music

St. Barts Reverb Plugin

A plug-in that captures the reverb of a neo-gothic church that you can apply to your music.

2025 Brighton, UK
St. Barts Reverb Plugin

St. Barts Reverb

St. Bartholomew’s is a neo-gothic church in Brighton (UK), and is widely considered to be the tallest parish church in Britian with potentially the largest volume due to it’s non-standard shape - it’s huge!

Years ago I recorded the reverberant characteristics of the space and used it in my undergraduate teaching.

More recently, I’ve turned it into a Plug-In (Standalone, VST3, AU). Read about the story behind it and how I created it in this blog post.

Take a listen here, download it, and use it in your own music - it’s free!

Audio demos

Here are some examples of St Barts reverb applied to some recordings (no other processing took place):

Piano

From the seminal 1981 recordings of Bach’s Goldberg variations by Glen Gould:

Piano Dry
Piano Wet (St Barts)

Vocals

Imogen Heap’s Lost & Found:

Vocals Dry
Vocals Wet (St Barts)

Chamber Ensemble

Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor by Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective:

Chamber Ensemble Dry
Chamber Ensemble Wet (St Barts)

Music

What happens when you put Adele in St. Barts?:

Adele Dry
Adele Wet (St Barts)

Download

Get it free! Download includes standalone, VST3, and AU versions.

Download St Barts

Installing on macOS

The build is ad-hoc signed, not notarised, and the files pick up macOS’s download quarantine on the way to you — so macOS will block them on first open until you clear it. This is expected.

  1. Unzip and copy the components to:

    • AU → ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/St Barts Reverb.component
    • VST3 → ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/St Barts Reverb.vst3
    • Standalone → wherever you like (e.g. /Applications)

  2. Clear the download quarantine. Open Terminal and run, adjusting paths if needed:

  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/St\ Barts\ Reverb.component
   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/St\ Barts\ Reverb.vst3
   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/St\ Barts\ Reverb.app
  1. First launch of the standalone: if macOS still warns of an unidentified developer, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway in the note near the bottom. You only do this once.
  2. In your DAW, rescan the plug-in list if St Barts Reverb doesn’t appear.