- Excellent sounding, 12 unique reverb algorithms
- Classic Strymon quality
- Freeze & Infinite features
- Adjustable Mod speed
- Using this with the lowest sample size may give you some audio crackles
- Heavy on CPU in comparison to other reverb plugins
- Very expensive for a plugin
Hello there, and welcome back to another plugin review for you! This time, we will be looking at a very recently released and quite sophisticated reverb plugin, the Strymon BigSky. As I always do, I’m going to do my best to give you every detail about this plugin and also provide you with a preset walkthrough video so you can really have an idea of what the Strymon BigSky plugin sounds like.
Table of Contents
About Strymon
For those who have never heard of the Strymon company, here’s a quick introduction! Strymon is an American guitar pedal and effects manufacturer. Surprisingly, while researching them, I found out that the company first started as the Damage Control company that used to manufacture tube-driven pedals back in the day! Strymon is a very strong brand featuring highly respected guitar pedals, covering the full scope of what guitarists really need! All of their products are designed and made in the USA. Strymon BigSky was originally released in an effect pedal format and is very well respected by guitar players and musicians. I was already aware of their product line. However, when I heard that BigSky has been released as a plugin, it got me really excited! Yes, the Strymon BigSky reverb plugin is their first-ever plugin released! 
What is Strymon BigSky?
Strymon‘s sound designer, Pete Celi, explains that the BigSky project came out of in-depth research. Strymon company actually investigated hardware reverb units, algorithms and architectures as well as academic materials and programming approaches that existed in the last five decades. This huge research resulted in the BigSky pedal, which has become a pinnacle in today’s guitar pedal and effect market.
Why Strymon BigSky Plugin?
As the company has received tons of feedback from audio engineers who use the BigSky pedal as an outboard effect on various non-guitar tracks in their mixes and really like the results, Strymon has decided to enable audio engineers and aspiring musicians to use BigSky in their DAW without worrying about hooking up an external pedal every time. After having put in years of work in the development of the plugin, Strymon has finally released the BigSky reverb plugin! The plugin version perfectly reproduced what the BigSky pedal is capable of!
Offers Flexibility
BigSky is not just a standard reverb plugin; it offers so many unique algorithms that you can use on your tracks individually and come up with original soundscapes. As you may already know, working in DAWs offers extreme flexibility, and you can actually control almost any parameter and automate them as you wish. 
Easy to Tweak Unique Algorithms
Strymon’s BigSky reverb plugin comes with 12 unique algorithms that are very easy to customise and tweak thanks to its wonderful layout. Each reverb algorithm also comes with a set of unique parameters that are special to the algorithm and very easy to play with. The layout makes it really easy to use and understand all these parameters at a glance.
Infinite Reverb Function
Strymon BigSky plugin also offers a hold button, which allows you to infinitely sustain the reverb while adding each note you play to the reverberated signal.
On top of that, you can also choose between “Infinite” and “Freeze“, so you can play with your dry signal on top of the “frozen” reverb signal.
Features
As I have mentioned above, the BigSky reverb plugin comes with 12 unique reverb algorithms. You can find detailed explanations of these algorithms below.
Bloom
Strymon BigSky‘s first algorithm is the Bloom algorithm! Back in the 90s, when companies were designing digital reverbs, they had to add more diffusion blocks to the algorithms as they needed to smooth out the reverb characteristics. But this also introduced some side effects, such as reverbs that built blooming envelopes. Therefore, you would end up with big ambient reverbs that stayed present with the dry signal even when higher wet/dry ratios were set.
The Bloom algorithm actually reproduces these desired side effects and features a bloom-generating component that feeds the signal into traditional reverb tanks and applies unique feedback parameters.
The Swell
Next, we have the Swell algorithm that is designed for bringing the reverberated signal behind the dry signal to create evolving textures, just like you would achieve by using a volume pedal for controlling the wet signal. You also have the option to have the dry signal swelled into the reverb in case you want to create bigger ambiences.
Spring
The Strymon BigSky plugin also comes with a much-loved Spring reverb algorithm. This Spring algorithm allows total customisation for the user and enables them to cover any type of spring reverb effect, featuring the ability to choose the number of springs and dwell parameters.
Plate
Strymon BigSky also features a Plate algorithm that creates rich, fast-building reverb effects for generating depth without early reflections coming into a specific environment. As with any algorithm, you have many parameters to shape the plate sound as well as plate size. selection.
Hall
BigSky also comes with one of the best-sounding Hall reverb algorithms as well, featuring diffused reactions and slow building density characteristics. For this algorithm, you can choose Concert or Arena sizes with a Mid-EQ control.
Room
Next, we have the Room algorithm! This algorithm is again one of the most preferred reverb algorithms out there. The BigSky Room algorithm is capable of creating any kind of room acoustics, from a studio ambience to large nightclubs. With the Tone, Diffusion and Low-End parameters, you can actually adjust the dampening parameters such as room materials, furniture and even people! 
Reflections
The Reflections algorithm is one of the most groundbreaking algorithms in BigSky‘s algorithm arsenal, in my opinion. With this option, you can actually accurately create small space reverbs in which you can move the source location in the room. It calculates 250 reflections based on the source location in the preferred room shape.
Nonlinear
Next, we have the Nonlinear algorithm, which can be used for creating special effects and unique textures. You have the option to choose from three different backward shapes, such as Swoosh, Reverse and Ramp, as well as gated reverbs and more.
Magneto
BigSky also features a tape echo/delay algorithm named Magneto. With the Magneto algorithm, you can actually choose the number of heads for echo creation with adjustable head spacing and feedback amounts.
Shimmer
Next, we have the Shimmer algorithm that features two adjustable pitch-shift controls to be added to the reverberated signal. The Amount and Mode parameters can be used for a variety of shimmering effects, covering subtle to full-blown splendour soundscapes.
Chorale
BigSky also comes with the Chorale algorithm, which is a very unique algorithm. It features vowel ranges and intensities for customising the “choir” type of effect. By increasing the Modulation parameter, the choir actually becomes more alive, backed up with a variety of voices.
Cloud
Last but not least, we have the Cloud algorithm! As the name suggests, this algorithm definitely makes you over the cloud (not always in a happy sense, though)! With the Cloud algorithm, achieving huge ambient reverbs is pretty easy. 
Review
Before I provide you with a full-scope demo of this wonderful plugin, I would like to talk about my findings about the BigSky plugin here.
Pricing – ~EUR235, Maybe a little bit too pricey?
I think you will definitely agree that Strymon BigSky sounds awesome and provides you with so many options out of the box. It retails for around 235€, and I think it’s just about the right pricing for a modern plugin like this. But I would still prefer a bit more affordable pricing, as the competitors are also priced around the same. I believe this would encourage people to buy the license more often than they start looking for cracked versions. However, having all these algorithms from a really respected company at the price tag is not something most people would complain about.
Installation – iLok Licence Manager
Regarding installation, unfortunately, installing Strymon BigSky took a while, as you need to first download an iLok License Manager and then create an iLok account. Once that’s done, you can launch the iLok and allow it a couple of minutes to sync a license with your computer. Then you can simply install the BigSky plugin and just start your trial period, which is 7 days long. Note that, in making the video below, I used the trial version, which is fully functional without any limits, but only for 7 days. I think a 7-day trial period is pretty good. At the end of the day, you don’t need more than this duration to understand the plugin and make a purchasing decision.
Performance – Heavy on CPU!
One of the most important things that you need to know about Strymon BigSky is that this plugin is very heavy on the CPU. As you may already know, I have been releasing many plugin reviews (mostly reverbs, echoes, etc.), and no other plugin has caused constant crackling and popping sounds while monitoring at the lowest sample and latency settings. My laptop features an Intel i7 4710MQ processor with 16GB of RAM, and I have been using it for the last 7 years without any issues. My current approach using these kinds of plugins is simply creating a separate track for the effects and setting it to 100% wet.
I use my ENGL E570 tube preamp along with an ENGL Cabloader IR pedal direct into my RME Babyface PRO. There, I use zero-latency monitoring and hear the dry guitar sounds through my KRK Rokit 5 G4 monitors. When I also launch Reaper and use an effect track for any reverb or echo plugin, I have never had any audio issues. However, with the Strymon BigSky, there were constant crackling and popping sounds while playing. There’s only one solution to overcome this issue, which is simply to increase the number of samples. But this adds latency, so I don’t really prefer it. The video that I recorded was pretty painful to make, as I had to hear these noises while playing. 
But while recording the screen, since there wouldn’t be any low-latency monitoring needed, I increased the samples up to 2048 so my computer was comfortably able to perform. On the Reaper FX window, I noticed BigSky was already consuming around 6% of CPU, which is huge in my opinion. No other plugin, including Valhalla’s crazy big reverbs, caused this. So to summarise this section: I highly recommend you visit Strymon’s website and download BigSky, then activate your free trial. You definitely need to try this before you buy, especially if you are planning to use this while monitoring at the lowest sample rates.
Resize Issues
The cool thing about the BigSky plugin is that it comes with an option to choose the interface size. You can make it smaller or bigger based on your preferences using the Size option in the top right section. However, even though I set it to 100% while recording my guitar parts and kept opening up the interface, it would give me different results. It would sometimes start smaller and sometimes as I set it to.
Sound Quality
Apart from these issues, we also need to talk about sound quality. I think they nailed it so well! It’s probably one of the best-sounding reverbs I have ever heard. As you may know, this is not just built for guitar, but for every instrument or vocals, you may not like every single preset. However, most of the presets will definitely get you inspired. I must say I’m so impressed by the Spring, Hall, Plate, Reflections and Cloud. I was really looking for a spring reverb plugin these days (I have even started seeing Google Ads showing my spring reverb plugins already!), and I’m sure this is pretty much what I would need.
Sound Demo (no talking)
As promised, here I’m sharing the Strymon BigSky plugin demo video with you! It took so much time of my days to make this, as I didn’t want my trial period to expire! 🙂 I used my Fender American Standard Stratocaster, ENGL E570 tube preamp, ENGL Cabloader direct into RME Babyface PRO interface and then Reaper. I tried to play through all the presets, but after having realised not all of them would work for the guitar parts I played, I picked and chose some algorithms to fully present with all presets and some just to demo a single preset.
I was also recording random videos of the sky with my Canon EOS M200 in order to use them one day in the future for a video! I recorded this blue sky video a year ago. What a coincidence to have the BigSky plugin and combine it! 🙂 I hope you like the sounds I got in this video! 
Verdict
To summarise, as I mentioned above, I urge you to try the BigSky plugin before you buy. It’s definitely a heavy plugin and should be tried precisely in your recording/monitoring scenario. I believe the pricing can be pretty much justified if you consider what you get for this money.
Pricing & Availability
As mentioned, I used the trial version to prepare a demo video for you. So, basically, I have never bought this! I usually have a look at Thomann’s plugin section for the best price offers. However, this time, I’d say you should also check out Strymon’s official website, as they usually offer a lot better prices for their plugins.
Check out the Strymon BigSky Plugin on the Strymon website here
Of course, you can also check out Thomann’s offer. They sometimes run deals on multiple categories, and you may benefit from these. But currently, Strymon offers a lot better price tag than Thomann.
Check out Strymon BigSky Plugin on Thomann here
Hardware version?
If you prefer implementing this lovely reverb into your pedalboard or signal chain, you may want to get the pedal version. BigSky reverb pedals are one of the most respected reverb pedals out on the market.
Check out Strymon BigSky Reverb Pedal on Thomann here
For the 2nd-hand options, don’t forget to check out Reverb.
Check out the Strymon BigSky Reverb Pedal on Reverb here
Also, don’t forget to check out Amazon, as there are many resellers as well as the official Strymon store listing all Strymon catalogue there.
Check out the Strymon BigSky Reverb Pedal on Amazon here
In my use case, which is almost always bedroom guitar playing, I don’t really like to buy effect pedals as I always use my DAW to get a parallel, full wet signal and also as these would add complexity to my current setup. It’s a perfect solution for those who want the best quality reverb sounds with extreme flexibility.
I hope you enjoy this article and like the sounds of the BigSky plugin. Thanks for visiting my blog and reading/watching the materials here! Hopefully, see you in the next piece of content here!
