Reflected glory
most of the time. However, there’s plenty of tweaking to be done in the Advanced Controls section, which pops out in a separate panel below. At the left-hand end of the Advanced Controls panel, the Pattern knob sweeps through the M7’s 32 early reflections patterns, defining the number and relative levels of the ERs – all of these are sampled, not emulated. Next to that, Pre-delay (initially dialled in true to each original preset) ranges from 0-500ms unsynced, or synced from 1/64 to 1/4, with triplet and dotted variations. The echo-generating Delay Time control is also syncable or free-running from 100-1000ms, although it’s here that LiquidSonics ’fess up to a slight compromise in their simulation, in that the M7’s multi-voice engine isn’t captured literally. Rather, presets that utilise delay are sampled with it included, at their default timings, automatically switching to a separate IR set without delay baked in when the Delay Time is adjusted. It’s an elegant solution, and we can’t imagine anyone being able to tell the difference between it and the real thing unless they’re specifically looking for it.
Even the different low-pass filters used for the ERs and tail are faithfully handled, with the IRs sampled unfiltered and the filters modelled in the plugin instead, controlled with the Reflections and Reverb Roll-off knobs. The Lexicon-style (Bricasti’s two founders are ex-Lexicon) Frequency Dependent Decay Time controls, multiplying the decay times of the Low (shelved from 80Hz to 4.8kHz) and High (200Hz to 16kHz) frequency spectra by 0.2-4x, are also emulated in software. The original band multipliers of each preset are captured in the IRs, though, of course.
Finally, LiquidSonics have bolted on a five-band Master EQ with Low and High cut filters, switchable High and Low shelving/ parametric peak filters, and a parametric Mid band. It sounds lovely and proves very useful, potentially negating the need for a discrete post-reverb EQ. However, occupying a separate tab in the pop-out bottom section means you have to flip between it and the Advanced Controls, rather than the two panels being accessible together, which quickly gets annoying.
“It pretty much responds and feels like an algorithmic reverb”