Baby Audio Crystalline

Baby Audio are on a roll with their releases, but can they crystallise their reputation with their latest algorithmic reverb? The answer's crystal clear

PC MAC $99 

Baby Audio have only been around for a relatively short period of time but have made a big impact thanks to a set of plugins that focuses on what the user wants, rather than blinding you with specs, data sheets and direct emulations of rusty old hardware. With plugins like Spaced Out, they take the concepts behind that hardware (in that case a Space Echo) and transfer them to the 21st Century, putting the controls you want in front of you, and leaving much of the science to the white coat brigade.

And we love them for that; it's putting the music first, and the company's latest Crystalline reverb takes that ethos along very nicely indeed. It's an algorithmic reverb in the vein of classic Lexicon hardware and exudes that quality but in software, the kind of quality you can only now get with today's processing power.

Crystal tips

There's a set of 300+ presets to get stuck into in the central window: user presets and those programmed by various Baby Audio experts. The sections around these comprise four blocks of easy edit parameters (with three buttons each) along with Output and Timing sliders.