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Your Favorite Reverb?

Less plugins - definitely. Strangely though I had more gear. Ha. But yes, you are probably right. If you know your tools really well, you can get a lot out of them (e.g. working with what I had).

I'm actually trying to narrow it down to my one goto verb, one primary eq, and a couple of favorite compressors right now for that very reason! I do not know my library of plugins as well as I once knew my old standbys! :thumbsup:

EDIT: I've also refound a fondness for Waves Renaissance EQ6 out of all of the EQs I have. If only the GUI was bigger...
I use all the Renaissance stuff far more than I'd like to admit.
 
I frequently do little Reverb shootouts where I'll take a track, usually of someone else's music, or a drum track or something, and then insert a bunch of different reverbs on a send, try and match their settings, and compare them.

Valhalla frequently wins. Other winners, depending on the material, are altiverb and slate verbsuite, lexicon PCM bundle, r e Labs 480, and the Eventide 2016.

What never wins, is the fabfilter verb. This surprises me because the concept behind it is so cool, and I'm a huge fabfilter fan , owning most of their plugins. But it just never excites me.

For matching, though, the first thing I try to do is find out what room the samples were recorded in, and then find an IR for that room. Most major Studios, where a lot of sample libraries were recorded, have impulses that you can find either in Alta verb or spaces or in impulse packs.
 
Well put Mark. I also have Spaces and Valhalla Room, and FOG Convolver (which is great for loading 3rd party IRs from Bricasti and Lexicon collections). I've spent the time to really get to know these plugins and where/how best to use them, so I don't feel I need anything else.
I love these types of threads (my bank account and Mrs SoNowWhat? less so) as there's always some new (to me) dev or product that pops up for me to check out. Downloading FOG demo now.

Edit - By the way I had a lot of trouble with demos of the Exponential Audio Verbs. Has anyone else had this problem. Kept crashing my system when trying to open my DAW, I gave up in the end. Studio One 3 Pro, Win7. Know they are highly regarded.
 
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Wow, there are about 15 reverbs recommended that I had never even heard of! This may take a little more research than I thought... I'm going to try Spaces first. I've got it installed on my master computer, but this reverb is going on a slave to balance HW Diamond, 8Dio, and Spitfire.

Here's hoping I can find my original download link for it :/
 
Wow, there are about 15 reverbs recommended that I had never even heard of! This may take a little more research than I thought... I'm going to try Spaces first. I've got it installed on my master computer, but this reverb is going on a slave to balance HW Diamond, 8Dio, and Spitfire.

Here's hoping I can find my original download link for it :/

spaces can be downloaded easy with the east west installation center.
 
I've been on a bit of a reverb quest over the last three or four years. Yesterday I listened to a few of my favorite mixes where I loved my reverb sound. These were back from 2008. Let me tell you... I was shocked to see my sessions! I only used DVERB inserts on every track. This was pop/rock.

No sends? What was I thinking?! Dverb? Really? Why did I do that?

It is not how I would ever mix today, but for some reason, it sounds better than anything I have tried to do since...

I have a similar experience with D-Verb. As a clueless Pro Tools beginner, I just put D-Verb on every track and loved it. Since then, I never use D-verb and try to use way more reverb sends etc, and even tho they are clear benefits from mixing this way, sometimes I listen to my old tracks and they sound better in many ways.

D-Verb as a track insert just sounds really great for some reason. I feel like unlike some other reverbs that maintain the integrity of the source material, D-Verb kinda just murders the top end but by doing that, it makes it really easy to mix a song without a lot of harsh top end build up.
 
Surprised no mention for some UAD verbs. The 244 and Ocean Way are my go to and I love 140 plate for drums/percussion. With that said I enjoy Valhalla room and Shimmer and use often for vibe and effect.
 
My favorites: Acon Digital Verberate, SIR2, MOTU's Proverb. I demoed Pro-R and liked it very much, but it was close enough to Verberate that I thought I didn't need it. Here's something I'd strongly recommend: do a blind test with demos of all these plugins, using HOFA's 4U+ Blind Test (get it! I'd totally recommend it.) Set the various reverb plugins to similar or identical reverb lengths. The results may surprise you. Plugins that you are in love with may fall short. Others that you have taken for granted may really shine. Speaking from my own experience...
 
You ‘walk’ into a (virtual) room where a bunch of people are discussing which reverb is best, only to tell them that their conversation has no merit - why do that?

Ned, coming from a very different point of argumentation as Jimmy, i have to admit that his statement has some truth.
Personally, i'm kind of a reverb junkie, and i have my very clear - although everytime shifting -preferences. Which means, i guess i know the microcosm of different reverbs enough to come to a intuitive choice in most cases. (and sometimes i wonder about this fact, since there are really lots of choices).

HOWEVER: what still amazes me, is not my personal relation to different reverbs, but the fact, that so many other professional users come to their own - often completely different - preferences/conclusions and get amazing results with completely different setups.
So, at a certain point, i really think it's not that much about the specific reverb you use, but more about how you make the parameter "reverb" a part of your composition.

It's somehow an interactive process:
Your reverb gives you a result, and then you go on and refine that result.
Which at a certain point means: it's more about the ability to integrate the results of the reverb in the bigger creative scheme than the reverb itself.

I might be wrong, of course. But i've heard so many great composers praising tools that i personally don't like so much that my personal conclusion is the insight that in fact many roads are leading to Rome.... ;)
 
I have a similar experience with D-Verb. As a clueless Pro Tools beginner, I just put D-Verb on every track and loved it. Since then, I never use D-verb and try to use way more reverb sends etc, and even tho they are clear benefits from mixing this way, sometimes I listen to my old tracks and they sound better in many ways.

D-Verb as a track insert just sounds really great for some reason. I feel like unlike some other reverbs that maintain the integrity of the source material, D-Verb kinda just murders the top end but by doing that, it makes it really easy to mix a song without a lot of harsh top end build up.
Are you the new gnugnu?


*sorry, back to the thread*
 
My favorites: Acon Digital Verberate, SIR2, MOTU's Proverb. I demoed Pro-R and liked it very much, but it was close enough to Verberate that I thought I didn't need it. Here's something I'd strongly recommend: do a blind test with demos of all these plugins, using HOFA's 4U+ Blind Test (get it! I'd totally recommend it.) Set the various reverb plugins to similar or identical reverb lengths. The results may surprise you. Plugins that you are in love with may fall short. Others that you have taken for granted may really shine. Speaking from my own experience...
Great idea. It was fun playing the Spitfire World Cup reverb challenge blind. Problem was I didn't always pick the same as Christian or Jake so didn't get to hear the match-ups I wanted. Hofa 4U+ could be an option.
 
We are very fortunate as there are so many great reverb plugins. We are literally spoiled for choice. I own a few of them, these are my favorites.

1. Waves Abbey Road Plates. Downside is CPU usage. I struggle to use it when I’m running large sessions/templates. A shame as I’d use all the time if I could. Next computer, it’ll be on everything.

2. Reverberate 2.0. I absolutely love this reverb. Very flexible for a convolution verb. Included IRs are very, very good. Downside is the interface.

3. UAD AMS RMX16. It’s not for everything but what it’s for, there’s nothing better. The sound of it always puts a smile on my face.

4. UAD Lexicon 224. I’m a huge Vangelis fan, so of course I’m going to love this. It’s amazing for ambient sounds but also very, very good at being a verb that’s not overly obvious in a mix. Recently, I’ve compared it to UAD’s 480 (there seems to be a lot of buzz about it) and I felt that it held its own very, very well.

Honorable mention - Waves H-Verb. Very, very nice and flexible reverb. Can be extremely affordable too, when on sale. High CPU usage though.
 
Ned, coming from a very different point of argumentation as Jimmy, i have to admit that his statement has some truth.
Personally, i'm kind of a reverb junkie, and i have my very clear - although everytime shifting -preferences. Which means, i guess i know the microcosm of different reverbs enough to come to a intuitive choice in most cases. (and sometimes i wonder about this fact, since there are really lots of choices).

HOWEVER: what still amazes me, is not my personal relation to different reverbs, but the fact, that so many other professional users come to their own - often completely different - preferences/conclusions and get amazing results with completely different setups.
So, at a certain point, i really think it's not that much about the specific reverb you use, but more about how you make the parameter "reverb" a part of your composition.

It's somehow an interactive process:
Your reverb gives you a result, and then you go on and refine that result.
Which at a certain point means: it's more about the ability to integrate the results of the reverb in the bigger creative scheme than the reverb itself.

I might be wrong, of course. But i've heard so many great composers praising tools that i personally don't like so much that my personal conclusion is the insight that in fact many roads are leading to Rome.... ;)
This is probably close to how I think of it (thought I have nothing like as much experience as you working with reverbs in a production setting). I am thinking it is very much like samples, a good composer/orchestrator can make any library sound good. Of course, having tools that make it easier are only ever a good thing and I need all the help I can get most of the time. And I guess that the way a verb works/UI/etc all play into that as well. Some things you just jibe with and seem to get results with relatively little effort, others it feels like a chore. This is obviously very personal and very, very subjective.
 
Lexi Pcm native, Waves Ir1 and Hreverb... this last one does wonders on guitar and piano.
 
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