Product Reviews

Reverb: recordings simply don't soundfinished without it. Whether it's the natural reverberations of the space in which the recording was captured (the ambience of Abbey Road's Studio 2 is one of the reasons Beatles records sound so good) or artificial reverb overlaid from digital studio gear, it's an effect musicians can't live without.

Hence the excitement whenever a new reverb arrives on the scene. The advent of powerful computers has made studio-quality reverb available to even the most humble bedroom musician, and any Mac in Apple's current range will breeze through the complex maths involved in calculating the early reflections, high and low frequency damping and realistic decay tail needed for natural results.

Now we have a new twist on the reverb plug-in from German outfit VirSyn, a company better known for soft synths such as Cube and Tera. Billed as an algorithmic reverb plug-in, Reflect combines the extensive parameter control of a digital reverb unit with the sonic quality of convolution reverbs - which emulate the acoustic response of a real-world space, as pioneered by Audio Ease's Altiverb.

Reflect has a very clean GUI reminiscent of its soft synth products. From the impulse response file browser on the left, the user can browse more than 50 program selections, with

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more promised soon. The files are grouped under such familiar headings as Ambience, Chambers, Halls, Plates and so on, and there is plenty of variation.

The main section of the plug-in features a graphical portrayal of the response file, with five sections below it that control the behaviour of the reverb. The Early setting deals with early reflections, Tail handles the tail, EQ offers four-band manipulation and the In and Out sections control the incoming level and the wet/dry mix respectively. Given such comprehensive control, fine-tuning the sound is never a problem.

The results were lovely and smooth. Even when we deliberately extended the tail (40 seconds and beyond), there was no grainy break-up at the extremes of the fade. Compared with reverb heavyweights such as Altiverb (impulse responses, convolution) and IK Multimedia's CSR Classik Studio Reverb (algorithmic, vintage), Reflect exhibits characteristics of each approach, but its results are unique and equally compelling. It is a very interesting and complementary tool, and well worth auditioning - especially given its impressive CPU efficiency.

However, Reflect is another plug-in that regrettably relies on the Syncrosoft USB key, which is not supplied. The licence-management process caused us untold problems. The plug-in refused to load after only a few days, despite hundreds of days' free use showing in Syncrosoft's License Control Center application. From the VirSyn forums, it seems that other users are experiencing issues with Syncrosoft. VirSyn's support is very conscientious, though.

Reflect is also more expensive than we expected at £169. An early-bird price of £99 is available during September, so you'll have to act quickly. At this price, we would highly recommend it. At the higher price, however - and given the headaches we experienced - we'd advise you to try before buying.