- in Production by Bobby Owsinski
New Music Gear Monday: LiquidSonics Cinematic Rooms Atmos Reverb Plugin
When I first started to mix in 5.1 back in the early 90s, there were no tools available. We had to jury rig a multichannel monitor controller and panners, and linking outboard gear together was a real pain. Reverb was especially tough because even with identical units, we never could get the feeling of a single space until multichannel versions were developed later on. Much the same thing is happening today when mixing immersive in Atmos, but a new Atmos compatible reverb from LiquidSonics called Cinematic Rooms could end all that.
LiquidSonics is the company behind Seventh Heaven and Lustrous Plates, reverb plugins that are noted for their lush sounds, but Cinematic Rooms is dedicated to the intense acoustic demands of surround room simulation. Available in 2 editions (Standard and Professional), the plugin is able to work in any format from stereo to 7.1.6.
Both editions feature decay that will go up to 45 seconds (!), reverb and reflection roll-off, reverb decay contouring, pre-delay with sync, level monitoring, surround/true stereo/multi-mono propagation modes, and a host of presets (80 for the Standard version, 300 for the Professional).
The Professional edition also features surround plane parameter editing, reverb echo, and enhanced reflection engine, and crossfeed disparity definition. What that all means is that you now have a set of tools to precisely control the reverb within the surround field. When you need, you’re able to individually control the parameters in the front, rear, side, center or elevated planes relative to the master preset.
For example, you can extend and filter the reverb tail in the sides and rears, emphasize and widen reflections in the front and side channels, or apply a tempo-synced pre-delay and echo in the rears and elevations. The master controls track these changes and propagate them throughout the space. You’re able to clearly see what each is doing via the surround editing indicators beneath every parameter.
Advanced control of crossfeed allows you to accentuate or suppress the amount and character of reverb propagation into the surround space. Unlike other surround reverbs that typically create a homogeneous wash of equal magnitude in all channels, Cinematic Rooms’ crossfeed controls allow you glue the reverb to the source of the action while tracking panning very naturally with additional filtering, level and delay control.
If you’re working in Atmos then Cinematic Rooms is a must have. It works on both Mac and PC with at least 8 Gig of RAM and a modern quad-core processor, and a 64 bit DAW in most plugin formats. Both editions are on sale until July 1st. Cinematic Rooms Professional sale price is $249 and Standard sale price is $129.
