Inspired Acoustics’ Inspirata raised some eyebrows when it launched as it takes convolution to a different level in terms of the level of detail of measurement involved in capturing the impulse responses. Instead of taking a single measurement from a single sound source in one position measured from a fixed point in the space, Inspirata measures spaces from many, many points in the room both in terms of where the sound source and the measurement point is in the space. This gives freedom to place the sound source in virtually any point on the stage and to place the listener in any seat in the house.

The inevitable consequence of this is that a great deal of measurements have to be taken and the data payload reflects this. The impulse responses come in at most of 150GB! Convolution is a processor intensive process and with so much convolution being performed this plug-in hits both the processor and RAM of a host computer harder than other reverbs when used to its fullest but with so much control and detailed measurement available, are the results worth the cost?

Apart from the strikingly thorough approach taken by Inspired Acoustics in terms of measurement, the approach to manipulating the results is rather different too. The Inspired Acoustics team are acousticians and their approach to designing a reverb reflects the approach taken by acousticians designing physical spaces rather than studio engineers designing reverb patches which emulate real spaces.

Controls

The control set on offer differs in ways which reflect this. There are many examples but I’ll highlight two. The first is Clarity. Clarity is related to the ratio of early energy versus late energy. It is independent from reverb time and it is possible to adjust the two independently of each other. Adjusting clarity changes the density of the early reflections, try it and you’ll hear the colouration of the comb filtering introduced by those changed early reflections.

The second parameter I’ll highlight is the Reverberant/Direct control. A Reverberant vs Direct slider sounds very much like a Wet/Dry control but confusingly there is a Wet/Dry control too. What is the difference? We all understand what a Wet/Dry control does but given that Inspirata allows you to place sound sources within a virtual acoustic space with a spatial relationship to the “listener” in that acoustic space Direct/Reverberant offers control between the non-reverberant sound of that spatial relationship and the reverb produced from that relationship. This is slightly different to “Dry” vs “Wet”. I think of it as being like the difference between PFL and SIP.

What Is Inspirata Like In Use?

The download is huge, there’s no getting away from it. I’m unused to overnight downloads these days but pulling this down reminded me of pre-broadband days. Once installed I found Inspirata straightforward to use with one exception where I had to refer to the manual. The manual is short but thorough and it contains specific “Practical Application” sections which cover workflow examples like Dolby Atmos and Routing Multiple Inputs To Stage Sources.

The head scratch moments for me were whether I should use Inspirata as an insert or on a bus? The answer very much depends on what you are doing but whereas I would rarely use a standard reverb as an insert, in this case I can see reasons for doing so regularly. A second confusing moment was how to use Inspirata as a virtual environment and place several virtual sources in the plug-in. The answer is to create a bus of the appropriate channel width. In my example I have four singers and I created a Quad bus but channel widths up to 16 channels can be created in Pro Tools Ultimate so with Inspirata Professional Edition there is plenty of scope.

Once set up the spaces on offer cover the large and impressive very generously. Concert halls, churches and the like are well represented. Smaller spaces are less represented which is a shame as I really enjoyed the domestic spaces. More larger rooms would be welcome as they are the spaces I’d find most use for. The plan is for the Inspirata team top build the impulse library over time and I’d recommend this as an area to develop. If they were able to measure some well known studio spaces that would be amazing but I think that is very unlikely to happen.

Sound

The sound is strikingly realistic. I was struck by how dramatically it is possible to change the sound using the positioning options as well as the envelopment and polar response controls. While based on convolution a considerable amount of time-variant processing is used and significant modulations can be heard in some examples. If you think that as you already have Avid Space you’ve already got what is on offer here then you’re mistaken.

The closest comparison I would tentatively make is with Vienna MIR Pro, a product which uses Multi Impulse Response convolution to achieve something similar to this. I say tentatively because while I’m aware of this product I have no experience of it.

To summarise my experience of this product I’d say that is is a specialised tool for a specific job. It’s not a utility reverb, it’s probably not what you’d want for a pop track but if you have an orchestral or choir recording which you would like to virtually bring into to a concert venue it’s the best tool I’ve used for that job. How you respond to the experience of using it probably depends on your attitude to your computer’s resources. This is the first product I’ve had which gave me persistent warnings about not having enough RAM installed. That either means I don’t have enough RAM to do this job or this product is using too much of my RAM. Which way you view this probably says as much about you as it does about this reverb or my computer!

The edition tested here was Inspirata Professional (up to 7.1.4) which costs $599. Inspirata Personal Edition (Stereo Only) is $199, there is also an Immersive (22.2) edition and a free Lite version.

Update: on the 22nd of January 2021 Inspired Acoustics will release an update which as well as squashing a few bugs, significantly reduces the load on the host computer.