What's your preferred reverb plugin?

[synthetic]

I'm surprised that there are no impulses of the AMS RMX floating around. "Nonlin" and "Ambience" were very popular reverb programs in the 80's.

[rhythminmind]

i think everyones still hiding/denying there 80's reverb abuse..

[TonyCrazyMan]

Hi!

 

I've been busy the whole day experimenting with and testing different reverb plug-ins. I tested the following reverbs:

 

- UltraFunk Sonitus FX Reverb R3

- Sir (Impulses: Lexicon PCM Series, Lexicon 480L, Lexicon 960, Spring Reverbs, Alesis Microverb 2 & 4, Quantec Yardstick, UAD Plate Reverbs)

- Princeton Digital 2016 Stereo Room VST

- Waves TrueVerb

- Waves IR-1

- Waves Renaissance Reverberator

- Steinberg Nuendo Verb3

- DSP-FX StudioVerb

 

The goal was not to find the most versatile and well equipped plug-in, my goal was to find the most natural and beautiful sounding reverb! I reached the goal!

 

First of all I'd like to mention that besides these reverbs I've tested a lot of other reverbs as well (including for instance TC Electronics, Cakewalk), but now that I've tested quite many different reverbs I can say that the sound quality between different reverbs vary pretty much and the reverbs mentioned above are among the better reverbs on the market in terms of the quality of digital software based reverbs. One reverb unit that I haven't tested is the AltiVerb, people say it sounds amazing, but I can really not say anything about it since I've not tested it. What I also found out during this test period was that many of the sounds of the reverb itself are quite the same between different units, but there are differences:

 

- Stereo and/or dynamic wideness

- Tail modulation

 

The better these two properties were, the more natural the reverb felt and sounded.

 

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

 

****Test result****

 

1.Waves IR-1

2.UltraFunk Sonitus FX Reverb R3

3.Sir (Impulses: Lexicon PCM Series, Lexicon 480L, Lexicon 960, Spring Reverbs, Alesis Microverb 2 & 4, Quantec Yardstick, UAD Plate Reverbs)

4.DSP-FX StudioVerb

5.Steinberg Nuendo Verb3

6.Princeton Digital 2016 Stereo Room VST

7.Waves Renaissance Reverberator

8.Waves TrueVerb

 

 

8,7 Waves TrueVerb, Waves Renaissance Reverberator

 

These reverbs can be useful. They have a lot of features, however, if you have sensitive ears like I have you will feel that these reverbs don't sound so beautiful. But if you're really good at tweaking you might dial in a rather beautiful reverb if you're lucky. But don't expect any top notch quality.

 

6 Princeton Digital 2016 Stereo Room VST

 

The Princeton Digital 2016 Stereo Room was clearly much better sounding than both the Waves Renaissance Reverberator and the Waves TrueVerb. By tweaking the Fine Stereo preset you would end up with a quiet stereo rich reverb sound, useful in many different situations. Actually this reverb topped my list at first. I thought there was something interesting about the sound of this reverb. But the problem with this unit was that almost all presets sounded the same, which in combination with the rather limiting editing features made me realise that the unit is capable of a couple of good sounds before you have to start tweaking among very limited features. But because of the sound quality it took the sixth place.

 

5 Steinberg Nuendo Verb3

 

I was a little surprised when I tested the Steinberg Nuendo Verb3. It had a pretty simple user interface but a few very good reverbs. When I compared it with the Princeton I thought it was a little better sounding, which in combination with more variations between presets made me realise that Steinberg Nuendo Verb3 takes the fifth place. Steinberg might be underrated when it comes to the quality of the effects they make! They have the knowledge of making great sounding effects! So give Steinberg a second chance if you think they cannot make good sounding effects!

 

4 DSP-FX StudioVerb

 

If I would have rated the user friendlyness this unit would have not been on the fourth place. The effect is outside the sequencer window, that is good if you have several monitors, but it's a nightmare if you have only one monitor. Also, the DSP-FX StudioVerb user interface looks rather old. But, do you know what? It sounds great! I almost thought that the DSP-FX StudioVerb would win the test, but after comparing the top 4 units over and over again I realised that it would be unfair to rate it higher. It was mostly in the stereo department where I thought it was not top notch. But this unit is really useful and worth trying. You might like the sound of it!

 

3.Sir (Impulses: Lexicon PCM Series, Lexicon 480L, Lexicon 960, Spring Reverbs, Alesis Microverb 2 & 4, Quantec Yardstick, UAD Plate Reverbs)

 

Actually I was playing with the Sir pretty much. I had a lot of impulses I wanted to try out. Some impulses sounded really good, so I got the feeling that with the right impulses this unit might really be very useful! Yes SIR!

 

2.UltraFunk Sonitus FX Reverb R3

 

Actually I was not really sure about the quality of this unit's reverbs. I was feeling it was "common sounding" at first, but as the time went by and I was comparing the top 4 over and over again I started to like this effect more and more. Even though it was rather simple and had quite typical reverb sounds I figured out it had a good modulation tail and the width feature was acutally quite useful! So it was smooth and useful, great! I needed to ask a friend too to take a listen, even though I was pretty sure it was not the number one I had to see if I'm being too negative about the potential in the sounds of this unit. But I was not the only one that thought it was not worth the first place. But this effect is actually very good sounding when you compare it with other reverbs on the market.

 

1.Waves IR-1

 

Awesome! The Waves IR-1 is really sweet sounding! No matter what sound type you play this unit is actually really sweet to have in the mix. Why is it so good? Because it sounds natural! It is quiet and thin, but it is there and it makes a huge difference in the mix! It sounds like you would be outside a calm night and shout. That's what I call a nice reverb! The Waves IR-1 is also impulse based so you can import new impulses, for instance the Lexicon 480L. I bet those impulses would sound awesome too in the Waves IR-1. Even though the UltraFunk Sonitus FX Reverb R3 and the Sir had many great sounds, I didn't find any as natural sounding as the reverbs in the Waves IR-1. It is the best of those I tested!

 

Finally I thought I had to post a small demo sound sample of it since you are so curious about what it sounds like on a record if you haven't heard it, so here is a short peace of Twin Peaks I recorded with my keyboard for this. The reverb is lying directly on the stereo outputs, no other reverbs are in the mix. Thanks to the quality of this reverb, it can be on the main stereo outputs without problems. This reverb is so thin, though, that some of it dissapears because of the bitrate being only 160 on this mp3 file. (I had to make it small enough to fit a floppy)

 

Waves IR-1 Plate Reverb - Twin Peaks

[rhythminmind]

i agree with the IR-1..

 

i think the reason for it being the best is do to it's quality impulses (96k 32 bit) .. they were made with great gear in great spaces... sir could be great but most free impulses are kinda sketchy ..

 

i'm using the IR-1 but i just hate using waves stuff... i have something against the waves loader.. i tried converting the waves impulses but wavelab didnt like them, even as raw files.. i got it to make a wavform but it had digital crap in the being of the files.. i think waves impulses have meta data in the files that mess up the conversion..

[greendoor]

If you want great non-linear reverbs, they really have to be tweakable in context. The only decent non-linear VST algorithmn reverb I know of is at www.artsacoustic.com This raises the bar for VST plugin algorithmn reverb.