Aurora is the second installment of iZotope's new Catalyst Series. Aurora is an “intelligent” reverb that actively “listens to your audio and dynamically carves space out of the reverb signal to keep your instruments and vocals focused”. Promising you keep your mixes clean and clear, Aurora creates lush, three-dimensional spaces with six reverb types, over 60 presets, convenient on-board filters, and an adjustable unmasking section.
Aurora truly is a different kind of reverb and the key to this is the feature NI calls unmasking. I would describe this feature as Aurora is continuously analyzing the audio and in real time nonlinearly deciding what frequency areas to dynamically minimize to enhance reverb clarity quality. The effect is quite striking. The feature can be completely bypassed, and Aurora can behave as a premium “ordinary” reverb. Perhaps the difference could be described as passive or active reverb. And sonically, I found the difference between having unmasking on and off to be quite dramatic, with the adjustable unmasking control delivering space and clarity as promised. Aurora sounds good with unmasking bypassed, and when it is engaged, the sonics sound closer to what engineers describe as polished record or radio sound, analogous to when you add a compressor to an entire mix.
Aurora is designed to be fast and easy to use with a minimum of controls. A pulldown menu selects the 6 reverb algorithms, consisting of Hall, Room, Chamber, Plate, Ambience and Cathedral. Then the preset menu allows massive modification of the algorithm with interestingly named presets like “GlimmerVerb” and “Harmonic Wave”. Additional controls include pre-delay, decay, width and tone which allows the overall character of the reverb to be adjusted between dark and bright easily. If you are using Aurora on an Aux or Reverb return, the dry to wet blend control if bypassed by engaging the Solo Reverb button, which is a little unusual of a name for that control so worth noting.
We have entered a time where plugins are becoming more intelligent, active and interactive. Aurora is one such plugin that interacts and makes choices that you as the user can adjust and use to your advantage, or not. At a low price, Aurora stands up in quality sonics to reverbs costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars more. Aurora is available to run in AAX, AU, and VST3 formats. A computer with a newer operating system is necessary and requires macOS Ventura (13.6.9), macOS Sonoma (14.6.1) or Windows 10 and 11. $49 MSRP
