FOAM is Carbonated Audio's ducking reverb. While the dry signal plays, its Make Room control lowers the reverb by up to 36 dB, then lets the tail return in the gaps, so the space stays alive underneath a busy part instead of being gated off. Recovery sets in note values or milliseconds, and a Detector listens to FOAM's own input by default or to an external source, so a vocal reverb can duck to a kick.
The room comes from a single Size and Bloom field with ten factory spaces, and a four-point Tail Shaper (Onset, Build, Body, Decay) draws the tail against the dry signal on a tempo grid. Decay, Pre-Delay, and Recovery sync to tempo or run free, with a manual BPM fallback when the host gives no tempo. It loads as a send or an insert, adds Tone and Width, reports zero latency with no lookahead, and runs under 1% of one core on an Apple M4 at 48 kHz, per the developer.
The license is $49, one time, for up to three machines, with no dongle or account. Formats are VST3, AU, and AAX on macOS 11 or later, and VST3 on Windows 10 and 11. The nearest rivals are Baby Audio Crystalline, a full modern reverb with a Ducker mode at $99, and Valhalla VintageVerb at $50, the classic algorithmic reverb with no ducking. For the same studio's console-chip resynth tool, see TALLBOY.
We have not scored it. The demo is the full plugin, playing 60 seconds then muting 10 on a loop. For the full walkthrough, see the FOAM first look.