Reverb

[iomegaman]

Mostly regarding plugins here:

Because I have limited room/s I have been going through and buying and testing plugins lately...so here's my rundown of current "best of"...

The Abbey Roads Chambers is nice but very cpu heavy...some of that is because they add all that other "non-tape" crap and frankly Waves is not known for being code light...

I also picked up Apogees Bob Clearmountain Domain...really nice stuff and super tweakable, but probably not in the ballpark of what you are looking for...(right now Apogee is running a sale on his spaces $24.00)

Tverb by Eventide is pretty damn good...especially since it is designed to give you the room sound as it hits a console...built in compression and actually very tweakable as well...you can get (almost) exactly the David Bowie Heroes sound...

Capitol Chambers by UAD is probably a level up from most plugin verbs...just out of the box it has some of those really decent Capitol recording rooms stuff...UAD is never really cheap but I have never regretted any of their products...I tend to not spend a lot on them and wait for the summer sale only buy a couple of things every few years...the basic plugin pack that comes with your device is plenty-too-much enough as it is. (their SSL-legacy is the closest plugin to my G-ssl build of any out there)...

ProTools gives you the Convology XT plugin and right now they are running a sale on vintage convolutions...classic pack is like $24...out of all the convolution stuff I have they are probably the top...

I have the Stevie Slate bundle so I get "Lustrous Plates" from liquid sonics...some rather decent settings, but have not used it much...

McDSP Revolver is good but not my favorite...a lot of people like it but its a bit middle of the road.

The ProTools "Space" (part of the suckscription model) is really decent as well...as well as the 2106 room which is really very workable.

PSP 2445 is very nice basically their version of the EMT 140/250, psp makes pretty decent plugins.
I also have the KUSH plugins...his verb is really nice, its a plate and his stuff sounds more "transformery" than most plugins...its a little cpu heavy though...

Denise "Perfect Room" takes a different approach (refreshing imho) and does not use delays for the reverb tails...Denise plugins are not as expensive as most and are put together by mostly muso's...pretty light footprint and a lot more natural sounding than most of the current crop...it might not go far enough though.

Have not tried Klevgrds verb but they are another company that doesn't waste time making obnoxious GUI's that are more eye candy than useful (looking at you Waves)...their Kompressor is the simplest quickest comp in my box and works great...

There's too many to name really...I've considered doing my own sort of room because the building I manage (part time) has an old cement staircase going to the roof that I alone have access to...it would require running a bunch of mic cables about 100' though and making sure the noise level is not intrusive...two levels of stairs narrow hall...reminds me of Bob Clearmountain room in his studio...

I do have a Kurzweil Rumor (same dsps as the mangler other unit)...and an older Lexicon...(which is noisy as heck)


I can never get my hardware verbs to sit in the mix...sound like everything is going through a metal coffee filter...which is also a "feature" of a lot of plugins...I think its the verb tails not being natural...

I wish Dave at DMG would create one...but I imagine doing a SPICE model of a reverb or room is practically impossible, it might give you the opamp/tube side of some reverb but the room itself is going to be a different beast altogether.

If I had to pick one for rooms I'd go with the UAD Capitol Chambers...the way I use it is I run it through an Apollo Twin from my laptop as an insert into either my Console or directly into the Apogee converters...(I'm basically using the laptop with the Twin as an "Analog DSP engine"...) not that I get any real benefit from doing it this way other than I have a little more control of over.

(I do have some UAD cards but put them in another machine because have maxed out my cheese grater Mac Pro so I can run a Thunderbolt card in it and NVMe hard drive...with the Symphony card I'm outta PCIe ports and don't want to buy a magma...Apple can kiss my grits...I've thought of running the UAD CC via spdif from another desktop to see if that works any differently, I doubt it will.)

 

[Whoops]

PSP 2445 is very nice basically their version of the EMT 140/250, psp makes pretty decent plugins.

Thats not correct,
PSP 2445 is based on EMT 244 and 245 digital reverbs, none of which have any resemblance to the EMT 140 which is a real Plate reverb and not similar to the EMT 250 which is a digital reverb.
Also the 140 and 250 don't sound similar in any way.

 

[iomegaman]

Thats not correct,
PSP 2445 is based on EMT 244 and 245 digital reverbs, none of which have any resemblance to the EMT 140 which is a real Plate reverb and not similar to the EMT 250 which is a digital reverb.
Also the 140 and 250 don't sound similar in any way.

My bad, I was blowing through my verb list and didn't load it up again...its been a while since I used it.

 

[Whoops]

My bad, I was blowing through my verb list and didn't load it up again...its been a while since I used it.

No worries, just that for what the OP is looking after a Plate like the EMT 140 and Echo Chambers seem to be more in the ballpark

 

[evil grill]

...
I can never get my hardware verbs to sit in the mix...sound like everything is going through a metal coffee filter...which is also a "feature" of a lot of plugins...I think its the verb tails not being natural...
...

Have you tried pre-emphasis / de-emphasis in the box's sends and returns?

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I do have a Kurzweil Rumor (same dsps as the mangler other unit)...and an older Lexicon...(which is noisy as heck)
I can never get my hardware verbs to sit in the mix...sound like everything is going through a metal coffee filter...which is also a "feature" of a lot of plugins...I think its the verb tails not being natural...

You mean with the Rumor and "older" Lexicon? What model of Lexicon? There are all levels of adequacy in Lexicon products: the 224, 480 and 960 are hard to beat, although being quite old. In contrast, the cheaper models are nothing to write home about. I don't know the Kurzweil either.
I have 3 hardware digital reverbs that all sit remarkably in the mix, a TC M3000, a Quantec Yardstick and a dbx290.
The Quantec is rather rare and fetch $$$, even second-hand, but a used M3k can be had for less than $1k ; a dbx290 can be had for a couple hundred $ but is quite rare.
I made comparative tests between these and a Bricasti M7 and a Lex PCM96. The Quantec is clearly in a league of its own; you can't hear it until you turn it off. The Bricasti and PCM96 did not make enough difference with the M3k to justify the expense (and I had very nice pricing on both, nearly -50%). Finally the 290 was far from ridiculous in terms of performance in this comparison. It is quite limited in terms of tweakability, though.
I also tried a number of other digital reverbs that I rejected, as for me they don't sit in the mix, such as Yamaha, Eventide or AMS. For me they are more suited for FX than emulating natural ambience.

 

[living sounds]

I'm not a fan of the 960 (lacks the mojo of the 224, 300, 480 IMO), and modern stuff like the PCM96 is no better than the plugins (all of which are various shades of meh).  I like the 300, which is newer and more reliable and can do a larger-than-life effect sound, but applied correctly can also create convincing spaciousness. The cheapest variant, if you can find it, is a Lexicon Nuverb card, a 300 (minus the pitch shifter and AD DA) that runs on an old Mac. I've got two of those.

On the very cheap I like the Alesis Midiverb II, which can do very nice effect reverbs for electronic stuff, but lacks parameter controls.

The PSP EMT emulation is one of the best plugin verbs IMO, works well with the source.

I've also got a Logidy Etsy, a guitar pedal using convolution, that for some reason sounds a lot clearer and more convincing than plugins, but isn't well-suited for a professional studio environment. Quite affordable though.

 

[FarisElek]

Finally got around to reading all of these, and I truly appreciate all of your opinions. It really seems like reverb is just one of those things there isn't a really affordable/convenient solution many can agree on. I have experience with some Lexicon and Alesis reverb units and I felt like they were either tinny, boomy, or just applied some weird artifacts to the sound. Could be bad units as I got them from goodwill.

Would love to build a plate reverb, but it sounds a little intense of an endeavor for me at this moment, as I don't have a wood shop (regrettably). 

Until I figure out a solution I'm using the Abbey Road plates and rooms by Waves. I prefer them to the Lexicon and Alesis units I have sitting in a closet somewhere, but they still don't sound right to me.

 

[Whoops]

Until I figure out a solution

Altiverb

 

[FarisElek]

Would love to try it but it’s really expensive. Does it ever go on sale?

 

[Tubetec]

Im using the TC electronic Konnekt 24d Fabrik R reverb , It blows away the 20 year old onboard efx on my Akai DPS24 , works like a plugin or standalone unit, but the processing is internal ,so no glitches  . Also has two channels of 4 band eq and three band compression which Im also very impressed with. Downside is its Firewire connectivity which wont suit some, upside is it cost me 50 euros. Also handles digital,  co-ax and optical as well as Adat .

 

[FarisElek]

Intrigued. Couldn't find any for sale in the states on reverb, but I'll keep my eye out.

I sent my song to a friend that has Altiverb and we remotely worked on it together. Through the limited used with it, I can tell you that I like it better than the Waves Abbey Road stuff...kinda. I felt at times the Altiverb's decay would sound digital, with other settings I felt like it sounds luscious and amazing. The Abbey Road plates always sounds fine. But the serious downside I'm noticing about the Waves stuff is it's "Analog" sound. It's like an exaggerated darkness  that doesn't sound legit to my ears anymore. I also like the Altiverb let's you mess with the parameters more. The Waves stuff only gives you a couple settings for bass cut, and it's decay is weird.

I'll probably start saving up for the Altiverb. But with the amount it costs, i'm pretty sure I could take my jigsaw,  buy some wood, a metal plate, some isulation, and some other odds and ends and make a plate reverb. So I am unsure.

If anyone wants to hear our cover of the Laura Nyro cover of the Nolan Strong song we did over the last couple weeks, we just finished it.

Ryan

 

[Whoops]

Would love to try it but it’s really expensive. Does it ever go on sale?

there's a lot of "try before buy" versions online that you could Try out.

 

[FarisElek]

Here is the final result if anyone is interested.

https://ryanfarismusic.bandcamp.com/track/the-wind

 

[jensenmann]

Lately a friend called me that he bought a Lexicon 480 plugin. So I grabbed my Lexicon 300 and visited him. We did a few comparisons and it turned out to be very obvious that the hardware is so much better than the plugin. It´s still a long way to go for plugin reverbs.

 

[user 37518]

Lately a friend called me that he bought a Lexicon 480 plugin. So I grabbed my Lexicon 300 and visited him. We did a few comparisons and it turned out to be very obvious that the hardware is so much better than the plugin. It´s still a long way to go for plugin reverbs.

A hardware reverb runs software on a DSP, how is that different from a plug-in? Im not buying it...

 

[jensenmann]

I´m not selling anything, so you have no need to buy whatever from me. Honestly I don´t care about why there is a difference. I´m using gear and even a few good plugins as tools. As long as there is a difference that obvious I´m going to use hardware.

Anyway, I don´t believe that Lexicon gave their algorithms to a 3rd party company. So the difference might be the code. Who knows.... 

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Lately a friend called me that he bought a Lexicon 480 plugin. So I grabbed my Lexicon 300 and visited him. We did a few comparisons and it turned out to be very obvious that the hardware is so much better than the plugin. It´s still a long way to go for plugin reverbs.

But a 300 is not a 480, in many ways.

 

[jensenmann]

That´s true. Back in the days I had a 480 and a 300, so I have a very clear opinion what they do and how they compare. 

 

[wlinart]

There are loads of really nice reverb plugins, some very expensive, some less so. Here are a few i use, and they're great bang for the buck:
https://valhalladsp.com/ valhalla has a few really nice reverbs, all for 50$ (and some other effects). Very colourful reverbs
Exponential audio has some reverbs, which are often for sale for like 10$. Be carefull though, because they basically only have 2 reverbs, the other ones are just slimmed down / more extensive versions. More a clean-ish sound.
Altiverb is already mentioned, because it has a nice library with it. But there are other IR-reverbs as well. Most daw's have one built in. And there are some awesome free IR's: https://www.housecallfm.com/download-gns-personal-lexicon-480l and there are the free bricasti ir's which i can't find back.