When my band recorded our first album (Vomit Launch’s Not Even Pretty) in 1986, our producer, Greg Freeman [Tape Op #1], had a Yamaha SPX90 reverb unit. There were no other reverb processors in his studio at the time, and we loved reverb. If you listen, especially to the original vinyl release, vocals and drums are drenched at times with that device's grainy, sharp-sounding spatial effects. We loved it then, but maybe it hasn't aged that well. Digital reverbs in the '80s seemed all about creating expansive, impressive spaces. Sometimes, they'd even be gated to get that crazy drum sound of the era. But as I moved into record production, I began to realize that one doesn't always want giant, unearthly reverb effects and that, many times, subtle spatial enhancements can add far more to a mix. No longer did I want huge, cascading canyons of reverb in my mixes. I wanted something that gave a sense of “place” or added what I’d call a “halo” around a vocal or such. Sometimes, I’m just looking for a not-quite-dry sound with only a tinge of ambience.
The convolution-based plug-in, iamReverb, is modeled on the acoustics of real spaces. Knobs for levels of Close, Mid, and Far reverb sit in the GUI's center, allowing for blending of the varying distances of the created space. More knobs below add control of In, Out, Dry/Wet, Pre-Delay, Decay, and Size. A Main/EQ toggle near the top flips over to a 4-band EQ that can be used to change the frequency response of the returning reverb – something I never felt I needed to do, unlike my experiences with many other convolution reverbs.
First impressions? I slapped this on a well-recorded acoustic guitar track. Frequently, these sorts of tracks sit a little dead and seem to hide in a dense mix, and in this case, we had drums, bass, and keyboards backing it up. Placing iamReverb on an aux, setting up a Medium Room preset, and blending that ambience back into the mix made the guitar feel more present without just washing it out. On a vocal, subbing out for a plate reverb plug-in, iamReverb worked extremely well. In a Vocal Hall setting, by using the Close, Mid, and Far levels, I could give the singer an intimate bit of Close room or a wide Far depth that would please any a cappella group. Blending different amounts of the distance levels created many options, and all were usable. One thing I really noticed was how much the added ambience sat around the vocal, even with no Pre-Delay, and it didn’t clutter up the original track or obscure the lyrics. On drums, initially I wasn’t thinking iamReverb was doing much for me, but upon closer examination after running through some of the Drum presets, I was pretty excited. With carefully chosen settings, I could dial in a very natural room tone that really added a lot to the drum sound. Once again, subtle but the kind of reverb trick I’ve sometimes struggled to achieve with other reverb plug-ins.
Another mixing trick I like to do is to add an electric guitar ambience across most of the close-mic’d tracks in order to bring a sense of room to a rock performance. This is always a convolution reverb and never a long-tailed ambience, but more a sense of a medium studio-sized room that I barely bring into the mix. I’ll also make sure the effects return is panned the opposite of the guitars’ in order to add more depth and width. iamReverb worked quite well for this and wasn’t clouding up the mix at all like some other convolution reverbs I’ve used in the past. As iamReverb tells us, “We developed a measurement technique that captures early reflections from a short distance while avoiding interferences with the direct signal.” It works.
The iamReverb folks say many rooms were measured and studied, and about 30 were used directly for creating iamReverb’s Enhanced Reverb Modeling (ERM). It sounds to me like that’s true! I have been trying this plug-in out in many scenarios on different styles of music with quickly-usable results. iamReverb is a very well-thought-out and excellent reverb plug-in.