Recording - July 2013 - 64

PLUG-IN OUTLET
PSP Audioware PSP SpringBox
By Paul Vnuk Jr.

Spring reverb is one of the most beloved guitar effects on the planet.
Spring tanks are found in most combo guitar amps from the ’60s until
the advent of digital effects, and thanks to firms like Orban and
Demeter, rackmount spring reverbs lived in studios as standalone
effects. But interestingly, outside of guitar-effect emulation bundles, there
haven’t been very many spring reverb plug-ins on the market. Leave it
to Poland’s PSP Audioware, with its highly accurate circuit emulation
and weird and wacky sense of fun, to come up with PSP SpringBox!

3-spring models (4 and 6 springs total). Each of these
can be mono or stereo in, but always stereo out. Having
a stereo send summed back to mono before entering a
plug-in with stereo outputs seems odd in a modern DAW,
but this setting has the most vintage/realistic sound.
The remaining controls on the unit are global. They
include Diffusion, Spread (width of the verb) and Pan /
Balance. This is rounded out by a set of individual output controls for Dry and Wet signal common to many of
the PSP plug-in family. Lastly there is a setting labeled
Low CPU or Brilliant, with the later taking up more horsepower for a more realistic sound.
Sound
Before diving into the subject of realism, let me say that
like most of PSP’s best works, this is a sound designer’s
dream toy. It is instantly capable of small, bright, tiny and
tinny spaces as well as big dark, sproingy and swimming spaces and everything in between. In comparison
to many of the other spring reverb VSTs on the market,
few can come close to its scope and breadth of sounds.
But does it sound like the real thing? That answer is
complicated, as I found it hard to accurately copy the
sound of a miked tube amp with its own spring reverb.
Even when I played the same amp dry and re-springed
it with PSP SpringBox, the dimension and spring-reaction
were slightly different. This is to say I could approximate
the sound and feel of the real thing, but just not copy it.
I was able to more accurately capture the sound of a
standalone 2-spring Ruby Tank coupled with Radial
Engineering’s 500-Series Tank Driver module (reviewed
July 2012), mostly due to it also being a standalone effect
vs. an amp-and-tank scenario. What surprised me most
was how much duller and tighter the real tanks were, compared to what was sonically possible with PSP SpringBox.
In use
Beyond the obvious use on guitars, I liked PSP
SpringBox on shorter settings on snare drum, and as a
medium full drum room. I really liked it on vocals, both
as short springy slapback or even as an enveloping
shimmery long vocal verb. Of course it is great on
synths and textural drum samples as well... all stuff you
might not consider running through a spring!
This may be one of my favorite offerings from PSP yet,
along with PSP Echo (reviewed November 2012), with
which it pairs wonderfully. Like PSP Echo, PSP
SpringBox does a great job of capturing the sound and
spirit of the original real-world effect, but takes it far
beyond in both sound and capability.

Looking in the box
PSP SpringBox may seem simple compared to other reverb plug-ins,
but considering that a real spring reverb often has few (or no) controls,
its feature set is fairly extensive! It’s a 2-channel reverb with four spring
configurations, mono or stereo in/stereo out. Click on the PSP logo to
reveal a signal-flow diagram (see the screenshot for examples) and
understand how the spring routings work.
Each channel has controls for High Pass Filter,
Delivery: Web download only
Presence, Damping, a Time control and an Output Trim.
Format: 32- or 64-bit Windows XP SP2/Vista/7 VST/RTAS/AAX,
The two sets of front-panel channel controls are not serMac OS X 10.5+ Intel or PowerPC VST/AU/RTAS/AAX (AAX
ial or parallel or left/right; they’re simply two easily
requires OS X Intel 10.7+)
reachable sets of controls that you can switch between
Copy Protection: serial number challenge/response
with an A/B switch. This setup allows you to have two
License: single user/multiple computers not used simultaneously
different tone and time settings that can be automated
Documentation: PDF download
and toggled between in a mix to great effect, much like
Price: $69
a guitarist switching stomp boxes in a song.
More from: PSP Audioware, www.pspaudioware.com
After each channel is the reverb configuration section
with a choice of a 2- or 3-spring model, or dual 2- or
64

RECORDING July 2013

http://www.pspaudioware.com

Recording - July 2013

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