Free Bricasti M7 Impulse Responses from Acousticas

Posted on February 6th 2012

Acousticas is giving away a set of free impulse responses (IR’s) taken from the very expensive Bricasti M7 reverb unit. If you know what an IR is and how to use them, go grab the Bricasti M7 IR’s here.

If you don’t know what an IR or convolution reverb is, I’ll do my best to help you understand. Actually, I’m not sure if I understand exactly how it works.

Basically, convolution reverb lets you use reverb from an actual acoustic space on your music and audio. Though, it can do more than just acoustic space reverb.

Anything that sound can pass through can give an impulse response that’s used with convolution reverb such as guitar amp speakers – or any kind of speaker for that matter. Check out Audio Ease Speakerphone for more on this.

Here’s a quote from an article at B&H Photo on Convolution Reverb:

A Convolution Reverb consists of a recorded sample (called an Impulse Response or “IR”) of an acoustic space to excitation from a signal such as a sweep tone, starter gun, or snare drum crack, and the effect on the space of that signal after it has been removed and usably transformed by the convolution processor. Convolution reverbs essentially record and process the reverberant behavior unique to a real acoustic space.

Eh…say what? It may be a little complicated, but you don’t have to understand exactly how it works to use it.

There’s nothing like being able to make your music sound like it’s coming from the inside of a vacuum cleaner.

If you want to learn more about convolution reverb and IR’s, here’s another great article at Electronic Musician.

The free Bricasti M7 IR’s should work in just about any convolution reverb plug-in that accepts import of wave files – which most do.

They’ll work with plug-ins such as Waves IR-1 and IR-L, McDSP Revolver (Revolver LE won’t load them), TL Space, SIR2, and Space Designer – to name a few.

I’ve downloaded the IR’s but I haven’t been able to check them out yet. I’ve recently purchased Valhalla Room Reverb and have been using it for just about all my reverb needs.

No matter, I like free stuff and Acousticas (no longer online) is well known for their great impulse responses.

So, download the Bricasti M7 Impulse Responses here, load them in your favorite convolution reverb plug-in and see what you think.

Update

Acousticas seems to have gone out of business, but their Bricasti impulse responses live on. According to their license:

This Impulse Responses in this library may be copied, distributed or altered to your liking. You may publicly share the files and use them on as many computers as you like. No limitations apply.

So, I guess you can feel free to download and share them. Excellent impulse responses from a company that is surely missed.