Following on from LiquidSonics’ recent expansion of its product line with a trio of Reverb Foundry titles, we look at Tai Chi, the character ensemble reverb with multichannel and stereo goodness on tap. Three Experts give their verdict.

Reverbs Of Old

Reverb (and other time based effects) are different to other engineer’s tools because it is generating something from scratch. Compare that to EQ, or dynamics which simply shape what’s already there, reverb’s scope for creating something inspirational is vast, with what constitutes a ‘good’ reverb meaning different things to different people.

In its early days, artificial reverb was generated in ways that even non-engineers could understand. From the earliest chamber setups, through to later electromechanical devices, making something vibrate and transducing the result was the order of the day, with basic production affording any necessary spice.

Landing in the latter part of the 20th century, the very earliest digital boxes boxes did something that sounded very much like real spaces (and a lot of imagined ones as well), giving mixes soundscapes that became ‘sounds’ in their own right. This ability quickly helped these units become part of the studio landscape, not to mention the only game in town for decades.

Reverb In The DAW Age

The DAW revolution saw developers able to harness the power of host or DSP power in the computer to implement ‘classical’ algorithmic reverb as well as to fully explore convolution techniques sampled from real spaces. Following an initial period where these tools’ demands could easily outstrip the computer’s available resources, engineers now enjoy an era where computing power can meet the demands of highly advanced reverberation designed purely to perform.

LiquidSonics Reverb Foundry Tai Chi

One of the leading exponents of cutting edge software reverberation is LiquidSonics. Known for a suite of advanced tools that take in both algorithmic and convolution technologies, they are perhaps best known for their Fusion IR technology, which brings the ease of use and lush modulation of algorithmic reverb to the stunning realism of convolution-based reverberation . Of their products, Seventh Heaven and Cinematic Rooms are perhaps the best known. they are now offering the Reverb Foundry family of products under the LiquidSonics brand.

Reverb Foundry Tai Chi is LiquidSonics’ character ensemble reverb. Unlike some of the company’s other reverbs, this brings in-depth editing such as multiband decay, an advanced dynamics section, and lush chorusing into a purely algorithmic reverb. Aimed at music mixers and post production pros alike, Tai Chi supports up-to 7.1.6 multichannel.

LiquidSonics describe Reverb Foundry Tai Chi’s ethos, starting with the units that inspired it:

Tai Chi is the definitive ensemble character reverb. While 70’s hardware like the Lexicon 224 introduced us to the wonder of thick, evolving ethereal chorused spaces and legends like Vangellis broke new sonic ground with them, their potential was held back by the technology of their time. Tai Chi follows this path, taking inspiration from multiple hardware legends with a no-comprises algorithmic design for the richest, thickest and smoothest ensemble reverbs ever heard. For luscious evolving Atmos reverbs with exceptional clarity, Tai Chi has no equal.

Reverb Foundry Tai Chi GUI, Features And Sound

• Master: the fundamental controls including the reverb time, width, pre-delay (including tempo sync), and reflections

• Advanced: density, diffusers, and chorus/modulation. Includes Tai Chi’s Wander control, which moves reverb taps on fade-through rather than gliding at full level. This can provide a more ‘chunky’ modulation sound depending on the amount of wander selected.

• Dynamics: compression and ducking can be applied using familiar dynamic processor style controls. As well as options to apply dynamics to just the wet component or the dry/wet mix, and handy gain reduction meter is provided.

• Fidelity: Bit depth, input bandwidth, and reverb loop control. While Tai Chi will keep many happy with seamless halos of lush reverb, those wanting to evoke retro algorithmic grunginess are covered too.

• Equaliser: Simple low/high cut and low/high shelf controls

• Multi-band decay time controls. Band splits allow the user to shorten or lengthen the reverb in different parts of the spectrum for fine aesthetic control.

• Treble contouring for high frequency roll-off and high decay timing, plus Bass contouring for low frequency shelf and low roll-off timing. In concert with Tai Chi’s multiband goodness, these controls allow the user to change the reverb’s tonality over time by filtering the loop signal. Lows and highs roll away progressively and subtractively for natural effects.

Watch in the video as we walkthrough Tai Chi and explore some of its features and sounds. We take full advantage of its band-split and contour abilities on percussive elements before exploring its rich chorusing with Wander control to breathe life into a stock pad sound. We then evoke a character reverb sound on vocals to round off the mix.

Expert Panel - Hit or Miss?

In every Expert review we ask three of our team of contributors to give their first impressions of the product. We ask them to give the product a hit or miss, based on factors such as originality, innovation, usefulness, quality and value for money. For each hit the products gets an Expert Award. One hit and it gets our bronze award, two hits gets silver and for a hit from all three of the panel it gets a coveted gold award. Of course if there’s three misses, there’s no award.

Steve DeMott On LiquidSonics Reverb Foundry Tai Chi

I know that reverb isn’t exactly as drool worthy as a compressor, EQ, or some classic channel strip emulation, but let’s be honest for a moment: where would we be without a good reverb or three in our arsenal? At some point we need to add the sense of space & depth with a reverb. With that said, my go to reverb is LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven Pro. It just does the job so well, so, trying out Tai Chi was interesting for me, because one of the things I often do with Seventh Heaven Pro is to mess it up a little. I’ll add some modulation and a little saturation. Maybe not on every instance, but on at least one instance in every mix. Tai Chi was promising a quicker path to that for me.

While the chorus section was what I was looking forward to most, it was not what ultimately made me say “woah…that’s really nice!” in the end. I really liked the chorus effects & controls and found them extremely usable. But, I found the Multiband Decay Multipliers to be the highlight of this reverb. Through the tweaking of the different bands I was able to contour reverbs in a way that allowed me to have reverbs working bigger just where I wanted them, and getting out of the way faster where I needed them to, all at the same time. This is something I would normally cheat towards with an M/S EQ on a reverb return, but the multiband decay multipliers gave me control over the reverb in a way I’ve yet to see in another reverb. I could, for instance, really shorten the bottom & top of the reverb while allowing the mids to bloom a little longer. And then I could focus that bloom in different places in the mids on two different instances to create big reverbs that stayed out of each other's way. And, it was quick & easy without having to pull up another plugin.

One other thing I found really fun was the Fidelity controls. Basically allowing me to add some bitcrushing to the reverb. Now, some may say “why would you want to grunge up a perfectly good reverb?” To those I would say, “because of the Lexicon PCM 60!” For those that don’t know, the Lexicon PCM 60 was a classic digital reverb unit from the ‘80s. One of the shortcomings of its design became a signature feature: you could overload the input & get this beautiful grunge/saturation that made the reverb come alive. While Tai Chi got close, it wasn’t the exact same sound…but it was reminiscent of it, and I liked being able to get there without adding another plugin.

Reverb Foundry Tai Chi is a big HIT for me.

Roger Guerin (CAS, MPSE) On LiquidSonics Reverb Foundry Tai Chi

Although Tai Chi is known as a Chinese martial art, it is also an artistic outlet which is why I suspect Sonic Foundry named their latest reverb “Tai Chi”.

For the user the magic sauce are the presets, and this one will not disappoint you. With poetic names like “Golden Room”, “Proud Sax”, “Funk Guitar Ducking Space Wide”, and intriguing names like “Dirty Chambers”, “Crispy Room”, “Empty Two fifty”, and so on.

My main interest is it’s use in a postproduction environment specifically in Dolby Atmos, and the Tai Chi reverb plugin plays well in all surround sound formats. From Quad to 7.1.2 (expandable to 7.1.6) and everything in between. It even allows you to have a stereo input and if you choose a 7.0.2 configuration, without being a DSP hog, it will do the necessary math, pretty neat if you are working on an existing stereo session that you want to bump up to Atmos or Binaural.

Like all of Matt Hill’s reverbs this one sounds great, so what distinguishes this one from the others? For the Dolby Atmos savvy, it has six (6) available inserts that you can assign to objects.

My trick is to call up an instance of the plugin in 7.0, don’t need reverb on the LFE, and have three (3) stereo auxiliaries, each with one of the plugin’s inserts, and assign them to different objects, then pan them in successive distances and heights.

(Aux1 – height 50, f/r 100 ; Aux2 - height 75, f/r 0 ; Aux3 - height 100, f/r -100)

But the kicker on this plugin is its ability to change reverb time per frequency band (up to 4).

So instead of trying to EQ down the Low end, or boost the High end, you could have a 0.5 second on the Low end and a 4.2 seconds on the High end. A totally different experience, and just what the doctor ordered. The GUI is pretty intuitive, only had to open the manual once for the Pattern and Spacing features.

From the manual:

… PATTERN … Greater letters represent greater reflectivity, higher numbers for positions further away. SPACING controls the space between individual reflections, higher spacing values create a larger sounding space.

We all know that Early Reflections are the backbones of a great sounding reverb and having this kind of control is pure elegance.

The only criticism I would have is that I would make better use of the window assigned solely to the Multiband Multipliers. In fact, I would have it change every time the user modifies a parameter, that would be a great visual feedback help (remember Yamaha’s REV1 remote control?).

All in all, it’s a great reverb that I am sure will get its way in most of our Plug-ins folders!

It’s a HIT. It’s a Must.

Nathaniel Reichman On LiquidSonics Reverb Foundry Tai Chi

There are a lot of really good software reverbs these days, but there are very few immersive software reverbs. My early attempts to incorporate my favorite stereo reverbs in an immersive mix failed spectacularly, and while some notable immersive mixers (Steve Genewick) have found ways to do it, I still find it kludgy. So I was very pleased to find out that Tai Chi comes with options all the way up to 7.1.6 right out of the box.

My first impression was how hi-fi Tai Chi sounded. It had a great deal of depth, and a totally polished quality. Often the reverb component in the average effect or multi-effect plug-in is not high quality (grainy tails and spaces lacking depth or shape). Not here. Tai Chi sounds terrific doing simple things. But as I dug deeper into the presets and started tweaking them to try to achieve different results, it never stopped sounding great. The multi-band reverb shaper in the middle of the GUI is very smart. I used to go about this with damping and EQ, but this approach is better. Chorusing, dynamics, bit-crushing… all easy to control and useful.

Very often, I’ll be in the middle of a mix and need something that has more character or sizzle or dynamics than a regular reverb or plate, but pulling out a multi-effects plug-in is often way too much. Tai Chi sits in a much-needed sweet spot between quality rooms and chambers and whizz-bang crazy effects. In a straight-up classical music mix of a string quartet or orchestra, you probably wouldn’t use Tai Chi first. But in any pop, hip-hop or jazz production, Tai Chi might very well bring something truly distinctive to the mix.

I control nearly all of my favorite plug-ins with Eucon, and I’m happy to report that the out-of-the-box Eucon parameter mapping is not terrible. There are a couple of funny choices and some mismatched names, but you could basically get to work on an S-series console without having to stop and make a custom map. Much appreciated. But there is one big omission in this plug-in: it’s lacking an output page where you can control the levels going to the surround and ceiling channels. I’ve been spoiled by Liquidsonics’ and Exponential’s channel-specific control. But this is probably an easy thing to add in a future update to Tai Chi, and in the meantime, I can achieve the same result with some faders and EQs post plug-in.

Definite HIT. Tai Chi is a unique reverb plug-in with deep controls and great character.

LiquidSonics Reverb Foundry Tai Chi gets an Experts Gold award.