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 Heavyocity, Scarbee and Orchestral Tools, all three of which are very highly rated for their sound. Put simply, Peter knows how to make an excellent impulse response.

Into Position

As you can see on the left of the screenshot, the plug‑in’s GUI includes a soundstage graphic, and you can use this to select one of 18 separate instrument/microphone placements, using the ‘traditional’ seating arrangement for Teldex. They’re organised both by instrument and mic position, from Viola to Percussion Upward to Front Stage Room Mics, and there’s lots more in between. This is where this plug‑in really shines, because it allows you to account for where and how both the source and the mic would be positioned in a room. These positions are all individual impulses too: the manual states that “to provide the most exact, realistic and transparent results, Berlin Studio does not use IR synthesis, nor reconstruction from different IR sources. Switching between position options is instantaneous, without loading or calculation discontinuities.”

On the right of the interface, we’re given mixing flexibility similar to that of a console — it’s easy on the eye and familiar in use. There are faders for the input signal, the source (used for adjusting the direct signal in the mix) and the stereo output, plus three separate mic positions: Decca Tree, A‑B pair and surrounds. Each mic channel has built‑in tools for adjusting the EQ, imaging, decay, tail and early reflections, as well as mute and solo buttons and a level meter. The output channel has just the level fader and EQ controls, while the input gets left‑ and right‑channel pan pots.

The source channel has almost the same features as the mic channels, except that instead of the width and scaling controls it has left plus right channel pan pots, an Align knob and a related Auto button. These last two are used to align the source with the signal in the Decca Tree mics that typically form the main image. The knob allows you to dial this difference in manually, while the Auto button calculates it based on the selected position — and it often seemed that when I pressed this button, magic happened!

Ich Bin Berliner?

Berlin Studio set up as an aux send effect in Logic Pro.The Berlin Studio plug‑in is intended for use as either an insert or a send effect. The two common approaches would be: inserting instances on your instrument group tracks, and selecting the appropriate point on the Teldex recording stage for each (eg. you’d put an instance on a cello group and select the plug‑in’s cello position); or setting up different instances as effects busses, to which you can send from your various tracks. I tended to do the latter.

In my experiments, I created a piece using sample libraries recorded in six different rooms and, by the end, I was totally convinced it was a one‑room recording. It’s worth noting that if you’re to achieve the most convincing results then you’ll need libraries that allow you to isolate their spot mics but, since not all libraries have that option, I also decided to find out how well Berlin Studio would work with other sources. To do that, I opened up a previous project of mine and simply added ‘on top’ reverb sends to Berlin Studio’s Mid‑Stage Wide and Front‑Stage Wide microphone placements. It worked well, adding a pleasing sense of cohesion to an already dense mix, and lifting the production to another level. So this reverb is clearly usable with a wide range of material. But the best part is that I can send non‑orchestral parts through this room too, just as if I had the studio next door — and it sounds legit!

Despite the superb quality of result, Samplicity position this product at the ‘affordable’ end of the orchestral reverb market. That’s great for obvious reasons, but while the GUI is easy to use it lacks some functionality offered by more expensive competitors that could save the user time. For example, many DAWs don’t currently have options for quick‑linking controls inside a plug‑in or an insert‑level mix pot (as in Reaper; an example of what they should all do!). I often wanted to ever‑so‑slightly tweak the balance between mics, and I had to do this 18 times by managing somewhere from three to six faders on the individual instances. And while the manual states that “the plug‑in does not provide a dedicated control for adjusting the ratio between the dry signal and the wet output, in line with its approach of mixing four separate channels”, I sometimes missed simple features like that.

The sound is what it’s all about — and at this price, what a difference it can make!

Having said all that, those are all minor issues, really, because once the plug‑in’s sweet spots are found it’s unlikely that you’ll want to tweak much from there. As I’ve written above, the sound is what it’s all about — and at this price, what a difference it can make!