As my home studio has grown over the years, I find myself having the luxury of unlimited tracks upon which to record. As a result, I frequently record a room mic without fear of jeopardizing any close mic tracks. I like a nice room sound. I usually place my trusty Neumann U87 on a mic stand in cardiod about 10 feet away from the drum kit and hope for the best. Listening to this lone room mic track has never really blown the doors off my ears, but in the end I'm always glad that I took the effort to track it for the mixdown.

Altering the tone of this track has been a challenge. I've wanted to use this track for giving my mixdowns some character and sound. Some funky EQ'ing and compression can go a long way, but when it's all said and done, I have been reaching for the Timeworks Reverb 4080L plugin to get my room mic some character.

The 4080L reverb unit Direct-X plugin fits my philosophy: It does one thing and it does it well. It's easy to dial in your sound. All reverb parameters are described in terms even a layperson can understand. Some twisting of the knobs and faders will dramatically alter space, tone, timbre, and time. I find that bringing all faders down to the bottom is a good place to start experimenting. I follow this with an emphasis on the reverb output rather than the dry. Altering the levels between the room size, damping, decay, and predelay variables is likely to bring a believable room to the mix.

My favorite parameter to create a "space with an attitude" has to be the colour knob, which simply cuts off some or all of the annoying high frequencies. The colour knob, along with the a bit of predelay, can transport my drum mixes to the famed land of John Bonham.

A neat trick I like is to use the Timeworks reverb plugin to create a little stereo imagery with mono guitar or stings. First, bounce the mono track to a new track, pan both identical tracks left and right, apply Timeworks Reverb to one of these tracks, choose desired room size and tone color and don't forget the predelay adjustment for some real wicked tone.

The thing I like about hardware versus software is that an analog piece of gear generally offers the ability to mangle sounds beyond recognition. The Timeworks reverb plugin is a rare plugin effect that will allow you to get that analog mangling in the digital domain. It's even got a big honkin' VU meter to keep the analog snobs happy.

The Bottom Line: Highly recommended. Altering and mangling your sound is definitely an option here. Street price is $149.

Link relating to this review: Sonic Timeworks

Marc Gosselin is a member of The Butterfly Effect and is a recording engineer from Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.