Perfect Room 2 | Denise Audio | RRP: $79 USD
The new plugin from Denise Audio, Perfect Room 2, is a stellar offering in the expansive world of reverb plugins. Traditionally used to add space, depth and life to an audio source, reverb can be used either subtly or overtly, as either a mix tool that’s not always discernible, or as a sound design tool where the reverb plays a part in the sonic footprint of the source.
The Perfect Room 2 does both of these jobs to a stellar standard, offering both traditional reverb controls and sounds, as well as the ability to elevate the sounds further for full on ambience and sound design.
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Featuring traditional controls like Width, Mix, Pre-Delay and Length, I had the Perfect Room 2 plugin up and running in seconds, adding width and depth to a drum kit. Adjusting the Length gives you sounds similar to a nice, bright drum room at approx. 1s, though pushing it beyond that gives the impression of a huge hall, church or chamber.
The Width control helps to push the reverb out beyond the speakers, or pull it right back in for a mono source like a snare or vocal. Two instances of Perfect Room 2 might just have you sorted across the board!
Some of the more unique controls are where Perfect Room 2 is a cut above the rest, namely the Halo, Pitch Mod, Freq Profile and Decay Profile, allowing you to do all of your reverb processing and effecting within one simple plugin! Not to mention, Perfect Room 2 features a four band EQ (post reverb) for shaping and refining the verb to play well with the rest of your mix.
The Halo control allows you to blend in a sparkly, scattering top end to your mix, reminiscent of a huge empty hall or church. The sound ricochets off the walls near it for that high end smack, before echoing around the vast hall and arriving at your ears. Incredible for sound design and placing sounds into a large space, the Halo control works equally well when blended in just so, offering you a bright but expansive room sound.
The Pitch Shift has two main uses that are immediately obvious. The first is to tuck the reverb into a mix, making it not so explicit, while still garnering the feeling of space that a reverb offers. Shifting the whole reverb down allows you to blend in a little reverb without it being such an in-your-face sound, the high end of the reverb now sitting below the source material, ensuring that your main sound remains the star. The other use is for otherworldly sound design. Pitching the reverb down has an pleasing, albeit unnatural feel, and when blended in closer to 100%, puts you in a unique space, adding harmonics in different areas across the frequency spectrum, and allowing the reverb to steal the limelight for a moment.
The Decay Profile again, allows you to shift and shape the reverb, blending between short and roomy for more traditional mixing reverbs, or longer and scattered, more like a physical space, even extending to sounding like you’re in a well or pipe at the most extreme settings. Shifting the Decay Profile helps to push or pull the reverb forward or back in your mix, a really useful tool when dialling in a reverb and carefully fitting it into an existing arrangement!
The Perfect Room 2 also includes a built-in Ducker, easily allowing you to have overt reverbs without muddying up your sources. A common reverb ‘trick’ is to use a sidechain compressor to duck your reverb out of the way, i.e. for less reverb while a vocal is busy, but allowing the decay to flourish when the singer takes a break. While this usually requires a few clicks, additional auxiliary sends and a Key Input on your compressor, this is all in-built into the Perfect Room 2. The Ducker also features a Release setting to control how quickly (or slowly) the reverb comes in after ducking.
This, coupled with the ‘Attack’ setting of the Perfect Room 2, allow your reverb to stay out of the way of the source material, an issue all too common amongst reverbs that muddy up signals!
Denise Audio
Complete with a four band EQ built in, Perfect Room 2 really is the perfect reverb plugin. While featuring all the familiar and traditional controls you’d expect, allowing you to dial in a reverb great for adding space and depth to different elements in your mix, it also has additional controls for more unique reverbs and sound design.
Beyond Pre-Delay, Width and Length, the Perfect Room 2 plugin has a unique Halo control, for adding sheen and sparkle to the high end of your reverb, as well as shifting the Decay Profile to replicate different types of rooms, and as such, different reverb types like Halls, Chambers, Rooms and more.
The Frequency Control and Pitch Mod allow you to subtly or overtly shift the frequency response of the reverb overall, either for tucking into a busy mix or creating whole new sounds entirely. The Perfect Room 2 is going to stay in my mix template for a while now, its suite of controls allowing it to serve every purpose I’d need from a reverb, and then some!
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