AudioThing has released Environments, a new convolution reverb plugin built from real acoustic places rather than standard studio rooms or generic halls. The plugin is available now for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and iPadOS, with desktop support for VST2, VST3, AU, AAX, and CLAP. It is currently priced at $39, down from its regular $69 price, with an upgrade discount available for Fog Convolver owners.
The main idea is simple, and it is also the best part of the release: Environments lets producers work with captured architectural spaces as part of the instrument chain.
Instead of loading one static impulse response and calling it a day, the plugin uses a convolution engine built around multiple impulse responses with different traits, giving each location a deeper sense of position and movement.
The included spaces are not typical rooms.
AudioThing captured the Temple of Mercury in Baia near Naples, Piscina Mirabilis in Bacoli, and the Cisternone of Livorno. Each location has a specific acoustic identity, with domes, water, pillars, vaults, and scale all affecting how sound moves through the space.
Real Acoustic Spaces Inside A Reverb Plugin
The Temple of Mercury is one of the clearest examples of why Environments feels different from a regular reverb tool. The Roman structure is known as “The Echo Temple” because of its hemispherical shape, reflective water surface, and unusual acoustic behavior. AudioThing’s capture brings that architecture into a plugin format, giving producers a way to place instruments inside a space with a real historical and physical character.
Piscina Mirabilis brings a different type of scale. Built as a massive Roman freshwater cistern, it measures roughly 72 meters long, 25 meters wide, and 15 meters high, with 48 pillars supporting barrel-vaulted ceilings. That kind of structure gives the plugin a very different acoustic profile from a concert hall or plate reverb.
Cisternone adds another dimension through its 19th-century hydraulic architecture in Livorno. With 128 pillars, cross vaults, and a large water basin, it offers a more architectural kind of space for producers who want reverb with a physical identity rather than a polished studio preset.
Gestures Adds A Second Convolution Layer
The feature that makes Environments more useful as a creative tool is Gestures. This adds an extra convolution layer before the main environment processing, using resonant objects, actions, and feedback-based recordings gathered on-site by artist Salvatore Carannante through the Spare Parts Sound Project.
That means the plugin can add motion, contact, and texture before the signal fully enters the captured space. It gives producers a way to make the reverb feel less fixed, especially when paired with the Room section, two LFOs, brightness and contrast controls, randomization, and the preset system.
Environments includes three environments with two positions each, a room simulator, resizable interface, Gestures loader, and standalone or AUv3 operation on iOS and iPadOS. For producers who use reverb as a compositional tool rather than a simple send effect, Environments looks like a useful release. It gives real places a role inside production, and it does that with enough control to make those spaces playable rather than purely archival
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
