Which reverb ?

[Arpangel]

Personally, I use hardware rack Effects, on Analogue Mixer AUX sends.

Me too, lots of sends, Eventide have become way too cliched, Lexicon still have it, so do Yamaha, plus my old Midiverbs.

[Eddy Deegan]

There was a similar reverb thread a few days ago and you will get as many suggestions as there are replies (because we’ve all got one each )

Bob speaks the truth but here are my thoughts

Ever since Martin reviewed it way back in 2009 I've been a steadfast fan of 2cAudio's Aether software plugin.

I've not owned that many 'high end' reverbs (I tend to favour delay over reverb) but I've heard quite a few first-hand from visiting various folks many of whom frequent this forum.

Aether has been updated a handful of times since that review and is still right up there with the best of them to my humble ear.

When it comes to hardware I've got two 'go-to' units. The first is legacy crunchy goodness in the form of the Alesis Midiverb 4. This probably isn't what you (Scouser) are looking for but it has something about it that's particularly pleasing to me and I've heard more than a few people say nice things about it.

The second is the on-board reverb in the Novation Summit. If they made that algorithm available in a rackmount they'd probably sell loads of them. Not that many parameters (3 spacial types only) but it's a wonderful sound and I'm very happy that they made it possible to use the Summit as an FX unit for external audio sources.

I'm not actually looking for plugins, rather how to distinguish one from another and be able to identify the type and generally get a better understanding where to start.

I'm afraid I can't help you much with that but then again from the above I'd say that in my case it's more a case of finding the solutions that sound good in a mix. If it sounds good in a mix (granted there's a whole discussion about what 'good' means to different people) then it is good.

In my case, 'good' means 'transparent' insofar as I can hear the effect without it overwhelming or masking various other things going on in a mix. To complicate things further I'd say that a good half of that is down to the skill of the mixing engineer working with whatever unit they have available to them.

[rha]

Might be useful to look at something like the manual for the Lexicon 480L as it goes into a bit of detail about how the reverbs work and what the parameters do, with some pointers as to what might be useful in recreating certain sounds. I guess there are some general principals that may carry over to other units or plugins, original hardware not necessarily required?!

[muzines]

Might be useful to look at something like the manual for the Lexicon 480L as it goes into a bit of detail about how the reverbs work and what the parameters do, with some pointers as to what might be useful in recreating certain sounds.

Honestly, the Relab manuals for their reverbs (including the 480L emulation) are excellent and easy-digestible primers for general reverb principles, and are well worth a glance through - at least for the introductory stuff, you don't need to get into the nitty-gritty of the actual plugin.

Here's the LX480 Complete manual:
https://relabdevelopment.com/public/man ... Manual.pdf

[Gone To Lunch]

Ever since Martin reviewed it way back in 2009 I've been a steadfast fan of 2cAudio's Aether software plugin.

Me too. Except that I have now just transitioned from Intel to Silicon, and Aether does not seem to be silicon compatible and no longer shows up as an option in my Digital Performer 11 or Vienna Ensemble Pro 7.

Ho hum.

[Eddy Deegan]

... I have now just transitioned from Intel to Silicon, and Aether does not seem to be silicon compatible and no longer shows up as an option in my Digital Performer 11 or Vienna Ensemble Pro 7.

Ho hum.

I sympathise. Aether has been around for many years and I've not updated it for ages. I don't know what 2CAudio are doing but I note from their product page that they say:

Aether is available for AU, VST, and AAX hosts under Mac OSX.7 or higher. Both 64-bit and 32-bit versions are provided for all formats. An Intel-based CPU is required for Mac OSX. WE DO NOT SUPPORT PPC.

This seems something of an outdated statement. My hope is that they would continue the tradition of an excellent plugin by supporting it on the latest Apple architecture (even though I'm not a user of same).

I've just dropped them a note asking about their plans, if any, to support the latest Apple hardware. I'll post an update with their response if/when I get it.

[RichardT]

Here are some quick thoughts on reverb plugin types. Probably this can be easily improved..

I think there are two dimensions to think about.

The first is - what is the aim of the plugin?

- to recreate real spaces
- to recreate reverbs from the past (plates, springs, early digital etc)
- to create interesting effects
- some combination of these

The second is - how does it work?

- using algorithms to calculate the reverb
- using modelling technology to simulate devices
- using impulses / convolution technology to model real spaces
- some combination of these

I’ve no idea if that helps. For modern recordings, it will be very difficult to tell by listening what’s going on. Best thing is just to try things out.

[6120]

I don't know if someone has mentioned it but depending on the DAW software you're using for recording, with the exception of Reaper, all modern DAWs have their own flavours of reverb that might be worth trying before buying anything else?

I love reverb and have far too many reverb plugins and have deliberatly decide to strip back all my plugins to the ones I find most useful. I've got several Eventide reverbs that are excellent but expensive if not on sale, SSL, again excellent and I got it on sale a few months ago at a great price, and Sonnox, probably my favourite and again got them in the Black Friday deals several years.

However, the best value reverb plugin, IMHO, is the range by Valhalla DSP (https://valhalladsp.com) that's well worth trying as they're $50 all year round.

[Scouser]

The Kris Kristofferson track mentioned in the OP was released in 1970, which of course rules out the use of digital reverb. The available technologies at the time were chambers, plates and springs. It was recorded at Monument Studios in Nashville which certainly had EMT plates -- I don't know whether it also had a chamber. The most noticeable thing about it is that it sits behind the vocal even though it's quite prominent, I think because it's delayed using a tape machine. If I wanted to try to reproduce that I'd start with a fairly dense chamber or plate sound and use a fairly long pre-delay, perhaps 80-100 ms or thereabouts.

Thanks for the replies

Sam, so with a little research one can rule out certain reverbs and get closer to what may have been used. Thanks for taking a listen to the track. Thanks for the giving me some idea as to what may be going on in the example.

This is the type of thing I mean, being able to find some vague starting point, even if that is being able to distinguish the difference between a plate and room.

I think there could be value in just limiting oneself to using one reverb, when learning. Whilst that may not always get you the sound you want, you will be learning the parameters and settings, which will apply to other reverbs when you come to use them ?

[YashN]

Other hardware worth checking: Ensoniq's DP4 and DP4+, as well as Alesis Midiverb II. The latter is quite good for the price it goes for, even today.

Budget Lexicon but very cool is the one I have: LXP-15. If the hardware mods are already done, then you can also upgrade its firmware to make it an LXP-15 II. Presets are great and if at all you need to tweak them, internal parameters are easily accessible. Another cool thing about it is that it has 5 CV inputs which you can program to be map to parameters of your choice. This makes the control interaction with other gear quite interesting.

Software-side, also check out Acustica Audio's offerings (Acqua and more). Their technology really nails Virtual Analogue.

[resistorman]

I think there could be value in just limiting oneself to using one reverb, when learning. Whilst that may not always get you the sound you want, you will be learning the parameters and settings, which will apply to other reverbs when you come to use them ?

Many reverbs don't have all that many parameters, but the terms can vary, which can be confusing. The usual important ones are length (time of decay) size (the physical size of room/ device) density (amount of discrete reflections) color (balance of frequencies) pre-delay (as noted by Sam about Kristofferson's sound), modulation (an artificial effect that gives motion to the reverb) and mix. One of my favorites, Little Plate from Sound Toys, only has Decay (length), Lowcut (color), Mix, and modulation on/off.

[YashN]

I was just showing my Kurzweil KDFX manuals to a friend of mine who's also into synths and composition. They are available for download at Kurzweils website (Legacy -> K2500 or K2600) if you want to have a look at parameters and their meanings.

[Eddy Deegan]

I sympathise. Aether has been around for many years and I've not updated it for ages

...

I've just dropped them a note asking about their plans, if any, to support the latest Apple hardware. I'll post an update with their response if/when I get it.

I got a reply from 2CAudio today so as promised here is what they had to say:

Thanks for the question regarding OSX and Apple Silicon topics.

We have heard from users, and verified on our end, that our products actually do run on Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey.

There are a few minor (depending on your perspective) issues in Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey:

0) To install you must goto system preferences and allow to install "from anywhere" using the unsigned installer.

1) In our older products (Aether, B2, and KS) Preset Names and folder lists are sorted in a random order instead of Alphabetical due to changes to the Apple File System. Breeze and Precedence are fixed for this topic already.

2) Saving user presets does not work * this is the largest issue, but it appears to have been resolved specifically on Monterey.

Do you support Apple Silicon? We are Intel-only at the moment, but performance running under Rosetta 2 is favorable compared to some Intel MacBook Pros. We are working on Apple-Silicon-Native versions.

Short version: yes, the current version of the products work on the latest Apple systems, with some minor limitations, and we hope to address these limitations shortly.

We are working towards updating our SDK platform in a unified effort that would address all of the above as well as add VST-3 support in one action/update. No exact ETA for this release yet, as there are a lot of moving parts, and we have an unfortunate challenge with a former co-worker who has left the company. The products are being moved to a new SDK to address all of these topics and get back to a more frequent update and new release schedule.

As always, for new purchases, we always recommend new customers try the demo version to verify the current product behavior meets his/her current requirements and purchase decisions should be based on current functionality.

[Martin Walker]

Well that sounds more encouraging than I was expecting - other less informed folk have claimed on line that no more updates would ever appear. As usual, it's far safer to ask the experts