Airspace by MusicTech Mag

ModeAudio’s first plugin is a sound designer’s dream, with a mix of convolution reverb, delay, and a varied collection of impulse responses

Since 2013, ModeAudio has now released over 330 sample and loop packs in various styles. The UK brand specialised in creating rich and evocative ambient samples, and the team has used this knowledge to create its first plugin – a hybrid convolution reverb and delay effect.

With a broad collection of curated impulse responses and presets, Airspace transforms even your simplest audio sources into mesmerising, deep and enveloping pads and textures.

The plugin is made up of a stereo delay and two convolution modules that load impulse responses. Although these two modules are named ‘Colour’ and ‘Space’, they are in fact identical, and you can load any of the over-450 included responses (IRs) into each.

These IRs are the core elements that give Airspace its unique sound. They include authentic recordings taken from a cathedral, a nuclear reactor, a submarine, and a chocolate factory (didn’t expect that one, did you?). There’s also vintage reverb hardware, found percussion, analogue drum machines, an upright piano, experimental sound effects and textural loops. Everything is neatly organised into folders, and the longer responses are listed with reverb times to help with browsing.

Although the IRs can be accessed from either convolution module, the general idea is that you use the Colour module for shorter impulses such as amp sims or found sounds, and the Space module for longer reverbs. You can dramatically change the timbre and character of the sound with some of the shorter IRs, introducing extra movement, frequencies or additional harmonics, and then place it into a real or imagined space using the longer impulses. Some of these extend all the way up to 16 seconds, for an instantly epic sound.

Additional controls let you reduce or increase the impulse response size, up to a massive 500%. This empowers you to experiment with tighter versions of the longer reverbs, or longer, drawn-out versions of the shorter settings. Size also affects the pitch, which can help when you want to tune pitched impulses such as the piano resonances.

Taking things further, you can then add predelay and change the envelope using attack, hold, release and Env Curve envelope controls. These let you tighten the tails further to wrap stereo spaces around drum transients, or increase the attack portion to create smoother-sounding reverbs that leave more space for the dry signal. Each module also comes with a built-in EQ with low and high shelves, and two notch filters.

Sandwiched in the middle of the interface is the stereo Delay module. This includes the usual features you might expect, like separate Feedback and Time controls for each channel, tempo sync, a link L+R button, and a Crossfeed button to feed signals between each side. There are also low-pass and high-pass filters, with resonance for added character.

Want more spice? There’s a Delay Mod section at the bottom of the plugin window that offers delay time and pan modulation with five LFO shapes and tempo sync. These can be used to add subtle (or not-so-subtle) pitch and spatial movement to liven up the repeats. Rather than throw the whole signal left and then right, the pan modulation just switches the left and right signal over, which results in a more subtle effect. There’s also a +/-24 semitones pitch shift effect that you can blend in, with a Recursive Shift button that applies the transposition incrementally for glissando effects. This is a fun way to add a harmony note into the effect tail, or to make the entire effect run an octave up or down.

At a glance, there’s nothing that especially stands out with Airspace, but when it all comes together, the results are astonishing. A simple arpeggio or dry vocal can be instantly morphed into an ethereal drone that sounds like the soundtrack to heaven.

There’s a richness to the impulse responses that adds texture and character that you just can’t get from algorithmic reverbs. It’s also surprisingly versatile. Although it’s at its best making longer textures, it can also be used to create original-sounding short spaces and special-effect reverbs to envelop a sound, making it more complex and interesting.

To help showcase this effect, there are over 240 presets divided into Ambient, Blur, Cosmos, Reflect, Transform and Warp categories. These make full use of the controls and impulse responses, including more extreme and glitchy sound design presets.

Our only real gripe is that you can’t change the routing of the effects. It would add even more flexibility if you could separate the two convolution modules and then pan them, for example. It might also be useful to have control over the overall width of the output.

These are fairly minor things though given the quality of results that Airspace outputs and the reasonable asking price. The closest competitor is probably Fog Convolver 2 by AudioThing, which comes in at a similar price, and also includes some built-in modulation and effects. However, Airspace’s additional delay and excellent presets help to make it shine as an instant ambience machine. It might not replace your favourite reverb and delay for more simple tasks, but it’s versatile enough to cover a lot of ground when it comes to sound design. And if you’re writing ambient or soundtrack work and create a lot of drones or textures, then it’s a no brainer.