Soundtoys have announced that the innovative new reverb plug-in that was being showcased at this year’s NAMM Show is now available. Inspired by the pioneers of ambient music, and their extensive use of layered tape loops and delays, SpaceBlender has been designed to create “massive waves of lush, organic and evolving spatial effects”. What’s more, it’s being offered as a free download until 22 May 2025!
The plug-in has been created primarily with experimental use in mind, and is capable of creating unreal and imaginary spaces and textures that would be impossible in the real world. It’s an algorithmic reverb and produces effects that are very different to those offered by conventional feedback delay networks. Its algorithm makes it possible to dynamically control the shape of the reverb tail, resulting in sounds that would cause traditional reverb plug-ins to become unstable.
SpaceBlender’s Time knob can be set to values between 100ms to one minute, allowing it to create everything from short echoes to “absurdly long” non-linear spaces — there’s a Sync mode that will lock the Time to match the tempo of the host session. A Color dial then makes it possible to increase or decrease the reverb’s brightness over time, while a Texture parameter affects the reverb density in a similar way to a diffusion control, and a Mod knob introduces a chorus-like effect. Finally, a Freeze button feeds the plug-in’s output back to its input, creating an infinite soundscape that evolves over time.
A visualiser display provides users with a graphical representation of their reverb, a feature which is said to be particularly helpful when working with longer Time settings and slow attacks — the effect can even be controlled in real time by dragging the cursor around the display. Soundtoys say that despite the experimental nature of SpaceBlender, it’s not solely for cinematic sound design or avant-garde experiments, and will be equally at home in everyday music and audio production tasks.
Key Features
- Interactive control: Move between gate, reverse, decay and bloom reverb shapes — and everything in-between — in real time.
- Visualiser: See your sound move through the reverb shape as you adjust its sonic envelope.
- Simple control of spectral evolution; reverbs can get darker or brighter over time.
- Deeply embedded modulation creates rich, constantly moving ambient effects.
- Smoothly change the reverb texture from dense and lush to sparse and grainy.
- Extreme range from super short 100-millisecond non-linear effects to absurdly long 60-second meditations.
“We’ve been exploring new ways to build an algorithmic reverb — something with the creative flexibility of convolution and the richness, depth and soul of classic hardware devices. SpaceBlender is the first product of this research, and we’ve tried to make it easy to play with ‘space’ in a fun and musical way. We’re excited to hear what people create with it.” - Ken Bogdanowicz, Founder & CEO, Soundtoys
Compatibility
SpaceBlender is supported on PCs running Windows 7 or higher, and Macs running macOS 10.12 and above. VST2, VST3, AU and AAX plug-in versions are available.
Pricing & Availability
SpaceBlender is available now, and is being offered as a free download until 22 May 2025, priced at $99 thereafter.
