Simulating a Spring Reverb in C++
Recently, I implemented a spring reverb simulator VST in C++. The plugin was created for an assignment in Miller Puckette’s “The Vibrating Body” seminar at UCSD.
We’d been talking about mass-spring systems and resonators, so I decided to use a bank of parallel resonant filters to simulate the springs.
I implemented a Resonator class, following Robert Bristow-Johnson’s biquad formula for a resonant LPF [1]. Each resonator tends to ring at a particular frequency, and the impulse response looks like a decaying sinusoid.
By combining a few hundred of those simple resonators, each resonating at a different frequency and driven with a complex sound, you can approximate the sound of a spring reverb.
Here’s the Resonator implementation file – the rest of the plugin source is on the bitbucket page linked below:
Musician/hacker living in San Diego, CA. Studying computer music at UCSD. 