono/Stereo (4) determines whether your input signal will be treated as mono or processed via two independent stereo channels. For many situations mono is more realistic (because the sound comes from a single location), but stereo can produce more interesting and creative results.
• Gain Match radio buttons (5) allow you to select options that increase the level of the plugin’s output to match the input level in different ways (view tooltips for details).
  
• Distance (6) independently toggles different components (attenuation - , distance delay - and binaural delays- ) of the direct signal processing pipeline - when they are all on, processing is realistic giving a vivid sense of the source’s location. When they are all off, the direct signal is equivalent to the dry input.
• Room Tone (7) provides high- and low-pass filters allowing you to adjust the tone of the room signal, removing low and high frequencies respectively.
• Reverb and Fade Time controls (8) allow you to trim the effective duration of the impulse response and the shape of its tail, shortening the reverberation time.

5.3.1 Presets: Create, Save and Delete

Use the Presets control to capture useful combinations of room, position and processing settings so you can recall them quickly.

5.3.1.1 Create and Save a Preset

1. Set up the plugin the way you want (room, source position, mix and processing controls).
2. Click the Presets control to open the popup, then click New Preset .
3. In the Save Preset dialog, enter a name.
4. Choose what to store using the three groups.
5. Group meanings:
   • Room: saves the current room reference. If a User IR is selected, this stores the User IR reference (when available).
   • Position: saves XY source position.
   • Processing: saves processing controls (mix, mono/stereo mode, distance options, gain match, filters and reverb-time controls).
6. Click Save.

If a preset with the same name already exists, THeVerb asks whether to overwrite it.

5.3.1.2 Load a Preset

Open the Presets popup and click a preset row marked . If that preset includes a room reference, THeVerb also loads the associated room (or User IR reference) and updates controls accordingly.

If you change settings after loading, an asterisk (*) appears next to the preset name to indicate the current state has been modified.

5.3.1.3 Delete a Preset

1. Open the Presets popup.
2. Move the mouse over a preset row icon to reveal delete .
3. Click , then confirm deletion in the dialog.

The built-in Default preset is protected and cannot normally be deleted.

5.4 Spatial/Room Panel (D)

The Spatial/Room Panel (D) is the heart of the interface, where you choose the acoustic space and place your sound source within it:

• Room Selector (9) choose from a library of factory rooms, or load your own impulse responses.
• Sync button (10) you can synchronize the preset and room selection with other THeVerb instances in the same project (), or keep them independent (). When synced, changing the room or preset in one instance will change it in all synced instances, allowing you to easily create a consistent acoustic environment for all synced tracks.
• XY Pad (11) allows you to move the sound source around in the horizontal plane of the room, changing its distance and direction from the listener. The listener’s position is just below at the bottom-centre of the pad, left is left, right is right. The size and aspect ratio of the sound stage depends on the selected room.
• Instance Bar (12) shows you the name of the current instance (the track name if your DAW supports it) and reveals locations used by other instances of THeVerb in the same project - this can make the interface rather cluttered so it is hidden by default - click the closed eye icon () to make it active ().

5.4.1 Room Selector, IR Library and User IRs

The Room Selector is where you choose the acoustic environment that determines the room signal. Open the browser and find the factory bundle: these are curated rooms with impulse responses modelled on recording and performance spaces with different characteristics. Select a room by clicking on its name in the middle column. The room selector remains open so you can switch between rooms and audition them with your track playing.

If you want to use your own impulse response, switch to User IR mode in the Room Selector and load your file. In the full product, you can then enable Spatialize to map that IR into THeVerb’s spatial model, so movement on the XY pad still produces meaningful positional cues, affecting both direct and room signals, rather than a static stereo reverb. This is useful when you want the character of a custom IR but still need consistent placement control across multiple tracks. The spatialization synthesizes spatial cues based on statistics of thousands of IRs across different simulated spaces, so that your IR behaves like the more detailed and precise spatial models built into our library.

5.5 Output Panel (E)

In the Output Panel (E) you can adjust the balance between the direct and room signals with the Direct/Room Mix control (13). The higher the value, the more room signal and less direct signal you will hear, so it acts very like a wet/dry control, although the direct signal is not strictly dry because it normally includes microdelays and attenuation.

In the Metering Section (14) you can see the input, direct signal, room signal and output levels. The meters display the RMS level of the signal (coloured bars) in dBFS and an indication of the peak signal (white line). From left to right the meters show:

• Input (): the level of the signal coming into the plugin.
• Direct (): the level of the direct signal (after processing).
• Room (): the level of the room signal (reverberation only).
• Output (): the level of the final output signal (after mixing direct and room signals and applying gain match).

5.6 Footer Panel (F)

The footer at the bottom of the interface shows information about the plugin’s status, such as whether it is in Trial/Activation mode, the convolution and graphics modes, the build name and type. These can be useful for troubleshooting and support. On the left hand side of the footer is the notification area. This displays information (such as license status), warnings (for example, if a library file cannot be found) and error messages (for example, “IR Library path not found: {path}”). It is normally closed and just displays a count of the number of messages of each type. Click on the notification area and scroll to see the messages. If a message spans several lines you can click to expand it. When a new warning or error message is generated you will see it briefly displayed to the right of the notification area, and the count of warnings or errors will increase.