Said to “stand on the shoulders of 60 years of chasing ‘the holy grail of DSP’,” 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 reverb 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 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 says 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 and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats and comes with more than 300 presets.
Find out more on the Baby Audio website. Crystalline’s full price is $99, but it’s currently available for the intro price of $49. A demo version is also available.
