The Bricasti M7 has been a standard in studios for years, go into pretty much any major studio and you will find one there. Now in the modern age of plugin software we have access to the wonderful sound of Bricasti M7 reverbs with Seventh Heaven, a high quality reverb plugin by LiquidSonics with thirty of the most widely used presets from the original hardware. Jump to the Seventh Heaven Professional and not only do we have every preset of the M7 but we have more flexibility and detailed control than ever.
In this breakdown video I go through the updated version of Seventh Heaven Professional and check out the awesomely detailed features for myself on a wonderful track featuring some incredibly talented musicians including Jonah Smith that we recorded over at Sunset Sound. On this mix I make use of the integrated 5 band post equalizer, the advanced reverb controls that give total control of reflection types, pre-delay, late verb delay, ducker (which can be externally sidechained), and the plug-in’s ability to fine-tune the decay time of the reverb in different frequency ranges. Having now played with the Seventh Heaven Pro I’ve experienced how much a reverb with so much detail can really shape your mix in the best way possible!
First things first, let’s start at the expanded preset list of Seventh Heaven Professional that has grown from 30 to 236! This alone will help you find the reverb you need or at the least a starting point closest to what you need. There are some fantastic presets in here that will remind you of some truly classic spaces. A&M Chamber, Sunset Chamber, three Sun Plates, two Boston Halls, and the list goes on. To make the preset detail even more in depth they are arranged in three categories; version 1, version 2 and nonlinear. Version 1 represents the original M7 algorithm. Version 2 represents a new algorithm with additional tail modulation and brighter roll off filters that remind me of the classic hardware reverbs of the 80s and 90s. Nonlinear represents a short burst of reverb with a non-decaying region, which is followed by an exponential decay – great for those classic RMX16 style drums!
Open the equalizer tab and you will have total control – starting with precise roll-off filtering to help cut those lows that can muddy up the bottom end of your mix or cut the highs to get a control over the sizzle. You’ve then got control of the lows, mid and high frequency ranges separate from the roll offs of course to finesse your reverb sound even further.
The Very Low Frequency Reverb provides fullness and body to your reverb allowing you to blend in additional reverb that is up to around 200 Hz for appropriate weight and body in the low register. The VLF reverb time intelligently grows a touch for very short reverbs giving a realistic weight to a tight or small room, yet holds itself back for longer reverbs so the lows don’t become too boomy or overwhelming – a very smart move by Casey the designer of the original M7 hardware and captured accurately in Seventh Heaven thanks to its dedicated low frequency reverb engine. Combine this with the control of the low frequency eq to really dial in the proper lows of the reverb you need with ease.
Jump to the advanced controls, and we find one of my favourite features – the Frequency Dependent Decay Time. With these four controls (frequency and reverb time multiplier for low and high decay) I’m able to control the decay time of the lows OR the highs separately. An example use of this that I used in this video is controlling the lows of the reverb on both the snare and kick drum. On the snare I was able to boost the Very Low Freq reverb BUT then cut the decay time of that reverb so now my snare has weight behind it but because I halved the decay time it doesn’t muddy up the lows of my drums. Having done the same idea on the kick I now have a strong foundation to my drums with strong attack and the beautiful shimmer and space of the reverb yet no mud. This is a fantastic idea and a really fun process.
A huge feature on the Seventh Heaven Pro is the detailed control of reflections. To start we have a roll off to darken or brighten the reflections at any frequency we want but with the Early/Late control we can set the balance of the M7 early reflections and late reverb field. Playing with this on the vocal I was able to get a blend of what sounds like a mic in a tiled room that’s far away combined with the warmth of the vocal.
The pattern setting with a total of 31 sets allows us to adjust the reverb reflections to sound like they are coming from a small room to a much larger room (and the distance within that space) giving us the control to add much more personality to the room of our reverb sound. Combine all of these features and you will have endless possibilities of the reflections. I used this on a pretty average snare to really give it some personality – if you’ve been struggling with some underwhelming snare recordings recently give it a try.
Lastly I played with the ducker feature, a trick I always use on my vocal reverbs to avoid swamping the dry signal allowing the presence of the vocal to stay there and giving the illusion that there is always a reverb on the vocal even though in reality is blooming at the end of phrases. The beauty of having this feature here in Seventh Heaven Pro is I can get everything I need from my reverbs without having to create these tricks with other plugins thus adding more processing work on my machine. You can duck the wet reverb or just the late signal, and in the most recent update you can even use a separate source to trigger the sidechain, so there’s far more control here than you could get with just using a compressor after the plug-in so it is really helpful to have this built directly into the plugin.
I love this kind of detail of reverb controls, truly allowing me to sculpt the reverb how I want and need it to be making my mixes cleaner and more importantly easier to work with.
Download the multitracks from today’s video below!