With an array of different modelled devices and controls you won’t find on the original hardware, have Pulsar breathed new life into the humble spring reverb?
Since their first release in 2017, French software developers Pulsar Audio have been steadily building an impressive collection of plug‑ins, with emulations of esoteric hardware effects and processors that, in the hardware world, would be out of reach for most of us. Regular readers will know that I have a real fondness for hardware spring reverbs, but in some scenarios plug‑ins are more convenient, so I was very happy to check out Pulsar’s latest release.
Overview
Primavera promises us a smorgasbord of spring reverb options based on some classic and often lesser‑seen devices: Pulsar say that it features precise emulations of both the electronic and mechanical behaviour of six classic spring reverb units. These include the Pioneer SR202, Hawk HR12 and Roland RE‑201 as well as more broadly descriptive options they’ve called Twang and Tubby. A final option is GBS, which I assume is based on the Great British Spring, a legendary design that was housed in a sizeable piece of drain pipe!
We’re also treated to a plethora of modern control options with which to shape the behaviour and tone of these virtual ‘springs’, and this promises to make the plug‑in more flexible than any of the modelled hardware units would be when mixing. A quick tour of the ‘unit’ from left to right begins with a preamp section. This offers us the option of driving the input into a virtual valve or germanium preamp, and there’s the welcome addition of simple high‑ and low‑pass filters that affect the wet signal only. Over on the right, a wet/dry blend control allows you to set the plug‑in to only use this preamp stage, only the reverb, or anything in between. The centre section presents a choice of the six emulations, along with the more typical software reverb controls for pre‑delay, decay and width. Less conventional are the controls for Tension, which allows us to stretch or loosen the physical model of the springs, and Excitation, which allows you to dial in more or less of the more explosive effects of physically hitting a spring hardware unit! A handy ducking facility allows you to rein in the effect while there’s an input signal. There are also useful oversampling options, with the ability to specify different settings for real‑time use and for an offline render, and a drag‑to‑resize GUI, which is nice.
Lo‑fi To Hi‑fi
I managed to get Primavera installed quickly, during a short break in a live recording session I was engineering, and getting a workable sound up and running for a clean electric guitar track before the band came through to listen to a take was a breeze. The Twang setting is based on a reverb found in Fender guitar amps and it certainly sounded convincing when used on clean or slightly overdriven guitar recordings.
Clearly, Pulsar have taken a lot of care to make this plug‑in easy to use, and I was particularly impressed at how ‘natural’ it felt when I skipped between the different flavours of spring. They’ve organised the six options in such a way that they range from ‘lo‑fi’ to ‘hi‑fi’, with the general idea that you start with the more ‘obviously spring’ effects that most users will be looking for, and things then get a bit cleaner and more versatile (as you might want for vocals, for example) as you step through the options. I often found myself favouring the RE‑201 and GBS as a starting point that suited my personal taste. The HR12 and Tubby sound darker and more dense, and these seem to work great for drums, some synth sounds and, on occasion, even a bass guitar.
As great as hardware spring reverbs can sound, and as fun and inspiring as they can be to play with, they can sometimes be a bit frustrating to use. That’s due to the difficulty in physically engineering control parameters to change decay times and the like. Primavera dispenses with the constraints of the physical world, offering a great selection of tools for fine‑tuning the result, without it ever really feeling like you have too much choice, and the big one, sitting smack bang in the middle of the GUI, is the Decay control. This enables you to transform any of the reverb options into a more expansive effect, or to tighten things right up to the point where the springs are more of a tone‑shaping tool than a spatial one.
We could all do with an Excitation control in our lives!
The width and pre‑delay sections perform exactly as you’d expect on a software reverb, and the Tension and Presence controls offer the opportunity to really fine‑tune the tone and character of your chosen spring model. I reckon we could all do with an Excitation control in our lives! This intriguing control allows you to dial in more or less of what I would describe as the ‘boing’ of a spring reverb. You can also get into more special effect territory by clicking on the CGI springs, which are animated as they respond to this virtual ‘kick’. The ducking effect can also offer a way to make this effect useful on the right sound. Of course, there does come a point where you can dial things back too much — at this stage, you should probably ask yourself if you might like to try a different style of reverb altogether — but the additional controls certainly felt very useful to me in those closing, really detailed stages of a mix.
Wrapping up my whistle‑stop tour of Primavera with a brief mention of the preamp section: you have the option of dialling in more ‘grit’ using the tube or germanium transistor‑based preamps I mentioned above. You can go pretty crazy with this, or just add a touch more character if needed, and can use the wet/dry control to give you just the preamp (no reverb) if you want to use it as a saturation/distortion effect. While most of us will have preamp emulations of some sort or another in our plug‑in folders already, it was interesting to hear how this stage seemed to interact with the different reverb styles: it felt to me like there was more going on here than when you just drive any preamp before a reverb.
Summing Up
Primavera was my first encounter with Pulsar’s software, and I was very impressed: it has been a wonderful addition to my software effect options, and it ticks a number of my ‘what I want from a plug‑in’ boxes. You can slap it on a track during a writing or recording session to get a bit of instant ‘vibe’, whilst also having the flexibility to fine‑tune and sculpt your sounds towards the latter stages of a mix. I either own or have owned most of the units that are emulated in this plug‑in and whilst I do think that the hardware still offers a little ‘something’ that this doesn’t quite manage, these are excellent‑sounding emulations — better than most I’ve heard and convincing to the ear — and there are more than enough modelled units to choose from, making it both enjoyable and convenient. The additional control options then take this plug‑in to another level: as well as a fun ‘colour box’, it’s also a very serious mixing tool, as it’s much less of a fight to tuck your chosen colour into a mix. If you’re into your lo‑fi and characterful‑sounding effects you should definitely take the full‑featured 14‑day trial of Primavera for a test drive.
Pros
- Six flavours of virtual spring to choose from.
- Fun and creative to use.
- Extra control features allow for finer mix placement.
- Preamp section allows for added ‘grit’ and character.
Cons
- None.
Summary
This plug‑in features a selection of convincing spring reverb emulations and a fun, well thought‑out selection of controls that expand the versatility of this much‑loved style of reverb.
Information
€99. Discounted to €59 when going to press.
€99 (about $105). Discounted to €59 ($63) when going to press.