Denise Audio Perfect Room 2

Denise Audio say that their Perfect Room 2 takes a new approach to algorithmic reverb, with the aim of delivering a natural, transparent character. It’s essentially an update of their original Perfect Room plug‑in. They’ve improved the clarity, while also offering zero latency performance, and this new version has some useful creative options, such as changing the shape of the reverb tail and reversing it. That can produce some very musical treatments, that I already know will come in useful in my own ambient compositions! Also useful is that key parameters can be tempo‑synced, specifically the pre‑delay time, attack time and reverb length, and the last of those is particularly helpful when using reversed reverb tails.

This isn’t one of those conventional reverbs with separate early and late reflections controls, though. Its simplified control set belies its ability to integrate with the real sound in a very believable way, conjuring up the illusion of a real space, whether that be a small room, a cathedral or somewhere in between. An EQ, with five fully parametric EQ nodes, sits over a spectrum analyser display. The large Reverb Time knob has a sync button and a reverse button below it. To the left we have controls for Pre‑delay, Attack time, Pitch Mode and Halo, the last extending the decay time at either the high‑ or low‑frequency end, depending in which way it is moved from its mid position. Denise describe this as adding a lingering spectral effect — and in my book, you can never have too much of those!

Bottom centre of the GUI, you’ll find a control for stereo Width, ranging from mono to ‘wide’, and to the right are controls for Frequency Profile, which is essentially a tilt EQ, Decay Profile, which changes the shape of the reverb decay tail, Ducker and the ducker’s Release time. The ducker essentially compresses the reverb tail while the input signal comes in and then allows it to ‘bloo’m once the initial sound has passed. At the bottom of the screen are sliders for Mix and Output Level as well as a Bypass button, and a helpful Lock button that retains the Mix setting when you change presets.

There’s no choice of algorithms here, but the Decay Profile control is instrumental in adjusting the perceived character of the reverb tail decay, and the reverb effects on offer cover shimmery plate‑like treatments, small and medium rooms and large indoor spaces. Throughout the range, the result comes over as natural, and the wet and dry sounds combine in a very believable way. Flip to Reverse mode and there’s a world of textures and delay/reverb hybrid effects to explore — they somehow always remain very musical‑sounding and usable — while the tempo sync options keep delay and reverse type effects in time with the DAW.

Verdict

I found Perfect Room 2 to be very flattering to piano and guitar in particular, but it also works well on drums and percussion loops, as it retains their presence in the mix rather than burying them. It’s a simple enough plug‑in perhaps, but sometimes simple is what you want — and there’s just enough of a departure from the norm to make it usefully different when you need it to be.