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Plates, Echo Chambers, Springs...

JohnMarkPainter

Active Member
I do a lot of retro-leaning work and have worked in a lot of the Nashville Studios where the old 'Nashville sound" records were done that had echo chambers and nice Plates so I am a sucker....

For those that think EW Spaces II is expensive...I use a lot of UA.
Their retro stuff is always good for me.

I recently bought Capitol Chambers after using it on a record in demo mode. It costs too much. It was worth it to me.
Sounds awesome on strings.

I have been using the UA EMT 140 Plate for years. The "Orchestra" Preset is a great start.
I also use the UA BX-20 Spring Reverb

Another good gem for me is the Waves Abbey Road Chambers.
It isn't as smooth as the UA Capitol but it is very very useful (and you can get it cheap).

Anything I am missing out on?
I haven't looked around lately.
 
I'm pretty picky about reverb. Ironic to people because my mixes don't sound "Wet"-but, I think that's 100% related. I think long smooth lush is the EASY reverb to get right.

My "dumb pop guy" ;) template in Mixbus32c has an Abbey Road plate, SpacesII (usually on formerly Cello studio room IR) and EchoBoy on a dual mono tape delay bus. When I do strings, I just use a scoring stage from Spaces2. If I want what I call "Dido vocal reverb" I go Relab480--ie, long lush chorus "obviously digitally generated classic Lexi studio reverb".

I demo'd about everything I could try when I got a new machine last year.

If you've not tried FabFilter's ProR, it's my fave algorithmic digital reverb. I don't own it because I don't have a use case for it. But, it was sweet, none the less. Again--from my picky vantage. It's neither as realistic as Spaces....nor as sweetened "studio reverb" as the Relab480L or Abbey Road Plate.... it has some "unique" settings....make sure to heed the input matrix....maybe they call it "width"--but, it goes from mono to stereo to dual mono on the one knob....and the way I use reverb, that's UUGGE, since I pan sends INTO the reverb....
 
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I'm pretty picky about reverb. Ironic to people because my mixes don't sound "Wet"-but, I think that's 100% related. I think long smooth lush is the EASY reverb to get right.

My "dumb pop guy" ;) template in Mixbus32c has an Abbey Road plate, SpacesII (usually on formerly Cello studio room IR) and EchoBoy on a dual mono tape delay bus. When I do strings, I just use a scoring stage from Spaces2. If I want what I call "Dido vocal reverb" I go Relab480--ie, long lush chorus "obviously digitally generated classic Lexi studio reverb".

I demo'd about everything I could try when I got a new machine last year.

If you've not tried FabFilter's ProR, it's my fave algorithmic digital reverb. I don't own it because I don't have a use case for it. But, it was sweet, none the less. Again--from my picky vantage. It's neither as realistic as Spaces....nor as sweetened "studio reverb" as the Relab480L or Abbey Road Plate.... it has some "unique" settings....make sure to heed the input matrix....maybe they call it "width"--but, it goes from mono to stereo to dual mono on the one knob....and the way I use reverb, that's UUGGE, since I pan sends INTO the reverb....
I’ll have to check out Abbey Plate...those Waves sales pop up a lot.
I’ve never worked with dynamic EQ...always used Multiband Compression but the latency with UA Multiband is no good for live playing. Have to leave it off until mix which is a drag.
 
Be warned--it (AR Plates) uses about 10x the CPU of the (release later) Chambers-or any other reverb I've ever used EXCEPT that UVI Plate, which I think has modes that use my entire hexcore i7--but, still sound like a lame metallic reverb.

Friends from the Cult of UAD say they still like their plates more (if only "a little bit", so it might not be worth it for you.
 
And there's one I didn't try....I tried their Seventh Heaven--the Bricasti emu one--didn't have a dual mono input matrix. I do remember it being a nice sounding reverb, though. I just thought it was going after that same thing--that smarmy big rich "studio made reverberation as effect". I seem to remember mixing a sax with it during the demo and thinking it hit that out of the park.

It's an IR based thing--what's the CPU footprint look like on the Lustrous Plates?
 
The Lexicon plate in the PCM 91 and others is really good, but actually there was a cheap Yamaha reverb in the late '90s that had one that was a real surprise - in fact it was indistinguishable from a real one (a friend created the programs for it, and I heard the two side-by-side).

Given that Yamaha isn't going to start from scratch every time, it's a safe bet that anything of theirs still has that algorithm.
 
It's an IR based thing--what's the CPU footprint look like on the Lustrous Plates?
Very low - barely a ripple on the Logic CPU meter on my 2015 iMac. Seventh Heaven is excellent too and I have an actual Bricasti M7, which sits idle most of the time as the plugin is usually 'good enough' and so much more convenient!
 
I am firmly in the UA camp. I own, and use, reverbs from Exponential Audio, 2CAudio, and a couple others, but that is not where I start.

I use the EMT 140 Plate on almost everything I do. I "grew up" using spring and plate reverbs, and in this case I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the UA plate is as close as we get with plugins.

I also used chambers a lot way back when, and the Capital Chambers takes me back. At the moment I've had great success using the chambers on tracks, and not so much using them on mixes, but I am still learning.

And the Ocean Way Studios, while not strictly a reverb, gets used early and often - lately in conjunction with the chamber.

Then there is the Lexi 480 - one of the only plugins for which I still use presets. It is deep, and I am working on it.

Leaving UA world I do like the PSP reverbs a lot. Their spring reverb is my favorite.

Exponential Audio - their reverbs are complex, both in sound and in operation. At first I used their presets, but as I've learned what they do I've used them as starting points and I am much happier with the results. R4 is probably closer to the 480 or other high end digital reverbs, not that there is anything wrong with that. Nimbus, on the other hand, is probably as close as one can get to a digital representation of a real room - if that makes sense. It's hard to explain. In both cases the preset browser is fantastic, it is my friend!

2C Audio, again we have different reverbs for different purposes. Lately I've been using Breeze2 a lot. It sounds gorgeous, and they have a placement tool, Precedence, that works really well with Breeze2. The combination is fantastic for virtual instruments.

I still end up using the EMT 140, the Lexi 480, the Chamber, and the Ocean Way Studios, but I've been having fun with the Exponential Audio and 2C Audio reverbs.

When it was all hardware, and very expensive hardware, I pretty much figured one digital reverb was enough. With the prices dropping to insanely low levels I am slowly joining the camp that thinks one can never have enough reverbs.
 
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