AES Fall Online Convention

Reverberation plugin designs differ significantly between manufacturers. The use of abstract terminology, individually stylised interfaces, and a manufacturers preferred lexicon increases complexity and decreases skill transference for novice users. Two studies were undertaken to explore the degree of complexity within the reverberation domain. In study one, the extent of both lexical and functional aspects of 46 reverberation plugins were examined through in-vivo coding of manufacturer documentation. From this, parameter labels were identified and inducted into nine higher level categories based on function. In study two, a free elicitation task was undertaken by seven experienced reverberation plugin users. This study identified the most salient parameters within their underlying knowledge structures, allowing the overlap between system and user to be viewed. The results from both studies establish the lexicon used within existing reverberation plugins, and the breadth of parameters discovered suggests that recognising and understanding parameters across designs may be challenging for novice users. The findings also provide an overview of the reverberation domain whilst highlighting the core parameters identified by expert users. This data could potentially act as the basis for a novice training system.