Stefano Baldan Chambro – IRZU INSTITUTE

A reverb that asks for a room’s dimensions in metres, and for what its walls are made of. Type in 9 × 18 × 8 and the result is a chapel, because that’s what a room that size does to sound.

Most reverbs describe a space in abstractions: size, density, a room dial from 0 to 100. I build instruments that model physical things, and one conviction runs through all of them: when the controls are physical quantities – a length, a material – they stop needing to be hunted. “Nine metres wide, stone walls” is a setting anyone can picture, and one that matches a room that could exist is heard as a place instead of audited as an effect.

An impulse response is a photograph of a room: exact, and frozen at one size, one material and one decay. Chambro is a render. Every setting obeys the physics of rooms, and because the settings are independent, rooms that can’t exist are within reach.

At certain frequencies – a room’s modes – sound bouncing between the walls lines up with itself and rings on. The dimensions alone set those frequencies, which is why a bathroom sings a note. Inside Chambro are sixteen delay lines, each tuned to one of those modes: move a wall and every line moves with it.