The Experts team wondered what we thought people would want to find behind the windows of a dream studio advent calendar. Some of the things we own, some we wish we did. Owned or not, we think any of the things we name in the next 21 days would be a gift to a professional studio owner.

Day 4 - LiquidSonics Tai Chi

Russ Hughes names another, LiquidSonics Tai Chi.

Until recently Tai Chi was being sold under the Reverb Foundry brand, until reverb guru, Matt Hill, brought the brand into the LiquidSonics family. Matt had a hand in the creation of Tai Chi, so it made sense. To be honest until this point I hadn’t really taken much notice of Tai Chi, after all, with so many reverbs available and Matt making some of the best, what could Tai Chi possibly offer me?

I’d been told that the chorusing element of the reverb and the multipliers were special, to be honest I’m a little jaded, partly to do with age and also that I’ve seen more plugins than I can remember. Then I tried it on a couple of average keyboard sounds… wow!

Tai Chi has gone from being a reverb that I didn’t give a second thought about to my new secret weapon, making synths, guitars and other stuff sound much better than anything has the right to do so. I’ve spoken with Matt at length about what the core of Tai Chi is, a Lexicon, a TC? He remains ‘conveniently vague’ about the exact inspiration for the unit, however it is reminiscent of some of the cool hardware that’s graced studios over the years. The mulitpliers can do magic to almost anything, check out this DX7 Electric piano sound, you might think there’s a pad behind it, it’s not, it’s all Tai Chi.

However, Tai Chi is not a one trick pony, check out this video with Julian David using Tai Chi on vocals.

I thought I’d heard all the reverbs I needed, but Tai Chi is special, even better there’s a Lite version for those who don’t want to stretch to the full version.

At the time of writing the standard version is $99 and Lite $29, but hurry these are the Black Friday 2022 prices.

Download a demo, you’ll thank me!