As many of you know, I fit somewhere in the human sub-category commonly referred to as “gear dork”. If that’s not obvious from the blog on this site, you’re either new here or simply not paying attention. Anyway, this past week I was working on some cues that called for shaping “traditional” instrument sounds into something a bit other-worldly. Right as I was getting into the teeth of this work, I got an email from Tone2 about their updated Warmverb plugin.

From the name – you’d think that this was just another reverb processor – not so! This little gem has a slew of effects that can radically alter the quality of the sound you pump through it. I pulled down the demo and gave it a try, and 10 minutes later I was paying for the full license. (and at $80US it’s a steal)

Aside from the amazing array of great-sounding FX, there’s also the ability to do some acoustic gymnastics by re-routing the effected output back into the front of the chain. This opens up some pretty staggering possibilities. It reminds me of the Moog Modular synthesizer, with a relatively open architecture that will even let you get into a bit of trouble. Audio feedback often spins out of control rather quickly, as anyone who’s done a live gig with misplaced monitors can atest. In this plugin it’s used as a way to re-shape the effect in a controlled manner (sporting both a gain control and a time delay) – but also notice that there’s a danger! label on the clip indicator – not to be taken lightly. I put a signal limiter right after Warmverb to make sure that I don’t damage speakers or my hearing while designing a new sound.

So now that I’m done with the specific project that called for this whacky plugin, I’m going to do a bit more work, to audition all the effects as well as work up some of my own custom presets. I’ll be putting up some new sound cues over the next week when there’s a sonic experiment worth sharing.