I replaced quite a lot of the original reverbs (mostly Sintefex and SIR+impulses) and got some great results. I found that the AA Reverb is superb at glueing stuff together, making instruments sound more coherent. This could be the benefit of algorithmic reverbs versus impulse reverbs which tend to sound a bit 'pasted on'. It also excells at very tight ambiences for vocals where one needs that 'bigger than life', slightly stereo, vocal sound (good replacement for chorus which can cause problems).
However, I also found some areas where the AA reverb was not suitable. I had some trouble making it sound dense enough for single percussive sounds, especially in large gated kind of reverbs. This became a problem in minimalistic backgrounds where one can hear the reverb clearly. I also found that the 3 controls for reverb decay, low, mid and high frequencies, is not enough. Would love to see more bands, like 5 of them. This would give the possibility to cut problematic frequency decays which is more effective than EQing the tail. I would also like to see more early reflection models of really tight spaces as sometimes I couldn't get the sound that I wanted.
Stereo width of the plugin is not as wide as some other reverbs that model rooms. I get the feeling of a narrov x-y pair of microphone in a room where as I would sometimes want that super-wide ORTF or spaced A-B microphone feel when using mono source material.
Overall though I can confidently say that the AA reverb brought a huge amount of professionalism in the sound of the end product. Without it the results would not have been as good. The way it can geel a mix is just fantastic and it seems to be independent of source material! I rate it a 8.9 out of 10! Good work guys!
Cheers!
bManic
ps. I have a bunch of presets that I made during the project which I'll try to upload to the preset exchange area at some point but right now I'm rather busy so it'll have to wait a while.
