Ujam
UFX contains just about every en vogue feature a 2023 reverb needs. Is it the FX for U? Andy Jones needs a little space…
Ujam’s UFX Reverb couldn’t be any more ‘2023’ if it had a picture of Taylor Swift on it. It looks as cool as a plugin effect can in the 2020s, has features like ‘Freeze’ and ‘Duck’ and even unusual ‘Finisher’ effects with cool names like ‘Time Is Fleeting’, ‘Terminator Bend’ and ‘Sea Of Resonances’ that are more about a feeling than a fact. We like that. It brings out our inner Zen. There might even be a bit of artificial intelligence in there in the form of a randomiser that comes up with new sounds for you (or it could just be… a randomiser). Whatever, UFX Reverb screams ‘use me’. It’s one of the tidiestlooking plugins out there, and, as it turns out, one of the tidiest-sounding ones too.
Hidden extras
UFX Reverb is an algorithmic reverb and as Ujam say, it’s not aimed at recreating real spaces but instead makes usable reverbs for musicians (not engineers) and those “who want to go beyond physics”. This explains the more ‘out there’ terminology, though things start off fairly ordinarily.
You get to choose ten reverb modes to start with and these are standard Spring, Plate, Gate, Room and Hall options (among others). The controls start out innocently too, with left-hand ‘Dimension’ options controlling the duration of the reverb (Time), its early reflections (Size) and perceived spaciousness (Pre-Delay).
There are a set of controls to the right of the main dial under ‘Character’ that let you home in on detail, so Diffusion is more about controlling the reverb’s spread, Damping about how it dies away – higher value, higher frequency affected – and Modulation is for adding subtle or not so subtle movement. All well and good so far. The two Ducking and Freeze options are where things start to get very interesting. Ducking reduces the reverb effect according to the input signal so you can get some lovely and instant contemporary pumping effects applied to the effect rather than the more common and wellused volume. Freeze essentially holds that reverb right there, looping it potentially infinitely for the kinds of long reverb tails that Eno et al took months in the studios in the 1970s to achieve. Here you just press a button for instant meditative ambience and, in the right instances, this can be quite brilliant.
You get the kind of ambiences that Eno et al took months to achieve in the 1970s… only in an instant
The mood goes up a level – or more into fantasy land – when you take a trip over to the right hand of the UI. Here you get a Filter section and Ujam’s Finisher effects, either or both of which can be bypassed with a simple button press. Filter has a drop-down of some 26 different filter types.
While you can’t go in and change any para
