Ascent

Name: Ascent
Price: 29 USD
Author: Audio Damage

by Audio Damage · Reverb · Shimmer reverb

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Ascent is a shimmer reverb that runs a natural hall reverb and a granular pitch-shifting particle reverb at the same time.

A Bloom control sets the shimmer intensity, and grains transpose from -12 to +12 semitones, for $29.

Best for: Keys & Synths, Guitars, Vocals, Sound Design. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic, Electronic & EDM, Pop.

Keywords: shimmer, granular, pitch-shifting, hall, ducking, wet, ambience, electric guitar, room, spacious, synths, cinematic, classic, dark, mixing, sound design, pads, vocals.

What it does

Ascent is Audio Damage's shimmer reverb: a hall reverb paired with a pitch-shifting particle reverb that feeds it. The developer's aim is a sound that moves "from grounded, room-filling depth to shimmering" atmospheres.

Two engines: a hall reverb for long washes, which is always on, and a granular particle reverb built on two sets of pitch shifters with overlapping grains to avoid metallic artefacts.
Bloom: blends what feeds the hall, from the dry input alone at 0% to only the particle reverb's output at 100%.
Pitch and Regen: Pitch shifts the particle reverb from -12 to +12 semitones (+12 is the classic octave-up shimmer); Regen feeds the shifted output back in, so the tail keeps climbing or falling.
Particulate: a switch that adds random pitch shifting to the particle reverb's first delay lines, scaled by the Pitch setting.
Expanse: three tuned room modes, Small, Medium and Large, which change the delay network and the sense of space.
Tone and length: Darkness lowers the low-pass filters throughout the signal path, and Decay sets the fade time of both reverbs.
Duck and Mix: a built-in ducker turns the reverb down while you play so it swells up after you stop; Mix has a Mix Lock so presets don't change your wet/dry balance.

Presets are XML files that work across formats and systems. A fully working demo runs for 20 minutes per session with saving disabled. The current manual covers version 1.0.

Source: Audio Damage product page

When to use it

Ascent is a cheap, focused shimmer reverb with a small set of controls and a built-in ducker. Compared with Valhalla Shimmer and Eventide ShimmerVerb, it uses a granular particle engine for the pitch shifting and adds Regen for tails that keep rising or falling. Next to Supermassive, which is free and offers many more delay and reverb modes, Ascent is narrower but built specifically around shimmer and swells. Unlike Blackhole, it has a single hall character rather than a range of huge spaces.

Best for: shimmer pads, ambient guitar, swelling synth tails and octave-up washes behind sparse parts.
Genres: ambient, post-rock, cinematic and electronic.
Look elsewhere if: you want realistic rooms or classic plates (Pro-R 2 or VintageVerb), or many ambient modes for free (Supermassive).
Tip: turn up Duck so the reverb stays out of the way while you play and blooms after each phrase.

Where to buy

Audio Damage: $29
Plugin Boutique: $29

Tutorials and reviews

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