The Crystalline algorithmic reverb plugin sounds “almost unreal”

Said to “stand on the shoulders of 60 years of chasing ‘the holy grail of DSP’”, Baby Audio's Crystalline is a new algorithmic reverb plugin that harks back to classic digital reverbs of the past while taking advantage of modern processing power. The result is a plugin that promises everything that today’s DAW-based producer needs.

For a start, Crystalline enables you to hard-sync the reverb attack and decay time to your DAW’s tempo, creating reflections that sync with the music. That being said, you still have the option of setting the pre-delay and decay times in milliseconds if you’d rather.

A dedicated Reflections section, meanwhile, enables you to set the size of the room, add ‘Sparkle’ – which emphasises the high frequencies within the reverb algorithm – and set the width.

The Depth section, meanwhile, can be used to set the resolution of the reverb algorithm, add pitch modulation and adjust the level of ‘Shimmer’ (this makes the high frequencies of the reverb tail decay lower than the rest of the spectrum).

Over in the Clean-Up section you can remove high or low frequency content, filter-out stereo information from the low-end of the reverb and use the gate to create that classic ’80s reverb sound. The Shape section offers Tone, Smoothing and

Transients controls, while the Output section features two ducker settings, reverse and freeze options and a dry/ wet control.

Baby Audio say that the overall sound of Crystalline is “almost unreal” in the sense its spaces are closer to what you’d dream of having rather than what you’ve actually experienced. It runs on PC/Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats and comes with more than 300 presets.

Crystalline’s full price is $99, but it’s available for the intro price of $49. A demo version is also available.