Samplicity Berlin Studio

The person behind ‘those’ Bricasti impulses now brings us Berlin’s Teldex Studio...

Let me start by identifying a common issue: you’re working on a big orchestral project that’s loaded head to toe with lots of wonderful sample libraries, perhaps complemented by some drier‑sounding recordings captured in your studio. Despite a decent arrangement, top‑notch instruments and great recordings, because each sound was recorded in a different space your mix lacks coherency, realism and, therefore, personality.

For years, people have tried to tackle this by sending a little of everything to the same convolution reverb, to create the impression of everything being in the same ‘real’ space. But the essential part that this always missed is that a single IR can’t account for the position in the room of different players or the corresponding time delay to the mics. If you have a trumpet section, for example, you really want to hear reverb that corresponds with where the trumpeters stood on the day (or at least where you’re pretending they did!). The same goes for the strings, the woodwinds and so on.

Samplicity!

Samplicity’s Berlin Studio reverb attempts to overcome this problem by providing multiple impulse responses, all captured at different positions in Berlin’s Teldex Studios. This studio is famous for decades of high‑quality classical recordings and film scores, and it’s also where some great sample libraries have been recorded, including Orchestral Tools’ Berlin range. Berlin Studio promises users of those libraries the very useful ability to place other sources in the same space.

It’s not just for them, though. These are some of the best impulse responses I’ve heard to date, and while that is of course partly down to the room itself — it has a beautiful tone, with a natural yet characterful presence that never becomes overwhelming — it’s also very much due to the skill of Peter Roos, the man behind Samplicity. I could easily see Berlin Studio replacing the classic ‘hall’ setting that many of us have in our default templates, and it’s entirely possible that Peter is responsible for that hall because over a decade ago he created the hugely popular and free‑to‑download Bricasti impulses that many of us still use (and which remain available on the Samplicity site). You can also hear his IRs in some virtual instruments from the likes of...