Sonible – Smart:Reverb | HONEST Review 2020
Sonible are renowned in the world of music production software for creating intelligent, A.I-based effect plugins. These plugins use detailed algorithms that analyze the sound input and create incredible effects based on the input material itself. We recently reviewed their SmartEQ 2 product, a highly effective tool that automatically sculpts and shapes EQ curves. This plugin was a goldmine of sonic inspiration, and a genuinely useful tool for fast-paced, intuitive equalization.
Sonible have just released Smart:Reverb, which they describe as: “an AI-powered plugin that delivers a tailored reverb by aligning its processing to the characteristics of the input material“. This definitely peaked my interest, as reverb is arguably more subjective than EQ or compression, and is often centered more around personal taste and the “human touch”. So the question remains: is Smart:Reverb’s A.I functionality as useful as it seems, or are you better just creating your own reverbs?
Smart:Reverb: The Engine
As with all Sonible plugins, Smart:Reverb has a beautiful, modern interface with a clean, easy to understand design. In the top left, you have a drop down option for various input signal types, such as universal, vocals, guitar and even speech. When you select an input type, various controls change and shift to match the chosen input type. It’s worth noting that changing the input type doesn’t affect the reverb time, pre-delay, dry/wet values and a few other key parameters, which makes sense as these values are highly dependant on the style of reverb you’re going for.
Below this option, you have a quantitative grid / matrix which allows you to drag your sound between “natural”, “rich”, “intimate” and “artificial” values. This features works particularly well with vocals and is extremely useful for changing the character and tonality of a sound.
Smart:Reverb also has standard width, color, clarity and dry/wet controls, as well as a neat dual reverb time/pre-delay knob.
Aside from the intriguing reverb matrix, these controls are fairly standard in most reverb plugins. However, when playing around with these values, the spectral shaper grid and temporal shaper (the two large right-hand side grids) start to bend and warp in various ways. This is where things start to get very interesting.
The Shapers
Once you’ve analysed the sound input, the shaper grids can be used to tweak and finetune your reverb tails in very creative, unique ways. The top spectral shaper / particle display view allows you to freely adjust the decay rates across four different frequency bands. For example, this could be used to create a sound with a long, defined high-end reverb tail with a short, abrupt low-end tail. This feature is incredibly fun to play around with, and the moving particle display visualizes this beautifully.
The bottom temporal shaper allows you to freely adjust the temporal behavior of the decay, spread and density using the interactive shaper lines. Using a combination of these shapers, Smart:Reverb gives you an insane amount of precision and control of your reverb tails, and how they develop over time. Quite surprisingly, even without the A.I intelligence of the plugin, these features alone set Smart:Reverb apart from other reverb plugins on the market.
Smart:Reverb: Tailored Reverbs
Now let’s take a look at Smart:Reverb’s main selling point: the A.I Intelligence and the resulting tailored reverbs. I tested this feature on various instrumental and percussive sounds, and honestly this thing is really impressive across the board. With drums / percussion, Smart:Reverb handles low-end frequencies very well, avoiding muddying up the mix with little to no customization. This plugin gives clean, dynamic reverb effects for drums in seconds, and with the various controls and shapers, there’s a huge amount of creative versatility here.
Smart:Reverb also gives fantastic results for individual vocal, guitar and keys samples. Vocals in particular are analysed and “understood” to a great degree of accuracy, creating smooth, spacious, lush reverb tails that sit perfectly in a mix. The left-hand quantitative grid also allows you to modify the style and timbre of the reverb, from close, artificial-sounding results to rich, clean reverb effects. Again, all these changes are reflected in the particle display, allowing you to accurately visualize the changes you’re making.
Intelligent Reverb
Smart:Reverb does exactly what it says on the tin, giving smart reverb effects within an intuitive interface. Like other Sonible products, the A.I is remarkable, and very efficient in analyzing a wide range of sounds across various styles and genres. It’s worth noting that the spectral / temporal shapers take a little getting used to, but this is mainly because there’s not many reverb plugins with this unique feature. With a little experimentation, these features are highly powerful reverb tools, and the creative potential here is sky-high.
Features
Ease of Use
Value for Money
Sonible’s Smart:Reverb is currently 89,00 €. There is also a 30-day trial of Smart:Reverb available. For more info, visit sonible.com/smartreverb.
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