FRCTL Audio has released AURA, an algorithmic reverb built so that a six-second hall can sit under a lead vocal without burying the words. A free version, AURA Lite, ships alongside it.
AURA
Keeping a big reverb from burying a vocal usually means working around the reverb rather than with it: a compressor on the return keyed to the dry, an EQ scoop on the send, an automation lane riding the throw. AURA does that work inside the reverb and drives it from one knob.
That knob is CLARITY. Turned up, it makes the tail step out of the source’s way while the source is sounding, then bloom back in the gaps between phrases. It works two ways at once. It ducks by how loud the source actually sounds rather than by raw level, so bass does not over-duck and bright vocals do not under-duck, and it pulls the tail down band by band in whichever part of the spectrum the source is occupying at that moment. There is no threshold to set and no sidechain to route.
ABSORB and SWELL work on a different quantity again. Rather than changing how loud the reverb is, they change how long it rings, and they do it while the music plays. The room tightens as a passage gets busy and opens back up as it thins, so the end of a phrase throws by itself instead of being drawn into an automation lane, and a drum room can pull in under a fill and open out after it.
TUNE handles mud on vocals and leads. It follows the note being sung and clears the tail out from between that note’s harmonics, and it does the same for the notes just played, so the chord you have left stops ringing through the one you are on. DELTA is a listen mode: it plays back only what CLARITY removed, at the level it would have had in the mix, so the processing can be checked by ear rather than taken on trust.
Underneath is an eight-line feedback delay network with seven characters to choose from, morphable between: Room, Plate, Hall, Chamber, Bloom, Shimmer and Space. Decay is a true RT60 in seconds, from 0.1 to 60, and it is set independently of size, so a small room can be given a ten-second tail. Decay and predelay can both be tempo synced.
Also in v1.0.0:
- 71 factory presets across 9 categories, with vocals the deepest bank at 17.
- Two tail EQs with draggable handles, one across the whole reverb and one on the late tail only.
- A gate with a draggable threshold, a reverse voicing, and early reflections.
- A sidechain key input, so a reverb on a send can duck under a separate vocal bus.
- A spectrum analyzer that shows what is being removed, per band, while it happens.
- A/B compare, undo and redo, mix lock, and user presets.
AURA Lite
AURA Lite is permanently free and has four controls instead of thirty-nine: SIZE, DECAY, CLARITY and MIX. It is the same engine as the paid plugin rather than a reduced one, voiced on the Hall character, and its CLARITY knob drives the same ducking and the same band-by-band unmasking at the same quality.
TUNE, ABSORB, SWELL and the sidechain key belong to the paid tier. The spectrum display above the knobs shows the tail being carved around the source as the knob turns.
Pricing & Availability
AURA is $34.99, on introductory offer at $24.99 until August 12. It can be tried free for 14 days, activates once, and needs no subscription and no iLok.
AURA Lite is free permanently, with no account, no trial timer and no email wall. It has no activation step and makes no network calls of any kind.
Both run as VST3, AU, CLAP and standalone on Windows, macOS and Linux, at zero latency. The macOS build is a Universal Binary, native on Apple Silicon and Intel.
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