Cinematic Rooms from LiquidSonics is a plug-in which should need no introduction. This superb room simulating reverb is available in two versions: Standard and Professional, both use the same reverb engine and support channel counts up to 7.1.6. The Experts’ Luke Goddard recently looked at using the standard version for music production. The question is; what do you get in the Pro version over and above what’s included with the Standard edition?

Surround Editing Planes

Surround editing planes is a feature which allows you to independently control parameters in each of the stereo planes of a channel-based surround mix. If, for example, you’re using the 7.1 version of the plug-in, you have the option to apply different decay times to the front, rear, side or centre channels. These all operate relative to the master settings. Reverb time in each of the channel pairs or centre channel can be set to anywhere between 0.2 and 5 times that of the master level. Other parameters operate on a range between + and - 100% of the master setting. This really gives you the option to tailor your reverb so it decays differently in different speakers. For example, you might choose to add a delay to the rear channels or reduce the reverb time in the centre channel, all of which can contribute to a more realistic room sound.

Presets

Cinematic Rooms Pro incudes a number of additional presets which you don’t get with the Standard version. This isn’t just a marketing ploy to encourage you to buy the more expensive version of the plug-in. The additional presets use and require many of the additional features and parameters which are specific to Pro. This includes some of the things we’ll look at shortly, such as EQ and the Pattern, Diffusion and Width controls.

Crossfeed Control

Crossfeed control is particularly relevant to those of us working in audio post. If you’ve got something panning dynamically around the room, crossfeed essentially acts as a form of pan tracking. Rather than having the reverb remain uniform in all channels as the source sound moves around, crossfeed lets you set the delay, level and rolloff of the crossfeed reverb so that reverb in other channels sound further away or at different levels to the channels closest to the sound. This is a very effective way of simulating how sound propagates in real acoustic spaces, where the reverb responds to the sound’s location in the room.

Better Control Over Reflections

The Reflections section of Cinematic Rooms Pro has a Character section. This allows you to choose between different patterns and also control the diffusion and width too. Width is handy for tightening the reverb to better simulate a small space, or you can go all out and make it massive! The diffusion control provides a means to simulate damped or reflective environments.

EQ

If you need to tailor the frequency content of your reverb, the EQ is a great feature in Cinematic Rooms Pro. There’s high and low cut controls plus low shelf, mid band and high shelf sections, all of which have frequency, gain and width controls.

Enhanced Frequency Contouring

The Standard edition of Cinematic Rooms allows you to adjust the bass and treble contouring. This means you have some control over the rate at which high and low frequencies decay. Again, this provides a means of simulating different acoustic spaces, albeit with fixed frequencies. Cinematic Rooms Pro builds on this with frequency controls for both the treble and bass. It’s important to understand that frequency contouring differs from the rolloff in the EQ section in that rolloff is fixed whereas frequency contouring is time dependent.

Reverb Echo Control

When modelling larger spaces, adding a delay or echo to the late reverb can help make it sound more believable. The Echo section provides level, rolloff and depth controls plus a Time setting which can be set to follow the session tempo if required.

Chorus

More of a music feature than post, chorus controls allow you to modulate the reflections with fine, light or moderate chorusing.

Dynamics

If you want ducking or gating, there’s a dynamics section in Cinematic Rooms Pro. We covered this back in May. In post-production, ducking can be an effective way to prevent reverb from swamping the dry signal. This can help with speed intelligibility when used on dialogue.

Conclusion

If simulating real acoustic spaces is your goal, Cinematic Rooms Pro provides all of the features you’re likely to need, and importantly it sounds great too! To see some of the features in action, take a look at the video below.