In this article we look at the differences between Liquidsonics’ Seventh Heaven and Seventh Heaven Professional. Seventh Heaven is already an impressive reverb, what do you actually get if you upgrade? Is Seventh Heaven Professional worth the extra cost?
Liquidsonics’ Seventh Heaven is a beautifully accurate recreation of the Bricasti M7 hardware reverb. This plugin offers the best combination of quality, convenience and value out there. It sounds wonderful, is quick and easy to set up and it’s very inexpensive. I simply can’t recommend it enough. We always advise people to fully explore the stock plugins available with your DAW of choice as for general processing there isn’t a DAW which doesn’t provide you with all the tools you need to create professional recordings - with the possible exception of reverb.
In his mix challenge here on Production Expert, grammy winning engineer Mike Exeter mixed the same track twice using only stock plugins versus premium plugins and his conclusion was that it was only in the reverbs that he found the stock plugins were noticeably different. The two reverbs he was using in that mix were both from Liquidsonics and one of them was Seventh Heaven Professional. Why would someone choose Seventh Heaven Professional over Seventh Heaven?
Seventh Heaven sounds like a Bricasti, of that there isn’t really a debate. The very accessibly priced Seventh Heaven doesn’t economise on the richness or quality of its reverbs, it does however present a reduced feature set. So what features are unique to Seventh Heaven Professional? As a Seventh Heaven owner what are you missing out on?
V2 And Non-linear Algorithms
The most significant addition to Seventh Heaven Professional is the number of presets available and the breadth of those presets, which comes down to which Bricasti algorithms the plugin is capable of recreating. Seventh Heaven is based exclusively on the v1 unit (i.e. all presets come from the reverb’s original banks and don’t contain any of the newer v2 and non-linear reverbs). The later v2 unit, which is included in Seventh Heaven professional, added significantly to the reverbs available – all of the v1 captures (up from 30 in the standard edition) and then the v2/non-linears are also included on top of that in the professional edition. Non-linears probably need no introduction, but the v2 presets are brighter and more energetic (it’s a bit like comparing the 480’s static Hall algorithm to the wild and infamous modulations of the Random Hall algorithm).
One of the most characteristic things about the sound of a Bricasti reverb, and the reason it is so difficult to emulate in software, is the way it uses modulation in the early reflections, low frequency reverb and the tails. Originally conceived of as a way to overcome the limitations of the hardware being used to create early digital reverbs, modulation adds movement and richness to the tails of reverbs and, while the limitations which inspired its use had largely fallen away by the time of the development of the Bricasti, the modulation of the v2 unit is rich, lush and only available in Seventh Heaven Professional.
If you are a fan of the big 80’s ‘dooosh’ of non-linear reverbs, you’ll find them included in Seventh Heaven Professional. It’s an effect which, when used sparingly, can be more versatile than you might initially think if you remember the massive bursts of white noise of the more excessive snares of the 80s. In his premium vs stock mix challenge Mike Exeter refers to a technique of running gated reverb into a room reverb. Dial up a non-linear reverb from Seventh Heaven Professional and run it into a second instance running a room. It’s a cool effect!
More Ways To Shape The Reverb
Seventh Heaven Professional includes a dedicated 5 band equaliser. Seventh Heaven only has a pair of filters. These 12dB/Oct filters are available in Professional which also has an additional 3 bands of fully parametric EQ with switchable high and low shelves. But the tonal shaping doesn’t stop there. Seventh Heaven Professional’s Roll Off section provides editable low pass filters affecting the early reflections and the reverb tail independently. In the standard edition you can’t open up the filters to brighten the sound beyond what was in the original capture’s presets, but the magic of the Professional version means you can do that, which is unheard of in a conventional convolution-based reverb. These filters are really powerful, being adjustable all the way down to 80Hz and up beyond 20 kHz. Combine these with the Frequency Dependant Decay Time controls and you have three independent and complementary ways to shape the spectral content of your reverb.
You can dial in some delay, as opposed to pre-delay, into Seventh Heaven. This tempo-syncable single repeat in the tail can have its delay time set at anything up to a second but the level is fixed in Seventh Heaven at -6dB, but in Seventh Heaven Professional you also have a level control so you can tuck it into the tail exactly how you want it.
Frequency Dependent Decay Time
The frequency dependent decay time controls use a pair of crossover points to define low and high sections of the reverb tail and the pair of multiplier controls allow you to tweak the high and low sections’ decay time in terms of a ratio of the global decay time, which controls the middle section in-between the high and low bands. Easier to use that it is to explain, it means that you can offset the top and bottom of your reverb to be shorter or longer than the overall decay time and these offsets scale with changes to the decay time. If you want progressive tonal change through your reverb, this is the place to find it. Great for taming low end rumble or adding some high-end fizz.
Selectable Early Reflections And VLF Meter
While talking about decay times it would be a good time to mention the VLF section. This much misunderstood feature is available in both Seventh Heaven and Seventh Heaven Professional and is a key part of what makes them sound as good as they do. The Very Low Frequency reverb control sets the level of the VLF reverb engine which affects frequencies below about 200Hz. As you can see from the additional output meters in Seventh Heaven Professional, this low frequency content is delivered by a discrete section of the reverb and, while uneditable apart from level, it provides crucial low end which can be transformative on the right reverb. The decay is independent of the main decay control. Set the early/late control to 100% early and pull the early roll off filter all the way down to hear VLF properly.
You’ll notice that the early reflections in Seventh Heaven aren’t editable. In Seventh Heaven Professional you have the choice of any of the 31 different ER patterns ranging from tiny tight spaces to larger, more complex patterns, and of course you can filter them using the Reflections Roll Off filter. This is another area where Seventh Heaven Professional gives a similar workflow to using the original hardware – typically you have absolutely no control over the level, shape or timing of early reflections once they are captured along with a late reverb because they are baked in with no opportunity to extract and manipulate them.
Slick, Powerful Workflow
So you get more controls and access to more reverbs, both the non-linear and v2 flavours. With this added complexity are you sacrificing the directness and simplicity which makes Seventh Heaven so fast to use? I’d say not. The UI is still very streamlined and you also gain many more presets to choose from. The focused set of presets Seventh Heaven presents make it efficient to use but the additional choices available in Seventh Heaven Professional really extend your choices. And of course this isn’t an either/or choice as if you buy Seventh Heaven Professional you also get Seventh Heaven!