Sonnox Elite Native review – Reverb, SuprEsser
By Paul Dakeyne
| Posted in Music Technology
Our muti-part review of the Sonnox Elite Native bundle continues today with the Reverb and SuprEsser plug-ins. Reverb bucks the recent trend for convolution based solutions in favour of a more traditional ‘design your own space’ stereo modeling ethos. Precise control and shaping of early reflections and the reverb tail is provided and users can access the very well laid out, logically defined faders to build their own reverb, literally from the ground up. The blend and mix balancing between these two important parts of the signal chain is again, very customisable.
The early reflections section of the GUI features some creative, easy to use tools such as the selection of microphone room position, and selection of the ‘shape’ of the actual room. Also present is the ‘absorption’ fader, which works surprisingly well as it governs how much or how little sound absorbent material is present in your virtual space (sofas, bookshelves etc). Once the reverb attributes are created, further sonic fine-tuning is possible by flicking over to the EQ tab, bringing an exceedingly powerful Oxford EQ into play. This is not just any old EQ - apart from the four ‘type’ select option and the LP/HP filters, this EQ is very similar to the actual Sonnx ‘EQ’. This is one mighty additional tool to have within the reverb itself and saves time for the user.
However if intricate reverb building isn’t your forte or you prefer a varied set of foundations to build upon, Sonnox Elite Native‘s Reverb has some excellent presets available which, after a scan through the list, more than satisfy any of my personal needs as well as, I’m sure, those of most other users in both acoustic and electronic music making. These presets are grouped well and are easily navigable. The choices range from drum ambiences to large or small rooms and spaces, plus some interesting ‘post’ settings with some wacky, though quite usable options to access. More general, vocal-oriented and recording spaces are present too, plus a nice emulation bank with things like Lex, (1970s) EMT and Mverb presets to doodle with. Used on various sources from vocals to drum kits, Reverb performs beautifully, sounds great and does exactly what you’d expect. Better still, if you find any reverb signal that you think could stand some improving, then you can do just that – you have the power in the GUI dude!
The ‘SuprEsser‘ plug-in is next on the test bench, and what a wolf in sheep’s clothing it is too. As a de-esser, it ranks as probably the easiest to use, intuitive and effective solution of its type I’ve yet come across. At the most basic functional level, unwanted ‘S’es can be controlled and minimised in just a two fader adjustment: choose the frequency range to enclose the spike(s) and adjust threshold to control the reduction. This is all clearly illustrated in the waveform window, which itself is able to zoom further into the problem area for a more finer degree of visibility.
A width control enables widening or reduction of the bandwidth effected and filter Q slope changes are possible steeping up to 72dB per octave. Three monitoring modes of ‘mix plus effect’, ‘inside’ the effected area and ‘outside’, give the user an advanced audition option when listening to the plug-in’s effectiveness, which is darn useful I have to say. Additionally, an almost super-advanced control layer is within reach by the user clicking ‘access’ to drill down to some very specific effect targeting functions. These include triggering applied to the full (wide) or selected (band) areas, and threshold level addressing of the same, again, full or selected bandwidth zones (at a setting of ‘wide/wide’, making the plug-in behave effectively as a normal compressor would).
The auto level tracking control also found in this advanced layer is a clever tool that makes the plug-in track the level of, for example, a vocalist’s performance, acknowledging more sedate verses and enthusiastic choruses, and ensuring the proportional amount of de-essing remains in the same exact ratio to the input signal whatever the input dB reading. This therefore ensures equal amounts of compression throughout a performance – nice touch Sonnox.
So, SuprEsser is basically a dynamic EQ effect with regards to the way it controls just the specific range of frequencies it is set to address and leaves the rest of the signal untouched. But it is more than just this and a De-Esser.. It can apply the same control over reduction or even complete removal of erroneous frequency spikes when used to tackle other categories of frequency nasties too (such as ‘plosives’, thuds, booms and shrills). Just refocus the bandwidth and threshold to sit around whatever is causing concern (a vocalist kicking a mic stand for example), and hey presto, ’tis gone!
Yet again, this Sonnox Elite Native bundle presents some individual feature-packed, incredibly useful, creatively expressive plug-ins that just keep on getting repeated thumbs up from me. Tomorrow, in the final part of this (now) four-part review, I’ll be finishing off with the ‘Limiter’ tool. Maybe I’ll find something I don’t like then?
Tags: elite native, limiter, Reverb, sonnox, supresser