Numerical Responses has released Hollywood Impulse Responses (HIR), inspired by the ambience of 20 major Hollywood blockbuster films released between 1977-2006.

I don’t know abou you, but “Impulse Response” sounds like one of those 80’s erotic thrillers that involved a guy cheating on his wife with a hot ultra-babe, only to find out that she was really a psycho-bitch hot ultra-babe hell-bent on killing him because he used her for sex.

“Impulse Response” also sounds like it could be the title of a Kraftwerk tune, with the klangwerkmeisters making vocoded intonations “impulse”, “response”.

But no – HIR is a set of over 600 impulse responses for convolution reverbs.

HIR’s impulses were designed to change the perceived timbre of an individual instrument, ensemble or even the entire orchestra. The user can adjust the tone of a track by selecting the appropriate Dark, Warm, Flat, Clear or Bright impulse when mixing the wet signal in with the dry.

Another feature unique to HIR is the addition of 6 sets of Reverberation Impulses (RI’s) that are high pass filtered at points of the frequency spectrum that match the range of acoustic instruments. These points are at the notes C2, G2, C3, G3, C4, and G4. This instrument designed approach offer much more sonic precision and clarity than any other currently available hardware or software reverberation. For example if you have a solo violin track the RI’s from the G3 set will exactly match the range of this instrument. C3 would work for the Viola and C2 for the Cello.

Each of the 20 RI’s (24 bit 44.1K) has 5 variations. Six separate sets of these for a total of 600 reverberation impulses. Signal to Noise is greater than 130 db for stunning richness and density.

This collection of reverberation impulses was developed to add authentic film ambience (dramatic and “larger than life”) to a users’ orchestral sample library or any other acoustic material such as drums, voice, guitar, and keyboard tracks.

Required: Convolution — a program such as Altiverb, Pristine Space, Space Designer, IR-1, Acoustic Mirror, Perfect Space, or SIR. Logic, Cakewalk, Samplitude, Seqoia, and Nuendo all have convolution integrated into their program so purchasing a plugin are not required.

The Hollywood Impulse Responses Package icludes 2 CD Rom’s, 1.1 Gig’s in size, and is priced at $129.95 (MSRP). Now Shipping.

For more information, visit their web site at www.numericalsound.com.