My last two columns for Icon Collective have been a two-part preview of Live 9, but there’s been more than just that Ableton’s new DAW happening recently, so this week I’m going to round up some of the other new music software releases that have grabbed my attention.
For no apparent reason, the last month or so has seen numerous superb Lexicon-style reverb plugins hitting the market: Native Instruments’ Reverb Classics, ValhallaDSP VintageVerb and Exponential Audio’s PhoenixVerb and R2, the last pair not actually being Lexicon-alikes but the debut plugins from ex-Lexicon designer Michael Carnes. Perhaps surprisingly, being as it’s by far the cheapest of the bunch at $50, VintageVerb turns out to be my favourite. It sounds fabulous – not so much a straight-up emulation of the various Lexicon hardware boxes it mimics, but rather, developer Sean Costello’s beautifully realised interpretation of them. With nine reverb algorithms, three ‘era-based’ Color settings (1970s, 1980s and Now), and the requisite Lexicon-style frequency dividing, it’s nothing short of a bargain for the sound designer looking to bring a bit of old-school algorithmic ‘verb to their projects. [read]
