In this post, we won’t only be doing a review of ERA 4 Reverb Remover, but also a practical guide of the ins and out of the plugin.
There are certain kinds of reverb (or for simplicity ‘echoes’) you don’t want in your audio recordings, in short, if you are recording in a non-ideal condition or to worsen the situation, you don’t have any acoustic treatment done to the walls, you might find this annoying effect playing ping-pong in your recorded audio.
Before we go over the review of ERA 4 Reverb remover, I’ll love to explain why the echo issue occurs in your recordings (I promise not to go overboard), skip if you are a Jedi:
When you say a word, sound waves created by your voice carry energy toward the microphone, normally you’ll expect this to simply process the sound, but if you think of it, you aren’t only speaking into the microphone, it’s an open space, and your room is most likely enclosed with walls.
What happens is that the sound wave (what you recorded), would continue to bounce around the walls of the room or reverberate, which then gets back (slightly later than the direct voice) to the microphone, which as a result of that produces an echo effect.
So, to fix this, you might want to invest in a proper recording room, however, if your budget doesn’t meet that, then you might want to either fix it manually or use a plugin, which is where ERA 4 Reverb Remover comes in, now, the question is…
What is ERA 4 Reverb Remover
ERA 4 Reverb Remover is a simple and easy-to-use one-knob plugin that offers an industry-grade dereverberation, the good thing about this plugin is that it does it automatically without causing artifacts or compromising the fidelity of the sound.
What this plugin does is analyze the reverberation profile, and helps adjusts the reverberation amount with a single control, I’ll be doing a practical experiment with this plugin, so, you’ll better get the idea of how it helps eliminate reverb smoothly.
The good thing about ERA 4 plug-ins, in general, is that they work similarly, so, if you have tried ERA 4 Noise Remover or De-Clipper, or Plosive Remover then this should be a breeze. If you haven’t tried any of their product, it is super easy to get started.
Getting Started With ERA 4 Reverb Remover
Reverb Remover is a simple and easy-to-use plugin, it features few parameters, so, it’s fairly straightforward, nevertheless, let’s dive deep into the core features…
Mr. Processor
The processor is the big round knob at the center of the plugin and is the main control ‘boss’ of the reverb remover. You can dial in the amount of processing you want depending on how you want the reverb suppressed.
Processing Focus and Buzz Control
The processing focus buttons ensure you are dereverberating the right frequency spectrum, it features five buttons:
- All-Frequency Focus: This focuses on the full-frequency spectrum
- Hi-Frequency Focus: This focuses on the high-end range of the frequency spectrum
- Low-Frequency Focus: This focuses on the low-end range of the frequency spectrum.
- Hi/Low-Frequency Focus: This focuses on between the high and low-end range.
- Mid-frequency Focus: This is more on the mid-range
Output Gain
If you notice the level of the output signal is lower than the original signal, use the output gain as a makeup gain, this way, you can adjust the level of the output signal.
It also features an Auto option, which automatically adjusts the output level, you start with this, and if you are not satisfied, you can go over it manually.
A/B switch
You can use the A/B switch to compare two settings, and it doesn’t stop there, you can adjust the controls such as Processing, Gain, and Focus independently for the A and the B setting, which is super awesome.
One last thing I would love to point out is that if you are recording the sounds yourself, record the best sound possible. if you are recording too many echoes in your audio files, please do not expect a miracle, I can’t stress this enough!
Practical Experiment
It’s time for an experiment…
I am using Fl Studio for this experiment, ERA 4 Reverb Remover works well with major DAWS, so, you are in safe hands.
Here is the layout of the experiment:
Original Audio (With Reverb) ->De-reverberated audio (With ERA 4 Reverb Remover)
This is a project I am working on, and I wasn't too happy with the reverb in the vocal I was sent, so, here is the before and after:
After Applying ERA 4
Although the changes were minor but still count, as a 7/10 from me. Try out the plugin, and let me know what you think in the comment section.
Is ERA 4 Reverb Remover Worth Using?
It depends!
If you've been reading the review all along, then I am very certain you know the answer, nevertheless, here are the group of user I feel would find this plugin useful:
- If you want to suppress excessive reverb
- A post-production engineer struggling to meet deadlines
- You don't want to remove a reverb manually
- A podcaster looking for a fast and easy way to improve the audio quality of your podcast
- A videographer that is regularly required to fix audio but doesn’t want to touch a parametric equalizer ever again
- A bedroom producer recording in non-ideal conditions using budget recording equipment
- and so on.
►Key Features:
- Single knob operation
- Simple and streamlined user interface
- Automatic dereverberation
- Precision-grade audio repair functionality
- Uncompromised sound quality
- Minimal CPU usage
- Resizable UI
►System Requirements:
- macOS 10.10 or higher // Windows 7 or higher
- Hard Disk Space: 250MB (minimum) for Windows and 660MB for macOS
- Screen Resolution: 800×600 (minimum)
- Sample Rates: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96 kHz
- RAM: 2GB (minimum)
- VST, AU, AAX Native (64-bit)