iZotope/NI Introduce Equinox, a Next-Gen Reverb Plugin for Dialogue and Sound Design
As podcasters, we spend a lot of time going over how to prevent natural reverb or “roominess” from recordings. But what if I told you that adding reverb can be a powerful tool to enhance a clean voice recording and add immersion to your audio dramas?
In this article, I am excited to introduce to you a new reverb tool from iZotope/NI, Equinox. This tool has the potential to elevate your podcasts to the next level, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro.
What is Equinox?
Back in the not-too-distant past, soundies worldwide drooled over the sound of the reverbs from Exponential Audio. Equinox is reviving the sound of these reverbs by utilizing the Exponential Audio algorithms and combining them with the adaptive unmasking technology we’ve seen from Aurora.
Equinox boasts 1,250 presets geared toward giving you a lush, immersive sound for dialogue, soundscapes, or experimental music.
The best part? Equinox is a multichannel reverb, which means it supports immersive formats like surround/atmos/binaural for mixing.
For individuals with a license for the Exponential Audio reverbs Stratus and Symphony, Equinox allows you to replace these plugins in a Pro Tools session with Equinox while carrying over plugin settings. At this time, only Pro Tools is supported for this feature. Automation and auxiliary output information is currently not supported at the time of this review.
Zotope provided me with a review build of Equinox. Some elements may differ slightly from the official release.
Crafting Reverb in Seconds
The team at iZotope has taken care to assist users who are new to more complex tools like Equinox without hindering control for more experienced users. Equinox features a “Filter” section where users can select what “flavour” of reverb they would like to have.
For podcasters, you’ll mostly focus on the Space and Size filters, but you may want to play with the Effect filter if you are doing sound design for audio dramas.
So, what do these filters do exactly? They suggest factory presets based on your needs. For example, under “Space,” I clicked “Tight,” and for “Size,” I selected “Small,” which brings up the Smooth Vocal Booth preset.
As you can see, the settings are changed, but you can make manual tweaks, add more effects for more complex textures, or enable unmasking. If you’re ever unsure what a setting does, hovering over it will give a brief explanation.
Equinox and Unmasking
Equinox has an unmasking function, but what exactly does that mean?
Frequencies need a lot of coaxing to “play nice” with each other. When you have the dry signal of say a voice recording and add reverb, you are adding frequency content to the overall signal. This can lead to frequency build-up, also better known as “mud”. This can have an ill effect on the intelligibility of both the dry audio and the reverb.
Did you know you’re supposed to EQ your reverb? This is how audio professionals deal with frequency buildup issues. However, now, with unmasking tools, you no longer need to listen for this manually, saving you a tremendous amount of time and leading to cleaner-sounding mixes. Equinox uses a simple UI to set up unmasking between the dry and reverb applied to the audio.
What Does This Mean for Me?
Your dry audio will remain intelligible with little to no loss in transient details, while your reverb will be more defined. That means you can have a large reverb with a long tail without the source audio sounding washy or muffled, or with tight/short reverbs to make a voice-over recording sound “larger”.
Now, is it 100% effective? Not always, but the unmasking technology has vastly improved since I first came across it in Neutron 4 Advanced from iZotope. With letting Equinox unmask the reverb applied to a source sound in real-time, there is definitely a noticeable difference! Equinox allows a user to make manual adjustments if needed. Having this tool built-in also helps with plugin insert clutter. This can help simplify plugin chains inside a DAW.
Equinox: UI
The UI has a lot going on, but iZotope did a good job of balancing sections that separate features so as not to overwhelm the user and keeping it concise enough that there’s no need to constantly flip between windows to make adjustments. It uses a “dark mode” colour pallet, which is great for people with screen brightness sensitivity.
Equinox: Performance
It’s always recommended that if you haven’t built your own PC for audio productions, at the very least, use a laptop that is advertised as a gaming laptop to meet the minimum hardware specs of the audio processing applications you’ll be using.
In my testing, Equinox wasn’t a glutton on CPU/RAM and ran quite smoothly. The version of the plugin I tested was in its review build, and I didn’t run into any time crippling glitches or performance issues. I was running it in a 100-track session with multiple occurrences on auxiliary sends (FX sends) with no issues.
This is a breath of fresh air for a Windows user, as QC for tools on the Windows side has started to take a downward hit again as developers favour Mac stability.
Sound Samples
Here’s a quick spoken-word before-and-after. I used a darker-sounding mic, and Equinox opened it up, making it brighter and livelier, but the effect is subtle in this use case. The tool will undoubtedly shine more with multi-sound source sessions like audio drama.
Equinox Cost & Conclusion
Equinox is set to be priced at $249 USD. A special discount price of $149.20 USD will be available until April 30th, 2025.
This plugin is a great addition to a toolset for time-saving capabilities with professional results. Its filter feature can help a less experienced user zero in on where to start with a preset, yet it has enough manual functionality for tweaking for a more seasoned user.
Reintroducing the sound of Exponential Audio for reverbs is very exciting, as those sounded amazing! They were an industry favourite for many years. With Equinox, a user will be able to easily create ear candy for their listeners!
