Darkside 50 B-Format Impulse Responses By David Monacchi & Fons Adriaensen

The Sound of Science Spaces has released Darkside 50 B-Format Impulse Responses, a free collection of reverb impulse responses which have been captured by David Monacchi and Fons Adriaensen at the Darkside-50 detector for dark matter particles.

Recordings were made both inside the 4-metre diameter spherical detector (inside which is the argon-filled WIMP detector itself) and in the much larger enclosing chamber. The sphere has since been filled with liquid scintillator (to detect neutrons), while the chamber has been filled with water (to detect muons). This was therefore virtually a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Darkside 50 B-Format Impulse Responses are available for free download via The Sound of Science Spaces (36.1 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 12 reverb impulse responses in 24-bit WAV format).

So, the Darkside-50 is a dark matter particles detector which was built inside a mountain at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy. These guys went in there and captured the reverb characteristics of this huge sphere (4 meters in diameter) as well as the enclosing chamber which is much larger. Since the chamber is now filled with water, this was pretty much their only chance to capture reverb impulse responses of this testing facility.

The impulse responses were recorded with a Soundfield ST450 microphone, using Ambisonic B-Format techniques to record the full 3D surround impulse responses of the spehere. The page linked above describes how you can use these 4-channel impulse responses in all their 3D glory.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy tool to use these impulse responses inside your DAW, you should download the freeware Reverberate LE convolution reverb. It is fairly easy to use, although you will be limited to reproducing these impulse responses in mono.